LIVERPOOL, England — Britain’s long-term settlement rules for migrants could be tightened, the country’s top interior minister Shabana Mahmood has signaled, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer branded the policy of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK “racist.”

The U.K. home secretary said that she is looking at how indefinite leave to remain — the status which settled migrants can apply for after five years of legal residence in Britain — could be linked to how applicants are contributing to society.

On Sunday, Starmer stepped up his attack on Farage, who he trails 11 points in opinion polls, telling the BBC that Reform UK’s own policy of abolishing indefinite leave to remain is “racist” and “immoral.”

Farage wants migrants to reapply for new visas with tougher rules instead of granting indefinite leave to remain, which gives people rights and access to benefits.

“It’s one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here, I’m up for that,” Starmer told the broadcaster.

“It’s [a] completely different thing to say we’re going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them,” he added.

But ministers, who are gathered in Liverpool, in the north west of England, for Labour’s annual conference, will signal this week that they are open to changing the current system.

Mahmood told the Sun newspaper in a pre-conference interview that she is “looking at how to make sure that settlement in our country –  long term settlement, Indefinite Leave to Remain – is linked not just to the job you are doing, the salary you get, the taxes you pay, [but] also the wider contribution you are making to our communities.”

Starmer has arrived in Liverpool facing questions about his leadership, and amid dire poll ratings.

On X, Reform’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice described Starmer’s intervention as “lashing out irrationally.” He said the British prime minister is “terrified of Reform.”