After months of whispered rumours, Shabana Mahmood announced on Monday the results of the consultation on her plans to tighten the criteria and increase the qualifying period for migrants to obtain settlement, also known as indefinite leave to remain (ILR). What brought ILR into the mainstream over the past several years was the Boriswave, which saw nearly five million people enter the country between 2021 and 2024. Under current immigration rules, most migrants will qualify for ILR after residing in the UK for just five years, meaning that this influx has already begun to obtain the right to stay in the country indefinitely (and from next year will begin to obtain citizenship in full).
Once a migrant has acquired ILR, they no longer require sponsorship from an employer, and can take whichever job they like. They no longer need to pay visa fees, nor the immigration health surcharge. They are no longer subject to the ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) condition, meaning they can access welfare, benefits, and social housing on the same basis as British citizens. They can sponsor family members to come to the UK, and they can naturalise as a British citizen after one year. Any children born in the UK with at least one parent who holds ILR become citizens automatically. Any children born in the UK to parents without ILR can immediately be registered as citizens the moment at least one parent is granted settlement. Finally, any student or prospective student with ILR will qualify for home fee status, as well as the full student loan.
Keir Starmer’s Labour Government appeared to recognise that allowing so many low-skilled migrants to access ILR would place immense pressure on Britain’s already stretched public services, ballooning the tax burden, and would be unpopular with the public; Starmer went so far as to label his Conservative predecessors’ policies as an ‘open borders experiment’. In May 2025, the Government released the ‘Restoring control over the immigration system’ white paper, which committed to increasing the standard qualifying period for settlement to ten years, with some migrants having to wait longer based on their contributions, compliance with the law, and the circumstances of their entry. In November 2025, the Government confirmed that these changes would apply to everyone in the country who had not yet received ILR, as well as any newcomers. These changes were initially scheduled to come into force from April 2026, but were delayed by the threat of backbench rebellions and the political chaos surrounding the end of Starmer’s premiership. Throughout the year, a constant flow of media reports has suggested that the proposals would ultimately be watered down to appease Labour MPs, unions, and migrants themselves, many of whom came from Commonwealth countries, meaning they can vote in general elections from the day they arrive in Britain.
With the Government response to the consultation now finally published, the truth of these rumours has been revealed. Low-skilled migrants (those employed in roles below RQF Level 6) will no longer have to wait fifteen years to settle. Generous transitional provisions for care workers have also been added, despite the fact that the initial proposals were, in large part, designed to prevent the huge fraction of the Boriswave that entered on Health and Care Worker visas from settling. Angela Rayner emerges victorious.
Notably, the introduction to the publication mentions that 73% of individual consultation respondents were migrants, with just 18% being British citizens (many of whom will be either naturalised immigrants themselves or the British partners of immigrants). Many respondents ‘sought greater clarity on how criminality, immigration history and debt would affect eligibility for settlement’ — not the best impression when these are supposedly the best and brightest. Whilst it is obviously outrageous to see British government policy being determined in the interests of foreigners, on the advice of foreigners, against the interests of Brits and largely without their consultation, these numbers should not be surprising. Consultations are extremely easily gamed by left-wing charities and NGOs who funnel selected respondents to submit feedback. Normal people, on the other hand, do not spend their time browsing GOV.UK and offering their thoughts on the tedious details of policy. Consultation therefore constitutes an insidious attack vector by which motivated actors can have an outsized influence, and any government wishing to implement a different policy approach will have to do away with it as a method of policymaking. The proper time and place for the public to be consulted is at the ballot box.
Where do these revisions leave Mahmood’s reforms? The policy as it stands is as follows:
The standard baseline for settlement will be ten years, up from the current five.
Applicants will now be required to have no outstanding government debt, including tax, NHS debt, National Insurance or any litigation debt owed to the Home Office. In theory, under current rules, government debt could lead to refusal, but that refusal is discretionary and up to the individual Home Office caseworker deciding the application.
Any adult applicant with a criminal record will be refused ILR. This includes custodial or suspended sentences, out-of-court disposals, conditional cautions, any court-imposed fines, community sentences, detentions, training orders or civil orders with a conviction. Under current settlement rules, only a custodial or suspended sentence of 12 months or more is disqualifying.
Any immigration rule breach now places the individual automatically on a twenty-year settlement path, regardless of earnings or other positive contributions. This will be clarified once the immigration rules are in place, but is said to include overstaying a visa, breaching a condition attached to the conditional leave to remain, using deception in an application or taking action to frustrate immigration controls.
