Introduction

The Home Office plans to make it more difficult for lawfully present migrants to secure permanent residence in the United Kingdom. Among other things, it plans to do so by penalising those migrants lawfully able to use public funds from actually doing so. In addition, under its proposals in A Fairer Pathway to Settlement – A statement and accompanying consultation on earned settlement (November 2025)  (the Statement) it seeks to extend the default period of lawful residence before permanent residence/settlement may be obtained from five years to ten years, with some migrants having to wait twenty years or more. The express motivation for these proposals is to ensure ‘fairness’ for those who already belong to the UK (by implication British citizens and other already-settled persons). Three broad questions require consideration. First, to what extent do the proposals identify a real problem? Second, to what extent do they address it with a suitable solution? Third, to what extent do the proposals create problems for other public policy priorities? A fourth more political question also needs asking: are these proposals consistent with the principles of social democracy that ought to underpin policy proposal from a Labour government?

The target

The earned settlement proposals target lawfully resident migrants, be they economic migrants who have been granted permission to enter, reside and work in the UK, family members of people who have built lives in the UK, or those people granted asylum in the UK on account of their need for protection from their country of origin. The proposals do not target illegal entrants, overstayers, or those subject to deportation. Instead, surprisingly, they target those persons that the Home Office has permitted to enter and remain in the UK under its own Immigration Rules.

While such persons may or may not have had a legitimate expectation that their path to settlement, as well as the conditions attached to their periods of limited permission to reside in the UK en route to settlement, would remain the same in the future as at present, the scale of the proposed degradation of the quality of their future UK residence and prospects for integration calls for powerful justification. Such justification is not supplied in the Statement setting out these proposals. Further, such reasons as have been advanced show muddled thinking, ignorance of other public policy priorities, and a lack of understanding of the wider contexts.

The motivation

The Statement setting out the proposals and its consultation questions contains a Forward by the Home Secretary and thereafter, a general Introduction, with the former focusing on the political motivation and the latter setting out the issues as the Home Office sees it. In the Forward the Home Secretary strikes a personal note about her own family’s journey to the UK and their integration both social and legal into UK society by becoming British citizens. Thereafter, she speaks of a patriotism that finds space for those like her family, as well as those who roots in the UK go back many generations. As she has put the matter thus and as she has done so in order to underpin what follows, it is worth observing that that her family’s journey to UK-belonging, as she describes it, took place at a time when there were no barriers to integration, settlement, and citizenship acquisition of the sort proposed in the Home Office Statement that follows.

Having struck a personal note, the Home Secretary proceeds to set out the problem as she sees it, using language that removes the human subjects or agents of concern from being identified: “…for some in our country today, this broad patriotism is narrowing. Divides are growing…Some will choose to scorn this analysis…But those who look like me do not have that luxury. Our lives – and the lives of our families – are more dangerous in a country that turns inwards. We have no choice but to ask: what is the cause of our division? And how might this country be united?” This is very personal stuff raising very big issues. Therefore, as she has put it so, it is in no way intended to be ad hominem comment to engage critically with her remarks, particularly as those remarks support proposals that are problematic in so many ways.

There is much that could be said about the increasing divisions in UK society but any dangers posed (she speaks of lives being made more dangerous) to black and other minority ethnic people are not the result of any particular public policy whether in the field of immigration or any other area, they are the result of the conduct of the actual people who target them and put them in danger. If someone is placed in danger, the people responsible for putting them there are at fault; they own their own behaviour. The Home Secretary is right to decry people being ill-treated on racial grounds but it does not follow that she has identified the ‘cause’ of the growing divisions in UK society, nor that in the implementation of these earned settlement proposals the country will become more ‘united’ as a result. There is no evidence-based logical progression from the problem identified by the Secretary of State in the Forward to the solution proposed in the substance of the Statement that follows. Indeed, as set out below, social divisions may well grow as a result of what is proposed.

Of course, a Forward to a policy paper may be seen as insubstantial and window-dressing but the framing of the issues matters. People of all backgrounds rightly deplore ill-treatment on racial grounds, and everyone has stake in the correct identification of the cause and in the efficacy of proposed solutions. There will be many perspectives and views on the issues raised. However, these earned settlement proposals are in no way a solution to the problem the Minster identifies.

The proposals

The Statement is built around a ‘demand’ for ‘contribution and integration’ (p. 3). To become a permanent ‘part of this country’ is something to be earned. Among the proposals is the already-announced plan to move the benchmark period of lawful residence before indefinite leave to remain (ILR) is secured from five to ten years.  In addition, the bar is to be raised in respect of the requirement to speak English, standards of conduct (want of criminal offending), and the need to be free of debt to public authorities. The proposals go further. By a series of conditions, the benchmark period of ten years’ lawful residence may be extended or shortened.

