Immigrants will be required to meet stricter conditions in order to earn the right to stay in the UK permanently, under a new government crackdown.
Labour has announced that a government consultation will be launched on plans to make settlement dependent on paying national insurance, claiming no benefits, learning English to a high standard, volunteering and having a “spotless” criminal record.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will set out these conditions in her speech to Labour Party conference on Monday.
Labour has marked this stance as a “clear dividing line” with Reform UK, pointing to Nigel Farage’s own position on indefinite leave to remain (ILR).
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Reform UK has pledged to abolish ILR, which is open to people who have worked and lived in the UK legally for five continuous years and their dependents.
Labour has said Reform’s policy “would force those who have lived here for decades to leave the country.”
The party claims: “These measures draw a clear dividing line between the Labour government and Reform, whose recent announcement on indefinite leave to remain would force workers, who have been contributing to this country for decades, to leave their homes and families.”
At present, those who have lived and worked in the UK for five years are eligible for ILR. In the government’s white paper on immigration, published in May, it was announced this would be lifted to a baseline of ten years.
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In her conference speech, Mahmood will insist that her policies are needed for an “open, generous, tolerant” country. But she is expected to warn party members that she will be a “tough home secretary” and that “you won’t always like what I do”.
She will pledge to be a “tough Labour home secretary, fighting for a vision of this country that is distinctly our own.”
She will express her fears that “patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller, something more like ethno-nationalism.”
It will be argued that failure to control borders and crime will result in voters turning away from Labour to “seek solace in the false promises of Farage”.
Mahmood will also announce a “winter of action” to tackle a rise in shoplifting and antisocial behaviour. This is said to follow the recent “summer of action”.
Speaking on Sunday, the prime minister hit out at Reform UK’s plan ILR plan as “racist” and “immoral”.
Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Well, I do think that it is a racist policy. I do think it is immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.”
He added: “It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that.
“It is a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them. They are our neighbours. They’re people who work in our economy. They are part of who we are. It will rip this country apart.”
Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.
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