Britons are more likely to support (47%) than oppose (35%) making most migrant workers wait longer before they can apply for ILR, according to polling by YouGov.

Charities working with refugees have strongly condemned Shabana Mahmood’s proposal to make some of them wait up to 30 years for settlement. (See 4.25pm.)

Imran Hussain, executive director of external affairs at the Refugee Council, said:

Refugees are being asked to rebuild their lives on a status that expires every 30 months for what could be 30 years. That is unfair and unworkable.

These plans condemn refugees to decades of deep insecurity, unable to lay down roots in Britain and contribute their potential. And there is no evidence to suggest that harming refugee integration will act as a disincentive to refugees fleeing the Taliban or brutal conflicts like Sudan. It also creates another bureaucratic nightmare for a Home Office that already is struggling with poor quality initial decisions on asylum cases which is leading to avoidable costs and delays in the appeals system.

And Flora Alexander, executive director of International Rescue Committee UK, said:

A route to settlement that takes up to 30 years means people will be left in limbo for more than a third of their lifetime. Those who have fled conflict and persecution should have the chance to rebuild their lives, not put them on hold for decades.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has said that anyone getting indefinite leave to remain (ILR) before the next election as a result of the plans announced today could lose it if be became PM.

He was not in the Commons for the announcement. Instead, he held a press conference where he said this was “a very major U-turn”. He went on:

Normal countries don’t give out work visas, allow you to bring dependents, automatically give you indefinite leave to remain, and then one year later citizenship. We are uniquely stupid in doing this, and we’ve been uniquely stupid in doing this for far too many years.

Our position is very, very clear: Anybody under this scheme that’s been opened today, and I believe today is just the opening of the door, anybody that goes through to ILR and citizenship under this scheme, we will review each and every single one of those citizenships if they are granted.

The CBI, one of Britain’s main business organisations, has suggested that Shabana Mahmood’s concession on care workers today means the rest of the measures announced might not be needed.

In a statement, Matthew Percival, the CBI’s future of work director, said:

Today’s announcement on settlement rules rightly recognises the importance of fairness and the contribution migrant workers make to the UK. But the decision to exempt health and social care workers fundamentally changes the case for the wider policy.

These proposals were introduced in response to a temporary spike in health and social care visas. If those workers are now outside the policy, the government should reconsider whether the remaining changes are still justified. Otherwise, the result risks being higher costs for the relatively small number of businesses using skilled worker visas, without addressing the problem the policy was originally designed to solve.

Here is the list of “public service” jobs where foreign workers will continue to be able to apply for ILR after five years, as now, instead of having to wait 10 years, which will be the new norm. Anyone earning more than £50,271 will automatically be in this category. But people earning less than that will be included if they are doing one of these jobs.

You will notice that care workers are not on the list.

Under the plans announced last year, care workers were going to be in a special category where they were going to have to wait 15 years for ILR (because of their low income). That idea has been abandoned, and instead they are covered by the new, 10-year norm. (See 4.39pm.)

But Mahmood has announced what she is calling “transitional arrangements” that will apply to most care workers. (See 4.11pm.) The Home Office says:

Care workers who entered, or switched into, the route before publication of the immigration white paper in May 2025 will retain the existing five-year qualifying period for settlement where they meet the applicable salary (£25,000 a year), sponsorship and employment requirements. They will also need to meet the strengthened minimum requirements that will apply generally under earned settlement, including on criminality and English language, unless an exemption applies.

Care workers who arrived before May 2025 who do not meet these criteria will instead be given the chance to apply for a second, five-year visa. (See 4.11pm.)

Labour’s Diane Abbott told Mahmood she was in danger of creating another Windrush scandal. And she complained about the changes being retrospective. She said:

It is right that care workers are exempted from the new arrangements for [indefinite leave to remain]

But for the rest of the workforce, the retrospective nature of these new arrangements still seem to be unfair because you can come in legally, you can work legally and then have your residency rights turned upside down. How can that be fair?

Mahmood said she did not accept that the changes were retrospective.

On indefinite leave to remain and what she calls the retrospective nature of the changes, she will know I do not agree with that characterisation of those changes.

Any government needs to be able to make changes to immigration rules to reflect things that are happening, to reflect abuses that we can see in the system, to also be able to make additional changes based on assessment of numbers and costs.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, responded to Mahmood on behalf of the Conservatives. He claimed she had performed a U-turn that would cost £10bn. (See 11.44am.)

