New critiques of ILR reforms by Institute for Public Policy Research and Garden Court Chambers' Adrian Berry
More than 300,000 children already living in the UK could be required to wait a decade or more for permanent immigration status under the Home Office's proposed "earned settlement" policy, according to new analysis published on Monday by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
Image credit: WikipediaUnder the Government's proposals, which are currently out for a consultation that closes tomorrow, the default qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) would double from five years to 10, with some migrants facing even longer waits. People sponsored for jobs designated as below graduate level, including many care workers, would have a default qualifying period of 15 years. The length of time required to qualify for settlement could then be shortened or extended depending on factors such as earnings, English language proficiency, volunteering, benefit claims or immigration breaches.
If the changes are applied retrospectively as the Government intends, IPPR estimates that around 1.35 million people already on routes to settlement would be affected by a longer default qualifying period. Children account for nearly a quarter of this group, around 309,000 in total, with most of them dependants on their parents' work visas. The figures are based on analysis of the Home Office's Migrant Journey dataset, with age breakdowns provided following a freedom of information request.
IPPR says that applying the new rules to people who arrived under the current system would be unfair and would significantly extend insecurity for families who made long-term decisions on the expectation of being able to settle after five years. It warns that prolonged uncertainty could undermine integration and restrict access to higher education, student finance and stable employment for young people once they reach adulthood. IPPR also highlights the risk of increased child poverty, particularly in low-income households that remain subject to restrictions on access to benefits while they wait for settlement.
The think tank says that keeping people in prolonged insecurity risks undermining wider economic goals by discouraging investment in skills, job mobility and long-term planning, and could weaken the UK's ability to attract and retain workers it still needs. It is calling on the Government, at a minimum, to introduce a clear clause protecting those already on routes to settlement from retrospective changes.
Marley Morris, associate director for migration, trade and communities at IPPR and author of the analysis, commented: "Families who were welcomed to the UK under one set of rules should not have the goalposts moved part way through their journey. It's simply unfair to apply these rules retrospectively. For the 300,000 children affected, this is not an abstract policy change. They face growing up with prolonged insecurity, with many facing new barriers to going to university once they turn 18."
Meanwhile, the proposals have also drawn criticism from Garden Court Chambers barrister Adrian Berry in a substantial long-form blog post available here. Berry says the 'Earned Settlement' model would actively work against the integration of lawfully resident migrants by entrenching long-term insecurity.
Berry's notes that the Government proposals are, "surprisingly", targeting "persons that the Home Office has permitted to enter and remain in the UK under its own Immigration Rules," rather than targeting illegal entrants, overstayers, or those subject to deportation.
The scale of what he calls the "proposed degradation of the quality of their future UK residence and prospects for integration" demands justification, but he argues, "such justification is not supplied in the [Government's November 2025] Statement."
Berry is especially critical of the claimed moral framing of the policy. The Government's statement is built around a demand for "contribution and integration" and insists that to become a permanent "part of this country" is something to be earned. But Berry sees a fundamental incoherence in how contribution is measured.
He states: "[I]t 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."
Berry also argues that the proposals misunderstand the nature of the welfare system and the role it plays in working life. Access to benefits, he writes, "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 penalise lawful migrants for using benefits they are entitled to claim — by extending the qualifying period for settlement — is to punish ordinary life events, such as redundancy, illness, disability, bereavement, or low wages.
For Berry, the cumulative effect is not integration but its opposite. He writes: "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."
He warns that lengthening routes to settlement to ten, fifteen, or even twenty years risks creating what he calls "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 a system, he concludes, is "bound to lead to some degree of alienation rather than gratitude."
Beyond integration, Berry argues that the proposals cut across other public policy commitments: the integrationist purpose of the British Nationality Act 1981; the UK's tolerance of dual nationality; labour market needs in a low-fertility society; and the economic competitiveness of the UK compared with European and North American migration systems. On his account, the November 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," instead frustrating integration and deepening division at a moment when cohesion is urgently needed.
He recommends: "There is a strong case for Ministers and the [Parliamentary Labour Party] 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."
Appearing in front of the Commons Home Affairs Committee last week, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood defended the proposals as being fair. With regard to adult social care workers, she said: "I think the proposals are fair. They are trying to meet the scale of the challenge. … I will just repeat the unprecedented nature of the numbers we have seen and the huge scale of abuse that occurred in social care. We have had to revoke something like 1,000 sponsor licences in that sector. First, it was right to close that route, which was open to such abuse, as we saw. Secondly, so many more people came than expected. Thirdly, that means there has to be a response. It is about fairness not just to the workers who arrived, but to the communities in which they live, given attendant pressures on social housing, the welfare state more broadly and public services."