The winners

For those persons described as making ‘an outsized contribution’ to national life, such as ‘high-talent’ (whatever that means) or high-tax payers (regardless of what sort or work they do), those at certain levels of public service seniority, or those who have engaged in voluntary work, the period of lawful residence may be shorter.

The losers

However, for those deemed to contribute less to public life, such as those who have claimed benefits, or those who ‘entered the country ‘illegally’ (p. 4) the period may be longer. There is also to be a new twenty-year benchmark period of lawful residence for Refugees granted asylum to wait before they may be granted ILR.

Going further still there is an additional proposal to prohibit persons with ILR from access to benefits; in other words, mere permanent residence and leading a settled life will no longer be enough to secure the ability to obtain benefits (as and when needed and on satisfaction of the generally applicable requirements). Instead, a person with ILR will need to wait a further period of time and, thereafter, apply for and be granted British citizenship.

In addition, for migrants on Health and Care visas and their dependents (implicitly not deemed to be making that ‘outsized contribution’ to national life) as well as other Skilled Workers below degree level, a benchmark of fifteen years’ lawful residence is proposed before settlement/ILR may be obtained (on the basis that they are likely to present significant fiscal costs to the UK).

Pausing there, it is quite something for a government drawn from a political party committed to the principles of social democracy and public service to treat much-needed public sector health and social care workers who provide care to British citizens as a drag on the national interest who have to yet to demonstrate the necessary degree of contribution to the public good. That inconsistency between principle and practice is only highlighted further by the proposal to shorten the period of lawful residence prior to settlement for those who are high taxpayers, regardless of what sector they work in or what else they do.

Instead of omitting consideration of the public service contribution of those with Health and Care visas and treating them as a burden (as the Statement does), it would be more sensible to hasten their integration by recognising their work as falling within the proposed class of public service occupation that warrants a five-year reduction in the qualifying period (p. 22) from the general ten year benchmark, so that that they may obtain ILR after five years. That would hasten their integration into the UK society in which they are already embedded, as well as allow them, their partners, and children to grow and develop meaningful lives and thus to make an increased contribution earlier to the common good.

Moving on, while the Statement proposes that family members of British citizens will still have a baseline of five years’ lawful residence in order to be eligible for ILR, no such commitment is given in respect of the family members of other settled persons (e.g., those who already hold ILR). The inference to be drawn is that such family members will move from needing five years’ lawful residence to having a baseline of ten years. No reasoning or evidence is advanced to justify the difference in treatment.

‘Voluntary work’

In addition, the Statement also proposes a reduction in the period of lawful residence of three to five years for those who engage in ‘voluntary’ work in the community. The substance of this proposal was first raised by the Home Office during Gordon Brown’s 2008-2010 government and dropped when the Conservative-led Coalition took office , see my post Earned Settlement and Citizenship: The pursuit of virtue in the White Paper ‘Restoring Control over the Immigration System’ for criticisms of the proposals then and now. Since 2010, the virtues of such a scheme have not become apparent. In words as true in relation to these current proposals as they were when made and commenting on the Brown proposals, in a memorandum submitted to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, HSMP Forum stated:

“Migrants will feel being forced to do voluntary work and hence will not contribute whole heartedly. It also undermines the true essence of philanthropic aim of the voluntary work. It would make voluntary work looks like a barter system and would reflect it rather in a commercial sense”. (JCHR Legislative Scrutiny: Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill, 9th Report (2008-2009) HL Papers 62 HC 375, Ev 26).

Public funds

Finally, the Statement proposes that where a migrant has been in receipt of public funds for less than twelve months, five years will be added to the period of lawful residence necessary before ILR may be sought, and where in receipt of public fund for more than twelve months, the pre-ILR period of residence is extended for ten years. This would be so even for, perhaps especially for, those not subject to a ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) condition on their existing grant of limited leave. Workers in lower wage occupations, including Skilled Workers on Health and Social Care visas are specifically identified as the target of this measure (p. 25).

The Statement shows no real grasp of how the benefits system works or of the effect of punishing (by delaying ILR) those who need to have recourse to it and in particular those who are lawfully allowed to do so. Access to public funds by lawfully resident migrants does not mean access to cherries that by right belong solely in the bowl of the resident British citizen population, it means access to a system of social security and social assistance that underpins lawfully authorised work, labour market participation, and UK residence. To seek to remove it cuts away the basis upon which lives are built and secured. Further, to seek to do so knowing these effects in order to be ‘fair’ to British citizens and other already-settled persons is fundamentally unserious.