The home secretary now proposes to allow every single care worker and their dependents who arrived prior to May 202 - a number running into hundreds of thousands – to stay in this country to stay in this country beyond the expiry of their visa, and in the case of 75% of them to stay permanently

How is it she can justify allowing people that she acknowledges arrived here fraudulently [to] stay forever, at a cost that she herself has admitted costs £10 billion? That is the cost. That is the cost of today’s U-turn.

Mahmood said her plans would save money, and lead to 500,000 people getting settlement later than planned. She said:

The cohort most likely to impose a cost will now, as a result of my measures, wait longer for settlement.

And that is why the [Department for Work and Pensions] say that these measures will save billions in the benefits bill.

And half a million people, 500,000 people, will settle later as a result of these reforms.

The Home Office has now published its new policy paper on earned settlement.

And here is its summary of the new rules.

And here are the rules for refugees.

Mahmood said her proposals would cut welfare spending by billions. She said:

These reforms are the right thing to do, both morally and financially.

While a full impact assessment will be completed and published as we implement the reforms, our changes ensure those who are net contributors are encouraged to this country to come to this country and stay here.

Meanwhile, the cohort most likely to impose a cost at settlement must instead seek work and meet the conditions of their visa before they can apply.

As a result, the Department for Work and Pensions estimates that our reforms will reduce the benefits bill by billions of pounds.

Mahmood said refugees would be allowed to access ILR more quickly if they work or study.

We do want to promote integration into this country for all those who are here.

For that reason, those who enter work or study will be able to earn settlement 10 years earlier.

And this means a refugee who did not arrive by small boat, who is working and studying, could qualify for settlement at ten years.

Mahmood confirmed that, as she proposed when she first set out detailed plans last November, migrants arriving in the UK illegally on small boats would have to wait 30 years for settlement.

I know the people of this country wish to continue welcoming genuine refugees. However, I also know that there is nothing fair about allowing unsafe and illegal entry into this country.

It is not fair that our borders are run by people smugglers. It is not fair that women and children are dying in the Channel. And it is not fair that after historic levels of illegal arrivals, British citizens are paying £4bn a year to fund asylum support.

So as we open new safe and legal routes for genuine refugees, we must also discourage dangerous, unsafe and illegal crossings. And settlement plays a key part in this.

We will place those who come to this country on one of our new safe and legal routes on a five-year path to settlement. This is as fast a path as higher earners entering Britain today.

At the same time, we will discourage the use of unsafe and illegal routes, the standard disqualifying period for all refugees who have not come by a safe and legal route will become 20 years.

A further 10 years will be added for those who entered the country by an illegal method, such as by small boat. We do want to promote integration into this country for all those who are here.

Mahmood said the transitional arrangements that she described for care workers (see 4.11pm) would also apply to some other public sector workers.

The same transitional arrangement will be applied to public sector workers in roles identified by the migration advisory committee in healthcare and education, such as auxiliary nurses. This country has been highly dependent upon them and their contribution will be recognised.

These transitional arrangements apply only to those who joined before this government published the immigration white paper in May 2025.

After that point, as our consultation shows, the government’s position of a ten year path to settlement was widely understood.

These are exceptional exclusions for exceptional circumstances, and it remains the case that the rules around settlement are determined when a settlement decision is made, not at the point when someone arrives.

This is a position that is long established in this country, and it is one that has been tested conclusively in our courts.

Mahmood went on to specifically explain the rules for care workers. She said:

Between 2022 and 2025, 250,000 people and their dependents arrived on or switched into the social care route. They came at a time when the sector was under considerable pressure following the Covid 19 pandemic and the unique challenge of that moment.

It is also, however, the case that this route was abused. The last Conservative government may have talked of restoring control to our borders, but in truth they lost control entirely.

There never was this more obvious than when the shadow home secretary [Chris Philp] was an immigration minister in the Home Office.

Delegations were sent across the country to encourage ever more businesses to sponsor foreign workers, with little apparent interest in their suitability to do so. As a result, there was significant abuse of the care route, sometimes because of fraudulent and exploitative companies, and sometimes because individuals themselves came here knowing there was no job they could fill.

A fair solution must address both sides of this, recognising the service of those who cared for our sick and elderly at a time of immense national need, and also addressing the abuse that was present on this route.

The government solution does so in two ways.

Firstly, by providing a five-year path to settlement for care workers who lived up to the promise that they made on coming to this country, worked hard and answered our call when we needed them. Those who earn £25,000 a year working in the social care sector, which was the condition of their visa, will therefore be able to settle on their existing five-year path.

