The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in the other place by my honourable friend the Minister of State for Immigration, Tom Pursglove, on immigration. The Statement is as follows:
“This Government are committed to reducing immigration—both legal and illegal—into the UK. Legal immigration has risen in recent years in part because we have extended the hand of friendship to people fleeing conflict and persecution in Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. That was the right thing to do. But another factor has been rising numbers of overseas students and workers and their dependants, which have risen to unsustainable levels. The steps that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced last year to cut net migration will mean that around 300,000 people who would have been eligible to come to the UK will now not be.
We have restricted most students from bringing dependent family members, increased the salary that most skilled worker migrants need to earn to get a visa by almost 50% to £38,700, stopped overseas care workers bringing dependent family members with them, raised the minimum income for family visas to ensure that people are supported financially, and scrapped the 20% going rate salary discount for shortage occupations and replaced the shortage occupation list with a new immigration salary discount list. The latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics show that net migration in the year to June 2023 was 672,000, 73,000 lower than six months earlier. These are provisional figures and we need to go further, but these are encouraging signs.
The latest statistics show that the numbers applying for skilled worker, health and care and study visas in the first three months of 2024 were down by 24% on the same period last year. We removed the right to bring dependants on the student visa route for those starting courses from 1 January other than those on postgraduate research programmes and government-funded scholarships. Applications for student dependant visas have fallen by 80% since our changes came into force. From 11 March 2024, we have stopped overseas care workers bringing family dependants, and have required social care firms in England to be Care Quality Commission-registered in order to sponsor visas. In the year ending September 2023, an estimated 120,000 dependants came via that route. In the first three months of 2024, applications for health and care visas were down by 28%. This is just the start; most of our changes have only just come into force.
Meanwhile, we remain committed to stopping the boats. Following Royal Assent to the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 and the ratification of our treaty with Rwanda, we can operationalise our plan to relocate illegal migrants to Rwanda. Rwanda is a safe country that has repeatedly shown its ability to offer asylum seekers a chance to build new and prosperous lives. It has a strong and successful track record in resettling people, hosting more than 135,000 refugees, and it stands ready to accept thousands more who want to rebuild their lives and who cannot stay in the UK. Once flights begin, we will have added another vital deterrent to crack down on the people-smuggling gangs who treat human beings as cargo. The first illegal migrants set to be removed to Rwanda have now been detained, following a series of nationwide operations this week. Operational teams within the Home Office have been working at pace to safely and swiftly detain individuals in scope for relocation to Rwanda, with more activity due to be carried out in the coming weeks. This action is a key part of the plan to deliver flights to Rwanda in the next few weeks.
We have made solid progress in stopping the boats but we need to finish the job. The number of small boat arrivals fell by more than a third in 2023, and our work with international partners prevented more than 26,000 crossings last year, as well as helping to dismantle 82 organised crime groups since July 2020. Our new agreement with Albania has cut Albanian small boat arrivals by more than 90%, and we recently signed a ground-breaking deal with FRONTEX—the European border and coastguard agency—which marks another crucial step in securing our borders. An initial cohort in the thousands of suitable cases for removal to Rwanda has been identified and placed on immigration bail, with strict reporting conditions. We have a range of measures in place to ensure that we remain in contact with individuals, including both face-to-face and digital reporting, and Immigration Enforcement has a range of powers to trace and locate any individuals who abscond, as well as a dedicated team of tracing officers who work with the police, other government agencies and commercial companies to help trace individuals and bring them back into contact. It would be inappropriate to comment further on operational activity.
