Immigration: Earned Settlement

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I tell you what is an affront, Mr Speaker, and that is the shadow Home Secretary’s response. He might have amnesia, but given the muted response from those on his Back Benches, they clearly still remember what happened on their watch when they were in government, as does the country. When he was immigration Minister, it was his Government who ran around the country signing up people to become sponsors of foreign workers. He might have complaints about the companies on the register, but it was his Government who signed them up. Perhaps an apology for that would have been appropriate. His Government were responsible for a number of arrivals in four years that we had previously seen in four decades. Before he starts trying to lecture anybody about being tough on immigration, perhaps an apology for his Government’s abject track record would be appropriate.

It is this Government who have cut net migration by 82%, and it is this Government, with me as Home Secretary, who have found a fair solution to the mess left behind by the shadow Home Secretary and his colleagues. He talks about the cost of those who will be settling. If he had been paying attention to my fair solution and the detail in the response to the consultation document, he would know that the cohort most likely to impose a cost will now, as a result of my measures, wait longer for settlement. That is why the DWP says that these measures will save billions in the benefits bill. Half a million people will settle later as a result of these reforms. That is a fair solution to the mess I inherited from the Conservatives.

The shadow Home Secretary talked about the arrangements for those workers on low pay who were allowed by previous Conservative Governments to extend their visas up to 2030. That was in order to allow them to attain settlement in 2030. To honour the promise made by the previous Government, I have extended that period to 2035, reflecting the changes in the earned settlement consultation. Again, that is a fair solution, honouring promises made previously—there are also exceptional cohorts and exceptional circumstances—in order to clean up the mess left behind by the Conservatives.

I could answer more detailed questions, but apart from political rhetoric, the shadow Home Secretary had nothing else to say, so I have nothing more to say to him.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

It is extraordinary that the Opposition see migration issues as some kind of political football. We are talking about people’s lives, and whatever idea one has about policy and programmes, I think people’s lives deserve more seriousness. It is right that care workers are exempted from the new arrangements for ILR, but for the rest of the workforce, the retrospective nature of those new arrangements still seems unfair. People can come in legally and work legally, and then have their residency rights turned upside down. How can that be fair? May I ask the Home Secretary whether she has read the 276-page “lessons learned review” on the Windrush scandal, published by the Home Office in 2018? If she had read it, she would realise that she is in danger of finding herself in the same position as Home Secretaries who were in office at the time of that scandal.

I have heard Members of this House talk about people coming here just to claim welfare. I have heard Members of this House say that people are not making a contribution. I have heard Members of this House say that we have to look at the rights of British nationals as opposed to migrants, as if many British nationals were not themselves immigrants. My parents were immigrants. My mother was a nurse. She was one of that generation who came to this country to build the NHS after the war, and it remains the case that immigrants play a very important role in our NHS. I say to the Home Secretary, and I say to the House, that we should always remember the contribution that immigrants made and continue to make to our society.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I agree with my right hon. Friend about the contribution made by immigrants. As she knows, and as I said in my statement, I too was a child of migrants, and that experience informs the way in which I think about policy and how to strike the right balance between all the different communities in our country, which is what I have sought to do. As for indefinite leave to remain and what she calls the “retrospective nature” of the changes, she will know that I do not agree with that characterisation. Any Government must be able to make changes in immigration rules to reflect things that are happening, to reflect abuses that we can see in the system, and must also be able to make additional changes based on assessment of numbers and costs. As I said in my statement, that has always been the case. These matters have been litigated before in our courts, and the courts have upheld the principle that the rules that apply to settlement applications are those that apply at the point of application and decision, not the point at which a person entered the country. That is an important principle that will be upheld, and is upheld by the changes that we are making.

I have heard a number of people try to suggest that these settlement changes are akin to what we saw during the Windrush scandal. Again, respectfully, I disagree with my right hon. Friend on that. The issue relating to the people who were caught up in the Windrush scandal made it a scandal precisely because the country already had obligations to those people relating to their right to be in this country, and failed to honour the obligation that we already had. That is different from the position of workers arriving in this country on temporary work visas, and the rules that apply to them for settlement itself. The two are not the same. Let me, however, assure my right hon. Friend that I will always be mindful of the lessons that were revealed during the Windrush scandal, and I will make sure that those lessons are learnt.