Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Avebury

Monday 12th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, who made a very powerful speech. I welcome the fact that there has been movement on the part of the Government in these amendments, and I very much welcome the helpful questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who has played such a role in getting us to where we are now. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, acknowledged, some people may still be made stateless as a result of the clause. Therefore, I am not as happy as some other noble Lords appear to be—or perhaps content is the word—and I support Motion B1.

In the Commons, some of the most pertinent questioning came from the Government’s own Back Benches. Sir Richard Shepherd asked,

“how the people of Britain will know that the action has been taken in a rational and reasonable way, when it is obscured from public view”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 194.]

Dr Julian Huppert asked:

“What will happen if somebody in the UK goes through the process, the Home Secretary believes that they are able to get citizenship from another country and they make a bona fide application for that citizenship, but it is turned down?”.

In effect, this was also the question posed today by my noble friend. When pressed—and he had to be pressed—the Minister, James Brokenshire, responded that they could be given,

“limited restricted leave to remain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 196.]

But that is not a satisfactory substitute for citizenship and the rights that go with it.

My noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and others have expressed very grave concerns that the Government may well be waiting for someone to be out of the country to deprive them of citizenship. One concern of the Joint Committee on Human Rights was how often that has happened under the current powers. I very much welcome the fact that the Minister said he has responded to the Joint Committee’s latest letter about that and that he will make that information available to whoever is given responsibility for the review. I thank him for that.

In the Commons, James Brokenshire prayed in aid the fact that the matter had been considered by the Joint Committee on Human Rights as well as in another place—that is, here—to argue that,

“it is not correct to say that it has not been subject to careful consideration”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 213.]

Indeed, the Minister made the same point earlier. But the Joint Committee on Human Rights was very critical of the speed with which this measure was introduced and we—I am a member of the committee—made it very clear that we believed that a public consultation,

“would have made for better informed parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s proposal”,

and that the Joint Committee that was proposed would allow for just that kind of proper scrutiny.

Your Lordships’ House made it very clear that it did not consider that there had been sufficient scrutiny by passing the amendment with such a significant majority. The only thing that has happened since then is that the House of Commons has debated for only 90 minutes something of such grave constitutional and moral importance. I really think that the case for a Joint Committee still stands. Indeed, the Home Affairs Select Committee, which published its report on counterterrorism after the debate in the Commons, has supported Lords Amendment 18, which underlines the point made by a number of organisations outside this House that the measure does not guarantee security against terrorism in any way.

I, too, have read the legal debate between the Government and Professor Goodwin-Gill. As a non-lawyer, I am not in a position to be able to judge that debate. Surely, however, the fact that there is such disagreement reinforces the case for a Joint Committee to tease out these very serious legal matters. The Floor of the House is not the place to do that. As the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, has already made clear, so much is at stake. I quoted earlier the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who is now in his place, because what he said was so important. He said:

“Statelessness is one of the most terrible things that can befall anyone”.—[Official Report, 19/3/14; col. 212.]

The Minister spoke of the evil of statelessness. Another expert in this area said that statelessness was a recipe for exclusion, precariousness and dispossession.

We have not completely averted the danger that we will make somebody stateless as a result of the amendment, welcome as it is. I hope, therefore, that noble Lords will stand firm and support Motion B1 because the amendment does not provide a cast-iron guarantee against the evil of statelessness.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

Like other noble Lords, I welcome the concessions that have been made by the Government which do, to an extent—although this could be argued—reduce the risk that an individual might become stateless. However, the risk still exists and I still have some concerns apart from those that have been expressed so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I agree that we need answers to those questions, but I would like to touch on some other concerns.

We have already heard that the Government recognise what the Supreme Court called, in the case of Al-Jedda, “the evil of statelessness”. They now purport to address that evil by providing in their Amendment 18A that the Secretary of State has “reasonable grounds for believing” that the individual she is depriving of his citizenship will be able to become a citizen of some other state to which he formerly belonged. That assumption has been made by other states from time to time, including—as the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association has pointed out—the Dominican Republic, in the case of persons born in Haiti, and Zimbabwe, in the case of all residents who might have had a claim through having been born in some other country. In the UK, too, the Government asserted for many years that persons of Indian origin who lived in Hong Kong had the right to reclaim the nationality of China—until finally in 2006 we satisfied them that they were wrong.