The definition of ‘Public funds’ is widely defined in paragraph 6 of the Immigration Rules, and includes universal credit (UC), child benefit, carer’s allowance, disability living allowance (DLA), personal independent payment (PIP),  homelessness assistance provided by local authorities, and pension credit.

The benefits system is woven into the fabric of economic life in the UK. Put broadly, it does two things. First, the benefits system provides a system of social insurance when the vicissitudes of ordinary life raise their head (as some of them will inevitably). Thus, loss of employment, childcare costs, disability, loss of a home, high housing costs, serious illness, death in the family, reaching retirement age, etc., are all matters in respect of which cash benefits or benefits in kind (as the case may be) may be provided. All have strict general requirements before being provided. None are generous.

Second, the benefits system provides cash support to those in-work where their salary or wages are insufficient to meet the basic cost of living. Thus, as regards children, child benefit and universal credit (UC) provide cash support to help with the costs of raising children (UC contains a child element, replacing what used to the free-standing child tax credit). Further, as regards housing costs, UC has a housing element (what used to be free-standing housing benefit) that enables people to meet housing costs unaffordable from their earned income. In effect, as regards those in work, the benefits system functions as a subsidy from taxpayers to employers, as it means that wages and salary levels may fall below the levels needed to meet the basic needs of employees.

Bearing these two points in mind, lengthening the period of residence before ILR may be sought, by reference to access had to public funds makes no sense. As regards life’s crises and events, if a person is made redundant without warning, is unfairly dismissed, loses their home, gets cancer, suffers the death of an employed partner, has a disabled child, reaches retirement age, etc. the Home Office plan to punish them for needing the relevant type of public funds.

Further, when in work, if certain migrants cannot live from their wages to meet child costs and housing costs such that they are obliged to obtain UC, the Home Office plan to punish them for needing public funds. In order to avoid this outcome, the migrants concerned will need to eschew the benefits they need and endure the resulting poverty. Bear in mind that those benefits they would have received are those available to their British citizen co-workers who do exactly the same jobs, who face the same costs, and who receive UC to help with child costs and housing costs on the basis that Parliament and the Government recognises that such payments are necessary to meet the basic needs of those in work.

Thus, these proposals are very far from being clever politics. To some significant degree, among other things, they will force some lawfully resident migrants to turn to cheaper, possibly inadequate housing, in areas where migrants are concentrated; they will lead to more children growing up in poverty and children growing up in worse poverty; they will leave the needs of some disabled persons unmet; and they will add to the risk of homelessness. Cumulatively, they will lead to families who might otherwise have succeeded in integrating and building meaningful lives failing to do so. Such problems as arise on the lengthened road to settlement will be further compounded and aggravated if access to public funds is postponed beyond the grant of ILR to the later grant of British citizenship.

It is no answer to the above criticisms to opine that under current Immigration Rules a Skilled Worker visa requires a minimum salary of over £40,000. The restriction on access to public funds will bear down on those already lawfully resident with work authorisation and on lower incomes (e.g., many allowed to work in in RQF levels 3-5 work). Further, life’s vicissitudes, loss of employment, serious illness, death in the family, etc., may strike anyone at any time, regardless of income level.

The Statement contains no evidence of Home Office consultation on these particular issues with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). That is a matter of regret. A more integrated approach to policy making is required.

Manufacturing segregation

These proposals actively militate against the integration of the lawfully resident migrants in at least three ways.

First, as noted above, they do so by creating a long-term class of working people unable to rely upon the social insurance that working people need to build meaningful lives. Some of these migrants will live in families where some members have limited leave, others already have indefinite leave, and others may be already British citizens. In such mixed status households, every single member will be affected and punished by the delay in settlement and integration of any one family member and also by that person’s exclusion from unpenalised access to public funds. It is further inevitable that the impact of these proposals will be felt more in families from certain ethnic backgrounds than others, a point no doubt to be explored further elsewhere in consideration of the public sector equality duty and the provision against indirect race discrimination found in the Equality Act 2010.

Second, the proposals do so by postponing the moment when the local allegiance lawfully resident migrants demonstrate by paying taxes and respecting the law enables them to find the psychological security of permanent residence and ultimately British citizenship. Moreover, self-evidently, delaying access to the public funds may well inculcate in the migrants concerned a degree of psychological and practical alienation that may be hard to displace once permanent residence and full access to public funds is finally secured.

