Doubling leave to remain timeframe for UK care workers ‘cruel’, say campaigners

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has called for Mike Tapp, one of her department’s junior ministers, to be sacked. Photograph: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen Home secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has called for Mike Tapp, one of her department’s junior ministers, to be sacked. Photograph: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock Doubling leave to remain timeframe for UK care workers ‘cruel’, say campaigners Experts and activists back Mike Tapp’s proposal for care worker exclusion that led to row with Shabana Mahmood Doubling the leave to remain timeframe for care workers to 10 years is “cruel and unconscionable”, according to workers rights campaigners who back a Home Office minister’s proposal to exclude the cohort from the government’s immigration plans. Mike Tapp is at the centre of a political row with the home secretary , Shabana Mahmood, after writing an article in which he said migrant care workers should be excluded from plans to retrospectively change the length of time people must work before they can permanently settle in the UK. Mahmood has called on Keir Starmer to sack him, and restricted Tapp’s access to sensitive documents and meetings in response, with sources suggesting he had leaked a policy the department was working on. Migrant care workers and workers rights’ experts said Tapp’s proposal was the right thing to do, and that the current plan risked further forcing workers into exploitation, which is rife in the sector. Home secretary sought to restrict minister’s access to papers as she calls for his sacking Read more Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, the chief executive of the Work Rights Centre, said: “All of these people migrated legally and they answered a call that came from the UK, so to throw them under the bus now is cruel and it’s unconscionable, especially by a Labour government.” She said Tapp’s proposals should be taken onboard, adding that “if Andy Burnham is starting with a clean slate, then let it be the first thing that he drops”. Gavin Edwards, the head of social care at Unison, said the proposed change to leave to remain was a “slap in the face” for care workers who had “come to this country, propped up a vital public service and are doing difficult work, only to be told the rules will be changed halfway through the game to qualify for leave to remain”. Edwards said the power imbalance created by the visa sponsorship system, which ties workers to a specific employer until they are granted indefinite leave to remain, meant abuse was rife. “The level of exploitation and workplace abuse that this particular group of workers has experienced has been off the scale,” he said. “It’s astounding.” Migrant care workers close to the current five-year goal for securing settled status said they were devastated by the plans. Many said they had been subjected to abuse and exploitation. Josephine*, who came to the UK from Zimbabwe in 2022, said she was forced to live in a wooden shed in her employer