Migrants will need to have earned at least £12,571 a year for three years to settle once the new ILR rules are implemented. Currently there is no overall minimum earnings requirement when applying for settlement. Those earning £125,141 or more for at least three years can settle in three years. Those earning £50,271 or more for three years can settle in five years. Those earning £12,571 or more for three years remain on the baseline ten-year settlement track. These earnings thresholds will remain linked to HMRC tax thresholds, so may rise or fall in future. (Given fiscal drag and frozen tax thresholds since 2021, which are set to remain frozen until 2031, this means in real terms these thresholds will become easier to hit every year.)
As yet unspecified mental and physical health exemptions to these salary requirements will apply.
The above salary requirements are waived for migrants working in certain public sector roles, such as those of doctors, nurses and teachers. They will be put on a five-year path to settlement.
Eligible couples will be able to combine income to meet the above salary requirements, in which case their total household income must be at least double the quoted figures.
Applicants on the three-, five-, or ten-year pathways will be expected not to have accessed specified public funds during the five years before they apply for settlement.
The Government did consult on whether volunteering should enable an applicant to qualify sooner; however, it has not gone ahead with implementing any such measures. This is good news, as it would have been open to abuse and fraud by charities seeking to provide an easy route to settlement.
Migrants will need to demonstrate English proficiency at B2 level to settle (currently B1), unless they are aged under eighteen, are aged sixty-five or over, or have certain mental or physical health conditions (as above, these remain unspecified).
The long residence route is being abolished. This prevents a migrant settling in the UK because they’ve accumulated ten years’ residence across several temporary routes, e.g. eight years on successive study visas and then two years on a graduate visa.
Migrants will no longer be able to transfer residence under one route onto another route if they change routes. For example, someone who comes to the UK on a work visa and later claims asylum will not be able to count their previous residence under their work visa towards ILR once under the asylum route.
British National (Overseas) (BN(O)) migrants, people resettled under the various Afghan schemes or existing safe and legal routes, and those covered by the Windrush scheme will maintain access to existing settlement arrangements; however, they must meet B2 English-language and new criminality requirements from whenever the immigration rules are updated.
Other exempt groups include unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (a concern, as many asylum seekers lie about their age), children and young adults with insecure immigration status who have grown up in the UK (I imagine this will refer exclusively to children of illegal migrants and visa overstayers) and victims of domestic abuse (we know many migrants lie about domestic abuse to secure immediate settlement, with a recent BBC investigation noting that claims had risen by 50% in three years).
Refugees admitted through ‘safe and legal’ routes will be placed on a five-year settlement path. They will also be exempt from the requirement not to have accessed public funds. (In combination with charities, NGOs and universities being able to sponsor refugees to come to the UK, this pathway may be widely abused.)
Migrants who arrive legally (for example on a study, work, or visit visa) and then claim and are granted asylum will be placed on a twenty-year settlement path. If they move into a work, education or training pathway, they will move onto a ten-year settlement path, restarting from the date at which they transition.
Migrants who arrive illegally (e.g. by small boat) will face a twenty-year pathway if, after being granted asylum, they move into a work, education or training pathway. If they do not do this, they will be placed on a thirty-year settlement pathway. However, the Government says that, where an individual is protected by Article 31 of the Refugee Convention, this ten-year penalty will not apply, and that guidance will follow before implementation.
Migrants who entered as care workers or switched into care worker roles before May 2025 will still qualify under the current five-year settlement pathway, provided that they meet sponsorship and employment requirements. It is reported that around 50% of care worker sponsors have since had their licence revoked, so many might not be able to settle under the five-year pathway. Migrants under this route who do not qualify are automatically eligible for a five-year Health and Care Worker visa extension, to enable them to find sponsorship and settle.
From 1 February 2027, care workers whose sponsor has had its licence revoked will be given a 120-day visa curtailment period to find a new job, up from the current 60-day visa curtailment period. (I suspect this will cause many to end up claiming asylum or that they are victims of modern slavery.)
Care workers that arrived or switched into the role after May 2025 are on the standard ten-year settlement pathway, with no transitional arrangements.
Migrant workers in healthcare and education who are on national pay scales retain the five-year pathway if they came to the UK before May 2025.