Immigration has enriched this country beyond measure, but it needs to be sustainable and it needs to be fair. Legal immigration should be focused on helping those in genuine need, and on ensuring that our economy has the skills it needs to flourish. It is simply not right for those who can afford to pay gangsters to jump ahead of those who would play by the rules and whose need is greater. No one needs to flee to the UK from a safe country such as France. Illegal immigration and unsustainable legal migration both place intolerable burdens on communities, and over time they will undermine support for immigration in general, which would be a tragedy. That is why the Government have a plan, which we are putting into action. There is further to go but we are seeing the positive impact of it already. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and I am sorry that he has been given the task of defending what reads more like a press statement on the eve of an election than an update on overall policy, but perhaps I am prejudiced. I am sorry that the Statement does not extend to putting our policy into an international context and telling the House anything about work being done with international partners.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I am interested in this well-covered story of the individual who has received £3,000 under the old scheme to go to Rwanda. What support will he receive to help him settle in? Will he have to pay for it out of the £3,000? Can the Minister give a breakdown of the number of asylum seekers who are not missing but who cannot be found? How many are due to report within the next week, the next month and so on? What is the “range of measures” to remain in contact with those people and how does the Home Office know where they are when they are reporting digitally? Will the Government keep the House updated on this?
The Statement refers to the minimum income requirement for family visas, which we will be debating the week after next. We have just debated overseas care workers bringing dependants, so I will ask some questions about students—most, but not all, of whom similarly cannot bring dependent family members—and about young people.
On students, where has there been a reduction in student visa applications? Is there data to show which courses have a reduction in international student numbers? Have the Government consulted universities recently about the impact of international student numbers on their university funding? Is the reduction in numbers reflected more in certain nationalities than others? What would be the long-term impact on university funding? Has an assessment been made of the impact of the policy to reduce international student numbers on the soft power that creates for the UK internationally?
With regard to young people, the youth mobility visa scheme offered by the EU has been rejected by the Government and I understand that Labour takes the same view. Why have the Government rejected this out of hand? Details would need to be negotiated but it is a sensible proposition. It would boost our economy—especially in hospitality and tourism—offer important opportunities for young people to live and work abroad and have an important role in our relationship with the rest of Europe. Why have the Government rejected the proposal?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for those questions. I will start with the cohort that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, referred to. He asserted that of the 5,700 that have been identified, the Home Office has located only 2,143. This is not accurate. In preparation for flights taking off, we have identified the initial cohort to be removed to Rwanda, as was said in the Statement, and have dedicated caseworkers who are ready to process any claims. An initial cohort of around 2,000 suitable cases has been identified for removal. They have been placed on immigration bail with strict reporting conditions. For those outside this group, there is still a wide range of tools to maintain contact with them, including face-to-face and digital reporting, while many individuals are also residing in Home Office accommodation. We are confident of their whereabouts. Once the decision to detain is made, this is just one of the cohorts of people who may be eligible for removal to Rwanda.
As to those who may or may not get sent to Rwanda, I am not qualified to comment on those particular statistics. I certainly did not recognise the one that the noble Lord quoted from the Refugee Council, so I will refer back to Hansard and, if I may, I will reply in more detail. On money, I do not know how much more has been released to Rwanda. I am basically up to date with what I read in the papers, which is that when the treaty was ratified there was another release—but, again, I may have to come back and correct the record on that.
The noble Lord asked me again, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the impact assessment. As I said on the previous group, the intention is to publish this as soon as possible. There are a number of assumptions in there that are being reworked, and as soon as those are solved or sorted, it will come around.
The noble Lord did acknowledge that I have already answered a lot of the questions that he posed about the domestic workforce, the plans we have in place and the cross-departmental work with DHSC and DWP—so I will not rehash all that, because it would bore the House to tears. On his final question about the volunteer who flew to Rwanda, as I understand it, he qualifies for the five-year support package, as outlined in the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised the issue of students. We expect to see a surge of applications in the summer as students tend to apply for their visa in advance of their course start date, most commonly in September. We have asked the Migration Advisory Committee to look at the whole student situation; I am not quite sure when it is due to report back, but it will certainly do so in due course, and I am sure we will discuss its findings.
