All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration and All-Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty and Inequality: The Effects of Recent Changes to UK Immigration, Asylum and Refugee Policy on Poverty and Inequality

Summary

<p>This joint follow-up inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Migration and the APPG on Poverty and Inequality builds on the groups' 2024 report on immigration policy and poverty.

Drawing on 41 written submissions from charities, legal practitioners, researchers, local authorities and service providers, together with oral testimony from people with direct lived experience, it concludes that the Government's proposed reforms would, in several important respects, intensify poverty and inequality rather than address them.

</p><p>On settlement, the inquiry examines the proposal to extend the standard qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain from five to ten years, with a possible fifteen-year route for workers in roles below RQF Level 6 &mdash; a category that includes many Health and Care Worker visa holders as well as chefs, welders and administrative roles. It notes that at least 325,000 visas have been granted to workers in these occupations since 2021, excluding dependants, that applicants would face a higher B2 English requirement and a minimum earnings threshold, and that public-funds claims or irregular entry could extend the route up to a potential thirty years. </p><p>Among its recommendations, the report urges the Government to reconsider extending settlement timelines and states that any changes should not be applied retrospectively to people already living in the UK on a route to settlement who have made life decisions on the basis of the existing rules. </p>

Why this matters for the archive

This is archived as a cross-party political-action source rather than as an Earned Settlement source in the narrow sense: the inquiry is authored by two All-Party Parliamentary Groups, is broader than the Skilled Worker route, and covers asylum, refugee protection and poverty policy as well as settlement. APPGs are informal cross-party groups of parliamentarians rather than official select committees, which is why this record files the report under Political Action alongside other APPG material rather than under the separate Parliamentary Scrutiny collection. It is directly relevant to this record because its settlement findings track the same five-to-ten-year extension, below-RQF6 fifteen-year exposure and No Recourse to Public Funds concerns documented elsewhere here, and because its first recommendation &mdash; that changes should not be applied retrospectively to people already on a route to settlement who have made life decisions on the basis of the existing rules &mdash; restates, from a cross-party parliamentary source, the transitional-protection argument that is central to this record. The report does not endorse SWJA or its analysis, and this record does not claim that it does; its value is that an independent joint APPG inquiry, reasoning from poverty and inequality rather than from public-law principle, reached the same no-retrospective-application conclusion.

Key Observations

• Published July 2026 as a joint follow-up inquiry by the APPG on Migration and the APPG on Poverty and Inequality, drawing on 41 written submissions and oral testimony and building on the groups' 2024 report.
• Examines the proposed extension of the standard settlement route from five to ten years, with a possible fifteen-year route for roles below RQF Level 6; at least 325,000 visas have been granted in such roles since 2021, excluding dependants.
• Recommends that settlement changes not be applied retrospectively to people already on a route to settlement, that No Recourse to Public Funds conditions not exceed five years or continue beyond settlement, and that the Home Office publish the full evidence base for its projected fiscal savings.