Ministers say Mahmood has repeatedly declined to tell fellow ministers what the Home Office expects the changes to do to homelessness and community cohesion, even when asked more than once. The Home Office says it simply cannot put a number on the impact yet because the policy details are still being worked out.
The shake-up at the centre of the row
Mahmood set out her plans last November. They include ending permanent leave to remain and scrapping the government's duty to support people who would otherwise be left destitute. She has argued the changes will restore order to the immigration system and take the wind out of the sails of hard-right parties like Reform UK.
Her department's own impact assessment, released this month, concedes that homelessness could rise. That admission has sharpened the dispute inside government, because colleagues whose briefs would bear the consequences say they are being left to plan around a policy whose side effects remain unquantified in public.
Why Burnham and Rayner are pressing
The disagreement has deepened since Andy Burnham took over as prime minister, promising every rough sleeper a route off the streets by Christmas, backed by hundreds of millions of pounds. Ministers working to end rough sleeping fear that moving people out of asylum hotels, and changing the support available to them, could push more people onto the streets and make existing targets harder to reach.
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner is also pressing for clearer information. She is said to be especially worried that moving asylum seekers out of hotels and into shared housing could spark fresh anti-immigration protests. Rayner has also pushed back on Mahmood's separate plans for legal migration, arguing care workers should be shielded from rules that would make it harder to gain settled status.
Former housing ministers had already sought the same information while serving under Keir Starmer, and secured a meeting with Home Office ministers to discuss it. The row is therefore not new — but colleagues say Mahmood's continued refusal to share the estimate has now turned it into an open cabinet clash.
What the Home Office says
A Home Office spokesperson said the policy followed the normal cross-government process, with information shared through the formal collective agreement system, and insisted that ending the use of asylum hotels will not leave people homeless, pointing to savings of more than £1 billion for taxpayers since the election.
A decision is expected within the next ten days, after a round of meetings between senior ministers. Until then, the government faces the awkward position of defending a flagship migration reform while its own ministers warn, in private, that nobody has told them what it will cost in homelessness.
Sources: The Guardian (via reporting on October 30, 2026); Home Office statement.