In late 2025, we contributed to the Home Affairs Select Committee consultation on the Government’s proposed Earned Settlement reforms. These reforms seek to extend the qualifying period for settlement, with further extensions for those who have accessed public funds.
In our written submission to the Committee, we raised concerns that the proposed longer route to settlement, alongside retrospective rules, risks unfairly penalising people for circumstances beyond their control and will have devastating consequences, particularly for vulnerable groups.
The Committee has now published its report, which includes a section highlighting these concerns:
CONCLUSION: Most immigrants can only access benefits in rare circumstances and must be granted permission to do so by the Home Office. We are concerned that penalising people in difficult circumstances who urgently need support will deepen poverty and increase pressures on local authorities. It would be deeply unfair to apply the penalty to people who have already been granted access to public funds and would not have known that this could extend their route to settlement. Doing so would also make implementation more practically difficult.
- RECOMMENDATION: We recommend that the Home Office does not apply any penalties for accessing public funds on the basis of benefit claims that preceded the Government’s new policy. There should be discretion for reasonable and fair exemptions to this penalty, where the applicant can demonstrate that they have only accessed public funds due to particularly challenging circumstances.
We welcome these conclusions and recommendations, which reflect our concerns. Sanctioning people for accessing public funds, especially retrospectively where they were entitled to do so under the immigration rules at the time, risks pushing people and families further into hardship, discouraging them from seeking essential support and forcing them to live in undignified conditions.
The full report can be found here.