Labour rebels threaten Commons showdown over crackdown on migration

Labour rebels are threatening to force a Commons vote to expose the party’s deepening divisions over the Home Secretary’s new immigration reforms.

Backbench critics of Shabana Mahmood say they want to make their voices heard against her plan to make migrants – including the millions already here – wait years longer before they can gain permanent residency in the UK.

Others are hoping to use arcane Parliamentary procedure to ensure there is a debate on related controversial proposals to make refugee status temporary.

But the Government is so far resisting the demands for another U-turn on the restrictions to settlement, after Angela Rayner criticised the policy, calling it ‘un-British’.

As the infighting continued, a backbench Labour MP leading the rebellion claimed the ‘whole basis for this policy is completely unfounded’.

Tony Vaughan disputed Ms Mahmood’s claim that without tightening up the settlement requirements, huge numbers of low-skilled workers and their families who arrived in recent years will cost taxpayers £10billion.

He admitted there was no right to a vote on the matter, which will be introduced by technical changes to the Immigration Rules rather than legislation, but told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Parliament should be given a chance to have our say on it.’

Mr Vaughan, a barrister at Sir Keir Starmer’s old legal chambers, said mooted transitional arrangements would be ‘essentially a sticking plaster on a scheme that was flawed from the beginning’.

Angela Rayner, joins Rob Swain, General Manager at KFC UK&Ireland, in Manchester yesterday to take part in the Great British Spring Clean

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood arrives at 10 Downing Street for Cabinet on March 17

He said it would cost the Treasury if care workers leave the country, and highlighted a report by think-tank IPPR suggesting it will keep up to 90,000 children of foreign workers in poverty because their parents cannot claim benefits until they obtain Indefinite Leave to Remain.

‘This is not a policy that can be trimmed around the edges. It is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned,’ Mr Vaughan told The Times.

Separately, Labour MP Stella Creasy has tabled an Early Day Motion calling for Ms Mahmood’s new Immigration Rules, which make refugee status temporary, to be annulled. She told the Daily Mail that unless more MPs sign it, with 24 putting their names down so far, they will not get any chance to debate the proposals as they are being introduced through a Statutory Instrument rather than primary legislation.

‘The Home Secretary has not put these proposals to Parliament for scrutiny.

‘Because they refer not to border control but people already in our communities, many of us have concerns they will create more problems than they solve. Good Parliamentary scrutiny could solve that.’

Meanwhile Labour’s former deputy leader Baroness Harman said that Ms Rayner – who yesterday joined a litter picking session as part of the Great British Spring Clean in Manchester – should not have publicly criticised the settlement policy without an alternative.

She said: ‘To just wave it away as an issue and say it’s un-British to exercise extra controls… What is she suggesting instead?

‘It’s just a negative intervention. It didn’t have any proposals about what should be done. I just don’t think she should be doing this.’

Last night a Government spokesman said: ‘As announced in November, we are consulting to apply this change to those in the UK today but have not received settled status.

‘We are currently reviewing the 200,000 responses and will outline our response in due course.’