Immigration: Earned Settlement

Mike Tapp Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me say to one of my many predecessors as Home Secretary that the proposals I have announced today are far, far more robust than everything he and his Government left behind. It is their mess that this Government have been cleaning up. The right hon. Gentleman will know that both myself and my immediate predecessor as Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), are responsible for a number of changes, including: closing the care worker route to overseas workers; the requirement for sponsors to be Care Quality Commission rated; suspending family reunion for refugees while we settle family migration policy as we go into next year; and raising salary thresholds. This Government —both myself and my predecessor—have been taking the action that is needed and that is why net migration is down 82%.

[Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)]

Those who come to our country and genuinely work in our care sector, looking after our elderly and vulnerable, do our country a great service. However, some are unfortunately working in poor conditions. They are exploited and underpaid partly due to the current sponsorship system. Will the Home Secretary seriously consider looking at an umbrella sponsor system, working with the Department of Health and Social Care?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I have had discussions with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. She is also very clear that conditions for employers in the care sector must improve and that there should be minimum standards in future. She is undertaking that work, and it will be part of the wider reforms to the care sector that the Government are undertaking. What I have undertaken to ensure that the immigration system reflects any changes made to improve standards in the care sector and that we will follow those changes. It would be in appropriate for us, as an immigration Department, to change licensed routes ourselves without the wider work required, which the Health Secretary is undertaking, to improve the functioning of the care sector. Once that work is complete, I will make the relevant changes.