Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has expressed frustration over frequent requests from government ministers to grant visas for migrant workers to fill labour shortages across various sectors. Speaking in an interview on The Rest Is Politics podcast, Mahmood revealed that she receives these appeals from colleagues in other departments as often as once every week or two.

Mahmood described how ministers routinely ask for relatively small numbers of work visas—for example, ten visas for welders—prompting her to question why domestic workers cannot fill these roles. She characterized the reliance on overseas recruitment as an easy but short-term "lever" that is frequently pulled to address immediate workforce gaps.

“There is a genuine labour shortage that you can’t fix any other way,” Mahmood said, acknowledging that foreign workers are sometimes necessary in an ageing society. However, she emphasized the need for better long-term workforce planning to reduce dependence on migrant labour. “From their side of the equation, they’d be thinking, we’ve got to plug a gap really quickly, and this is the best way to do it,” she said. Yet, she urged ministers to focus more on training and developing skills among workers already in the UK.

Mahmood also highlighted a concern that foreign workers are often brought in because they are cheaper and may face poorer working conditions. She warned that the government has not sufficiently considered the skills development of the existing workforce, suggesting that reliance on immigration as a quick fix overlooks deeper structural issues.

Recent statistics show that net migration has decreased sharply in the UK, with the number of people arriving for work nearly halving in recent years. Net migration stood at 171,000 in the year leading to December 2025, down from 331,000 the previous year and significantly lower than the peak of 750,000 in early 2023.

The Home Secretary’s comments came amid growing public debate over balancing the economic need for migrant labour with concerns about immigration levels and employment opportunities for British workers. While acknowledging the necessity of some immigration to fill genuine skill shortages, Mahmood’s remarks reflect tensions within government over how to manage this challenge.