The Home Office just backed down on its own fifteen year settlement plan

Shabana Mahmood is about to soften her own flagship immigration plan.

She's the Home Secretary. And this morning she's expected to tell the House of Commons that care workers already in the UK will be spared a 15-year wait for settlement.

So that's still reported, not confirmed. Nobody has shown yet that the statement has actually happened, or published the final rules.

So what was the plan, and what's changing?

A year ago, the Home Office set out plans to double the standard wait for settlement, called Indefinite Leave to Remain, from five years to 10 for most migrants.

For care workers, it was worse. The wait could have tripled, to 15 years.

Now Shabana Mahmood is reportedly preparing to exempt care workers already here from that 15-year wait.

What they'd get instead? Not specified. Not in any report checked.

So why draw up these plans in the first place?

Well, back in March, Shabana Mahmood gave a speech. She said the UK saw more migration between 2021 and 2024 than in the previous four decades put together.

She said about 350,000 low-skilled workers and their families would qualify for settlement and benefits over the next five years if nothing changed.

The cost? £10 billion over their lifetimes, she said, citing the Migration Advisory Committee.

And the Home Office says around 1.6 million people could become eligible for settlement over the next few years under the old rules.

The plans went out for consultation for almost a year. More than 200,000 responses came back.

But here's the part that forced her hand.

The Cabinet split over this. Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, has publicly criticised applying the new rules to people already in the UK. She called that approach "un-British".