As our name suggests, we were formed in Greater Manchester: a city-region of 3 million people, represented by 10 local councils in 10 boroughs, 27 Members of Parliament (MPs), a combined authority (GMCA) and a metro Mayor. Over the last few years, when opportunities with central government have been limited, we’ve looked to the published ambitions for residents of this city-region as a way to push for positive change. Our local politicians have committed to make Greater Manchester a place “where everyone can live a good life, growing up, getting on and growing old in a greener, fairer more prosperous city region”. We are determined to make sure this applies to all Greater Manchester residents, regardless of their immigration status. This blog is about how we’ve been engaging with Greater Manchester MPs in recent months to try to make that a reality.

Context: our expectations for politicians

In the run up to the General Election we published our Expectations for Greater Manchester Politicians. It uses the Greater Manchester commitments as its starting point and sets out what we expect our local politicians to do to ensure welcome, safety, justice, home and support for everyone in this place. Since its publication, the Expectations have become a collective document, with 42 organisations across all 10 boroughs putting their names to it. They include campaigning organisations, grassroots community organisations, charities supporting homeless people and national organisations working in Greater Manchester. 

Our ask to our local political leaders is to take these expectations on, using both:

  • Practical action, making changes on a local level to make a material difference to people’s lives and create a city-region of welcome
  • Soft power and voice, putting pressure on the government to change the hostile laws and policies that make up the national immigration framework

We designed a different version for organisations working in the North West outside Greater Manchester so the Expectations could be used in different local contexts. We contacted all 27 MPs in Greater Manchester, asking them to meet with us, discuss our Expectations and the immigration issues their constituents were facing – and we started to get replies. So far we have had engagement with 19 of the 27 MPs’ offices in Greater Manchester; we have had 9 collaborative meetings with individual MP offices, with another 4 coming up; and we have held an online casework session for MP’s casework staff which was attended by staff from 14 MPs’ offices.

Aims

The aim of the meetings we have been having with MPs was to help make life better for residents subject to immigration control, whatever that means in the local context.

Like other local politicians, MPs have different kinds of power which we’ve tried to tap into in different ways:

  • By ensuring their staff are informed and resourced so they can practically improve the lives of their constituents who come to them with immigration need.
  • By using their voice they can raise the profile of issues of injustice, amplify the voices of people affected and influence political and media narratives.
    • We’ve been supporting visits to different services, offering to convene meetings with lived experience campaigners and facilitating visits or places of immigration control so that MPs can better understand and represent what is happening in their area.
  • Some Greater Manchester MPs are also ministers, meaning they have additional power to help change the harmful policies that affect individual lives. Those who are not ministers are able to get our voices heard by those who are. In this way, the issues affecting constituents who seek help from local MP offices can be dealt with, but can also be understood as part of a bigger picture and escalated to the highest level.
    • We have  asked for issues to be raised in Parliament so that people’s experiences are heard, or that important questions are put to Ministers. 

Collaboration

From the start the work around our Expectations has been about collaboration, pooling capacity and facilitating access for people with lived and learnt experience to local politicians. Every MP meeting has involved residents from the constituency, people with lived experience of immigration control, and organisations running services in the constituency.

As a medium-sized organisation, at GMIAU we decided to use some of our capacity to help with the logistics of setting up meetings, planning together beforehand and debriefing together afterwards. By holding the process in this way we wanted to make it easier for lived experience campaigners and smaller, or volunteer-run organisations to co-lead the advocacy work. So far this has included: These Walls Must Fall, BRASS, Eagle’s Wing, S-Rep, SWAP, Revive, the GREAT! group and members of GMIAU’s youth group, consultation group and action group.

Every local area is different, but some of the issues covered in the MP meetings have included:

  • The impact of the 10-year route to settlement on people in Greater Manchester. Following our 2023 report and 2024 briefing, we’re asking MPs to help us raise this injustice to the Home Office, and push for all routes to settlement to be capped at 5 years.
  • The impact of the transition to e-Visas, which has been a growing issue for residents in Greater Manchester who are losing the physical proof of their immigration status. We’ve been helping equip MPs to deal with their constituents eVisa problems and encouraging them to escalate problems with central government.
  • Several MPs have asked for meetings to talk about housing, homelessness and destitution, having read our joint 2024 Slow Violence report with the Boaz Trust about how destitution is weaponised against people with insecure immigration status.
  • Detention and reporting, and how they link to community safety, have been at the forefront of our experiences in 2024 with the Rwanda plan and the racist riots. These Walls Must Fall have led discussions, encouraging MPs to understand and take action on immigration violence within Greater Manchester.
  • MPs have also asked for updates on campaigns supported by Asylum Matters on asylum accommodation, levels of asylum support and lifting the ban on working for people waiting for asylum decisions.

It has been joyful to do this together with so many different individuals and organisations, some of whom we had only met over Zoom previously, and to work collaboratively towards our shared goals.

Response from MPs

The MPs we’ve met have often wanted to hear more: about the different services our organisations offer, the legal implications of changes like the eVisa transition, or more detail on the injustices we’re highlighting so that they can raise them in parliament. The meetings have also provided opportunities for MPs to meet more constituents and see the work they’re doing first hand. Together we are making more visible to MPs the issues and the work that are often invisible in their communities.

However, we’ve also met some hesitation. MPs who have roles on the government’s front bench might be less willing to speak out publicly against government policy, and sometimes warn us that scope for change within the parliamentary system is more limited than our wide-ranging hopes and expectations. We know that some of the change we need is going to come from the ground up, and start in community, rather than reform from above. In doing this work collaboratively we are also strengthening the connections between people and organisations, and across boroughs, that we know will make that change possible.

Plans for next steps:

Going into 2025, we’re looking forward to meeting more of our local representatives,  to providing resources and expertise so that they can best support their constituents, and to holding them to account for the commitments they’ve made to us and the expectations we have of them.

We hope this model will not only continue into 2025 in Greater Manchester, but that our way of working might inspire people in different regions to work together to engage with their MPs in this collaborative, resource-sharing way.

If you live or work in Greater Manchester and want to get involved, or work for an organisation who would like to sign our Expectations document, please email rivka@gmiau.org.