Doubling leave to remain timeframe for UK care workers ‘cruel’, say campaigners

Doubling the leave to remain timeframe for care workers to 10 years is “cruel and unconscionable”, according to workers rights campaigners who back a Home Office minister’s proposal to exclude the cohort from the government’s immigration plans. Mike Tapp is at the centre of a political row with the home secretary , Shabana Mahmood, after writing an article in which he said migrant care workers should be excluded from plans to retrospectively change the length of time people must work before they can permanently settle in the UK. Mahmood has called on Keir Starmer to sack him, and restricted Tapp’s access to sensitive documents and meetings in response, with sources suggesting he had leaked a policy the department was working on. Migrant care workers and workers rights’ experts said Tapp’s proposal was the right thing to do, and that the current plan risked further forcing workers into exploitation, which is rife in the sector. Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, the chief executive of the Work Rights Centre, said: “All of these people migrated legally and they answered a call that came from the UK, so to throw them under the bus now is cruel and it’s unconscionable, especially by a Labour government.” She said Tapp’s proposals should be taken onboard, adding that “if Andy Burnham is starting with a clean slate, then let it be the first thing that he drops”. …