Joint statement on Earned Settlement reforms

Earned Settlement will punish migrant women for the abuse they experienced

Following the government’s announcements on its Earned Settlement model on 2nd November 2026, Hibiscus, Southall Black Sisters, EVAW and the Latin American Women’s Rights Service call on the government to withdraw the reforms entirely; at the very least, exemptions must be introduced and existing protections extended to all victim-survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG) regardless of their immigration status. We warn that the plans will directly penalise and harm migrant victim-survivors of VAWG for the abuse and exploitation they have experienced. Alongside extending the period to qualify for settlement from five years to ten years or more (in some cases even to 30 years), the government has announced stringent eligibility requirements including higher English language requirements, ongoing National Insurance contributions and the absence of any criminal record and government debt. These requirements fail to recognise how domestic abuse, trafficking and exploitation directly shape women’s financial circumstances, immigration status, employment histories and contact with the criminal justice system. The changes will instead increase long-term abuse, exploitation, poverty, destitution and criminalisation, while further restricting access to safety and justice. Yesterday, the Home Secretary said that workers should not be punished for the sins of their employer. Nevertheless, she has presented a model that will force victim-survivors to pay for the actions of their abusers, in some cases, for decades. 

Penalising victim-survivors for experiencing abuse

Perpetrators routinely use control over immigration status, money and movement to trap victim-survivors. Under the announced Earned Settlement changes:

  • Women who have been isolated or experienced coercive control and financial abuse will struggle to meet the settlement requirements, such as 3 years of national insurance contributions, no debt at the time of application, and fluency of English
  • Women who have been criminalised as a direct consequence of domestic abuse, trafficking or exploitation will be barred from settlement and face deportation. Many women are coerced into criminal activity by perpetrators or become involved in offending as a means of survival.
  • Women who are ineligible for limited avenues for protection, have periods of irregular status, and who need to access benefits in order to flee abuse will be penalised by extending their settlement period.

Deeper poverty, greater risks

Longer routes to settlement will increase women’s risk of abuse or force them to stay in abusive relationships. The government’s proposal to delay settlement for those relying on welfare benefits will create further barriers for victim-survivors who require financial assistance to escape abuse. It will deepen poverty and destitution for them and their children, and increase their vulnerability to abuse and exploitation. 

A requirement to have no debt will create new barriers for women whose debt arises from financial abuse, financial control, medical care for abuse/violence-related injury or unpaid surcharges controlled by perpetrators. 

A threat to specialist by and for organisations

Longer routes to settlement will increase demand on specialist services that are already underfunded and overstretched. At the same time, the changes to the Skilled Worker visa salary threshold pose an existential threat to these organisations, putting at risk their ability to recruit and train staff with lived experience or those with relevant skills from overseas.  

Changes that go against government pledges

These proposals cut directly against the government’s own commitments. The Child Poverty Strategy pledges to lift half a million children out of poverty, yet children born to migrant parents are twice as likely to experience poverty and make up a third of the children in deep poverty. The Homelessness Strategy commits to end rough sleeping and making homelessness rare, but these changes fail to consider that a quarter of people owed a homelessness prevention or relief duty were born outside the UK or EU, and migrant destitution has risen by 136% since 2019. The VAWG Strategy pledged to halve VAWG within a decade, yet immigration changes omit that women with NRPF are three times more likely to experience VAWG.

What we are calling for

We urge the government to introduce measures to mitigate the harmful consequences of the Earned Settlement reforms on victim-survivors of VAWG:

"The Earned Settlement reforms announced this week will be devastating to victim-survivors of violence against women and girls. As organisations working on the frontline to support migrant women, we know extended periods without settlement increase women’s risk of experiencing and remaining trapped in abuse. These arbitrary and punitive reforms will leave the women we support vulnerable and enable abusers to keep weaponising their insecure immigration status. 

Although the government has confirmed that existing exemptions for domestic abuse victim-survivors will remain, we know these will cover only a limited number of women, excluding some of the most vulnerable, including asylum-seeking and refugee women. The government must withdraw these reforms immediately, and if it refuses, it must exempt every victim-survivor of VAWG regardless of their immigration status.

We are particularly concerned about the increased criminality requirement, which would exclude many women from being able to settle in the UK. This reform ignored the extensive evidence showing how abusers exploit the criminal justice system to criminalise women. 

We are convinced that these reforms are a contradiction to the government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade."

Notes:

Note 1:

We argue that the domestic abuse exemptions mentioned during the announcement fall short because they only apply to a limited cohort of migrant victim-survivors. The Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession (MVDAC) provides a temporary 3-month grant of leave to remain and access to public funds, for certain migrant victims and survivors of domestic violence. The MVDAC is only available to survivors whose immigration status depends on a partner/spouse who: is a British citizen; has settled status or Indefinite Leave to Remain; has a work or study visa; has refugee status; is a current or former member of the armed forces. On the other hand, Appendix victim of domestic abuse (Appendix VDA) is a permanent settlement status, only available for migrant victims and survivors of domestic abuse whose spouse, civil or durable partner is a British citizen, a refugee, has settled status, or is a current or former member of the armed forces. Appendix VDA replaces any previous immigration status. Examples of victims and survivors who are ineligible for the MVDAC or Appendix VDA include those who are undocumented or hold visitor visas; those with valid fiance, student, graduate or skilled worker visas; and victims experiencing domestic violence from non-partner family members (such as parents or children).

