Tories accuse Shabana Mahmood of ‘U-turn’ on indefinite leave to remain policy – UK politics live

Chris Philp says the home secretary is giving in to ‘open-borders Labour left’ ahead of an announcement this afternoon The King’s Fund , a health thinktank, is warning that Shabana Mahmood is planning to tighten the residency rules for foreign workers when the number of overseas care workers being recruited is already on course to fall to 10,000 a year. And this is happening as vacancies in the sector increase, it says in its analysis . It explains: Overseas care worker recruitment is falling from its high point of 105,000 in 2023/24 to 30,000 in 2025/26, with it trending to fall to 10,000 in 2026/27. In 2025/26 there were 1. 02 million filled direct care independent sector posts and 65,000 vacancies.

Vacancy rates in the social care sector are above average when compared with others. Alongside a decline in the number of international recruits, the number of new domestic workers starters in care work is also falling - with now more leaving than are starting. There were 140,000 new British starters in 2025/26, down from 255,000 in 2020/21, compared with 175,000 who left the sector in the last financial year. The divergent trend lines of the growth in demand for care workers and the expected fall in new international recruits that the sector relies on, paints a bleak picture for where the social care workforce will be unless there is significant intervention from the government. We have never, in the history of this country, had so much low-skilled migration in so little time. We estimate, based on findings from the migration advisory committee … That the…