Mahmood in standoff with Starmer over sacking of her junior minister

Mike Tapp wrote unauthorised article saying new settlement rules should not cover overseas care workers

Shabana Mahmood is locked in an extraordinary standoff with Keir Starmer after Downing Street refused to immediately sack her junior minister for breaching the ministerial code.

The home secretary has demanded that Mike Tapp, the immigration minister, should be sacked for writing an unauthorised article calling for overseas care workers to be exempt from hardline immigration changes.

But No 10 has so far refused to officially sack Tapp, saying “no decision” has been made by the prime minister.

The row comes as senior Labour figures tussle for leading roles in Andy Burnham’s administration, which is expected to take power in No 10 as early as 17 July.

Tapp wrote in an article for the Times it was his “strong belief” that migrant care workers should not have to wait longer to apply for permanent settlement in the UK.

Mahmood was unaware he had written the article, which a source close to her insisted was written “to try to win a job in the new administration”.

It is understood Tapp was involved in ministerial discussions about exempting care workers from the proposed reforms to “indefinite leave to remain”. It is alleged Tapp took an idea proposed in those discussions and attempted to pass it off as his own in the Times article.

The ministerial code says the principle of collective responsibility requires that ministers should be able to express their views frankly in the expectation they can argue freely in private while maintaining a united front when decisions have been reached.

A source close to Mahmood said: “Mike Tapp is expected to be sacked for breaching the ministerial code. He has taken possible ideas that the home secretary and her team were working on, and briefed them as his own to try to win a job in the new administration.”

Asked to respond to Mahmood’s demand, Downing Street sources said that no decision had been made over Tapp’s fate and that it was up to the prime minister ultimately to judge standards of ministerial behaviour and appropriate consequences of any breach.

The row is the latest sign of tensions between Starmer and his home secretary, after she urged him to stand down after Labour’s disastrous local election results, and was subsequently accused by No 10 insiders of briefing it out.

The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, said: “The Labour government has descended into chaos and infighting – with Shabana Mahmood’s junior minister openly defying her in a brazen attempt to get a place in Burnham’s cabinet.

“There is not a single thought for the national interest here. All these Labour ministers care about is their own personal ambition and jockeying for government jobs. It’s beneath contempt.”

Mahmood is under pressure to water down her current proposals to force overseas workers already in the UK to wait longer to apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR), which grants the right to work, study and claim benefits in the UK permanently.

Burnham has previously criticised the decision to apply the changes retrospectively because they would leave people “in a sense of limbo and unable to integrate”.

Angela Rayner, an ally of Burnham, said earlier this month it would be “un-British” to make care staff already in the UK wait for up to 15 years – rather than the current five – before being allowed to settle permanently.

In his article for the Times, Tapp said he had been working closely with officials to “develop a better approach than a blanket retrospective extension from five years to 10 years for everyone”.

He wrote: “It is my strong belief that those who have come to the United Kingdom on care worker visas who have played by the rules and have genuinely contributed to our care system should not be required to wait longer to apply for settlement. That is the issue I am working hard to address.”

Tapp said that the exemptions to the ILR changes would apply to all those who came on the health and care visa route. A total of 616,266 of these visas were issued between 2022 and 2024. More than half of them were family members of workers, known as dependants.

Analysis by the Home Office and its migration advisory committee has estimated that about 200,000 care workers and their dependants will apply for permanent settlement between now and 2030 if the five-year route remains unchanged.

It comes as Mahmood prepares to place the immigration and asylum bill before parliament next Tuesday and will face opposition from some Labour, Lib Dem and independent MPs.

The bill will not introduce new rules to double the time it takes to qualify for indefinite leave to remain for most migrant workers.

It is understood the ILR changes are not part of the bill but could be introduced via secondary legislation.