Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer was granted a new lease of political life last week. His cabinet rallied round to reject Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s call to ditch their leader. Nobody knows if this is a mere reprieve of a few weeks or months, or a chance to serve the second half of his term, but a punchier prime minister seized the opportunity to come out swinging.
Downing Street was quick to challenge the claim that Britain has been “colonised” by immigrants, made by Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe. Labour ministers talked about how to differentiate legitimately contested arguments about immigration numbers from this ugly language of hostile conquest, while Reform leader Nigel Farage defended Ratcliffe’s sentiments.
Starmer told the Munich Security Conference that “we are not the Britain of the Brexit years anymore”. The government may speed up a potential social media ban for under 16s too. But there is another policy where there is a compelling case for the government to slow down: its major overhaul of rules on settlement, the process whereby migrants can secure leave to remain in the UK permanently and, ultimately, British citizenship. Hundreds of thousands of people have responded to the consultation, which closed last week, or signed petitions challenging the government’s plan to move the goalposts for those already in Britain.
The government’s idea is ‘earned settlement’. The consultation’s opening premise, that settlement is currently simply “granted automatically”, is a false exaggeration, but reflects the government’s view that the rules are too one-size-fits-all. Its proposed response could be called ‘two-tier’ settlement rules – but much more complicated. The standard timeline would double to 10 years for settlement (and 11 to be a citizen). It takes 10 years to be a citizen in Switzerland, but three to six years in every other major democracy: British Social Attitudes data consistently show that three-quarters of the public think five years is fair.
The government proposes to have at least seven or eight slow and fast lanes. The highest earners could qualify for settlement in three years (though spouses and families could wait a decade longer). NHS workers and Hong Kongers could keep the current five years. Care workers would wait for 15 years, but refugees for 20, with a review every few years of whether they could go back home. Some people would have a 30-year wait – and others would never be eligible at all.
But the draft reforms have a back-of-the-envelope feel to them. Employers, unions, faith and civic advocates and experts have highlighted deep flaws and many damaging unintended consequences. Tens of thousands of women face never qualifying at all, including the spouses of high earners. Several hundred thousand children are affected. Without pausing for proper impact assessments, rushing into these reforms will set back the government’s recent progress on child poverty, gender equality and workplace protections against exploitation.
The government’s main argument is that it must do something because so many people arrived during the last parliament. But its policy aims are confused. Bringing in these rules in future could reinforce tighter visa rules to make future immigration more selective. Bringing in the longest periods of “unsettlement” in any democracy – and applying them to people already here – will do much more to impede integration than to promote it.
The prime minister gave a good speech about community cohesion, albeit one that was drowned out by the noise of the Mandelson scandal. But there is a jarring contrast between his warm account of the contribution of the Windrush generation and proposals that will unintentionally, but foreseeably, create the biggest spike in those falling out of legal status since the Windrush scandal. So one of the biggest clashes with dozens of government backbenchers is how fair it can be to dramatically change the rules for people already here. Many who agree with the principle of ‘rights and responsibilities’ will not think it fair to make a care worker who was 12 months from settlement wait another decade.
These reforms were motivated more by politics than integration outcomes. But the politics clearly bring much more risk than reward to this Labour government. Swing voters undoubtedly want the government to get a grip on boats in the Channel, and to clear asylum hotels. But most have not noticed net migration falling by hundreds of thousands. These complex settlement reforms will never cut through to the median voter. They will, however, be very much noticed by the million people they affect.
Most of those now facing a 15-year wait are Commonwealth nationals with the right to vote in local and national elections. Rushing these reforms could create an enormous constituency of grievance among those directly hit – and an empathetic sense of unfairness among neighbours, colleagues and co-worshippers. It is not even clear if MPs will get a vote on these massive reforms – but the effort to reconstruct and renew this fragile government would make it dangerous to simply ignore their concerns.
