Burnham declines to say net migration still too high as Mahmood prepares to unveil tougher settlement rules – UK politics live

Good morning. Often these days, when the government has a big announcement and just before the relevant minister starts to give the details in a statement to MPs, Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, erupts with fury and rants and raves at the Treasury bench about how all the main points have already been leaked to the media, in contravention of the ministerial code.

Not today. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, will this afternoon unveil the final version of her plans to make foreign workers wait longer before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain, and we know relatively little about what she will say. The original plans were unveiled last November and they would require most workers to wait 10 years, not five, for ILR, with care workers having to wait 15 years. They would also apply to foreign workers already here, not just new arrivals. These proposals were hugely controversial, and Andy Burnham himself was among the ministers arguing that care workers should be treated more kindly.

As Jessica Elgot and Chris Osuh report in our overnight story, there has been some sort of climbdown in relation to care workers.

But it also seems to be the case that the broad thrust of the plan is being retained and that ILR rules are being toughened in a way that will affect hundreds of thousands of people.

The detail, which is coming after 3.30pm, will be crucial; so will the reaction of Labour MPs. When Mahmood announced these plans last autumn, some government backbenchers were horrified. But mostly public condemnation was muted. At the time Reform UK had a lead of more than 10 points over Labour in the polls and Mahmood – who was arguing that net migration was too high and that low-skilled foreign workers ended up being a burden on the taxpayer (a key Reform UK claim, although one contested by experts) – was pushing at an open door.

Now the situation is very different. The electoral threat from Nigel Farage has receded quite a lot. And net migration is falling like a stone. Here are the figures from last week’s OBR report.

To implement the ILR changes, Mahmood does not need primary legislation and that means there will be no chance for potential Labour rebels to amend the plans in the Commons. But it has been reported that more than 100 MPs are queasy about what is being planned.

And Andy Burnham himself has accepted that the context has changed. We won’t hear from him until much later, because he is spending most of the day on a flight to the Commonwealth summit. But, in an interview for an ITV documentary being broadcast tomorrow, he declined to say that net migration was too high. When Keir Starmer was PM, he regularly did say this, and that he wanted immigration to fall “significantly”. Burnham told ITV small boat crossing numbers were “too high, for certain”. However, asked about legal migration, he replied:

It’s come right down. And I think when you have planned migration, it’s difficult to say is it too high or too low, because it’s got to be, if you like, following gaps in the economy.

Burnham said legal migration had “come right down”. He declined to be drawn on whether it had to come down further.

This means that Mahmood will today be defending plans drawn up in response to a problem that some might argue no longer exists. However, speaking in the Commons last November, Mahmood argued she had to do something about the “so-called Boriswave, specifically the cohort of lower-qualified workers who – along with their dependants – entered the country through the health and care visa” because some of them were “never expected to be net economic contributors”, making “more stringent” controls needed.

Here is the agenda for the day.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Danny Kruger, Reform UK’s head of government preparations, gives a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank.

2.30pm: Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, gives her statement on the changes to indefinite leave to remain rules.

Evening: Andy Burnham arrives in Antigua for the Commonwealth summit.

Also, at some point today Labour will give an update on how many power-sharing agreements at council level with Greens will continue, in the light of Labour HQ saying recently Labour councillors should only continue to work with local Green parties willing to disown the “Zionism is racism” motion passed at the Green conference.

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