Earned settlement: “will it apply to people already here?”
The day the Immigration White Paper proposed doubling the qualifying period for settlement, MPs asked the one question every migrant on the five-year route needed answered: does it apply to us? Fourteen months, 300 written questions and a 200,000-response consultation later, the answer is still “in due course.”
days without an answer — and counting
300 written questions · 100 MPs pressing · the answer is still “in due course”
12 May 2025 → still open
Will the ten-year settlement rules apply to people already on the five-year route?
None yet. The consultation closed in February with over 200,000 responses; the government is “now reviewing” them.
The pressure
Thirty-two questions in publication month, a second surge when the consultation opened in November, peaking at 44 a month as it closed — and still double figures every month since. The counts are written answers citing the earned-settlement scheme, from 100 different MPs.
How it played out
The White Paper lands
“Restoring control over the immigration system” proposes expanding the Points-Based System and raising the standard qualifying period for settlement from five years to ten, with the ability to earn it back through contribution.
Immigration White Paper, 12 May 2025The question arrives the same day
On publication day, James Naish asks whether the extension applies to BN(O) visa holders already on the pathway. Two days later John Hayes asks, in terms, whether the ten-year pathway “will apply retrospectively to migrants already legally residing in the UK.” Neither receives an answer to the question asked.
We will be consulting on the earned settlement scheme later this year and will provide details of how the scheme will work after that, including which immigration routes it will apply to.
Publication day. Asked whether people already on the pathway are caught, the answer restates the policy and promises a consultation — the first “after that” of many.
Read the full exchange →We will be consulting on the earned settlement scheme later this year and further details on the proposed scheme will be provided at the time.
Asked in terms whether the ten-year pathway applies retrospectively to people already legally here, the answer describes the scheme’s ambitions and defers the only thing actually asked.
Read the full exchange →The consultation opens — six months later
“A Fairer Pathway to Settlement” (CP 1448) opens for public consultation on the earned settlement model. Among the things it consults on: “whether there should be transitional arrangements for those already on a pathway to settlement.” The government has, at this point, not decided whether people already here are protected.
A Fairer Pathway to Settlement, CP 1448The consultation seeks views on whether there should be transitional arrangements for those already on a pathway to settlement. Details of the earned settlement model, including any transitional arrangements for those already in the UK, will be finalised following that consultation.
Eight months in, the government confirms the question is genuinely undecided: “whether there should be” transitional protection is itself what the consultation asks.
Read the full exchange →I do not want to prejudge the outcome of the consultation, so there is no further detail I can give at this time.
Asked for a guarantee that families on the five-year route won’t be harmed, the minister gives the government’s best defence in one sentence — and no guarantee. The same answer confirms one group IS already protected: family-route dependants of British citizens keep their five years.
Read the full exchange →The consultation closes — 200,000 respond
The consultation closes having drawn over 200,000 responses from the public and organisations — an extraordinary volume, and a measure of how many lives the open question touches. In February alone, thirteen written answers on the subject say “in due course.”
The holding line, thirteen months in
The government’s latest position, given to Sir Roger Gale: the responses are “now being reviewed.” No date is offered for a decision, and the transitional question remains open.
We received over 200,000 responses from the public and organisations are now reviewing…
Thirteen months after the question was first asked, and four months after the consultation closed, this is the whole of the answer.
Read the full exchange →What the silence cost
People years into the five-year route — including BN(O) visa holders, the subject of the publication-day question — cannot know whether their settlement date moved by half a decade. The consultation itself confirms the protection question is undecided, fourteen months after it was raised.
A hundred MPs have put the questions; the answers have been variants of the same paragraph for over a year. The economic and equality impact assessments were “committed to publish in due course” in January; no publication appears in the record since.
Was the silence justified?
Reticence before a decision is normal. The question is how much, for how long, and at what cost.
A consultation that has already decided its central question is a sham — “I do not want to prejudge the outcome” is a legitimate position while responses are being weighed, and 200,000 of them take time to read.
But the uncertainty predates the consultation by six months, and the government pre-committed where it chose to: dependants of British citizens were guaranteed their five years mid-consultation. Grandfathering is a design decision a department normally settles when it proposes a change — not a detail that follows later.
A live process, honestly labelled: no bad faith is evidenced, and a full answer may yet come. The record here measures duration and substance — how long the question has stood open, and how little the 300 answers have said.
Ministers named: Seema Malhotra · Mike Tapp
Quotes are verbatim written answers in Beyond the Vote’s records of UK Parliament written questions. Tap any quote to read the full exchange.