Mahmood accused of hardening settlement rules for 200,000 successful asylum applicants

Shabana Mahmood is facing accusations of inflicting distress and uncertainty on hundreds of thousands of refugees by quietly introducing plans that could force them to wait up to 30 years before gaining the right to settle permanently in the UK.

The Refugee Council said the home secretary's tougher approach contradicts personal reassurances she gave last year that only "illegal entrants who are not refugees will face a 30-year wait for settlement".

Under the further tightening, a group of 200,000 successful asylum applicants who had been told they could apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years will now have their status reviewed every 30 months.

Mahmood set out a package of immigration proposals on Monday, some of which eased the rules for care workers and their families after unions, cabinet members and backbench Labour MPs raised concerns. Refugees who arrive by irregular means, such as by small boat, will face a 30-year wait for settlement under the new plans.

Last year's consultation had floated a 10-year settlement penalty for people who arrived irregularly, but this was not expected to cover those granted refugee status. In a post on the social media platform X on 21 November 2025, Mahmood shared an image of the white cliffs of Dover with the words: "Illegal entrants who are not refugees will face a 30-year wait for settlement." The House of Commons library cited that post as evidence that only "non-refugees who secured their visa after illegal entry or overstaying would take up to 30 years".

In March, the government assured hundreds of thousands of asylum claimants that they could still apply for settlement after five years provided their application had already been submitted. An explanatory memo at the time said: "Adults and accompanied and unaccompanied children granted five years' leave as a result of an asylum claim or further submissions made by 1 March 2026 will remain eligible to apply for settlement after five years."

That guarantee has been quietly removed in the small print of the immigration plan released on Monday. Footnote 14 of the Home Office document A fairer pathway to settlement states: "Those refugees, not on safe and legal routes, who claimed asylum before 2 March 2026 will move to core protection." Under the core protection scheme, adults and their children receive an initial permission to stay of only 30 months, which must then be renewed, and their refugee status can be revoked if conditions in their home country are judged safe.

Jon Featonby, the chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council, said: "Keeping changing positions on what refugees should expect will cause distress and huge uncertainty. Thousands of refugees who thought they were just weeks or months away from being able to access settlement could now have to wait for another 25 years."

Featonby added: "It is impossible to expect people to start new lives while living with a temporary status that expires every 30 months for 30 years. That's decades of fear and uncertainty for people who have already faced war, conflict and persecution and simply want to be safe here." He warned the plans would also cause chaos for the Home Office, which would face decades of repeated extra applications to process at enormous cost to the public purse.

Responding to the Refugee Council's analysis, the Home Office said there had been no policy change since last year's proposals, but it declined to comment further on Mahmood's remarks on X or the footnote in its recent document. Mahmood told MPs on Monday: "The right to live in the UK for ever will no longer be granted to migrants almost automatically after five years. Instead, it will be earned, under the new earned settlement model set out before parliament today."