LONDON.- Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to soften her government's earned-settlement plans next week, sparing social care workers already living in Britain from a proposed 15-year wait for permanent residency, according to BBC reporting published on Saturday, October 31.
Under the proposals published by the Home Office in November 2025, the standard qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain would double from five years to 10 years, while some lower-paid workers sponsored for jobs below degree level could face a 15-year wait. The government originally proposed applying the new rules to migrants already in Britain who had not yet received indefinite leave to remain, a retroactive element that drew fierce opposition from within the governing Labour Party.
The BBC understands that social care workers already in the UK are now likely to be exempt from the longer wait, keeping the existing five-year route. For most other workers, however, the 10-year qualifying period is still expected to stand. The Home Office has declined to comment on Mahmood's final decisions until they are presented to Parliament in the coming week, and the exemption has not been formally confirmed, so the details could still change.
The potential exemption matters most for the thousands of overseas care workers who entered Britain through the Health and Care Worker visa route from 2022 onwards, many of them Nigerian, who are approaching eligibility under the current five-year system. Under a 10-year rule, a worker who arrived in 2022 would wait until 2032; under a 15-year rule, until 2037.
The backlash has been unusually public. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, before rejoining the cabinet, described the proposals as "un-British" because they sought to change the rules for people who had come to the UK in good faith. Government whips have reportedly been trying to head off a Labour rebellion, with opposition thought to extend beyond the 100 MPs who signed a letter protesting the plans, and the consultation on the reforms drew 200,000 responses.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp accused Mahmood of preparing to "surrender to the open-borders Left, led by Angela Rayner," while ministers' own figures underline the scale of what is at stake: around 1.6 million migrants are forecast to become eligible for permanent settlement in the UK by 2030, and Home Office estimates suggest care workers and their adult dependants qualifying between 2026 and 2030 could cost public finances around £10 billion over their lifetimes.
A separate row is running in parallel. The Guardian reported that fellow ministers are angry that Mahmood has declined to disclose her department's estimate of how much homelessness could rise as a result of the wider asylum shake-up, which includes ending permanent leave to remain and removing the government's duty to support people who would otherwise become destitute. The Home Office said the policy went through the normal cross-government process and that ending the use of asylum hotels would not leave people homeless, because people would be moved into more suitable accommodation. Its own impact assessment, released this month, concedes that homelessness could rise if repayments materially reduce disposable income.
The final announcement, expected in the week beginning November 2, will therefore be read as two tests at once: whether Mahmood holds the line on a 10-year standard wait, and whether the care workers who kept Britain's social care system running keep the five-year promise they arrived under.
Fuentes: BBC vía Europe Says, 31 de octubre de 2026; Primetimes, 31 de octubre de 2026; QNC News, 1 de noviembre de 2026; The Guardian vía World Right Now, 30 de octubre de 2026.