Note 2: Our recommendations 
ILR Qualifying Conditions 
  • Remove access to public funds, as a factor to increase ILR qualifying periods, in cases of VAWG.
  • Introduce exemptions for victim-survivors of VAWG, modern slavery and human trafficking, in relation to the no criminal record requirement.
  • Introduce exemptions for debt accrued as a result of abuse. 
  • Reduce visa fees to only operational costs and eliminate the NHS surcharge, for victims of all forms of VAWG.
Prevent Deportations of Victim-Survivors 
  • Prevent automatic deportations of victim-survivors with criminal records by introducing exceptions for those whose offending is the result of VAWG, including modern slavery and human trafficking. 
Specialist Frontline Services 
  • Introduce an exemption from salary thresholds for staff employed at by and for Black and minoritised migrant women specialist organisations. 
  • Meaningfully consult by and for services on implementation. 
Safety Net for Victim-Survivors 
  • Keep existing protections for victim-survivors of VAWG, including modern slavery and trafficking. Extend the MVDAC and DVILR to all victim-survivors, regardless of visa type and immigration status. 
  • Introduce a statutory firewall for migrant women experiencing VAWG, modern slavery and trafficking, to increase their ability to report crimes and access support, and decrease the weaponisation of women’s immigration status by perpetrators.
  • Expand access to legal advice for victim-survivors by restoring immigration to civil legal aid and removing means-testing for survivors of domestic abuse and modern slavery.

by lawrsuk

Autumn Budget 2026: It’s time to translate promises into policy

In the past year, the government has set out three ambitious strategies, which aim to reduce child poverty, homelessness and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). We welcome the commitments to lift half a million children out of poverty, halve VAWG within a decade and make homelessness rare. On the eve of this year’s Budget announcements, we have two key questions. Firstly, will the government undo any progress towards these goals by pushing ahead with its proposed immigration and asylum reforms? Secondly, will it support migrant women and specialist services with dedicated funding?

As highlighted in our recent blog series, ‘Promises vs. Policy’, migrant women and girls are missing from all three government strategies. There is no acknowledgement of their disproportionate vulnerability to poverty, homelessness or VAWG. Concrete measures to address their needs are almost completely absent. In particular, the strategies propose no reforms to a key structural barrier for migrant women: the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition. 

Whilst the government’s strategies skim over migrant women and girls, this is not due to a lack of available evidence. The link between immigration status and vulnerability to child poverty, homelessness and VAWG is well-established:

  • Children born to migrant parents are twice as likely to experience poverty, and make up one-third of all children in poverty.¹
  • A quarter of people owed a homelessness prevention or relief duty were born outside the UK.²
  • Three-quarters of NRPF households spend more than a third of their income on housing.³ 
  • 85% of applications to remove NRPF conditions are made by women, mostly single mothers.⁴
  • Women with NRPF are three times more likely to experience domestic violence.⁵
  • 28% of victims and survivors who are turned away from refuges have to sofa-surf after fleeing abuse; 9% are forced to sleep rough.⁶
  • Most migrant victims and survivors are ineligible for protections like the Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession, blocking them from financial support to flee abuse. 

As the gulf between policy and reality grows, by-and-for organisations like LAWRS are left to plug these gaps with diminishing resources. Increasingly, we find ourselves pushing public services to uphold their statutory obligations. These services remain critically underfunded, causing direct harm to migrant victims and survivors. For example, Women’s Aid’s found that the majority of women supported by the 2025 No Woman Turned Away project had NRPF. Most experienced “inadequate and unsafe responses” from statutory services. Additionally, 61.5% of families with NRPF were refused support by children’s social care.⁷

Year on year, the resources available to specialist VAWG services is shrinking, whilst external factors like living costs increase the demand for support. This leaves by-and-for organisations in a deeply precarious position — we are forced to shoulder a progressively heavier burden, as the safety net which should protect victims and survivors disappears. This issue is made worse by the current commissioning model: specialist by-and-for organisations supporting Black, minoritised and migrant women are six times less likely to receive government funding⁸. As a result, many organisations operate at a significant shortfall. This situation is unsustainable.

If the government believes in lifting children out of poverty, making homelessness rare and halving VAWG within a decade, it must use its Budget to set out a safety net for the most vulnerable victims and survivors. Prioritising access to safety and justice means changing course on proposed immigration and asylum policies. We are continuing to raise urgent concerns about the Immigration and Asylum Bill, the ‘Family Returns’ proposals and the ‘Earned Settlement’ model. Each of these policies will deepen barriers to support, locking victims and survivors into long-term financial hardship whilst increasing their exposure to repeated violence, exploitation and abuse. 

Another year without sustainable investment in specialist by-and-for VAWG services means another year that victims and survivors struggle to access life-saving support. Strategies establish commitments, but budgets are where these promises are tested.  - iIt is time for the government to deliver for the sector, and for all victims and survivors of VAWG.

We call on the government to:

  • Address the needs of migrant women and girls with funded support measures, as part of cross-government strategies to reduce child poverty, homelessness and VAWG.
  • Publish an impact assessment which evaluates the effect of immigration and asylum proposals on cross-government strategy implementation.
  • Establish ring-fenced, long-term funding for specialist by-and-for services who are currently plugging the gaps in statutory support.

