Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, has called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to overhaul Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's proposed migration reforms, warning they are "fundamentally unfair" and risk both overstretching social care and fuelling far-right sentiment. He argues the changes break promises made to workers who came to Britain expecting a quicker route to settlement, and that extending the qualifying period for new arrivals would undermine integration by leaving people unable to plan their lives for over a decade.

The Home Office is consulting on plans that would force more than 300,000 low-paid workers, including many care workers recruited after the Covid pandemic, to wait 15 years for indefinite leave to remain, rather than the five years originally promised. Nowak noted 111,000 vacancies currently exist in social care and said Britain will likely still need overseas workers despite efforts to train domestic staff. He also warned that lengthening settlement periods for new arrivals could hand ammunition to Reform UK, and linked Nigel Farage's rhetoric to recent vigilante action against migrants in Dover and Portsmouth, urging Labour instead to focus on cost-of-living measures such as help with energy bills.