Angela Rayner challenges longer settlement wait for migrant care workers

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has renewed her objection to plans that could make migrant care workers wait longer for permanent residence in the UK. Speaking ahead of Labour’s annual conference, she said changing the rules for people who had already moved to Britain would be ‘very disruptive’. The government has yet to settle whether its proposed longer waits would apply to workers already in the country.

In an interview with the Times reported by BBC News and the Guardian, Rayner said the government risked changing the goalposts years after care workers arrived. Her concern is about people who moved their lives to Britain to look after vulnerable people, expecting to qualify for settlement under the rules in place when they came. She said she had not changed her view since returning to the cabinet.

What the Home Office proposed

A Home Office consultation published in November 2025 proposed raising the baseline qualifying period for settlement to 10 years, from five years on many existing routes. It also sought views on a 15-year period for people sponsored in jobs below RQF level 6, including some roles on Skilled Worker and Health and Care visas. These are proposed qualifying periods, not rules already adopted.

The proposed model would allow some people to shorten the baseline period through specified contributions or integration criteria, while some circumstances could lengthen it. The consultation also proposed applying the changes to people already in the UK who had not yet received indefinite leave to remain. It said people who already held settled status would keep it. That proposed treatment of existing residents is at the centre of Rayner’s objection.

Who could be affected

The Guardian reported that about 180,000 foreign care workers arrived in Britain between 2022 and 2024 and that many could qualify for permanent residence in 2027 if the rules stay as they are. The Home Office used a broader figure: 616,000 Health and Care entry-clearance visas granted during those years. That total includes people beyond the care-worker group and should not be read as a count of workers facing a 15-year wait.

The Home Office forecast 384,000 additional settlement applications from the Health and Care visa group over 2027 to 2029 under its assumptions, with a peak of 210,000 in 2028. Those figures are projections, not applications already made or a count of people whose settlement will be delayed. The consultation acknowledged uncertainty about how people will behave and what future settlement demand will be.

For workers already in Britain, the unresolved issue is whether time spent here under the existing rules would still lead to settlement on the timetable they expected. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told a parliamentary committee that a large group who arrived in 2022 could qualify in February 2027 without a change. The government has said it will set out its policy and any transitional arrangements later this year.

A decision still to come

The Guardian reported that officials were considering responses to the consultation and that the policy had not been finalised. Mahmood told the parliamentary committee that ministers were taking time to review those responses and balance responsibilities to people who came to work in Britain with wider concerns about the immigration system. The consultation’s closure does not itself mean that its proposed qualifying periods have taken effect.

Labour MP Rachael Maskell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she expected the plans to be changed so they would not apply retrospectively to workers already in the UK, according to the Guardian. That is her expectation, not an announced government exemption. BBC News also reported that trade unions and Labour MPs had pressed ministers to soften the proposals.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Radio 4 that ministers had to treat people fairly while maintaining an immigration system the public could have confidence in, BBC News reported. She said the government reserved the right to change its mind or stick to its plans. Her comments left open the question of how any final rules would treat people who came to Britain before the proposed change.

The settlement dispute comes after separate restrictions on care-worker migration. The Guardian reported that the government had stopped recruitment of care workers from abroad and restricted their ability to bring family members. Those earlier measures do not answer the question now facing ministers: how long people already here must wait before they can apply for permanent residence.

Rayner’s intervention brings that question into Labour’s conference debate while the Home Office considers its response to the consultation. The next decisive detail will be the government’s final settlement policy, particularly any transitional arrangements for people who arrived under the five-year route. Until those arrangements are published, neither the proposed 15-year wait nor an exemption for existing workers can be treated as settled.