Protect existing Skilled Workers from substantively retrospective changes

Background

The Government should guarantee clear transitional (grandfathering) protection for people already on the Skilled Worker route and their families, so they can complete the five-year route to ILR under the rules in force when they entered, without being affected by substantively retrospective changes.

Additional details

Many Skilled Worker visa holders and their families moved to the UK in good faith under the current five-year rules and have built their lives around them. Extending the route to settlement from five to ten years and imposing much higher salary thresholds detached from labour market realities on people already here would, in substance, be retrospective. This would disrupt lives, undermine legal certainty and fairness, and could stop people from reaching ILR after years of lawful residence.