The noble Baroness also asked me to comment on a large number of operational matters. I am afraid I will not do that, for very obvious reasons, but I will recount some of the work that is being done with our international partners, particularly on the policing and law enforcement side. As noble Lords will be aware, to stop boats launching we signed the biggest ever deal with France; we have doubled the organised immigration crime funding for the National Crime Agency; and, as I mentioned again in the opening Statement, last year the French stopped 26,000 boats launching and we took down 82 gangs. Since the inception of the UK-France Joint Intelligence Cell, 24 organised crime groups have been dismantled, with 12 in 2023; and 280 people smugglers were arrested in 2023, including 94 pilots of small boats. The NCA also conducted the biggest ever international operation targeting networks suspected of using small boats for people smuggling, with 136 boats and 45 outboard engines seized. Over 150 small boats and engines have been seized as a result of the work of law enforcement in the UK.
On working with EU partners, illegal migration, as noble Lords will be aware, at the EU’s external border is growing dramatically. It is the highest it has been since the 2016 migration crisis. There were about 380,000 irregular crossings at the EU’s external border in 2023, showing a 17% increase from 2022 and indicating a consistent upward trend over the past three years. But the UK is committed to working with our European partners on these issues, both bilaterally and multilaterally, including at the EU level. I have mentioned FRONTEX —I could go on. There are an awful lot of interesting EU and broader European initiatives taking place, but I do not want to bore the House and I will not go through all the details now.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, I cannot resist a buy one, get one free offer, so I want to come back in on the health and social care workforce, as we have this opportunity, and pick up one of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, made around transparency and the impact of the Government’s policies on the workforce. It may be that this is one of those happy occasions where the Government can eat their cake and have it, by both reducing immigration and filling the gaps in the social care workforce, but it may also be that the two are in tension. It is really important and I hope the Minister will at least commit to transparency around that, because I do think the public are grown-up enough to have a conversation around this. They do not just need to hear from the Government that it is all fine on both counts if it is not. So I hope we will get the data that we need to understand and make a grown-up choice. If there is a trade-off between reducing immigration and filling the social care workforce, we should have a public discussion about that.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I completely agree with the noble Lord; of course we should. We have to monitor those statistics to make sure that the sector has what it needs, but also that the system suits the domestic issues that we have been discussing as well.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, the Minister and your Lordships will be aware of the frequent denunciations of the Government’s policy on immigration by Irish politicians. Indeed, members of the Irish Government have denounced the Rwanda policy in very derogatory terms. Yet, having done so, they now seek to return to the UK those who say they are fleeing the UK because of the Rwanda policy. It is one of the many ironies of the situation: a Government who wanted an open border in all circumstances now want to send police to the border to ensure that there are controls there, and so on and so forth.
It is not lost on many people in Northern Ireland that Brit bashing becomes very fashionable as Irish politicians head into an election, but can the Minister assure me that Northern Ireland will not become a dumping ground for people returned from the Irish Republic? Although the Irish Government talk about 80% of people coming in through Northern Ireland, they have not produced any real evidence as to the actual figures. Can we be assured that Northern Ireland will not become a dumping ground and that there will not be any people border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom? Can he also outline what the understanding is, which the Irish Taoiseach has referred to as already being in existence between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic, about the return of people coming into the Irish Republic from the UK illegally? Can he tell us what that understanding amounts to and whether it has any force of law?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I would also reflect on the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made the point relatively recently that there is no deterrent effect, but clearly that is not being represented in the facts on the ground.
I shall to an extent repeat what my honourable friend said in the other place, which is that
“this Government are resolutely opposed to a hard border on the island of Ireland”.
He said that he understood that
“the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has requested an urgent meeting with the Irish Government to seek assurances that there will be no adverse implications for the smooth operation of either the common travel area or the Good Friday agreement. That is an important meeting and he is right to seek it. I reiterate that we would welcome a returns agreement with the EU. We think it is right that we explore those opportunities and we will continue to pursue that”.
Beyond that, I am afraid I cannot comment. It would be wrong of me to comment on the stories about the Irish police and the border. Much as I would not comment on operational matters in this country, I certainly will not on those in another. Obviously, higher-level discussions are still ongoing, which would, I think, address the last part of the noble Lord’s question. I am sure there will be much more to be said about that in the coming days.