Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain status, first announced almost a year ago, are still to be implemented, and have been facing increasing opposition from within the parliamentary Labour party and the wider left. The latest challenge is from the Trades Union Congress (TUC), where delegates have voted to exempt any workers already in the UK from changes which would see them wait 15 years for settlement, rather than five years.

The country’s largest union, Unison, proposed the motion, stating they were ‘alarmed at the sweeping attacks on migrants workers which render them second-class citizens’, while Unison’s head, Andrea Egan said ‘these are workers that have come from overseas to support a social care system, a health system that was absolutely buckling under stress. They answered that call on a contract with the government… work for five years and you’ll get the right to remain. To change that half-way through is breaking the contract with those workers’. The motion was seconded by the Society of Radiographers who claimed that NHS radiographer staffing numbers had fallen 12 per cent between January and March this year because of the proposed changes to ILR.

The Royal College of Nursing has also described the proposals as a ‘betrayal’ of migrant staff working in the care sector. The nurses’ union said that they are ‘calling on the UK Government to value migrant nursing staff and........

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