Shabana Mahmood has dropped the proposed 15-year wait for foreign care workers to secure settlement. That is a substantial concession. It is not the abandonment of her settlement overhaul, and Labour should not confuse the two.

The Home Secretary’s plans prompted more than 200,000 consultation responses, in what was the largest consultation any British government has conducted. Within Labour, open letters, speeches and pointed interventions from senior figures have kept the controversy alive for more than a year. This was no passing objection that ministers could reasonably expect to fade.

Mahmood has now softened the rules for dependants and made other adjustments, including to volunteering requirements. Those changes deserve to be judged on their practical significance. For care workers facing the proposed 15-year wait, its removal matters far more than the political vocabulary used to describe it.

But concessions must also be judged against what survives. The main thrust of the proposals remains, including elements that have divided Labour. Removing a conspicuous provision does not settle the argument over the rest.

Nor does the extraordinary number of consultation responses, by itself, establish a public verdict: participation is not a vote, and the total tells us nothing about the balance of opinion. It does establish the scale of engagement with a decision about people’s route to a settled future in Britain.

The remaining proposals therefore require a defence on their own merits. The Home Secretary can point to changes as evidence that she has listened. She cannot make those changes answer objections to policies she has chosen to keep.