Work Rights Centre preview an event in Parliament next week.

On Wednesday 4th February,  the Labour MP for Poole and migrants set to be affected will warn MPs that proposed changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) would trap thousands in precarity, and crush the health and care sector.

This event, hosted by Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan MP in Westminster, comes as the government’s consultation on plans to – retroactively – restrict settlement rights enters its final days. 

Duncan-Jordan will warn MPs that the Department for Health and Social Care does not have sufficient information on how many critical workers could be impacted by the reforms, while retrospective application constitutes a ‘broken promise’ to those already settled.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans for an “earned” settlement model would double the baseline qualifying period to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) to ten years, with a separate, harsher fifteen-year baseline for care workers, and a twenty-year baseline for refugees. Proposed penalties for people who were permitted to receive benefits, who entered on a visitor visa, or overstayed for any reason, would make the UK system one of the harshest in the Western world.

With the government’s consultation on “earned” settlement closing on 12th February, Neil Duncan-Jordan MP, Work Rights Centre and Unison will host an evidence session for MPs, putting those who will be most affected by the proposals centre stage. 

Guest speakers include:

• Natia, 45, a political refugee and mother of three from Georgia, who would face a 20-30-year wait for settlement under the proposals, as penalty for receiving Universal Credit payments and arriving on a visitor visa to claim asylum. Her family faces fragmentation with each person facing a different wait for settlement.
• Medical doctor Ercan 46, and lawyer Gozde, 43, who moved from Turkey to the UK on the Ankara Agreement (businessperson) visa to set up Gozde’s law consultancy. Alongside their two primary school-aged children, they are seven months away from eligibility for settlement, but could face another five years.
• Nandi, 53, a sponsored care worker who formerly worked as an educator in Zambia,who has fallen into debt after her employer withheld her wages and fired her for whistleblowing. She fears ten more years at risk of exploitation under sponsorship is untenable. 

Neil Duncan-Jordan, Labour MP for Poole will tell MPs: “This policy is designed to out-Reform Reform and chase Nigel Farage’s tail, when we should be starting from fairness and securing the skills our country depends on. Breaking our word to people already here is wrong and un-British.

“It’s not fair to punish people who have worked hard, followed the rules and built lives here. Social care workers, transport workers, and other public service staff will be hit simply for being low-paid. We’ve had a decade of stagnant wages – they shouldn’t be penalised for that. Whatever the outcome, it must keep its promises to workers and not restrict people’s rights retrospectively.

“The Government should delay its White Paper until a proper impact assessment is done. Treating workers unfairly and public services recklessly will leave communities divided and our NHS worse off.

“We now face a troubling situation where the left hand of government does not know what the right is doing – the Casey Review promises a new strategy for social care at the same time the Home Office squeezes out the very workers keeping the sector afloat.”

UNISON head of social care Gavin Edwards will tell MPs: “The government must rethink its proposals on indefinite leave to remain. Migrant workers have saved the UK’s care sector from collapse. They arrived here on the promise they could qualify for settlement after five years. Tripling the wait time would be wrong and will lead to greater staffing shortages in the care sector.

“Unscrupulous care companies have used their position as visa sponsors to threaten and exploit staff. UNISON has seen examples of some of the worst employment abuse care workers have ever faced. Ministers should recognise the contribution migrant staff make to this vital public service.”

Dr Dora Olivia Vicol, CEO of the Work Rights Centre will tell MPs: “It is a myth that these radical settlement changes are needed to ensure that migrants contribute and integrate. The evidence shows that most people coming to the UK today are already working and positively contributing to our public finances; integration is already happening, migration is going down and it is projected to continue doing so.

“These proposals will not make communities more cohesive. They just risk creating an underclass of people trapped in temporary status for decades, tied to their employers and at high risk of labour exploitation, all while raising costs for decent UK businesses, and throwing the health and care sectors into crisis. 

“We urge this government to abandon these harmful proposals, honour its promises to people who have already sacrificed so much to work in the UK, and pursue immigration reform that is fair and just.”

Event details

Date: Wednesday, 4th February. Time: 17:00 – 18:30. Please RSVP to evie.breese@workrightscentre.org if you would like to join us. We have limited capacity so an RSVP is essential to confirm attendance. 

This campaign is in response to the Government’s open consultation: A Fairer Pathway to Settlement. More detail on how the proposed changes would work in practice can be found in our guide: Settling in the UK. Read our policy analysis of the proposals: Earned settlement proposals: An extraordinary betrayal of migrant communities.

Work Rights Centre is a registered charity dedicated to ending in-work poverty. Its multilingual team helps migrants and disadvantaged Britons to access employment justice and improve their social mobility, by providing free and confidential advice in the areas of employment, immigration, and social security, and by mobilising frontline intelligence to address the systemic causes of inequality.

Image: c/o Labour Hub.