ANDY Burnham will continue with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plan to significantly extend the time immigrants must wait to receive permanent residency, according to reports.
Burnham’s team would not comment on reports in the Guardian that he would support the proposal – which have been described as "wrong" by those within Labour itself – to increase the wait for indefinite leave to remain from five years to between 10 and 20 years.
The Guardian has reported that the Greater Manchester mayor is hoping to reframe the changes announced in December but supportive of the Mahmood's attempts to limit legal and illegal migration.
The National Audit Office (NAO) previously warned that the Home Secretary’s changes to the asylum system, which will remove the legal obligation to house all people seeking refuge among others, require “effective action on the bottlenecks” in other policy areas, in a report published on Wednesday.
It also found the current cost of supporting people seeking asylum is “disproportionately high” and totalled around £4.9 billion for 2024-25 driven by long delays and backlogs.
With the Makerfield by-election being predicted as a contest between Labour and Reform, one source told The Guardian "immigration is the second most important issue there".
“Andy is fighting the most important by-election in half a century in the Labour-held seat with the largest Reform vote in the country,” a source is quoted as saying.
“Immigration is the second most important issue there. He must show decisive leadership on this and reframe but back the reforms to restore control over our borders and create a firm but fair migration system.”
Campaigning will continue in Makerfield, where Burnham faces Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon, who contested the seat in 2024, and Conservative Michael Winstanley, who last stood in the constituency in 1997.
The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats are yet to announce their candidates.
