The announcement that Shabana Mahmood is U-turning on the Boriswave reforms confirms that this Labour government has no intention, if it ever did, to end mass migration.
Labour was always just pulling the wool over our eyes. They have reverted to form and are throwing open the door.
We spend much of our time despairing over the small boats – rightly, because it is illustrative of a nation that has lost control, and given the national security and public safety ramifications of letting unvetted men from dangerous places into this country.
Rather than spend public money incentivising British people to do care work, we will spend billions subsidising others to come here from developing countries to do it instead
But in sheer numbers the Boriswave of course eclipses the illegal immigration scandal. ‘Between 2021 and the 2024 general election, [the previous government] oversaw net migration of two and a half million… In just four years, this country experienced levels of migration it had previously seen across four decades.’ These are not the facts as stated by a politician on the right. They are quotes from a speech to the IPPR in March 2026 by one Shabana Mahmood.
The headline change she announced has been the scrapping of plans to make foreign care workers in the UK wait 15 years for permanent settlement. Instead those who arrived before last May will qualify after just 5 years. There are other changes which are as egregious. Plans to withhold benefits until citizenship have been quietly dropped.
The government’s own analysis puts the cost of letting social care workers settle as £10 billion. Reform estimates higher; putting the cost to every British household at £20,000. And though the Home Office were last night belatedly insisting they need to adjust the numbers, their documentation put the total number being granted permanent settlement (and access to benefits) at 1.4 million. Or to put it in terms our PM will understand, around three times the size of Manchester.
Mahmood referred earlier this year to the ‘the scandal of lowering the skills requirements’ for those arriving on the Health and Social Care visa. She also pointed out that ‘fraud was rife – with phoney care providers created to draw people to this country on a false promise of work.’ She was explicit about the consequences of inaction: hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers would qualify for settlement and ‘gain access to welfare, free healthcare and social housing.’ She warned that ‘the lifetime cost to the taxpayer will be £10 billion…It would mean ever longer waits for the 1.3 million people in this country on the social housing list… And yet more pressure placed upon our National Health Service.’ All of this, she has now unleashed.
Rather than spend public money incentivising British people to do care work, we will spend billions subsidising others to come here from developing countries to do it instead. Eligible dependants can also settle after five years, even if they have never worked. And given the changes to benefit entitlement, what is to stop care workers leaving the industry to claim benefits, thereby creating shortages that justify importing yet more unskilled labour?
A consultation was done which the government has relied upon to explain its retreat. It is utterly farcical. Only 18 per cent of respondents were British citizens. 73 per cent were current visa holders. That is to say, the government asked migrants what they thought about plans to make it quicker for them to permanently settle here. For once, even the Yes Minister analogy falls short. This is a banana republic style charade.
The scale of this betrayal may mark a turning point. Reform pledged yesterday in response to review all British citizenship grants made to the Boriswave by this Labour government as a result of the U-turn. Zia Yusuf said that those migrants who don’t unambiguously benefit Britain will have their citizenship revoked.
Mahmood will hope that the longer qualifying periods for other categories of migrants will allow her to save some face. But they simply make a mockery of our laws. How can we credibly claim that making the journey by small boat will not be rewarded, when we are now saying someone can come here by those means, and 30 years after illegally entering this country all will be forgiven and they’ll receive permanent settlement?
How can we encourage legal migrants to work when we say that after 20 years of claiming benefits, and committing a few visa offences for good measure, they will be given permanent settlement?
We are saying you can break the law, you can sponge off the state, and we’ll reward you with what many around the world still regard as a glittering prize: the right to live permanently in Britain, or even a British passport.
It’s worth reflecting on that passport. Many will perhaps recall, at some point in their lives, standing in a customs queue at some exotic airport, clutching your British passport and feeling just a little frisson of pride. I know I have. It felt special and valuable; a golden ticket. In many parts of the world others still regard it in those terms.
How cheaply we now dole them out to all and sundry. For that which past generations regarded as a privilege, this government seems to regard as little more than paperwork.
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