Third, the proposals do so by creating a political narrative that fairness to British citizens and the already-settled means bearing down on lives of their co-workers and neighbours who have migrant status and limited permission to reside.

Taken as a package, the proposals actively work against the social, economic, and legal integration of lawfully resident migrants. Instead, they manufacture and contribute to their long-term segregation, bake-in the idea that they are a problem to be solved, and serve to animate the political discourse that their very presence is problematic, thus opening the way for further measures hereafter. None of this contributes to community cohesion or integration, none of it assists in the service of a properly articulated public policy priority.

In the result, recognised Refugees and their families, the family members of those with ILR, Health and Care workers and their families, other-below-degree-level Skilled Workers on low- to mid-range incomes and their families, and those at all levels who suffer crises and like events that form part of the vicissitudes of life, will have their lives made more difficult as they seek to integrate and build meaningful lives for themselves.

The average life span is around 80 years. To add ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years or more to the period of lawful residence before ILR/settlement is granted, and maybe to postpone access to public funds even beyond that until British citizenship is granted is to impair and block the leading of meaningful lives. It is to further add to the growth of a metic class of non-citizen residents who live their lives working, raising their children, and paying their taxes under a system of law that divides them from their fellow inhabitants in express material ways that contribute to their poverty and insecurity. Such second-class treatment is bound to lead to some degree of alienation rather than gratitude in the hearts of those so treated.

Even on their own terms these proposals will not work. In a representative democracy, the popularity of proposed policies among the enfranchised is ever in the mind of those in Parliament and in government. However, among those voters in swing-constituencies where immigration issues are pressed, the technical, long-term, nature of these proposals will be utterly opaque to them and is unlikely to make a single one of them consider that this Government has addressed and solved an issue of concern to them such that they will affirm loyalty to the party in power. Further, as set out below, these proposals may well lead to a direct political cost to those that advance them.

Other public policy priorities

As already noted, the Home Office statement cuts across the role and purpose of the benefits system and the support it gives to those in work or with access to the labour market and their families. However, it also impairs other public policy priorities.

It is an express purpose of s. 1 of the British Nationality Act 1981 (1981 Act) to promote the full integration of settled migrants (including those with ILR) and their families by providing for their UK-born children to acquire British citizenship at the earliest opportunity. A UK-born child with a settled parent automatically acquires British citizenship at birth (s. 1(1)). Further, where a parent become settled following the child’s UK-birth that child may register as a British citizen by entitlement (s. 1(3)).  In planning to make such provision in the 1981 Act, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government stated in its 1980 White Paper British Nationality Law – Outline of Proposed Legislation (Cmnd 7987) (note, at a time when the period before indefinite leave could be obtained was four years, less, or immediate, depending on the immigration category):

“42. The Government consider however that such a move to the complete adoption of the ius sanguinis [citizenship only for those UK born who are descended from British citizens] would have a serious effect on racial harmony. It would mean that children born in this country to parents who had settled here would not have our citizenship, and this could hinder their integration into the community….”

Thus, in seeking to lengthen the period of time before ILR is granted, the Home Office statement cuts against the statutory purpose of the 1981 Act and the ambition of the Thatcher Government to make provision in British nationality law to foster early integration and to contribute to racial harmony in so doing.

Moreover, the Statement’s proposal to delay access to public funds beyond the grant of ILR until the later grant of British citizenship presupposes that acquisition of British citizenship will always be an option for migrants. However, this is not so. Many migrants hail from countries of origin that are intolerant of multiple nationalities, such that they would stand to lose their first nationality or face penalties were they to acquire British citizenship. By contrast, the UK does not penalise people for holding other nationalities in addition to British citizenship. Consistent with the principles and practises embedded in contemporary international nationality rights-including treaties and the nationality law codes of many other states that respect fundamental rights, the UK is tolerant of people who hold multiple nationalities. Thus, the Statement militates against another aspect public policy.

In addition, bearing down on migrants in this way may militate against the UK public policies of attracting business, trade and investment to the UK, as well as maintaining the working population at every level of the economy. Economic migrants seeking visas have choices. They examine the overall ‘package’ of cost, entry, residence, settlement, and access to citizenship in various countries when seeking to build lives away from their country of origin. Just making it harder for them in the UK without any serious consideration of the needs of the UK economy at all levels and, further, without any serious consideration of the alternative packages in countries in Europe and north America suggests a lack of concern  for the virtues of comparative analysis, a want of respect for other UK priorities, and an inward-looking Home Office policy-making culture within government.

