This morning, the Home Office is publishing its long-awaited white paper on legal migration. The Home Secretary has already been out on the airwaves, billing it as a ‘crackdown’ on low-skilled visas. This morning it was the turn of the Prime Minister. Keir Starmer deployed the Downing Street bully pulpit to hail the package as a ‘clean break’ from the ‘broken measures’ of the past.
Proposed changes include tightening English tests and pausing the recruitment of additional overseas care workers. The route to settlement for migrants will be extended from five to 10 years – with reductions for those who contribute to economy. A clampdown on graduate visas is expected too, with overseas graduates forced to leave the UK unless they get a graduate-level job.
Inevitably, these changes are being read as a reaction to Reform’s success in the local elections. But Starmer claimed that ‘I’m doing this because it is right, because it is fair and because it is what I believe in.’
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