The second group, who have not fulfilled the conditions of their visa, represent around a quarter of those who came between 2022 and 2025 or switched into this route. We will offer them a second chance to make the contribution that they came to this country to make. They will be able to apply for another five-year care visa, and they will not be tied to their old employer, allowing those with rogue sponsors to break away from them.

Mahmood explains why she thinks the rules need to change.

Until now, settlement rights have come at five years, almost exclusively as a result of time spent in this country. It has therefore been a right accrued with little expectation of responsibility.

I do not believe this represents true fairness.

Instead, I believe these considerable rights should come after responsibilities have been met and a contribution has been made.

Settlement should not be automatic. It should be earned.

Today the government publishes a policy called earned settlement. It ensures the period someone must live in this country before they settle is determined by the contribution they have made.

Mahmood says fairness depends on a contract between people coming to the UK and people already here.

This country welcomes those who seek a new and better life within it. But I also know there is an expectation of those who do that they will play their part, contribute to their community and become a part of our national life.

I do not think this despite being a Labour politician. I think this because I am a Labour politician.

If we are to ask our fellow citizens to buy into a system of shared taxation and universal public services, they must know that everyone is playing their part. Solidarity is the precondition for social justice.

Shabana Mahmood is making her statement now about changes to the indefinite leave to remain rules.

She starts by saying “fairness” is at the heart of this policy.

A little over a month ago at Labour party conference I promised that we would adopt a policy on this issue that is guided, above all, by fairness – fairness towards those who come here legally and play their part, and fairness towards British citizens already here, who should not be asked to bear a greater burden.

The question of fairness matters to me because it matters to my family. Over 50 years ago, my parents came to this country from rural Kashmir. They came here knowing one thing above all else – that they would be treated fairly here. They came from a place where power was often arbitrary and where the dice were always loaded. They came to this country because they knew we do things differently here, and that we value above all else fair play.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has said that it has written to Reform UK with questions about what it doing to tackle racism and sexism in the party. The intervention has been prompted by complaints it has received about the racist views of some of Reform UK’s members and councillors, as revealed in an undercover exposé by ITV News.

In a statement issued this afternoon, a spokesperson for the EHRC said:

We have written to Reform UK regarding concerns expressed following ITV News’ investigation, ‘Undercover: A Year in Reform’, which aired last month. We have asked for more information including what action the party is taking to comply with the Equality Act 2010.

Following the broadcast of ITV’s documentary, we received complaints alleging unlawful activity under the Equality Act 2010, including concerns about racial and sexual remarks expressed by councillors, prospective councillors and members. As with every complaint we receive, we will assess the information provided carefully and, following that consideration, take action where appropriate.

The EHRC does have the power to launch a formal inquiry into discrimination in a political party, as it did with Labour and antisemitism. For this to happen, it would probably have to conclude that the problems were systemic and not being addressed by the party’s leadership.

In response to the programme, Reform UK claimed that the racists who were exposed were just an unrepresentative sample of “bad apple” individuals.

The Green party has criticised Labour for abandoning local government cooperation in 11 council areas in England. (See 2.44pm.) In a joint statement, the party and the Green group in the Local Government Association said:

The Green party, and the Green group office, representing Green councillors across the country, have been hugely disappointed in moves designed by national parties to force local council leaders into jeopardising successful progressive partnerships that are delivering benefits for residents.

Across the country, Green, Labour, independent and Liberal Democrat councillors have worked together to provide stable local government, protect services and deliver positive change. Leaders across these parties are rightly proud of what those partnerships have achieved.

Those who issued ultimatums that destabilised power-sharing agreements have often ignored the judgements of their own local leaders, failed to respect the choices made by local voters, and are disrupting successful partnerships.

The statement did not say anything about the “Zionism is racism” motion.

The Labour party has announced that its councillors are going to stop cooperating with the Green party in 11 areas in England where they have been in coalition, or in some other power-sharing pact.

Bridget Phillipson, the Labour chair, said cooperation was being withdrawn in these areas because local Green councillors refused to disown the “Zionism is racism” motion passed at their party’s conference.

In another seven areas, local cooperation is continuing because Green councillors did give the public assurances required by Labour.

Phillipson said:

This isn’t an issue of party politics; it’s about doing what is right and upholding the values anyone holding public office should share.

The Labour party fought hard to root out antisemitism within our own party and ensure it had no place in our politics. Our action is a demonstration of how today’s Labour party will not shirk from the responsibility we have to uphold those same standards in our relationships with other parties.

Last month the Labour party asked all Labour local authority groups that were working with the Greens to get a clear, public statement from those local Green parties saying they rejected the “Zionism is racism” motion and they were calling on the party’s national leadership to reconsider it. Green groups were given seven days to respond.