The Home Secretary intends these changes to be laid before Parliament in December, and to be implemented ‘over the course of 2027’. Out of the five million that came during the Boriswave, almost half came in 2021 and 2022; if these changes are only implemented in late 2027, perhaps upwards of two million will already have been able to settle. Of course, not all of them will choose to do so at the first available opportunity, but the threat of future reforms will inevitably increase their propensity to do so compared to historic rates of settlement. In any case, relying on a lack of agency amongst recent migrants seems an unwise policy choice, and one may question what value those who are too lazy or clueless even to secure their ability to remain in the country are really providing.
When the Home Office announced this consultation in November 2025, their initial projections suggested that, without changes to the existing system, between 1.3 and 2.2 million migrants would settle between 2026 and 2030, with the central estimate being 1.6 million. They have since revised this central estimate up to 1.9 million, closely matching both my own modelling and that of Cambridge Circus Research. They estimate that the changes above will delay the settlement of approximately 500,000 migrants, meaning around 1.4 million will still settle over the period, more than their low-end estimate from last year.
Put frankly, then, the suggestion that these measures address the problem is straightforwardly farcical. Over a period of just four years, a number of people equal to 7.5% of the population was allowed to come to Britain, many of whom brought nothing to contribute and came from the poorest and most culturally alien parts of the world. We did not ask them to come here, we did not want them to come here — in fact, we elected the Government that did in a landslide on the explicit promise to do the opposite. The task is not to moderately lessen the fiscal burden that this unprecedented betrayal will inflict upon us, our children, and our grandchildren: it is to reverse it. Mahmood’s reforms will delay the settlement of just 500,000 in the coming years; how vanishingly few will they actually return home?
The sheer demographic significance of the Boriswave has moved the entire political spectrum markedly to the right, and for good reason. In almost every town and city across the country, the change can be felt and seen viscerally. There is no significant settlement in Britain that remains unaffected by mass migration. It is no longer a problem ‘over there’ which can be ignored; it is a threat to your home, wherever that may be.
It is for this reason that even the current Labour Government, after a move to the left, feels the need to offer a fig leaf to public concerns. Yet we should resist any temptation to congratulate it for such a ridiculously insufficient response. Nor should we forget, as they promise to review ILR grants and revoke the status from those who are not making a contribution, that the Conservatives did even less to address the problem in the closing days of their last Government (or, of course, that they created the problem in the first place). Even if one were to make the mistake of believing that, after so many lies, this time they really mean it, a review of ILR grants alone without touching naturalisations would extend the period during which a migrant can be prevented from settling permanently by only one year, meaning the vast majority will still fall through the net.
Reform’s own position has evolved over time. In a September 2025 press conference, Farage refused to contemplate stripping citizenship from the Boriswave if they acquired it:
‘No, no. If you’ve been granted UK citizenship, you have been granted UK citizenship. To be absolutely clear. There should be no confusion over that. You know, we would not retrospectively change that, because you become a legal citizen of this country. We would never ever suggest otherwise.’
In April 2026, Farage and Zia Yusuf said that they hoped it would not be necessary to do so, but would not rule anything out if Labour walked back their proposals:
Nigel Farage: ‘…and on the citizenship point, if we get to citizenship, well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’
Zia Yusuf: ‘Yeah, look, we’re not going to rule anything out, but the reason why we’re saying what we’re saying today is because we hope it won’t come to that.’
Well, it came to that. At a press conference this week, Farage’s response was unambiguous:
‘We will review every citizenship granted due to Open Borders Burnham’s horrific U-turn today.
If a migrant doesn’t unambiguously benefit Britain, their citizenship will be revoked.
The Boriswave must be reversed.’
This move is welcome, and obviously necessary. Yet the precedent that this review would set — that it is legitimate to revoke citizenships that should never have been granted — opens further questions. If naturalisations are subject to reversal on the basis of the national interest, on what basis are those naturalised before this decision exempt from this test? Certainly, the British state’s negligence in protecting this status did not begin so late as 2026. This conversation, then, is far from over.
One thing is clear: migration, asylum, settlement and citizenship will be among the defining issues at the next general election, whenever that may be. The small boats are still coming. Illegal migrants are still not being deported. The Government’s pledge to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029, combined with its failures on deportations, will inevitably mean more and more usage of military bases and HMOs, diffusing migrants across the country and exposing more and more of the population to the consequences of their presence. Anyone expecting concerns around migration to dissipate will be sorely disappointed. No government that fails to meet them can expect to stay in power for long.
This article was written by Charlie Cole, a Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.
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