Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood reveals Labour ministers constantly lobby her to give out more visas for migrant workers, with requests 'at least once every week or two'

Published: 14:00 EDT, 4 October 2026 | Updated: 14:07 EDT, 4 October 2026 The Home Secretary has admitted her fellow Labour ministers are constantly lobbying her to let more migrant workers into the country.Shabana Mahmood expressed frustration about the 'sheer number' of pleas she gets from her colleagues in other Government departments for work visas, revealing she is approached every few weeks.She chided her party for 'pulling the lever' of importing overseas staff to fill vacancies, particularly when almost a million young people are not in employment or education.And she pointed out that given its focus on workers' rights, Labour should be concerned about the plight of foreign staff who are likely to be badly paid and live in poor conditions.Ms Mahmood's frank remarks have been likened to the private admission of another Cabinet member, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, that he is always being asked who can be taxed in order to give other people benefits.In an interview with The Rest is Politics podcast, the Home Secretary was asked about balancing public anger over immigration with the need for workers in an ageing society and replied: 'You should absolutely seek to bring workers in from abroad when you have a genuine labour shortage that you can't fix any other way.'But I got to tell you, since I've been in the Home Office, the sheer number of requests I get from colleagues across Government from other departments, "can I have 10 visas over here for welders" or something.'She said she replies 'you're telling me that we can't find 10 welders' only to be told 'it's urgent, and we haven't got the time'.Asked if she has Cabinet ministers phoning her up to ask for visas, she admitted: 'I have a conversation like that at least once every week or two. It happens all the time.' Shabana Mahmood and her Cabinet colleagues at Labour conference earlier in the weekMs Mahmood went on: 'No one has been thinking about the skills needs of people who are already here because it's a bit too easy to just always bring in foreign workers.'And the other thing that bothers me about that is be no doubt those foreign workers are being brought in because they're cheaper, and their conditions will be worse, right? So the massive numbers of people who've come for care work, for example, we all know this is a sector riven with poor pay and conditions, often very abusive working conditions.'Again, it's the job of the Labour Party, the party that literally is about work and workers, to be thinking about those pay and conditions, sort the sector out.'However elsewhere in the interview the Home Secretary suggested she wanted to bring more refugees into the country.Ms Mahmood – who told Labour conference she would open four new 'safe and legal routes' including a resettlement scheme for Afghans and Palestinians – said: 'We should be looking around the world, thinking of the sorts of communities to whom we can make a particular difference, whom we can integrate very quickly.'We should accept them as refugees before they arrive and then help them integrate into our country. I want us to play our full part and do right by people around the world.'She also claimed there was no way to make France take back every migrant who arrives on England's shores in a dinghy, after the one-in, one-out deal ended last week.'Even if we just sent people on a plane and said, off you go, you're going straight back to France, they can turn that plane back and send it to us as well. That's just not how those relationships between countries work.'Ms Mahmood conceded she felt 'very uncomfortable' with the sight of people being arrested for supporting Palestine Action, but defended the ban on the activists brought in by Labour and said she also wanted police to take action against 'skinheads standing outside a mosque' if they backed proscribed neo-Nazi group National Action.Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'Every Labour MP wants more visas and more open borders, even though low-skilled mass immigration has clearly failed.'Labour are handing out hundreds of thousands of work permits while millions of Brits sit on benefits. We should employ UK nationals before we bring in foreign labour.'