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16. What steps she is taking to support tenants in the private rented sector.

In Liverpool Wavertree, research by Crisis and Zoopla shows just 3% of homes for private rent are affordable for people who claim local housing allowance. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the increase in tax on property income announced in the Budget could feed through into rents, making an increase in LHA more necessary than ever. What discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in other Departments on that issue, as well as on rent regulation linked to inflation and wages, to relieve the pressure on private renters and reduce the cost of increasing LHA?

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility’s “Economic and fiscal outlook”, published alongside the Budget, says on page 77 that the consequence of the 4% hike in property income tax will be fewer rental properties and higher rents as landlords pass on those costs. Does the Minister think the OBR is wrong? If not, does he accept that rents will go up as a result of those measures?

15. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding for local authorities in rural areas.

In a statement issued by the Department last month, we were told that this money, which has been spent on partisan political campaigning, can be recovered if it has been used improperly—but that is not the same as doing it. Will the Secretary of State confirm that she will investigate and recoup every penny of taxpayer money funnelled to those partisan groups, either directly or by instructing councils?

Following this summer’s wildfires, we saw that the devolution of fire policy was no barrier to mutual aid co-operation between the UK Government and the Welsh Government. Can the Minister tell me how any additional air firefighting capability will be allocated fairly across the nations of the United Kingdom?

Summer was a difficult time for Nottinghamshire fire service; it battled with wildfires and a lot of heat-related incidents. The firemen and women had to wear protective equipment and clothing in which it was simply unbearable to work in that type of heat. I know that the Secretary of State has made some funding available for this, but will she work to ensure that by next summer, if we have the same hot weather and wildfires, brave firemen and women will have the clothing and protective equipment that they need to work in those conditions?

Two brave Eastbourne families are fighting for improved regulation of supported accommodation, after their respective relatives were found dead in the accommodation that was meant to be supporting them. Will the Minister meet them, and me, to discuss how we can better protect vulnerable people in supported accommodation?

As a member of the Home Affairs Committee, I proposed an amendment to our recent report on earned settlement that included a plea to only make changes to indefinite leave to remain for those not already embarked on the pathway to settlement. While my amendment was defeated, only three Labour MPs on the Committee voted against it, with four other Labour colleagues voting with me or abstaining. In the statement, which I applaud and welcome, the Home Secretary rightly lauds the UK’s reputation for playing fairly, so will she join the Liberal Democrats in agreeing not to make any retrospective changes to the time required to achieve indefinite leave to remain for all those already on pathways to settlement, not only care workers—or do other contributions not count?

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. It took a year for the Home Secretary to build her reputation as tough on immigration, but what took a year to build she has just dismantled in 12 short minutes. I do not judge her by the actions we think she should take; I judge her by what she herself has previously said. She made announcements from the Government Dispatch Box on 20 November last year, and doubled down in a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research on 5 March this year. She repeatedly singled out social care workers as a particular problem. She said on 5 March that fraud in the social care sector was “rife”, with bogus sponsors. She said from the Government Dispatch Box that it was right that “more stringent” restrictions should be applied to social care workers. Now, she stands there and says the exact opposite. A Home Office document that the Home Secretary published on 5 March said that social care workers alone, because they work on low wages and have brought in many dependants, will cost the taxpayer £10 billion. Those are her figures about social care workers that she specifically chose to publish. She went on to say on 5 March that failing to implement her plans would be “an affront to the idea of fairness” in our society. That is exactly what she has done in the changes she has announced today. The Home Secretary now proposes to allow every single care worker and their dependants who arrived prior to May 2025—a number running into hundreds of thousands—to stay in this country beyond the expiry of their visa and, in the case of 75% of them, to stay permanently, even though she acknowledges that many of them arrived fraudulently. How can she justify allowing people who she acknowledges arrived in this country fraudulently to stay forever, at a cost that she herself has admitted is £10 billion? That is the cost of today’s U-turn: £10 billion. Outside of care workers, many of the so-called highly skilled workers who have arrived recently are not highly skilled at all. The Home Secretary did not mention this in her statement, but in her document she proposes to extend the soft terms on which those workers can stay until 2035, extending the previous sunset by five years. Her own document published today, which she did not refer to, forecasts that a staggering 1.9 million permanent settlement rights will be granted between now and 2030, and a freedom of information request has revealed where some of those people work. German Doner Kebab, a chain of kebab shops, sponsored 106 skilled worker visas. Khans middle eastern restaurant sponsored 28 high-skilled visas. A Domino’s Pizza franchise in South Yorkshire sponsored 78 high-skilled visas—Members get the picture. Just a year after getting ILR, someone can easily get full citizenship, and we know what that means: benefits, social housing, and free NHS treatment. [Interruption.] When the Home Secretary said in March that failing to implement her changes would be an affront, she was right, but now she has done exactly that. She also plans to give illegal immigrants who have arrived on small boats ILR and citizenship. We disagree with that. Why has the Home Secretary made those changes? It is because the Housing Secretary—who I notice has run out of the Chamber—the Energy Secretary and the Labour open-borders left oppose what she previously announced. The Home Secretary is no longer running the Government’s immigration policy—the Housing Secretary is—and her position is looking increasingly untenable. The Home Secretary has done no better with her announcements last year than Keir Starmer did with his welfare announcements, and we know what happened to him. We would go a lot further than the Home Secretary’s previous announcements, although they were a good start. If she wants to implement them in full, we will vote for them, because mass low-skilled migration must end. Those people who came here on a temporary visa and are working in low-skilled, low-wage jobs must leave when their temporary visa expires. We cannot allow them to stay forever, claiming benefits and social housing, yet that is what the proposals today will allow to happen. Ten billion pounds—that is the cost of today’s U-turn. To those who ask where we will find the workers, I say there are 9 million economically inactive adults in this country. Thanks to this Labour Government’s high-tax, high-regulation policies, there are now a million young people not in education, employment or training. If the Government had the courage to toughen up the welfare system, we would get some of those people into work, instead of relying on mass low-skill migration. If the Home Secretary wants to face down her nemesis, the Communities Secretary, and implement her own plans, we will vote for them. However, if she capitulates to the open borders left, her credibility as Home Secretary will not recover.