Having reviewed the replies, Labour’s national executive committee has decided cooperation must cease in 11 areas.

They are in these 10 authorities where there has been cooperation – Arun district council, Derbyshire Dales district council, Havant borough council, Lewes district council, Sheffield city council, Stafford borough council, Warwick district council, Wealden district council, West Devon borough council and West Suffolk council – and in Coventry city council, where cooperation was being considered.

In Runnymede borough council, cooperation between Labour and the Greens was already over.

There are seven places where cooperation will continue on the basis that Labour’s conditions were met: Broadland district council, Monmouthshire county council, North Somerset council, Rother district council, West Oxfordshire district council, West Sussex county council, and the West of England mayoralty, where the Labour mayor has a Green deputy.

UPDATE: Labour is ending cooperating with the Greens in West Suffolk council, not in West Sussex county council, as one of the paragraphs originally said. In West Sussex cooperation is continuing (as another paragraph says). I’m sorry for the error.

Downing Street has denied a report claiming that Andy Burnham is open to the UK paying some form of slavery reparations.

This morning the Daily Telegraph has splashed on a story saying Burnham is “open to increasing financial assistance for Commonwealth countries to help atone for Britain’s role in the slave trade”.

Asked about this at the lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:

The story is wrong. We’re not setting up a reparations fund. We’ll not be making additional aid allocations on top of existing budgets …

The position on reparations is clear: acknowledging the horror of the transatlantic slave trade and considering a formal apology for Britain’s role in it does not mean accepting a present-day financial liability.

Burnham has been strongly criticised by Kemi Badenoch and by Nigel Farage for agreeing to discuss a formal apology for the role played by Britain in the slave trade with Commonwealth leaders.

The spokesperson said that, in agreeing to discuss this, Burnham was doing “the patriotic thing”. He explained:

The prime minister wants to strengthen the Commonwealth as a family of nations with shared values that can support growth around the world through trade and economic collaboration. And as he said in his op-ed, having these difficult conversations to safeguard the Commonwealth for the future is the right thing to do.

It’s also the patriotic thing to do, not just because it’s in our interests, but because the Britain I believe in, he said, is confident, decent, and brave.

When it was put to him that Tony Blair had already in effect apologised for the role played by Britain in the slave trade (one of the arguments made by Badenoch), the spokesperson replied:

The prime minister, like his predecessors, has expressed his sorrow and regret for the pain and suffering caused by the transatlantic slave trade, and recognised the way it still shapes our world today. That is distinct from a formal apology.

We’re opening a structured dialogue with those affected by the transatlantic slave trade, and listening to calls for a formal apology on behalf of the British state, and that will form an important part of that process.

We think it’s right that a formal apology is discussed properly with the countries and communities most affected, rather than simply deciding unilaterally what form it should take. An apology of this significance should be informed by the people and countries most affected, as they’ve asked for.

Downing Street has declined to say how much it cost for the plane carrying Andy Burnham and UK delegates to a Commonwealth leaders’ summit to stop in Manchester to pick him up (see 10.28am), the Press Association reports.

At the morning lobby briefing, asked if this was an appropriate use of public money, the PM’s spokesperson said:

The prime minister’s travel arrangements are made on the basis of security, operational requirements, and value for money for the taxpayer.

The prime minister’s travel arrangements reflect where he was carrying out official government business at the end of last week.

As you know, he spent the day in Scotland on Friday, returned to Manchester to work from Number 10 North on Friday evening. In terms of costs, travel costs will be published in the usual way.

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.

Danielle Jefferies, a senior analyst, said the fall in the number of foreign care workers coming to the UK would “present challenges”. She said:

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.

Shabana Mahmood has justified her proposal to make it harder for low-skilled workers, including care workers, to qualify for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) on the grounds that they will be a net burden on the taxpayer. In his statement (see 10.12am), Chris Philp referenced a claim she made in a speech in March when she said:

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 lifetime cost to the taxpayer will be £10bn.

At the time, the Home Office published a document explaining how they arrived at the £10bn figure.

The IPPR, a left-leaning thinktank, has published a briefing today suggesting this figure is miseading because it does not present the full picture. It says:

The £10bn figure should be put in wider context. New IPPR analysis suggests that, as a whole, the estimated net lifetime fiscal contribution of all skilled workers (including health and care workers) who were expected to settle in 2026-30, along with their adult dependants, is roughly £115bn. This follows the same approach as the Home Office in calculating the £10 billion net cost for care workers and adult dependants (see methodology below for more details). The risk of deterring skilled workers who make a significant fiscal contribution should therefore be an important consideration for the final set of proposals.

