Overview
- On Thursday the Home Secretary asked the prime minister to sack migration minister Mike Tapp after he wrote a Times article saying foreign care workers already in the UK should be exempt from tougher settlement rules.
- Downing Street refused to dismiss him and said Mr Tapp remains in post while Sir Keir Starmer takes formal advice on whether his actions broke the Ministerial Code.
- The Home Secretary has restricted Mr Tapp’s access to sensitive Home Office documents and barred him from meetings without her approval pending the probe.
- Mr Tapp publicly defended his article on social media, said he had ‘receipts’ for the work he claimed to have done, and later apologised for a ‘poorly judged’ tweet referencing the Taliban.
- The row centres on Shabana Mahmood’s plan to double the normal route to settlement from five years to ten with selective fast‑tracking, a change that officials say could affect roughly 200,000 care workers and dependants and is unfolding during the party’s leadership transition.