It is extraordinary that the Opposition see migration issues as some kind of political football. We are talking about people’s lives, and whatever idea one has about policy and programmes, I think people’s lives deserve more seriousness. It is right that care workers are exempted from the new arrangements for ILR, but for the rest of the workforce, the retrospective nature of those new arrangements still seems unfair. People can come in legally and work legally, and then have their residency rights turned upside down. How can that be fair? May I ask the Home Secretary whether she has read the 276-page “lessons learned review” on the Windrush scandal, published by the Home Office in 2018? If she had read it, she would realise that she is in danger of finding herself in the same position as Home Secretaries who were in office at the time of that scandal. I have heard Members of this House talk about people coming here just to claim welfare. I have heard Members of this House say that people are not making a contribution. I have heard Members of this House say that we have to look at the rights of British nationals as opposed to migrants, as if many British nationals were not themselves immigrants. My parents were immigrants. My mother was a nurse. She was one of that generation who came to this country to build the NHS after the war, and it remains the case that immigrants play a very important role in our NHS. I say to the Home Secretary, and I say to the House, that we should always remember the contribution that immigrants made and continue to make to our society.

The Home Secretary is right to say that government is about a social contract, and I can see where she is coming from. Some of us do not have amnesia. Many of us were putting this to our then Government in that period in 2023, and anybody who was serving as a Home Office Minister at that time should wear sackcloth and ashes. Frankly, as a party, we will never move on until we accept that—although there was a very difficult situation after covid. I still worry about a couple of things. I am still not entirely clear why, apart from political pressure, the Home Secretary is watering down her proposals from last time, if she is. I can see what she is trying to get at with care workers earning their right, but surely we should establish the firm principle that people have to have come here honestly to work in the care system and go on working. My last point is that I agree with her that, if people come here illegally, they should not be allowed to claim an indefinite right to stay until after 20 years, but are we going to have people in hotels for 20 years? Surely this underlines the fact that we have to arrest people, detain them and return them, otherwise there is no deterrent.

I welcome the Home Secretary’s focus on fairness. People know that this country has a set of rules, and we all should adhere to them, whether we arrive in this country or are born here. The Home Secretary raised the matter of English language. Many people have settled already, and some have come in as spouses, without good English. This is a very gendered issue, with many women in particular trapped because they do not have access to English. Is she working with colleagues across Government and society generally to make sure that better English language teaching is available, so that people are not excluded and are able to participate fully?

The Home Secretary will know that the Committee conducted a piece of deliberative democracy work, in which we worked with the public to find out their attitudes to people who are coming in on work visas. It was very clear that the public want skills training so that those in the domestic population can take vacancies. Can she confirm what work she is doing across Government to make sure there is appropriate skills training for those who are here to take the jobs available, and can she confirm when she expects the new provisions to start?

