Indefinite leave to remain changes ‘risk breaking promise to Windrush survivors’

Shabana Mahmood has been accused of breaking promises made after the Windrush scandal over her controversial plan to make it harder for immigrants to settle in the UK. The Home Secretary continues to face a Labour MPs’ revolt over her plan to double the default qualifying time for migrants to obtain indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK from five to 10 years, and apply it to people already in the country. Now a charity, which has been liasing with some of the Labour rebels on the issue, has accused her of breaking a promise made after the Windrush scandal to ensure immigration policy changes are accompanied by official assessments of their effect for the public to view. This amounts to a “staggering lack of transparency and accountability” around some of the “biggest restrictions to settlement rules in a generation”, according to the Work Rights Centre, which has been working alongside Labour rebels on ILR. Mahmood, who has set out tough measures to control migration pressures in the UK and win over voters switching from the Labour Party to Reform UK, has previously argued that settlement is a “privilege” that “must be earned”, rather than granted almost automatically after five years. Labour MPs are expected to attend an event hosted by the charity in Parliament next month to hear from Windrush survivors and health and care workers affected by the ILR changes. They will point out that the party previously accepted the recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned Report – one of which included not making immigration policy changes without a “rigorous” impact assessment. The Home Office has committed to publishing an impact assessment once it has considered more than 200,000 responses to a consultation on the ILR changes and come up with a final policy proposal in autumn, with a concession to the rebels widely expected. But the Work Rights Centre said Mahmood was breaching the promise to produce proper impact assessments, made after the 2018 Windrush scandal which saw Commonwealth citizens, mostly from the Caribbean, wrongly deported. The charity said an assessment should have been made when the proposals were first published and put out to consultation to inform public responses. A 2022 House of Lords Committee report said that the government’s own guidance on regulation makes clear that for laws that will have a significant impact on businesses, likely to cover the ILR changes, an impact assessment should be produced alongside a consultation and then later updated. Dora-Olivia Vicol, Work Rights Centre CEO, told The i Paper: “While Labour MPs strongly supported recommendations from the Windrush lessons learned review when they were in opposition, their Government’s ‘earned settlement’ proposals are a direct U-turn on those recommendations. “The Windrush review urged ministers to ensure that all policies and proposals for legislation on immigration are subject to rigorous impact assessments. “Yet to this day Shabana Mahmood’s Home Office has failed to release impact assessments, directly breaching that recommendation. “The public needed an impact assessment when the proposals were published and when they were asked to engage with the consultation, not in the autumn when ministers will have already made up their mind. “This is a staggering lack of transparency and accountability, at a time when the Home Office is proposing the biggest restrictions to settlement rules in a generation. “The Windrush review also explicitly asked officials to always consider whether there is a risk of an adverse impact on racial groups who are legitimately in the country. This Government’s entire approach to earned settlement betrays that recommendation. “Two million people who came to the UK legally and contributed to our economy and society, now risk seeing their futures upended… the Home Office knows it, and looks the other way.” A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Last November, we set out reforms to double the standard qualifying period to 10 years for most migrants, with shorter routes for those who contribute most to the UK. “A consultation on elements of those reforms has now closed, and we will set out our response in due course.” “We have committed to publishing a full impact assessment alongside the reforms.”