Allies of the prime minister say he regards migration as a moral issue, showing voters who have lost faith in politics that the government does control the UK's borders, while also wanting to tell a positive story about migration's contribution.
Andy Burnham's position on immigration reform has come into sharper focus, according to a Guardian report that traces his remarks from the Makerfield campaign trail to Downing Street. The prime minister supports the home secretary Shabana Mahmood's attempts to limit legal and illegal migration, measures that some senior Labour figures had called unBritish and others on the right had dismissed as electorally necessary. Burnham's backing of the hard line, the report suggests, should surprise nobody who has followed his career.
Questioned during the campaign about Reform's attack line of "open borders Andy", Burnham dismissed the charge as "ridiculous" and pointed to his time at the Home Office under Tony Blair, when it was his specific job to return people with no basis to stay. He described travelling to governments around the world to persuade them to take back planes of people who had come to Britain without grounds to remain. The account, as reported, casts him as a politician who has never been shy of the difficult end of the immigration brief.
Yet Burnham has also sought to reframe the debate rather than simply endorse enforcement. He argued for "a different way of thinking about it" that might restore public confidence, and told ITV that with planned migration it is difficult to say whether numbers are too high or too low, noting that migrants help plug gaps in the economy. Allies of the prime minister say he regards migration as a moral issue, showing voters who have lost faith in politics that the government does control the UK's borders, while also wanting to tell a positive story about migration's contribution.
The policy that emerged reflects that tension. Mahmood's reforms include a significant carve-out allowing almost 300,000 care workers to apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years, and a further compromise for those deemed to be making a "strong contribution" — high earners, people with strong British connections, or those working in health and teaching — who can also settle in five years. The Guardian reports that the most rigorous rules drawn up a year ago by the Home Office remain in place, including retrospective changes for many migrants and waits of up to 30 years before small boat arrivals may apply for settlement.
Burnham framed the compromises as fairness: those making the most valuable contribution should be able to settle earlier, while others should expect to wait longer, and those who abuse the system or arrive illegally will be refused or wait longer still. Notably, those words came in a press release rather than the Commons chamber or a press conference, issued after the government pushed the announcement while he was travelling to the Commonwealth leaders summit in Antigua. The Conservatives and Reform are already casting the carve-outs as capitulation, with Nigel Farage calling the care worker exemption "the beginning of the capitulation" on borders.
What remains unconfirmed is how the package will land with the public, which polling cited in the report suggests supports doubling the waiting time for most migrants to 10 years. Without an obvious vote to coalesce around, a Labour rebellion looks unlikely, but Mahmood's larger task is persuasion, and she will need a prime minister who has praised her for "gripping this problem" to help make the case.