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?

Like the Home Secretary, I come from an immigrant family that came here legally, but I fail to understand why she thinks not being able to get settled status for 20 or even 30 years will deter people from coming here illegally, provided that there is no prospect of them being removed from the country because of laws like the European convention on human rights?

I thank the Home Secretary for the changes she has announced today, but questions remain about the impact of these changes on children in particular. Children are not responsible for the choices of their parents, and we must ensure that they do not face greater poverty or instability as a consequence of any changes. The Home Secretary did not say much about children in her statement today. I have had a brief look through the consultation response, but I have a few specific questions. First, will she publish a child rights impact assessment ahead of implementation? Secondly, will she provide greater clarity on the situation for children, including whether the existing private—

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. As she knows, I have written to her about this matter, and I have met migrant workers in my constituency. She has mentioned that the Health Secretary will be carrying out a review looking particularly at fraudulent and exploitative companies, and I urge the Home Secretary to ensure that strong, robust action is taken against these companies to deter their behaviour. I would also like reassurance that the Home Secretary will meet migrant workers as part of this consultation and this review to ensure that their concerns are addressed.

I was hoping when I turned up today that I would hear the Home Secretary say that she was abandoning all the proposals around ILR. While it is positive that she has responded to the cross-party campaign on social care workers, she still has a long way to go to address the unfairness at the heart of these proposals. The un-British retrospectivity is still in place, and those who thought they had a contract with the UK will still be let down. When is she going to be positive about immigration, including its economic benefits and the value that it brings to our communities?

It is heartening to hear the Home Secretary dispel the lump of labour fallacy that people who come to this country simply take jobs. She is talking about the benefits of people coming to this country through immigration, and that is welcome, but if we are to help our constituents understand the new scheme that she is proposing, we do need some clarity. If I understand rightly, around 200,000 people who are working but do not earn more than £50,000, do not have a British spousal connection and are not working in the care sector or public sector—scientists, researchers or skilled technicians, for example—will now face a 10-year wait to get settlement in this country. She says that there is going to be an economic impact assessment. Does she expect these proposals to have a positive or negative impact on our economy?

I welcome the fair solution for existing migrant care workers, because they did nothing but respond to a need for their labour that was caused by our care recruitment crisis, which was caused by low wages and inadequate training. What are the Government doing cross-departmentally to prevent future care recruitment crises? How will the contribution of care workers be weighted in the framework in future for those who have arrived or will arrive after May 2025?

This country owes those in the Gurkha regiment a debt of thanks for their continued service. Will the Secretary of State outline what will happen to them and their dependants with these changes?

Does the Home Secretary believe that it is fair to change the rules retrospectively for people who are not earning in excess of £50,000 but nevertheless have built careers, raised families and paid taxes based on the settlement pathway that existed when they arrived? Does this not violate the British value of fairness and risk real damage to our economy and our social fabric?

I commend my right hon. Friend for consulting so widely in developing the earned settlement proposals and for listening to the representations of care workers in particular. I must express my astonishment at the refusal of Conservative Members to accept moral, social, financial or political responsibility for their failed immigration policies. These proposals will nevertheless adversely affect many. May I raise in particular early career researchers—postdocs and so on—who will not be earning £50,000 a year but will be contributing to our scientific understanding? Will my right hon. Friend meet me to discuss the impact on our science base?

The list of public sector jobs eligible to apply for the five-year settlement route does not appear to include prison officers. What assessment has the Home Secretary made of the effect that these changes will have on the crisis-hit Prison Service?

The Home Secretary has said that anyone exploiting or abusing the system must be penalised, and I suspect the whole House would agree with that. Prestige Dental Services has more than 500,000 patients across the west midlands region and sponsors more than 40 skilled dental workers. Last week, it had its licence revoked, not because of exploitation or abuse but because of an admin error in relation to three of the 40 employees. Will the Home Secretary please look into this matter urgently, so that those 500,000 patients are not put at risk?

I supported the Home Secretary’s original proposals and the tougher measures she has been taking since she came into post. I am also pleased that she made the point clearly about disqualification because of a criminal record. Has any assessment been made by the Department of how many of these care workers will remain in the care sector after the qualifying period?

There was a certain irony in the shadow Home Secretary lecturing the House on who should be defined as highly skilled. He was certainly highly skilled at opening asylum hotels, including the one in my constituency. Can the Home Secretary confirm that the proposals she has made today, along with the other work she is doing in the Department, will mean that that hotel is closed by the end of this Parliament?