References:

  1. IPPR (March 2025). ‘Revealed: Nearly half of UK children with parents born abroad are in poverty’
  2. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘Families with no recourse to public funds are trapped in hardship.’
  3. Ibid.
  4. The Unity Project, Access Denied: The cost of the 'no recourse to public funds' policy
  5. Ibid.
  6. Women’s Aid. (2025). Nowhere To Turn, 2025.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Domestic Abuse Commissioner. (2022). A Patchwork of Provision.

by lawrsuk

Promises vs. Policy: Holding the Government to Account (3/3)

Examining the gap between the Government’s commitments and the reality of its immigration policies: Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy.

By Isabella Rooney, Research and Engagement Policy Officer, and Monserrat Escudero, Policy and Communications Manager on VAWG.

This is our third entry analysing three of the government's key policy strategies to see if they hold water when it comes to migrant women and girls. If you missed our first entry on the Homelessness Strategy, you can read it HERE and our second entry on the Child Poverty Strategy, HERE.

VAWG Strategy 

During his Manchester mayorship Andy Burnham launched a 10-year campaign to tackle gender-based violence¹, where he aimed to tackle sexual harassment in public spaces. He recognised his “personal responsibility to lead a new conversation about the change we need to see” introduced a new campaign aimed at men and boys², committed to promote accountability of their behaviours. 

The Labour Government previously pledged to halve VAWG within a decade³. In spite of these commitments, our analysis demonstrates that these pledges will again be impossible without specific measures to address the specific barriers migrant women and girls face as survivors of VAWG. Here are a few key aims in the VAWG Strategy and the ways they will be impossible to achieve without incorporating the perspectives and needs of migrant women:

  • Break cycles of abuse through prevention and early intervention

The Strategy enshrines prevention as one of the three pillars to achieve its goal, placing particular focus on targeting online abuse and child sexual abuse. It makes provisions to strengthen school response to VAWG and misogynistic attitudes, providing training on healthy relationships. It also establishes the need to support families in parenting, as well as an increased investment in social services for early intervention. Finally, echoing Burnham’s claim to involve men and boys in VAWG efforts, it establishes a national summit to address root causes of VAWG. When outlining methods to achieve these goals, the Strategy completely omits the experiences faced by migrant women and girls, who face dehumanising and harmful misogynistic content online⁴, ignoring how structural factors such as NRPF and poverty perpetuate cycles of abuse. Targeted early intervention will not break cycles of abuse if migrant victims are not believed or supported by statutory services. Statutory failures prolong the time that children spend experiencing domestic violence first-hand.

  • Increase accountability for perpetrators of VAWG

The VAWG Strategy commits to ending perpetrator impunity through its second pillar, pledging to address barriers to reporting and lack of trust within Family Courts and Criminal Justice System. It acknowledges survivors are re-victimised and there is need for reform and improved awareness of dynamics of domestic abuse, including coercive control, within the justice system. In spite of this, violence perpetrated against migrant women is conspicuously omitted when approaching accountability mechanisms. Fear of deportation is the most common barrier to reporting for migrant victims of VAWG⁵, and data-sharing practices prevent effective investigation of VAWG, allowing perpetrators to repeatedly abuse with impunity and continue committing crimes⁶. The Government cannot deliver real accountability if crimes against migrant women and girls go unreported, uninvestigated and without redress. 

  • Provide wrap-around, targeted support for victims and survivors

The Strategy recognises immigration status as a barrier for migrant victims, and pledges to introduce a consent-based data-sharing policy between the police and Immigration Enforcement to improve engagement and access to justice. This policy is a recognition of the importance of safe reporting mechanisms for victims of VAWG⁷. However, the structural power imbalance with the police, the mistrust in the Government’s data collecting practices, and the hostile immigration environment are pressing issues that a consent-based form does not address. A full firewall between statutory services and Immigration Enforcement is needed, and structural barriers to accessing services must be removed, to ensure migrant women have equal access to support, protection and justice.

Tailored, holistic support that meets victims’ diverse needs is essential, including specialist by and for services. The intersection between VAWG and other forms of discrimination shapes experiences of abuse and makes it harder to access services or justice. By and for organisations have to press statutory services to support vulnerable victims, with the 2025 Nowhere To Turn Project finding that 67.4% of women supported had ‘inadequate and unsafe responses’ from statutory services and 61.5% of families with NRPF failed to be supported by children’s services⁸. In spite of the Strategy’s claim that  ‘no one should be forced to remain in an unsafe situation because they fear becoming homeless’, the housing system consistently bars migrant women from escaping abuse. Another pillar is access to healthcare, with the NHS being crucial in early identification and support, as healthcare is often the first point of disclosure. 

Migrant victims face systemic challenges barring them from safe accommodation and healthcare, including fear of reporting, lack of information about rights, and the consequences of abuse/exploitation, requiring extensive specialist advocacy to access. Many women are forced to remain with, or return to, the perpetrator to avoid homelessness, who prevents them from accessing healthcare. The specific barriers to wrap-around support for migrant victims and survivors are not addressed in the VAWG strategy. 

Conclusion

Across all three of these key  strategies analysed in our 3-part series, the omission of migrant women and children is glaring and harmful. We see a joint-up, across-the-board effort to marginalise migrants by enforcing a harmful narrative, maintaining a hostile immigration environment, and introducing laws and policies that either rollback on previous rights and protections or introduce new restrictions. All of this amounts to discrimination on individuals and groups on the grounds of their immigration status. 