In that regard, the fertility rate (average number of live children) among women in England and Wales is just over 1.4. Absent migration it would need to be around 2.1 for the population to remain stable. Thus, actually supporting lawfully resident migrants to integrate and raise families may makes good sense in policy terms.  It is one thing to restrict the number of new migrants arriving on economic migration routes to limit inbound migration (choices on that issue may vary from time to time and are separate from these earned settlement proposals for those admitted to the UK), quite another to penalise those already permitted to lawfully reside here (or who will be admitted) when they have children, raise families, and seek to integrate into UK society.

The wider context

The migrants affected by these proposals are not all solely objects of immigration policy. In many cases they and their families are also enfranchised subjects in the UK constitutional order, such that these proposals may well be a door-step political issue for MPs and Labour MPs in particular. The families and communities of those affected will contain many who are British citizens. Further, Commonwealth citizens with indefinite leave and also those with limited leave can vote in UK national general elections and local elections. Thus, affected citizens of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Nigeria, Australia, etc., who presently have limited leave in the UK, as well as their family members who have ILR or who are British citizens, may wish to reflect on how this issue it to be raised with their local MP as well as how it feeds into their overall calculation as to whom to give their support. Such considerations may also feed into the considerations of other British citizen voters whose vote is in play between political parties.

The point being made here is that this policy is not necessarily cost-free in electoral terms. If the calculation is that these proposals may harvest votes without consequential loss of votes elsewhere, that is not necessarily true. In certain constituencies it may alienate voters from the Labour Party and the principles of social democracy it seeks to promote in government. If not in the Home Office, among Ministers and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), further reflection on these proposals may be required.

In addition, despite its departure from the European Union in 2020, the UK remains an island anchored off the shoulder of the European Main. EU states have two economic migration systems. The first is the relatively frictionless movement of EU citizens from one member state to another. The second is the inbound system for nationals from third countries who use EU or member state economic migration routes to migrate, reside, and settle in an EU member state. It is to be regretted that the Home Office consistently fail to do mapping studies of how the UK economic migration routes compare with those of those our near-neighbours as part of the process of evidence-based policy making that seeks to formulate the best approach to furthering the UK’s many, overlapping, interests.

Conclusion

The Home Office Statement fails to make the case for its proposals. Whatever case is made for the numbers of new economic migrants to be restricted following a period from 2020 when the Home Office chose to grant high numbers of economic migration visas, to bear down in this way on those who have been and who will be allowed to enter, reside, and work makes no sense. It does not achieve any measurable public policy goal. The Statement contains no serious attempt to sustain the case that access to UC and other benefits must be pegged back in the ways proposed. In fact, given the ways public funds support those in work and their families, as well as access to the labour market, these proposals harm UK public policy objectives.

Across a whole range of policy areas, these proposals frustrate integration and manufacture segregation. Further, they are bound to increase feelings of alienation in some of the communities and families affected. The Statement fails to identify a real problem, fails to provide a proper evidence base for its proposals, and fails to advance proposals that advance UK interests, cutting instead against a number of other UK public policy priorities. At a time of international uncertainty and increasing anxiety at home, the UK cannot afford to have the divisive policies proposed. Policies that promote the swift integration of the lawfully resident population are what is required, so that instead of being a house divided, the UK can maximise the talents of all those available to it in the pursuit of common goals and interests.

That such proposals come from the Home Office may come as little surprise to seasoned watchers of that department of state. That they come from the government drawn from a party committed to social democratic principles and evidence-based policy making is of greater note. There is a strong case for Ministers and the PLP to pause the current process, to reconsider these proposals, to do so on consideration of all the relevant material evidence and all relevant public policy priorities, to identify with precision any issues arising, and to bear in mind if it is still found necessary to formulate proposals on settlement, that integration rather than segregation is at the heart of policy-making rooted in social democratic principles.

The virtues of early integration have been long understood. In the New Atlantis (1626), Sir Francis Bacon, the parent of evidence-based policy making in the English intellectual tradition wrote of the response to a warm welcome in a new land:

“We took ourselves now for free men, seeing there was no danger or our utter perdition, and lived most joyfully, going abroad and seeing what was to be seen in the city and placed adjacent within our tedder; and obtaining acquaintance with many of the city,  not of the meanest quality; at whose hands we found such humanity, and such a freedom and desire to take strangers as it were into their bosom, as was enough to make us forget all that was dear to us in our own countries: and continually we met with many things right worthy of observation and relation; as indeed, if there be a mirror in the world worthy to hold men’s eyes, it is that country.”