Shabana Mahmood told the Commons on Monday that settlement in Britain would be earned, and then she carved out the group that had made the earning look politically impossible. Care workers already here, who earn at least 25,000 pounds, meet the conditions of their visa, and came or switched onto the health and care route before the immigration white paper of May 2025, keep a five-year path to indefinite leave to remain. The proposal that they wait 15 years has gone. The rest of the tightening has not.
The policy is called Earned Settlement. Mahmood said the time a person must live here before settling would depend on contribution, not only on the calendar. Contribution, she said, is not only pay. It includes public service. The standard qualifying period for everyone else doubles, from five years to ten, including people earning less than 50,000 pounds. They can keep renewing temporary visas until they qualify. MPs spent Monday afternoon on a different argument, the petition against a social media ban for under-16s. The settlement statement is the one that changes the statute book.
The bars that do not move
Four things disqualify an applicant before any of the shorter routes apply. A criminal record. A failure to speak English to a high standard. An unpaid debt to the British taxpayer. A failure to have made three years of national insurance contributions. Mahmood called these the non-negotiable expectations of anyone who wants to live here permanently.
Above those bars, the clock changes with the salary and the job. A five-year path stays open to higher earners on more than 50,000 pounds, and to doctors, nurses, teachers and others in healthcare and education. People earning more than 125,000 pounds, and people on the highest talent routes, can apply after three years. The Home Office's case for the three-year route is fiscal: it says a top-rate taxpayer contributes about 1.5 million pounds over a lifetime. An immigration breach pushes settlement out to 20 years. Anyone who has claimed benefits must show five continuous years off the state before they apply.
The Paths, as Set Out on Monday
- Disqualified: a criminal record, weak English, unpaid tax debt, or fewer than three years of national insurance.
- Three years: earnings over 125,000 pounds, and the highest talent routes.
- Five years: earnings over 50,000 pounds, doctors, nurses, teachers, and qualifying care workers already here.
- Ten years: the new standard, including people earning under 50,000 pounds.
- Twenty years: an immigration breach, or a benefits history without five clean years. Small-boat arrivals in work or study also face 20 years, and 30 if they are not.
Why care was the exception
Between 2022 and 2025, about 250,000 people and their dependants arrived on, or switched into, the social care route. Mahmood said roughly a quarter of them had not met the conditions of the visa. Those who did, and who earned 25,000 pounds in the sector, keep the five-year promise they were given. The Home Office estimates, reported by the BBC, that the change spares about 282,000 people from a longer wait, and that the number facing a delayed settlement falls from about 799,000 to about 517,000. The National Care Forum welcomed the decision for workers who entered before the white paper.
The second group is offered another five-year care visa, and will not be tied to the old employer. Mahmood said the government had already removed about 1,800 sponsors for exploitation, and that workers would be given longer to find a legitimate job before a visa is curtailed. At the end of that second visa they can apply for settlement again. Unions and Labour MPs had warned that a 15-year wait would empty care homes of people recruited for the pandemic and the years after it. The carve-out is the government's answer. It is also, as Chris Philp told the House, easy to label a U-turn. The shadow home secretary said the package could cost taxpayers 10 billion pounds. The Home Office has not published a figure that matches that claim.
Who still waits decades
People who arrived by small boat are outside the care exception. Those in work or study face 20 years before they can apply. Those who have not entered work or study face a further 10, thirty years in all. Irregular arrival was the part of the original plan that cabinet critics did not force Mahmood to drop. The retrospective change for people already on ordinary work routes, the move from five years to ten, also stays. That is the part migrant groups call a moving of the goalposts, and the part the Home Secretary calls fairness to people who have waited under the old rules and to the public that funds services.
The legal test, when it comes, will be whether a longer qualifying period for people who are already here is lawful, and whether the care exception is a rational line or a political patch. Monday's statement publishes the policy. It does not enact every clause. Employers in care now have a number they can put in a contract conversation: 25,000 pounds, five years, and a visa issued before May 2025. Everyone else has a longer clock, and four reasons it can stop.