This concerted effort to marginalise migrant women cannot continue to take hold of the public agenda if the government is serious about meeting its policy objectives. We call on the Prime Minister to keep his promise, change course, and build a country that works fairly for everyone, everywhere.

References:

  1.  Greater Manchester Combined Authority (September 2021). Gender-Based Violence Strategy.
  2. Greater Manchester Combined Authority (December 2021). ‘Mayor Andy Burnham launches new campaign to tackle gender-based violence.’
  3. Great Britain. Home Office. (2026). Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-from-violence-and-abuse-a-cross-government-strategy/freedom-from-violence-and-abuse-a-cross-government-strategy-to-build-a-safer-society-for-women-and-girls-accessible
  4. Young Women's Advisory Board. (February 2026). Voices of Young Latinas: Peer research on online abuse and the impact of fetishisation
  5.  Mcilwaine, C., Granada, L. and Valenzuela-Oblitas, I. (May 2019) The Right to be Believed: Migrant women facing Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in the ‘hostile immigration environment’ in London 
  6.  Gracie Mae Bradley (December 2018). Care Don’t Share: Hostile environment data-sharing: Why we need a firewall between essential public services and immigration enforcement. Liberty. 
  7.  LAWRS (18th December 2025). ‘Government’s new VAWG strategy: Safe Reporting Mechanisms for Victims and Survivors of VAWG’
  8.  Women’s Aid. (2025). Executive Summary: Nowhere To Turn, 2025. 

by lawrsuk

Promises vs. Policy: Holding the Government to Account (2/3)

Examining the gap between the Government’s commitments and the reality of its immigration policies: Child Poverty Strategy.

By Isabella Rooney, Research and Engagement Policy Officer, and Monserrat Escudero, Policy and Communications Manager on VAWG.

This is our second entry analysing three of the government's key policy strategies to see if they hold water when it comes to migrant women and girls. If you missed our first entry on the Homelessness Strategy, you can read it HERE.

Child Poverty Strategy 

The Child Poverty Strategy highlights the scale and harms of child poverty in the UK, but completely overlooks the disproportionate vulnerability of migrant children to severe destitution¹.  Children born to migrant parents are twice as likely to experience poverty, and make up one-third of all children in deep poverty in the UK². In contrast to other groups, the strategy does not address the structural factors driving this vulnerability. This omission undermines the strategy’s ambition and objectives. Alongside this, the Home Office’s proposed policies will significantly increase long-term child poverty, making it impossible for the government to achieve its aims:

  • Guidance on No Recourse to Public Funds:

    The Strategy contains no measurable, concrete goals to reduce migrant child poverty. The only commitments made are to issue guidance to local authorities on supporting destitute children with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF), and to “consider” this group when making future decisions. Addressing the root causes of migrant child poverty would involve looking at the immigration system itself, which causes “destitution by design”, according to Parliamentary research³. Whilst the NRPF guidance for local authorities has since been published and importantly emphasises the need to safeguard children regardless of their immigration status, this stands to be completely overturned by the Home Office’s ‘Family Returns’ proposals, which would see local authorities prohibited from acting on safeguarding concerns and barred from supporting destitute undocumented children. Even the very limited measures included for migrant children in the Strategy would be dismantled by the Home Office’s proposals.

  • Improving access to employment and childcare:

    Growing child poverty rates are driven by the increase in low-paid, insecure work and the inaccessibility of childcare. However, the strategy completely overlooks the systemic barriers to increasing income and accessing childcare for migrant families. Most people already on 10-year settlement routes work in low-paid, essential sectors such as care work and cleaning, in which Black and minoritised migrant women are over-represented⁴. The visa sponsorship system restricts people from changing employers, forcing many workers to endure long-term exploitation or unfair working conditions⁵. Moreover, the NRPF condition prevents parents from accessing state-funded childcare. Many of the women we support have to take on low-paid, insecure and part-time work whilst they wait to be eligible for settlement. As outlined above, the proposed settlement changes will trap migrant mothers in a vicious cycle of prolonged poverty without opportunities to increase their earnings. This will directly counteract the strategy’s aim to reduce child poverty through improved access to secure employment and childcare.

  • Preventing homelessness and chronic temporary accommodation use:

    The Child Poverty Strategy calls for a preventative approach to homelessness. It highlights that the number of children living in temporary accommodation (TA) has doubled since 2010, significantly harming children who are trapped in long-term TA use. However, it fails to acknowledge the heightened risk of homelessness for migrant families. A quarter (26%) of people owed a homelessness duty were born outside the UK or EU, and three-quarters of households with NRPF spend more than a third of their income on housing, placing them at significant risk of homelessness⁶. Penalising use of public funds will harm families who need a safety net against destitution. We anticipate that many people will be discouraged from accessing public funds altogether, forcing them into homelessness to avoid longer settlement routes. Extending settlement timeframes will also increase the total visa fees that families must pay, compounding their vulnerability to destitution. By failing to address immigration policies as a root cause of homelessness, and setting out harmful proposals that increase economic precarity, the government will directly undermine the strategy’s preventative measures.

