Home secretary Shabana Mahmood has refused to meet with a migrant care worker who will be affected by her rightwing immigration reforms.
Mahmood was asked to meet the worker as part of a discussion with Unison boss Andrea Egan about plans to make migrants wait up to 15 years to apply for indefinite leave to remain, the i Paper reported.
But the home secretary refused Egan’s request and the meeting, which is part of a charm offensive by Mahmood to stave off a growing rebellion against her reforms, was cancelled.
Unison is officially affiliated with the Labour party and has been at the forefront of opposition to Mahmood’s plans. Egan, who was expelled from Labour amid a purge of leftwing members in 2022, has described the reforms as “dehumanising”.
Egan said on X on Wednesday: “Shabana Mahmood’s failure to engage with the migrant workers whose lives her nasty proposals will devastate is totally unacceptable. These are brilliant, committed workers who hold our public services together. Unison won’t tolerate them being attacked and ignored.”
The Home Office told the i Paper the meeting was a private one-on-one talk between Mahmood and Egan that Unison had chosen to cancel.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell urged Mahmood to “think again on this decision not to meet” the worker. Writing on X, he said “the work visa issue is causing totally unnecessary division in the Labour party.”
In an interview with Sky News on Thursday, energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh refused five times to back Mahmood’s policy of making people wait 15 years for permanent residency.
In a now deleted social media post earlier this week, Fahnbulleh hit out at “any attempt to prolong the time people have to wait for settlement.”
In March this year whilst not a member of cabinet, Angela Rayner referred to the reforms as “un-British”. She has since attempted to downplay reports of a cabinet split over the policy.
The government has delayed its official announcement of the policy, the Critic reported, and says it is “considering responses” to a public consultation that closed in February.
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