New: Jo White, the migration minister, has warned that weakening "earned settlement" plans could cause a major fall in the number of social care workers. She said giving indefinite leave to remain to those who came through a specific social care visa route between 2022 and 2024 might lead to a "spiral" in people quitting the profession. Ministers are considering retrospectively raising the number of years a migrant must have lived in the UK from five years to ten or 15, in order to qualify. Angela Rayner, the communities secretary, warned the move would unfairly hit social care workers. White said the government was considering its approach following a consultation that closed in February. However, she added that handing 600,000 social care workers and their dependents who applied over two years the chance to gain permanent residency could cause many of them to quit the profession. She told a Fabian Society fringe event: "We have, rather than looked to see where our skills gaps are, we've constantly imported from abroad and this is why we're in this situation and why we've got a crisis in the care sector... "I don't want us to get into that spiral where people move out of the care sector because they've got [indefinite] leave to remain. And this is what we hear from people coming from other countries, that they're here to work, but they then want to go on to other things."