  • Empowering young people:

    Both the Child Poverty Strategy and Youth Strategy highlight the importance of empowering young people in order to prevent long-term economic and social marginalisation. In contrast to this aim, the Earned Settlement model will be detrimental to the wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of young people, including those born in the UK or who have spent most of their lives here. Young people may miss out on university or face restricted access to essential services, undermining their integration and sense of belonging in the UK. For these young people, it will be much more difficult to escape poverty.

  • Cross-government responsibility to reduce child poverty:

    The Strategy affirms that all government departments, including the Home Office, have an obligation to promote children’s wellbeing by reducing and preventing severe destitution. There is a glaring conflict between the Home Office’s responsibilities and its policy proposals. Already, the Home Office’s immigration policies are the direct cause of long-term child poverty⁷, and research suggests that the Earned Settlement model will leave roughly 130,000 children in poverty by 2029⁸. The Family Returns proposals will also deliberately remove safeguards against destitution and homelessness for thousands of families without immigration status. Despite recommendations from the Home Affairs Select Committee⁹, the Home Office has failed to publish a child poverty impact assessment for its immigration and asylum policy changes. The Home Office is neglecting its own obligations to destitute migrant children and will directly undermine the aims of the Child Poverty Strategy.

References:
  1. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/child-poverty-strategy
  2. Praxis (November 2025). 'Why this Government must address the unique challenges facing migrant children.
  3. APPGs on Poverty & Migration (April 2024). Report Summary: The Effects of UK Immigration, Asylum and Refugee Policy on Poverty. 
  4. Praxis. (September 2023). A Joint Briefing on Capping routes to permanent settlement at 5 years. 
  5. https://www.workrightscentre.org/publications/2025/parliamentary-report-acknowledges-scale-of-exploitation-on-the-skilled-worker-visa/
  6. Johnson-Hunter, M. (8th August 2025). “Families with no recourse to public funds are trapped in hardship.” Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
  7. Pinter, I., (August 2025). ‘The Government’s immigration policies are increasing child poverty.’
  8. Praxis (March 2026). ‘Home Office settlement proposals threaten to keep 90,000 children in poverty.’ 
  9. https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/52138/documents/290281/default/

by lawrsuk

Promises vs. Policy: Holding the Government to Account (1/3)

Examining the gap between the Government’s commitments and the reality of its immigration policies: Homelessness Strategy.

By Isabella Rooney, Research and Engagement Policy Officer, and Monserrat Escudero, Policy and Communications Manager on VAWG.

A change in leadership, a new opportunity

A change in national leadership gives the government an opportunity to back its ambitious pledges with real action. Tackling homelessness, child poverty, violence against women and girls (VAWG) and modern slavery requires a shift from scapegoating rhetoric and counterproductive policies, to evidence-based safeguards for the most vulnerable.

In his first speech as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham promised “to end rough sleeping in our country.” ¹ We welcome this commitment: many of the women we support are forced to sleep rough by systemic barriers, rising living costs and experiences of abuse and exploitation. However, the Prime Minister has also backed the Home Secretary’s immigration and asylum policies, which will undoubtedly drive up rough sleeping and homelessness. 

Using our frontline experience, in this 3-piece series LAWRS has analysed three of the government’s key policy strategies - on homelessness, child poverty and VAWG - to see if they hold water when it comes to migrant women and girls. These strategies aim to make homelessness rare, lift half a million children out of poverty, and halve VAWG within a decade. 

Our analysis reveals a glaring hole: migrant women and girls are systematically excluded through lack of provisions and a failure to address their needs. More importantly, the strategies’ ambitious objectives will also be directly undermined by the government’s immigration and asylum policies. 

Following the Makerfield election, Andy Burnham promised “a country that works fairly for everywhere and for everybody”.² During the Labour Party Conference, he committed to drawing “a line on a decade of division.”³ We are holding the Prime Minister accountable to these promises. His government has an opportunity to create lasting change for our communities. But our analysis shows that none of these commitments will be realised if migrant women and girls are left behind. 

Homelessness Strategy 

The Prime Minister’s pledge on rough sleeping mirrors the aims set out by the Homelessness Strategy. However, our analysis demonstrates that these aims will be impossible without specific measures to support at-risk migrants. Here are a few key objectives outlined in the Homelessness Strategy and the ways they fall short:

