E-petitions relating to indefinite leave to remain

The e-petitions Protect Legal Migrants: do not implement the 10-Year ILR proposal (727372) and Keep 5-Year ILR and Restrict Access to Benefits for New ILR Holders (746363) are being debated in Westminster Hall on 2 February 2026. The debate will be opened by Tony Vaughan MP.

The Library previously published a debate pack on this subject for a debate about indefinite leave to remain which took place on 8 September 2025. While this latest debate is about the same set of proposed changes, more details are now available.

Background

In May 2025, the government published a white paper called Restoring control over the immigration system. It proposed some changes to reduce net migration, including to make it more difficult for migrants to qualify for permanent residence (also known as settlement, indefinite leave to remain or ILR). More details of the government’s proposals were published in a November 2025 consultation document.

Qualifying period for permanent residence

At present, the standard qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain is five years. This is also the case in most European Union countries.

Under the propsed changes, the ‘baseline’ qualifying period for many migrants would be ten years, but some people will be able to qualify sooner while others will take longer. The qualifying periods will now depend much more on each person’s individual circumstances.

For example, people in higher-skilled jobs who earn over £50,270 or work in public sector healthcare and teaching roles could still qualify after five years. The same goes for people sponsored for a family visa by a British citizen and those on the Hong Kong BNO visa.

Volunteering in the community would allow indefinite leave after five to seven years. But those working in medium-skilled jobs would take up to 15 years, refugees would take 20 years (unless arriving by resettlement programmes), and non-refugees who secured their visa after illegal entry or overstaying would take up to 30 years.

In addition, the minimum requirements for permanent residence would be tightened. People would need more advanced English (B2 instead of B1) and personal income of £12,570 for three to five years. This includes family visa holders and Hongkongers: see page 24 of the consultation document.

These plans may change following the government’s consultation.

Which immigration categories would be affected by the settlement changes?

Most of them. Even if some groups remain eligible for permanent residence after five years, people in those groups (such as stay-at-home parents with no income) might be unable to meet the toughened minimum requirements.

People with post-Brexit residence rights under the EU Settlement Scheme are entirely “out of scope” of the changes. The consultation asks for views on whether other groups, such as victims of domestic abuse and children who grew up in the UK, should also keep their existing settlement rules.

Would people already in the UK be affected?

The consultation says “we propose to apply these changes to everyone in the country today who has not already received indefinite leave to remain. This would mean that those who are due to reach settlement in the coming months and years would be subject to the new requirements for earned settlement, as soon as our immigration rules have changed”. The Home Secretary told MPs that the immigration rules will begin to change from April 2026.

This is subject to the final outcome of the consultation, which invites views on whether there should be “transitional arrangements” to exempt some people already in the UK. An accompanying press release suggests that this might be considered for “borderline cases”.

Claiming benefits following permanent residence

Indefinite leave to remain currently gives people broadly the same rights as British citizens, such as the right to work without restrictions and claim benefits if necessary. The same approach is followed by EU countries, all of which offer permanent residents the same access to benefits as citizens.

The government’s consultation floats the idea that those granted settlement might no longer gain access to the welfare system as a result – they would stay on ‘no recourse to public funds’ – with the right to claim benefits restricted to British citizens.

There has been limited detail published on this proposal. A forthcoming Department for Work and Pensions consultation on access to benefits for migrants more generally may cover this issue.

The petitions Protect Legal Migrants: Do not implement the 10-year ILR proposal

The Protect Legal Migrants: Do not implement the 10-year ILR proposal petition urges the government to scrap its plan to increase the standard qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain, arguing that “legal migrants, especially care workers, followed the rules and built lives here under the 5-year promise” and that they “deserve fairness, not shifting rules”.

The petition was open between May 2025 and November 2025 and received 107,000 signatures.

In its response to the petition, given on 4 December 2025, the government stated that:

The earned settlement consultation is seeking views on whether the increase in settlement qualifying period will apply to people already in the UK. No decision has been taken on this point.

While a final decision may not have been taken, the consultation document proposes that the increase would apply to people already in the UK (see above).

Keep the current five-year route to ILR and restrict access to benefits for new ILR holders

The Keep the current five-year route to ILR and restrict access to benefits for new ILR holders petition states that the government’s plan is “unfair” and would disrupt people’s “plans, families and financial stability”. The petition urges the government to keep the current five-year ILR route and instead restrict access to benefits for new ILR holders to “protect fairness and stability”.

The petition is open until May 2026 and had received 232,000 signatures at the time of writing.

In its response to the petition, given on 4 December 2025, the government noted that the consultation already suggests restrictions on benefits for new ILR holders, in addition to changes to the rules on qualifying for ILR in the first place. It does not address the suggestion that such a change happen instead of changes to ILR eligibility.

Commentary and further reading

Some of the commentary below was published before the detailed proposals outlined in the Home Office’s A fairer pathway to settlement consultation were known. In particular, the government’s original announcement of a ten-year route to settlement was developed in the consultation as a qualifying period of between three and 30 years depending on the person’s individual circumstances.

The Migration Observatory, an immigration research project based at Oxford University, has said that a ten-year route to settlement would “make the UK more restrictive than most other high income countries” and that “the impact on migration numbers is likely to be limited”.

It added that a longer route to settlement would come with a “trade-off between the financial benefits of higher immigration fees for the government, and the negative effects on the integration and wellbeing of migrants”.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has said that the government’s plans to lengthen the route to settlement is “completely out of line with most of our counterparts” and will create “a near-perpetual state of insecurity.” It also stated that the plans “could have major implications for integration”.

Benedict Rogers, the co-founder of the charity Hong Kong Watch, stated that he was “pleased […] the UK government is honouring its commitment to the people of Hong Kong by maintaining the five-year pathway to settlement for BNOs” but urged the government to provide “further clarity and ensure that they demonstrate their responsibility towards not only those on the BNO visa scheme, but all Hong Kongers seeking a safe haven in the UK”.

The Social Market Foundation has argued that the government is partly motivated by the fiscal cost of “the access to welfare entitlements which ILR provides”. It points to reported observations by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, that “migrants who have spent 5-10 years in the UK generally receive access to a broad range of welfare entitlements” and “those who arrived in the UK during the period of very high immigration in the past few years will become eligible for indefinite leave to remain over the course of this Parliament”. The government’s concerns about the fiscal cost of access to welfare benefits was confirmed in the Home Office consultation (see page 25).

Christina McAnea, general secretary of the public service union Unison, has described the government’s plan to introduce a 15-year route to settlement for social care workers as “devastating”. Ms McAnea has warned the government not to "overlook the care workers, nursing assistants and school support staff from overseas" as without them "care services would collapse”.

During an oral evidence session before a House of Lords committee, Professor Randall Hansen of the University of Toronto drew a comparison between the government’s proposals with problems experienced in Germany in the 1990s:

[…] if you create these interminable periods during which people have to wait to become permanent residents and to acquire citizenship, what you end with is, in effect, the German problem of the early 1990s: a large and growing population of people who are resident, who work, who live in the country and do not plan to go anywhere else, but who have very restricted access to citizenship.

Other resources

Commons Library research briefing CBP-10267 covers Changes to UK visa and settlement rules after the 2025 immigration white paper.

The Home Affairs Committee has published the written evidence it has received for its Routes to Settlement Inquiry.

The House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee has published oral evidence it has received for its Settlement, citizenship and integration inquiry.