Do we like them?Do we like Shabana Mahmood?
Our score: 4 out of 10. A hardline asylum record and gender-critical positions weigh against her; no pattern of mistreating people turned up, but we couldn't open much of the record.
Shabana Mahmood is a barrister from Birmingham who has been the Labour MP for Ladywood since 2010. She was Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor under Keir Starmer, then became Home Secretary in September 2025. Burnham kept her in the job when he took over in July 2026.
Her big project is the asylum overhaul she announced in the Commons in November 2025, calling the system “out of control and unfair”. Refugee status would become temporary, with people reapplying every two and a half years, and the legal duty to support asylum seekers would be dropped. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said it wasn't radical enough, while Amnesty International called one measure a “punitive blow”.
By March 2026 she was facing a backbench revolt over the changes, and she argued Labour shouldn't go “more Green or more Reform” on migration. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a government trying to restore trust in the system or as a Labour minister borrowing the right's playbook. Either way, it's the part of her record most likely to bother a family that cares about migrants.
On trans issues, PinkNews reported in April 2024 that she agreed with JK Rowling's gender-critical views, and it has also covered her questioning of LGBTQ+-inclusive lessons in primary schools. That is a position on trans people's rights, not a hate campaign, and we found no evidence she has pushed anything harmful to trans people since taking the Home Office job. Still, for this page it's a real mark against her.
On facts, Full Fact has looked at her only a handful of times. In October 2025 it checked her claim that 35,000 people had been “detained and removed” under Labour and found most had left the UK voluntarily, which it treated as misleading. Other items on its page are about fake or misleading material circulated about her, such as an AI-generated image and a misleading social media claim, which count for nothing against her.
The honest gap is the good-person side: we couldn't open enough reporting on how she treats staff, colleagues or constituents to say much. Nothing we found points to a pattern of mistreating people. She is also the first Muslim woman to hold the Home Secretary job, and reporting has her speaking about her faith as central to her public service.