  • Reduce barriers to accessing support:
    The Homelessness Strategy states that discrimination and communication barriers block support for those at risk of homelessness. However, it completely ignores the largest barrier for migrant women - the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition. Before becoming Labour Party leader, Andy Burnham advocated for NRPF to be abolished because of its impact on homelessness; as Prime Minister, he has back-tracked on this. His support for the ‘Earned Settlement’ policies also risks increasing barriers to support for those at risk of homelessness, and will see people subjected to NRPF for longer, with access to public funds penalised.
  • Improve statutory and local authority responses:
    The government’s proposals undermine the Strategy’s efforts to establish preventative, joined-up statutory responses and avoid a costly ‘cycle of crisis response’. People with NRPF are routinely refused assistance when they present at statutory services. We often support women who are forced to sleep rough by these refusals, escalating risk and increasing the cost of providing crisis support. By extending NRPF, implementing barriers to regularising immigration or refugee status and prohibiting local authorities from providing Section 17 support to undocumented destitute children, statutory services will not be able to adequately respond to the risk of homelessness, inevitably increasing the cost of later intervention. 
  • Support low-income families to increase earnings:
    The strategy acknowledges that it’s harder to meet rising housing costs without stable employment or childcare, but offers no measures to help migrant families in this position. Migrants are disproportionately in low-income work, forced to pay repeated visa costs and excluded from benefits-funded childcare. Extending settlement routes and adding an income requirement to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) eligibility will trap migrant women in a vicious cycle - they cannot access childcare, so cannot increase their earnings, and therefore never qualify for settlement, locking them in long-term housing insecurity.
  • End homelessness for people leaving public institutions:
    The Strategy acknowledges the high vulnerability to homelessness for people exiting the asylum system, who make up the ‘second biggest group’ of people rough sleeping after leaving public institutions. But in contrast to all other institutions explored (e.g. prison, care homes, hospitals), there are no measures to reduce this number. This is a glaring omission. Policies that could reduce homelessness for people leaving the asylum system, such as extending the ‘move-on’ period, ending camp/barrack use and improving access to legal advice are ignored. At the same time, reforms including temporary refugee status, a 20-year settlement route and a ‘refugee tax’ will significantly increase the risk of homelessness for newly recognised refugees.
  • Tackle re-exploitation of modern slavery victims by preventing homelessness:
    Many people owed a homelessness duty are victims of exploitation. The strategy highlights their high risk of re-exploitation, but commits only to improving identification of potential victims through updated guidance. Increasing identification of victims will not prevent homelessness or re-exploitation if the systemic issues with the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) are not addressed. Potential and recognised victims must have access to housing, appropriate financial assistance, quality legal advice and a path to regularise immigration status. Without this, victims will remain vulnerable to homelessness. The government’s current plans to penalise late disclosure of modern slavery will also increase refusals of support, undermining the aim of preventing re-exploitation.

References:

  1. Andy Burnham's first speech as Prime Minister: 20 July 2026 - https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/andy-burnhams-first-speech-as-prime-minister-20-july-2026
  2. "Final chance to change": the Makerfield count speech: 16 July 2026 - https://theburnhamprogramme.co.uk/makerfield-count-speech
  3. Andy Burnham's speech to Labour Party Conference: 29 September 2026 - https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/andy-burnhams-speech-to-labour-party-conference-2026/

by lawrsuk

Joint statement on harmful ‘Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers’.

On 19th of August, the government launched the guide "Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers". This guide will do nothing to support, inform or empower women. All it will do is fuel suspicion, prejudice, division and harmful myths about the nature and causes of gendered violence.

As organisations supporting victim-survivors of multiple forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG), as well as organisations supporting people seeking asylum, we are aware of the importance of the government providing comprehensive information about rights, entitlements and services to ensure victim-survivors can access support and justice. As stated by several led by and for  Black, minoritised and migrant organisations, it is a reality that many women with insecure immigration status (including women seeking asylum) lack adequate information about support services in the UK, which can impede them from seeking help when experiencing abuse and exploitation.

However, we are alarmed that the framing of this resource distorts the realities of abuse and utilises punitive, racialised language that contributes to a dangerous agenda that weaponises VAWG whilst fuelling hostility against some communities, to the detriment of victim-survivors. The decision to single out people seeking asylum to be instructed on these subjects reinforces the harmful narrative that migrant communities pose a particular threat to women and girls that requires correction and surveillance. It furthermore marginalises victim-survivors, de-centring them from responses and omitting life-saving specialist resources.

As well-evidenced, VAWG is a pervasive, systemic issue that affects almost one in three women living in the UK, with the majority of abuse committed by men known to their victims. This form of gender-based violence is not unique to specific communities but a pervasive global issue rooted in gender inequality. Holding particular groups as primarily responsible for violence and abuse misrepresents the reality of VAWG and marginalises Black and minoritised migrant women, who are absent from the conversation and left unsupported.

A year ago, as part of our #NotInOurName campaign, we called out politicians and the government for hijacking the fight to end VAWG to justify misinformation that generated unfounded claims about Black and minoritised communities being more likely to perpetrate violence against women and girls. It is concerning that the development and distribution of this guide by the government continues to dangerously weaponise VAWG, despite well-evidenced consequences of anti-migrant rhetoric, including targeted violence at accommodation for asylum seekers and hate crimes against racialised communities. Notably, many of those responsible for committing these attacks have themselves been identified as perpetrators of domestic abuse. This underscores the extent to which VAWG is cross-cutting across society, rather than being attributable to particular groups, and how these anti-migrant narratives decentre victim-survivors from the conversation and fail to address the root causes of VAWG.

We know that this guide will have a detrimental effect on some of the most vulnerable victim-survivors, including people seeking asylum who have experienced VAWG, trafficking and exploitation themselves, impeding them from accessing urgent support whilst reproducing a troubling message that overlooks the root causes of abuse and harm.

We call on the Home Office and the government to urgently review this guide and produce a new resource in consultation with specialist services that genuinely focuses on providing victim-survivors with the means to be free from violence and abuse and to receive the support they need. If the commitment to halving VAWG in the current decade is honest, we urgently need to see a change in rhetoric and practice.

Latin American Women's Rights Service | End Violence Against Women Coalition | Hibiscus | Women for Refugee Women | Southall Black Sisters | Imkaan | Asylum Matters

by lawrsuk

Come and join our Migrant Women’s Voices Group!

