Andy Burnham won’t end rough sleeping with Shabana Mahmood’s brutal immigration reforms

When Simon collapsed on a London night bus earlier this year, he had already spent two decades sleeping rough. Born in Brixton, but raised in Germany, he returned to the UK only to find himself trapped in immigration limbo unable to prove his identity. Since 2006, he had lived with no recourse to public funds and had little access to the support that helps prevent homelessness. To survive, he was selling the Big Issue outside Waterloo Station until he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. With nowhere safe for him to go, Simon spent 99 days in hospital waiting for accommodation.  

Simon’s story is shocking, but the barriers he faced are all too common. For 25 years I’ve worked at Praxis, a migrant rights charity, where I support people who just want a fair crack at building a life in this country. Some have spent decades as our neighbours, colleagues, and friends, many playing vital roles in our NHS, care sector, and local communities, but they’re up against a system that makes it difficult to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.   

Time and again, the most urgent issue they face is housing.   

This comes as no surprise. Unlike what we read in the papers, migrants are frozen out from the support that can help prevent homelessness until they get permanent settlement here. The No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) policy excludes many people from most welfare benefits including Housing Benefit, social housing, and other forms of help that can stop a housing crisis becoming an emergency. This year, research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found roughly a quarter of people sleeping rough are non-UK nationals while the number of refugee households experiencing homelessness has increased sevenfold since 2018-19.  

On the day he became prime minister, Andy Burnham pledged to end rough sleeping nationwide by Christmas. This was music to my ears, but it won’t be easy. Burnham’s vision of ending rough sleeping will be impossible to achieve after Shabana Mahmood confirmed brutal new rules on immigration. For many migrants, the standard route to settlement will double from five years to ten whereas refugees can face waiting up to thirty years. This final version of earned settlement will actively drive-up homelessness and poverty among migrant communities.

Whilst some public-sector professions (like care workers) might be able to access five-year routes, for most ordinary, working families, the wait is ten years by default. In other words, settlement becomes an endurance test. One that boils down to what job you do and how much you earn. In practice, that means the people who clean our offices, support our schools, and keep our communities running face the longest and hardest routes to security. People who have spent years working and paying into the system.  

It’s difficult to put into words the toll this can take on people who are often already incredibly vulnerable and traumatised. The people I work with – some of whom survived war, trafficking, and sexual violence – are doing everything right, but the goalposts keep moving and there’s no end in sight.   

Read more:

• Andy Burnham: ‘I’m not naive. You can’t say there will be nobody sleeping rough after Christmas’
• Andy Burnham exclusive on rough sleeping plan: ‘It’s not just a one-off thing for Christmas’
• Labour’s immigration shake-up is like the hostile environment on steroids

Why does this matter for rough sleeping? Well firstly, homelessness doesn’t begin when someone lays a sleeping bag on a pavement. It begins much earlier, with rising costs, financial shocks, and a lack of support when things go wrong.   

Mahmood has infuriated fellow minsters by repeatedly refusing to say what impact her plans will have on homelessness. The Home Secretary may be reluctant to show her homework, but we can spell it out for her. Migrants face all the same pressures that UK citizens face in securing safe, affordable housing. But, uniquely, they’re legally barred from accessing almost all types of support from government, even if they’re at risk of homelessness. Those who face illness, redundancy, relationship breakdown or other crises have fewer protections to fall back on.  

Migrants can sofa-surf for months, remain in unsafe relationships, or endure exploitation because they have nowhere else to go. By the time they appear in official rough sleeping statistics, they have often experienced a long period of housing insecurity.   

At Praxis we see these pressures every day. Recently, I supported a man in his seventies who had been granted leave to remain but was still denied access to public funds. Unable to afford stable accommodation, he moved between friends’ homes while trying to avoid ending up on the street.  

Another client, a new mother with a baby, is currently facing eviction. Despite working and paying rent, she cannot afford alternative accommodation and is waiting on immigration decisions that will determine what support she can access. Neither of these people are sleeping rough, but they are living on the edge of homelessness because the safety net available to most people remains out of reach.   

Earned settlement will make these problems worse. Hundreds of thousands of people will now spend years longer paying visa fees and immigration charges while remaining subject to NRPF restrictions. The government has confirmed that, to qualify for settlement, people need to have had no access to benefits in the five years before they apply – or else face a 20-year wait. Where does that leave people who become ill, lose their job, fall on hard times, or develop a disability? Ministers still haven’t explained how those people will be protected.  

New requirements around earnings and having no criminal record whatsoever will also bar others from ever qualifying for settlement. This is certain to drive up the number of people who lose their lawful immigration status after years of living and working here. 

Ministers have argued that delaying settlement could reduce future spending on welfare and public services. But analysis suggests that government claims of £10 billion in savings to the public purse are flawed and the government has yet to publish the methodology behind its calculation. Even if savings are made on paper, it’s worth asking if we are saving money or shifting the cost elsewhere?  

When people are pushed into homelessness, local authorities, homelessness services and charities inevitably pick up the pieces. The NHS and other statutory service providers will also see greater pressures.   

What’s much clearer is the toll earned settlement will take on families. Research analysing government data estimates that delaying settlement could leave up to 90,000 children experiencing prolonged poverty by 2029. Under earned settlement, these children would live under a two-tier system where the child of a high-earning banker could settle after three years; whilst the child of a care worker could have to wait fifteen. That’s an entire childhood spent in limbo and it leaves their families under enormous financial and emotional strain.  

Burnham is right when he says prevention is central to ending rough sleeping. If Labour is serious about this, it needs to recognise what specifically helps migrants experiencing homelessness. First and foremost, the immigration policies that drive housing insecurity – like the NRPF condition, expensive visa fees and long settlement routes – need urgent reform.   

Homelessness services also need access to specialist immigration advice. Local authorities need the resources and flexibility to support migrants before they reach crisis point and government policy should reduce the risk of destitution: not amplify it.  

Binning the earned settlement proposals would have been a good start.  

At Praxis, we spent the last year campaigning against earned settlement and more than 10,000 people joined our call for it to be scrapped. Those voices are a reminder that Britain is not defined by the loudest anti-migrant voices who show up in balaclavas and most people understand that the people affected by these reforms are not statistics. They’re the colleagues, neighbours and parents who have made their lives here and contribute to ours every day.  

But don’t just take my word for it. More than 200,000 people responded to the government’s own consultation and 84% of individuals and 79% of organisations disagreed with the plans. 

If Labour doesn’t listen and put earned settlement on the scrap heap, then more people will end up following the same path that Simon did. He spent 20 years falling through the gaps and we need to be closing them, not widening them.   

If Andy Burnham wants to end rough sleeping for good, the solutions must work for everyone, including migrants.

Bethan Lant works as head of capacity building at Praxis, a human rights charity that supports migrants and refugees

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