Steve Witherden

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I place on record my firm opposition to proposals to dramatically extend the timeline for the route to settlement, and in particular to the deeply unfair plan to apply the changes retroactively. To now withdraw that promise is, as the Work Rights Centre has rightly said, an “extraordinary betrayal of migrant communities”. The proposals risk fuelling exploitation, deepening poverty, destabilising already fragile sectors and doing real harm to the wider economy. Under the new system, so-called medium-skilled or lower-paid workers, including nursing, healthcare and social care staff, could face a staggering 15-year wait before being eligible for settlement. That is not a pathway; it is a prolonged period of insecurity. Last Thursday, I met a group of local Unison members —all migrant care workers. Their dedication to our community is unmistakeable. One told me that he regularly completes a long shift at Newtown hospital, volunteers at Newtown Food Surplus afterwards, sleeps for four or five hours, and then begins his next shift. I cannot think of a clearer example of someone who gives wholeheartedly to their community. At a time when our care sector is already facing critical workforce shortages, the proposals will drive people away. Research from the Royal College of Nursing indicates that up to 46,000 nursing staff could leave the UK in response to the measures. That would be catastrophic. What assessment has been made of the impact on staffing levels in our public services, particularly health and social care? Does the Minister recognise that forcing care workers into 15 years of temporary, precarious status risks destabilising the workforce even further, increasing delayed hospital discharges and placing yet more pressure on unpaid family carers? We must retain the five-year route to ILR, halt the retrospective application of these changes and honour the terms that workers originally signed up to. We must invest properly in social care, advance the fair pay agreement and protect the rights and status of existing international recruits. It is not migrants who have weakened our public services; it is successive Governments who have done so through underfunding and privatisation. Our migrant workers keep our health and social care system afloat. Punishing them with prolonged insecurity will only deepen the recruitment crisis and harm families and communities across the country.