Do you want to make a difference in fellow migrant women's lives? Come join our Migrant Women's Voices Group and use your voice and experience for real change!

What’s it about? 🤔

The Migrant Women's Voices Group is a new participation programme being launched by LAWRS in 2026 as part of our commitment to ensuring migrant women are at the heart of our policy, campaigning and advocacy work. The group will create a safe and supportive space for migrant women with lived experience of the migration system to share their expertise, shape our policy work, and influence change.

The group will work closely with LAWRS' Step Up Migrant Women Campaign, particularly its work to promote safe reporting mechanisms for migrant women survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and modern slavery, so that women can report abuse and access support without fear of immigration enforcement. 

The group is based on the principle that migrant women are experts in their own lives and the issues that affect them. It aims to move beyond consultation and create meaningful opportunities for co-production, where women with lived experience help design, deliver and evaluate our campaigning and policy work.

Who’s it for? 🤷🏽‍♀️

Participants should be women who:

  • Are aged 18 or over.
  • Are migrant (this includes women with any experience of the UK immigration or asylum system).
  • Can commit to attending 3-4 in-person meetings per year in London.
  • Are available to take part in optional projects between meetings (*meetings and project work is paid).
  • Have an interest in contributing to policy and campaigning work affecting migrant women, including the creation of safe reporting mechanisms for migrant victims of crime.

We highly encourage survivors of domestic abuse, violence against women and girls, trafficking and exploitation to apply (must no longer be in a high-risk situation).

What matters is your voice, your perspective, and your willingness to create change.

The group will include 10–15 members, ensuring a balance between diversity of perspectives and meaningful participation. The aim is to build a group that reflects the diversity of migrant women's experiences and backgrounds, including differences in: immigration status, age, country of origin, language, family circumstances, experiences of accessing services, among others.

We know there is no single migrant experience, and we want the group to reflect that diversity.

How will it work? 👩🏽‍💻

Activities are expected to include:

  • In-person group meetings (3-4 per year)
  • Online group catch-up meetings (3-4 per year) 
  • Optional advocacy activities (2-12 hours per year)
    • Policy events/discussions
    • Policy consultations (sessions/surveys)
    • Reviewing campaign/policy documents
    • Campaign activities
    • Storytelling activities.
    • Public speaking opportunities

These activities are entirely optional and will always be delivered with appropriate safeguarding and wellbeing support.

All activities will be compensated, transport cost will be reimbursed, and interpreters and crèche will be provided depending on participants' needs.

How long does the programme last? 

We ask participants to commit to the programme for at least one programme cycle (the first cycle will run from September 2026 to March 2027), as building relationships, confidence and collective influence takes time.

At the same time, the programme is designed to support longer-term engagement, and participants are warmly encouraged to remain involved in future cycles and in the years ahead, if they wish to do so.

Benefits 🤩

  • Develop new skills and confidence.
  • Advocacy and campaigning training.
  • Create new networks and community.
  • Gain experience for future education and employment.
  • Create positive change for migrant women in the UK.

All participation will be compensated:

  • London Living Wage stipend (As of July 2026, the London Living Wage rate is calculated £14.80 per hour).
  • Travel reimbursement
  • Interpreters, if needed
  • Crèche available (For in-person meetings)

This is YOUR chance to work towards a more equal world where all women have the right to a life free from violence and exploitation, regardless of their immigration status.

Apply Now! 🙋🏽‍♀️

Apply online using our Application Form: ➡️ ➡️ APPLY HERE ⬅️ ⬅️

Applications open until Sunday the 13th of September.

Contact and more information 🤳🏼

Melissa, the project coordinator, would be happy to talk to you if you have any questions or need support with your application. You can contact her at: melissa@lawrs.org.uk

If you need more information, you can check out our Information Sheet which provides all the details for the programme.

We would be grateful if you could also share this information with your network as we want to ensure many migrant women know about this opportunity.

Thank you for taking an interest, we can’t wait to hear from you! 

by lawrsuk

Joint statement – Southall Black Sisters, EVAW, Hibiscus and LAWRS’ response to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee report on Settlement, Citizenship and Integration

We welcome the publication of the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee's report on Settlement, Citizenship and Integration, to which we submitted written evidence drawing on decades of frontline experience supporting Black, minoritised and migrant women subjected to violence against women and girls (VAWG).

We welcome the Committee's clear rejection of proposals to extend the standard qualifying period for settlement to 10, 15 or 20 years, and its recommendation that the Government retain the existing five-year route. The Committee rightly recognises that prolonged insecurity does not promote integration or deter migration; instead, it entrenches precarity. We also welcome its conclusion that applying any new rules retrospectively would be "manifestly unfair and may be unlawful".

Despite the rejection of the extension of the qualifying period for settlement and the retrospective application proposal, we are concerned about two recommendations that would have serious consequences for migrant victim-survivors.

First, while retaining the five-year route to settlement, the Committee recommends maintaining the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition until migrant people have lived in the UK for ten years or obtained citizenship. For at least 32,000 victim-survivors of domestic abuse, NRPF is one of the most powerful tools of coercive control, trapping women in abusive relationships by denying them access to safety and support. Extending NRPF beyond settlement would hollow out the security and stability that settlement is meant to provide.