Both the Home Office and the IPPR are using from a report published by the migration advisory committee (MAC), The Fiscal Impact of Immigration: Static and Dynamic Estimates for the UK. It was published in December last year and it focuses in particular on people who came to the UK in 2022/23 on skilled worker (SW) visas, and on people with health and care worker (H&C) worker visas. The report contains figures supportive of both sides of this argument.

It says that, for most categories of foreign worker visas, the people who receive them will make a net contribution to the economy over the course of their lifetimes. The only exceptions are dependant children, and adult dependants of people on H&C visas.

These calculations involve working out whether the amount that people will contribute in taxes over the course of a lifetime will outweigh the amount they will cost due to benefits claimed or healthcare consumed (or education costs, if they are children). To work this out, economists need to make assumptions about how much people will earn, when they will retire, and how long they will live.

This chart illustrates the pattern. It shows how the 2022 H&C main applicants (ie, not dependants) are expected to contribute for the next 30 years, before they start becoming a net burden.

But the MAC does say that care workers (a subset of H&C workers) will be a net burden. It says:

The H&C workers are less fiscally positive compared to UK residents of the same age (though much better than the median) – but there is still the additional benefit to the fiscal balance of having more younger workers than the UK average. We can split this group of main applicants into those who came as care workers and those who came in other health and care occupations (mainly nurses and doctors). For care workers, the lifetime contribution is estimated to be -£36,000, whilst for the other occupations it is +£166,000. Care workers are therefore fiscally negative over their lifetimes and broadly similar to the UK median for the age group.

The report also makes the point that most UK residents will, over the course of their lifetimes, end up being a net burden. But it says “because our tax system is strongly progressive, the upper end of the income distribution contribute much more than the median”. This means that, even though the average Briton using the median definition is a net cost, the average Briton using the mean definiton puts in enough to keep the system going. These figures illustrate this point.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, is already ridiculing the indefinite leave to remain (ILR) announcement coming this afternoon. In a post on social media, he claimed that she was surrendering to “the open-borders Labour left”.

Later today the government will announce their u-turn on ILR, or Indefinite Leave to Remain.

It’s clear Shabana Mahmood has been forced to surrender to Angela Rayner and the open-borders Labour left. She will now allow hundreds of thousands of low-wage and no-wage migrants to stay in the UK forever and claim benefits.

By Mahmood’s own admission in a speech this March, letting low wage care workers alone stay forever will cost taxpayers £10 billion and be an “affront”. Now it looks like she’s about to do exactly that. After talking tough all year, Mahmood appears to have capitulated control of immigration policy to Angela Rayner - and Mahmood’s position is looking increasingly untenable

The Conservative plan is a ten year route to ILR, only for high wage workers. No more low wage workers should be allowed in, and those already here should be required to leave when their temporary work visa expires

Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party wants to get rid of ILR completely, has made a similar argument in his own social media post.

The Labour Party is at war with itself over Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood losing a fight to the far left of her own party. Tomorrow, she’s expected to cave on plans to even tinker with the ILR numbers. Angela Rayner emerges victorious, with her defence of the Tory-era policies hinging on “fair play” towards foreign nationals.

But what about fair play towards the British public? Doesn’t that count for anything anymore? Villages, towns, suburbs, and cities have to deal with the weight and strain of all this. Not only are ordinary Brits never consulted, but this current cabinet doesn’t even have an electoral mandate. It is rightly infuriating to most people who increasingly want net negative migration into Britain.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is due to meet some union leaders today to discuss with them her plans for indefinite leave to remain. Andrea Egan, who as Unison general secretary has many members working in the care sector, has been particularly critical of the original proposal to make foreign care workers wait 15 years for ILR. Recently she condemned Mahmood for refusing to let her bring a care worker to a meeting they were due to have about the plans.

That care worker was a Nigerian called Kolade. Aamna Mohdin has interviewed him, and he explained what he wanted to tell Mahmood.

For Kolade, the row encapsulates what he believes is missing from the immigration debate: the voices of those whose lives could be upended by its policies. He has watched politicians dismiss care work as low-skilled and portray migrant workers as a burden on the British economy.

“I was just going to tell her that is not correct,” he said. “We are not a burden to the British state. We are also contributing as much as we can, supporting British families.

“She talked about fairness to the British people. I was going to tell her that caring for British families is our own little way to show that we are contributing, and that we have earned our rights to stay in this country, a place we’re currently calling home.”

Here is Aamna’s article in full.

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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