Mahmood targets Boriswave settlement rules for 2021 arrivals
Shabana Mahmood plans to change settlement rules for people already living in the UK, including migrants who arrived since 2021, under reforms tied to Boriswave. The proposals would stretch the wait for indefinite leave to remain from five years to a further five to 10 years for those affected.
Mahmood says the changes would produce significant savings for the exchequer. MPs, unions and civil society groups have argued that applying the rules to people already on routes to settlement moves the goalposts and breaks the expectations they relied on when deciding to come to the UK.
2021 Settlement Route
Migrants who arrived in the UK since 2021 were expecting to qualify for indefinite leave to remain five years after arrival. Under the home secretary’s plans, that timetable would lengthen by another five to 10 years before they can permanently settle.
The change would affect people who are already here, not just future arrivals. It also changes the point at which migrants can reach permanent status and the state support tied to it.
Retrospective Policy Tests
The dispute centers on retroactivity. An action is retrospective when it applies to past events, conduct or legal situations rather than only to things that happen after the law is enacted. That makes the immigration proposal more sensitive than older examples in tax or financial policy.
Governments have previously made retrospective changes in areas including capital gains tax on disposable assets, inheritance tax, landlords’ and leaseholders’ rights, and the state pension age. They have also regularly changed the law to make people liable for tax retrospectively under the 1978 Rees Rules.
Mahmood and Article 6
The comparison most often cited against the proposal is the 2013 Cameron government legislation that prevented claimants from recouping benefits the Court of Appeal had found were wrongly withheld. That retrospective law was found to be in contravention of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the government introduced a Remedial Order in 2020 to correct for that contravention.
The Lords Constitution Committee called it a cardinal principle that people should not be punished for following the laws at the time of an offence. Settlement-rights changes are described as even more sensitive because they affect family life, employment and legal status.
Mahmood’s case rests on savings for the exchequer, but the criticism is straightforward: changing the rules after people have already built their plans around them is exactly the kind of move that makes settlement policy harder to trust. For migrants who arrived since 2021, the practical issue is not theory but timing — how long they must now wait before they can settle for good.