Second, the report's calls for greater cross-government data sharing run directly counter to the firewall victim-survivors need between immigration enforcement and the police, health services and other statutory services they must be able to trust in times of crisis. Without that protection, many women will continue to fear reporting abuse, leaving perpetrators free to act with impunity.

More broadly, we are concerned that the disproportionate impact of these reforms on Black minoristised and migrant women and victim-survivors of VAWG is not sufficiently reflected in the report. Nor does the report adopt our central recommendation: a clear statutory exemption from immigration restrictions for victim-survivors, recognising that no woman should be forced to choose between abuse and destitution.

As the Government prepares its response, we urge it to remove NRPF as a barrier to safety, establish a full, unconditional firewall between public services and immigration enforcement, and introduce a statutory exemption protecting all victim-survivors of VAWG. 

by lawrsuk

Reflections on World Refugee Day

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention. In the aftermath of the displacement crisis caused by the Second World War, a promise of protection to those escaping violence and destruction was embodied in the birth of the right to seek safety. Ratified by 149 countries, the Convention prohibits signatory states from returning people to countries where they face persecution, and highlights the importance of access to support, to work and education, of those affected.

In the UK, this anniversary has been met with a significant rollback of the rights and protections for asylum seekers and refugees. After this year’s announcement of the changes to the asylum system, where refugee protection is to be reviewed every 30 months and with proposals where children from families who are denied asylum claims face losing support and being handcuffed and physically forced out of the UK, honouring the right to seek safety becomes essential. 

Migrants and asylum seekers are increasingly being scapegoated for the failed policies of successive governments and the effects of global crises, whilst the compounding impact of decades of austerity measures, of underfunded support services for victims and survivors of violence against women and girls and exploitation, and a cost of living crisis are ignored. In this hostile environment, the realities faced by the individuals seeking asylum become invisible, and the failings of a broken immigration and asylum system are not addressed, which is particularly insidious for migrant women.

The reality is asylum seeking and refugee women face compounded risks: displacement does not pause gender-based violence or exploitation, and often intensifies it. As survivors of violence, of trafficking and persecution, concerns over their safety, support and healing should be at the forefront of conversation when discussing proposals to improve the asylum and immigration system. However, the fragmented support and often revictimising experiences women face when fleeing violence is not being centred. Rather, what support exists right now is being brought into question and gradually dismantled. 

Those who have experienced both displacement and abuse need support that understands both. They need a system that will provide safety and protection, not one that will subject them to  the risk of removal after years of building a life in the UK. The principles enshrined in the 1951 Convention were put in place to appropriately protect and support extremely vulnerable people whose lives and integrity are at risk, and today it is more important than ever to uphold them. 

The asylum and immigration systems can be changed and improved for the better. As we have said before, everyone deserves to live in dignity. A fair immigration and asylum system that offers equal and real protections is the only way to guarantee Human Rights.

by lawrsuk

A Landmark Opportunity to Transform Support for Migrant Survivors

LAWRS is pleased to announce a new 5-year project that seeks to transform support for migrant victims and survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG). The project is led by Southall Black Sisters and also comprising Safety4Sisters, Bawso, Shakti Women’s Aid and Foyle Women’s Aid, and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK. This new UK-wide partnership will be an opportunity to drive policy change at a large scale at both national and local level ensuring migrant survivors' needs are better reflected in law, policy and frontline practices. This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to advancing structural change for Black, minoritised and migrant women, drawing on the combined specialist experience of all organisations in delivering support and change.

For LAWRS, this project marks a significant opportunity to expand work that we have been leading for several years. Through our coordination of the Step Up Migrant Women campaign and our work on safe reporting issues, we have consistently challenged the structural inequalities faced by migrant survivors and advocated for equal access to protection, safety and justice regardless of immigration status. 

This work has never been more urgent. Across the UK, migrant victims and survivors face intersecting barriers that increase their risk of abuse, destitution, homelessness and exploitation. Recent immigration policy proposals and changes risk deepening these barriers and further deterring survivors from seeking support.

Current policies continue to prioritise immigration control over women’s safety, leaving migrant survivors excluded from life-saving support and access to justice. Despite growing evidence of these harms, there is still no comprehensive national framework addressing the needs of migrant women experiencing VAWG. 

“This partnership presents a critical opportunity for by and for organisations to work together across the four nations to challenge both national and local policies, strengthen accountability and drive systemic change so that migrant women can access safety and support without fear linked to their immigration status.

Despite years of advocacy and evidence building, migrant women continue to face systemic barriers to protection shaped by immigration policies that prioritise control over protection. The government has yet to respond with a comprehensive policy framework that addresses these gaps and truly protects migrant women across services.  

For LAWRS, this project is pivotal. This is an opportunity for us to expand years of work on safe reporting mechanisms, led by our Step Up Migrant Women campaign, and to take our knowledge and expertise beyond London at a time when coordinated actions across the UK and the VAWG sector is more urgent than ever.” - Gisela Valle, Director, Latin American Women’s Rights Service

At its core, this work is about transforming systems that have consistently failed migrant survivors. It is about building safety, trust and access to justice for women who are too often excluded from protection because of their immigration status.

This is a pivotal moment. As the government has pledged to halving VAWG within the next decade, it is essential that migrant women are not left out of that commitment. Through this partnership, migrant victims and survivors and specialist ‘by and for’ organisations will be at the heart of change.

by lawrsuk

Privacy Preference Center

Privacy Preferences