Immigration: Earned Settlement

Bradley Thomas Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I urge colleagues to keep their questions short and for the Home Secretary to be as on point as she can be.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

One of the criteria to gain long-term settlement rights that the Home Secretary set out was no debt being owed to the state. What does that look like in reality? I have advocated for a student loan-style system for debts to be repaid. Will the Home Secretary address what steps she is taking to abolish the impact of rogue sponsors, namely chicken shops, Turkish barbers and vape shops, which all exist in plain sight and are an acute problem in the illegal immigration web?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The hon. Member is right to acknowledge that there is a huge explosion in the number of people on the sponsorship register—that happened under the previous Government—and I will set out policy for how we resolve issues within the register. The hon. Member will already know that we are revoking licences where appropriate and where somebody should not be able to bring workers into this country. The debt the hon. Member references will include NHS, tax and litigation debt. For refugees, it will also include asylum support—either the payment of asylum support costs or at least for someone to be complying with a payment plan.