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A number of ministers concerned about Shabana Mahmood’s immigration changes are working behind the scenes with backbenchers to secure more exemptions, the Guardian has learned.
Keir Starmer is consulting on the proposed changes, which would make it harder to achieve settled status in the UK, and is under pressure from within his own party to say the measures should not apply to people who have already entered the UK.
Under the plans, most people would have to wait 10 years to qualify for indefinite leave to remain, rather than the existing five-year period. The Guardian revealed last month that Starmer was already looking at whether to exclude migrants working in the public sector from the changes, as well as those who are on the verge of being settled.
However, the prime minister is still being urged to go further if he wants to avoid widespread anger on the backbenches. The main demand by Labour opponents of the proposals is that the government exempts people who have already arrived in the country, as suggested by the former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and others.
One leading backbench rebel said they believed that stopping the changes applying retrospectively would be enough to calm the anger of most opponents – though several, including the foreign affairs select committee chair, Emily Thornberry, have said that a raft of changes is needed, including on the earned settlement element of the changes.
“I personally disagree with all of the changes to indefinite leave to remain, but I think that the majority of the cohort would accept that compromise,” another MP said.
Downing Street sources said it had always been the case that the changes were subject to consultation, including the retrospective element which, as it stands, would mean people who have entered the UK in the last five years would need to wait longer to be given settlement.
Labour MPs have also been particularly angered by briefings against one of the coordinators of the letter, Tony Vaughan, the MP for Folkestone and Hythe, who was the subject of a Sun article that criticised his record as a human rights and immigration barrister.
The attorney general, Richard Hermer, who has been the subject of similar attacks, is said to have been incensed by the briefing, which Home Office sources have denied came from them. The article included a quote from an anonymous Labour MP criticising Vaughan.
Several said they believed the Home Office had not effectively managed concerns. “If you’ve signed the letter you just get rung up and shouted at,” said one MP. Another said they had received no reply to a private letter sent to Mahmood. “I wrote more than a month ago and it’s not been acknowledged.”
Another MP said there was a degree of “contempt” for MPs expressing concerns because they would not be able to vote against the changes – which do not require a parliamentary vote.
London MPs have also raised how much the indefinite leave to remain changes are featuring in the Greens campaigning literature in London. One leaflet in Islington accuses Labour of changing the terms of indefinite leave to remain and “punishing hardworking migrants” and says the Greens are “anti-racists and pro-migrant rights”.
Mahmood, the home secretary, has led the government’s attempts to toughen its approach on immigration as it responds to the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. However, many Labour MPs are anxious that the Green party’s victory at the Gorton and Denton byelection shows Labour faces as much of a threat on its left as its right.
A group of 100 Labour MPs signed a letter opposing the measures when they were announced, arguing: “You don’t win back public confidence in the asylum system by threatening to forcibly remove refugees who have lived here lawfully for 15 or 20 years.”
Sarah Owen, a leader of the centre-left Tribune group of Labour MPs, has compared the threat of force against children to Donald Trump’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Rayner echoed many of those criticisms in a speech last month to the Mainstream campaign group, during which she criticised the changes to settled status. “We cannot talk about earning a settlement if we keep moving the goalposts,” she said. “Because moving the goalposts undermines our sense of fair play. It’s un-British.”
Asked about those pushing for changes to the proposals, a Home Office spokesperson said: “The government’s position has not changed. We will always welcome those that come to this country and contribute to our national life. But the privilege of living here forever should be earned, not automatic.
“Between 2021 and 2024, this country experienced levels of migration it had historically seen over four decades. We must be honest about the scale and impact of hundreds of thousands of low-skilled migrants getting settlement.
“The government will double the route to settlement from five to 10 years. As announced in November, we are consulting to apply this change to those in the UK today but have not received settled status. We are currently reviewing the 200,000 responses and will outline our response in due course.”
