Now is the time to put pressure on the government to scrap these plans for good.
Ever since the government announced plans to introduce so-called “earned settlement”, we’ve been pushing back. And we’re not alone. These plans will put hundreds of thousands of our neighbours and colleagues onto 10, 15 and 20-year routes to indefinite leave to remain (ILR), decades spent in a punishing and expensive limbo. They have the potential to create a workforce crisis in social care and the NHS, and they will further fuel divisiveness and racism.
Under pressure
With 200,000 responses to the public consultation, 500 people joining a mass lobby of Parliament in March, and nearly 80 MPs writing to Andy Burnham last week to ask that the plans are stopped, the government is under pressure. We are also in the middle of a change of national leadership, with Keir Starmer having resigned as Labour Party leader and Burnham preparing to take the reins. It’s the perfect time for a change of direction.
Reports in the press suggest that the pressure is working: the Home Secretary may make some concessions, including the possibility of not applying earned settlement retrospectively and of exemptions for health and social care workers. However, reports also say that denying benefit to people with ILR is being considered. We will welcome any changes that mean fewer people are subjected to the harms of long routes to settlement, but this is not good enough. We need to be clear that earned settlement should be stopped completely.
The numbers don’t add up
The Home Secretary has previously made clear that people already here, particularly people on health and care worker visas, are the explicit target of the policy. She has also claimed, erroneously, that if earned settlement is not implemented, we will face a “£10 billion drain on public finances”. These numbers have never added up – experts have found that the changes will not make this saving.
If the Home Secretary is rightly forced into exempting current health and care workers from the proposals, her calculations are thrown off even further. The whole evidence base for earned settlement, shaky from the start, is crumbling.
Time for MPs to speak out
Right now, it’s crucial that MPs hear that their constituents are still worried about earned settlement, that the concessions floated don’t go far enough, and that the Home Secretary needs to be pressed on the numbers she has used to justify the plans. This will encourage MPs to speak up and put pressure on the Home Office.
Earned settlement will not work judged on the government’s own stated aims, and it definitely will not work for people, families and communities.
How to write to your MP
We have prepared some tools to support people to write to their MP. The most powerful message will be one that comes from you personally, based on your own experience or knowledge, so please add your own perspective to our templates.
Digital postcard
We have designed a digital postcard you can use to write your own message and send it to your MP. You can do this by:
1. Downloading the postcard here.
2. Editing the postcard with your MP’s details, your details and your message. You can do this on a computer or laptop, by opening the PDF in your browser.
3. Saving your edited postcard as a PDF.
4. Finding your MP’s email address and sending them an email with the postcard attached. Find their details here. You can also write your message into the email itself, to make sure they see it.
Email
If you don’t want to use the postcard or have trouble editing it, you can also use our template email. Copy and paste it from this document, adding your MP’s name, your own details and any additional message you want to send about your own issues and concerns. Email it to your MP, whose details you can find here.
Whichever way you write to your MP, make sure you include your address, because they need to know you are a constituent in order to respond to you.
We want to hear from you!
We’d love it if you let us know if you use our tools to write to your MP, and if they respond to you. If you can update us, please email rivka@gmiau.org.