At the Trades Council’s February meeting we considered the Government “consultation” – “A Fairer Pathway to Settlement: statement and accompanying consultation on earned settlement”, which followed up on the 2025 “White Paper” “Restoring control over the immigration system”.
The White Paper had been followed, in July 2026, by changes in some immigration regulations – such as effectively blocking the recruitment of new care or senior care workers from abroad through Skilled Worker visas. The ability for those already in the UK on other visas to switch to health and social care visas was also removed.
The “consultation” then proposed increasing the standard qualifying period for permanent residence (also known as indefinite leave to remain (ILR) or settlement) from five to ten years, and “toughening” the minimum requirements for permanent residence.
The Trades Council felt that these changes were uncalled for, and particularly unfair in that they would be applied retroactively, so that everyone who is currently in the UK. but not “settled” yet, would be affected once the rules are updated. We were also critical of the way that the Government conducted the “consultation”.
As we have seen in a number of instances, the Government elected to use an online “questionnaire” only – in which the questions focused very much on the elements of the “earned settlement” routeway, rather than on whether this was indeed a desirable approach.
In response, therefore, we decided not just to complete the questionnaire, but also to write to our local MPs to voice our broader criticisms of the way the Government is approaching the issue.
This is how we put things to them:
“The section on “Approach” in the “Introduction” (to the Consultation) makes it clear that “earned settlement” is being seen as an option “to reduce the current forecast volumes and associated impact”.
“We feel this begs a couple of questions.
“Firstly, so far as we can see, the consultation paper does not do anything to say what options other than “earned settlement” have been looked at as possible means of “volume control”, nor does it make any argument as to why “earned settlement” is seen as being the better choice amongst these options.
“Simply trying to put people off is really the crudest approach one could think of, and one which treats badly those we should respect for their decision to commit their futures to our country. Were we to move to another country we would expect to be treated with the consideration due to any new entrant into unfamiliar surroundings. It would be fair for that country to say that they did not want us, but once they did say “do come here” we would expect that to be followed up with an attitude that hoped to cement the relationship as one of mutual benefit. You would not expect everything to happen all at once, but neither would you expect to be tested with things that did not apply generally to the host country’s citizens.
“Most industrial countries have some control over immigration, and some have been more self-contained than others. We don’t argue that reducing the volume of immigration would be catastrophic. Foreign-born population as a percentage of the total 2024 population in OECD countries ranged from under 5% in Poland and Japan to over 30% in New Zealand and Switzerland – so the link between the volume of “people imports” and general social and economic well-being is by no means one dimensional.
“But if you want to restrict the volume of in-flows we feel that it is preferable to face the matter head on, as the “Institute for Government” argued in its 2025 Report “Why government should introduce an annual Migration Plan”.
“Whilst we doubt the capacity of any state to fully “manage” immigration, having a such a plan, which would address the needs of economic sectors and try to quantify the consequences of different levels of visa approvals on them, would at least have a stab at being based on evidence and analysis.
“We now know, for instance, as the “Migration Observatory” has concluded, that “In the year ending March 2023, just under 26,000 nurses and approximately 57,700 care or senior care workers received entry visas. Clinical and managerial roles in health and care comprised 59% of all entry visas issued under the skilled worker category that year. As a result, the health and care sector has been the most important driver of overall increases in work-related migration”. An annual Migration Plan aiming to not issue that level of visas would have been expected to have defined, and owned, the consequences.
“The second point we note is that the Consultation paper leaves the idea of “associated impact” somewhat hanging in the air. The “Foreword” says that “It is clear the pace and scale of migration in this country has not just been unprecedented but also destabilising”, but nowhere is there any description or analysis of this “destabilisation”. We conclude, then, that this is actually a synonym for “politically unpopular”, irrespective of whether the concerns driving public opinion have any merit.
“A Government may feel obliged to bend to the public mood and psychology, but if it is so doing we ask that it avoids expressions like “associated impact” and “destabilising”, that appear to blame attributes of the immigrants rather than of the host population.
“We fear that these proposals will adversely affect work colleagues in various ways. They “move the goalposts” for many people who were under the impression that they were on a pathway to a career in care in Britain. It seems clearly unfair to change the Rules for people who have been already attracted to work here, when we had a dire need of them, on the presumption that they knew what they would have to do if they wanted to settle.
“Health and Care sector Unions are sounding alarms about the potential impact on both members and services.
“The Royal College of Nursing surveyed more than 5,000 migrant nursing staff and found that “60% of those who don’t have ILR say the decision to extend the qualifying period would “very likely” affect their decision to remain in the UK”.
“The proposals have created profound distress among migrant nursing staff, with 53% being extremely concerned about the impact on their financial security, 52% extremely concerned about the impact on their family life, and a further 49% extremely concerned about the impact on their career.
“UNISON is already campaigning for changes to the “sponsorship” system, saying that the way it ties workers to specific employers makes them vulnerable to unacceptable treatment including fraud, underpayment of wages, bullying, racism and many other forms of exploitation and mistreatment.
“Indefinite leave to remain currently gives people broadly the same rights as British citizens, such as the right to work without restrictions and claim benefits if necessary. The same approach is followed by EU countries, all of which offer permanent residents the same access to benefits as citizens.
“We don’t see anything at all wrong with this. According to the “Work Rights Centre”: “It is important to note here that even when migrants do acquire settlement and the ability to claim public funds, they make up a small percentage of overall claims. Data gathered by the Department of Work and Pensions in July 2025 confirmed that of the 7.9 million people on Universal Credit in June 2025, the vast majority of claims (83.6%) were made up of British nationals, Irish nationals and people with right of abode in the UK. Only 2.7% of people on Universal Credit were in the Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) category, and 32% of these were in employment anyway (which is broadly in line with the employment figure of 34% for the British, Irish and right of abode category). While the proportion of people with ILR claiming benefits has increased slightly (by 0.5%) since June 2024, this increase is slower than that of the British, Irish and right of abode category (1.1%)”.
“Whilst some sort of “qualification” period is understandable, it seems to us that 5 years is quite long enough.
“By asking migrants who claim benefits to wait an additional five to 10 years before they can settle, the proposals effectively penalise people who get sick, are exploited or become destitute. They also extend the qualifying period for migrant care workers who arrived on the Health and Care worker route to 15 years, abandoning the promise of five years that enticed them to come in the first place”.
We have not received a reply from any of them, and it looks like the Government is intent on ploughing ahead. The BBC reported on 20th March, however, that the Government’s plans are a cause for disquiet in the case of some MPs. The intention to apply the new rules to migrants who are already in the UK rather than just to those who arrive in future has been denounced by Labour’s former deputy leader Angela Rayner as “un-British”.