Indefinite Leave to Remain

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. Last week I held a meeting with the Nigerian community in my constituency. Around 30 workers were present, many of whom work intolerably long hours performing vital tasks for scandalously low pay in the healthcare and social care sectors. These people are scared: they are scared that the state will arbitrarily deprive them of their security and their ability to plan for the future with any certainty.

One of those individuals—her name is Uzoamaka—wrote to me outlining her concerns. Uzoamaka came to our country in 2022, and works in the NHS. She wrote:

“I am an immigrant, a taxpayer, a worker, and a human being. But the new immigration white paper strips me and others like me of dignity, stability, and belonging”,

She goes on to say that proposals to extend indefinite leave to remain

“to make someone live in limbo for ten years, despite working hard and paying taxes, is cruelty in slow motion. Ten years of exclusion, from a future. This is not about integration. It is about humiliation.”

How can a Labour Administration who profess to care about social justice participate in such performative barbarity against immigrants—a group already vilified in the media and subject to acute marginalisation in wider society? As Uzoamaka writes:

“this entire system treats immigrants as disposable tools. We are good enough to pay into the NHS, but not to benefit from it. We are needed but never welcomed.”

Similarly, a proposal that workers could still qualify after five years if they earn over £50,000 is

“a gatekeeping tool. Most healthcare assistants, carers, cleaners, and laboratory technicians will never meet this bar. Yet we clap for them, we depend on them, we call them key workers. Now we discard them.”

[Carla Denyer]

On that point, last week more than 45 migrant rights groups described the earned settlement proposals as “fundamentally racist and classist.” Does the hon. Member share my deep concerns that the proposals will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, and create a discriminatory, two-tier system in which wealth and certain jobs or nationalities are prioritised over others?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

I wholeheartedly agree. We must have equal compassion for all in our society, whether they were born here or came here to build a life for themselves and support our country and the prosperity that we all share in.

Uzoamaka concluded her letter by asserting that

“we do not want favours. We want fairness. We do not seek sympathy. We demand justice.”

If Labour politicians did not go into politics to give a voice to the otherwise powerless, such as Uzoamaka, and to fight for a humane state, why are they here? That is why Labour Members must vehemently oppose any changes that would extend indefinite leave to remain or unjustly penalise those on low incomes.

I urge the Minister to examine the Home Secretary’s proposals, which would marginalise even further the lowest earners and the most marginalised in our society, who make a key contribution to our society. They will destroy the fabric of our country, our NHS, the care sector and many other industries that rely on people from outside Britain to keep our country running.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I have much to say in this debate, hence it is very difficult for me to know where to begin. However, I will begin by thanking the petitioners.

For this MP—indeed, this is also the case for many of the MPs in this room, and for Cabinet Ministers and shadow Ministers, and even for a Prime Minister—I am what I am because of the manner in which this country treated me when I came here. I had two parents who could not speak a word of English, yet the support that we received means that now we have a dynasty of academics, entrepreneurs, professionals and even a parliamentarian—although I know, for some people, that might be enough to create a policy to make sure that it never happens again. [Laughter.]

We have a sense of belonging to this land, even though we are far away from our ancestral land. That does not happen by chance. It happens by design, and it can only happen in a country that promotes integration based on the values of decency, respect and contribution, rather than contempt, impatience and transactional values. It works when a society respects values that should be woven into its fabric—when we value our care workers, our frontline health workers, our teachers and our transport workers, not because of how much money they earn but because they are the foundation of our society.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

A lot of people who have come here have been branded “the Boris wave”, but one of my Nigerian constituents told me they came here under “the covid wave”, to care for people in this country.

[Shockat Adam]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

Having a policy like the current one also flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s pre-election pledge. It is a betrayal of his sixth pledge, which we were told was:

“an immigration system rooted in compassion and dignity.”

I, and I am sure many others, feel the betrayal most sharply when it comes from an Asian Home Secretary—someone whose own journey reflects the promise of migration, but who now advances policies that punish people who are just like her own family and mine once were.

Apart from the policy being morally bankrupt, it also flies in the face of fiscal responsibility. We are told that this issue is all about cost, and that migration is a burden. Yet those claims collapse under scrutiny. The widely cited £234 billion “ILR emergency figure” has been discredited even by its own authors. Correct the errors and migration delivers a net fiscal gain of £100 billion.