No doubt Ministers will say that what is now proposed is different, because instead of treating a whole class of persons the same, each case will be examined individually. However, in the case of the people who were formerly dual Malaysians and British Overseas Citizens, and had renounced their Malaysian citizenship in the hope of getting full British citizenship, they had all applied individually and had all been rejected. It was only after several years of correspondence and meetings with Ministers that in October 2013 the then Minister wrote to me asserting that an agreement had been reached with the former Malaysians on a scheme under which they would return to their country of origin, where they could enter a process of regaining the equivalent of indefinite leave to remain after five years; and after a further unspecified time, they would be able to resume Malaysian citizenship. During the whole of that period they would of course remain effectively stateless, as they had been during the latter years of their residence in the United Kingdom.

I wrote to the new Minister, James Brokenshire, on 11 February, asking if I could have a copy of the agreement he had reached with the Malaysians, having had no response to a verbal request made to his predecessor. I also asked about the experience of the one guinea pig returnee under the new arrangement. Having had no answer, I wrote again on 15 March, reminding the Minister of my earlier letter. After two further months, I had had no reply until, finally, after a telephone call this morning, the Minister’s reply arrived by e-mail.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Avebury

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, we have made several attempts in previous legislation to remove the disadvantage which illegitimate children suffer compared to their legitimate siblings in citizenship law. Some children born to British fathers who are not married to their non-British mothers are still not entitled to inherit their father’s citizenship. Since 1983, that applies to a child born out of wedlock in the UK to a British father and a mother who is neither British nor settled in the UK—an anomaly that was only partially redressed by Section 9 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. That section restored the right of such a child to British citizenship if he or she was born on or after 1 July 2006, leaving an arbitrary gap of 23 years from the date in 1983 prior to which all children born in the UK automatically acquired British citizenship.

The parents of such a child can apply to register him or her as a British citizen while he or she is still a minor, and the Home Office normally, but not invariably, exercises discretion in favour of those applications under Section 3(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981, but once he or she reaches the age of 18 there is no provision that allows him or her to become British—an irrational barrier, because it relies on the parents being aware of the qualified right and acting on it in time. There are examples on record of parents who discover the 2006 change too late.

The proposed new clause would allow a child born to a British father who is not married to their mother, and for that reason alone not British, to register as a British citizen. It assists a child born abroad to a father who is British otherwise than by descent to become British himself, and deals with the gap between 1983 and 2006 for the child born out of wedlock to a British father and a woman who is not British or settled in the UK. That would enable us to withdraw our reservation to the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which declares in paragraph 2 of Article 9:

“States parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children”.

The UK Government said that our acceptance of Article 9,

“shall not, how ever, be taken to invalidate the continuation of certain temporary or transitional provisions which will continue”,

beyond January 1983.

Discrimination in our citizenship has continued well beyond what might be considered temporary or transitional. Discrimination against women was corrected only by Section 4C of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2006, and discrimination against men has been corrected only for their children born after 1 July 2006. We now have the opportunity to put this last piece of the jigsaw in place so that we can ratify the convention and sign up to the European Convention on Nationality. I hope that your Lordships will therefore agree to the amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be able to support the amendment, although I was not able to put my name down to it fast enough. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has made the case for it very well. As I understand it, the Government accept the merits of the case and the substance of the amendment but, in the Public Bill Committee, questioned whether it lay within the scope of the Bill and suggested that there were better ways to take this forward. Presumably, as the amendment has been accepted by the Public Bill Office here, it is within the scope of the Bill.

I am not sure how many people are likely to be involved—perhaps the Minister could give us an estimate. As the Government said about Clause 60, it is the principle, not the number, that matters here. Even if it is only a handful, it matters to those people. I hope that the Minister will be able to come back with an amendment at Report to rectify what is clearly an unfair and anomalous piece of discrimination, based on the outmoded status of illegitimacy—indeed, what I would call an illegitimate status.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Avebury

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

Given that the Minister was able to slip out of answering this point on Monday—it did not seem fair to push him on it after he had covered so many points—perhaps I might remind him about the evidence base for health tourism. I have a snippet of information that one piece of research that the Department of Health is relying on is that, out of nearly 1,000 migrants screened by overseas visitors officers in more than 15 trusts during August 2013, only four individuals—0.4% of the sample—were identified as “health tourists”. Even if the Minister cannot now tell us what the evidence is for this claim of health tourism, I would be grateful if he could commit to write specifically on this issue, given that it kind of got left out of his last letter.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, when the noble Lord is replying on that point, will he deal with story of the 300 maternity patients who were alleged to have been treated at St Thomas’s hospital? When we last discussed this, the allegation was found to have been apocryphal. I would be grateful if the Minister would repudiate it.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Avebury

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, in opposing the question that the Schedule be agreed, I do not wish to reopen the debates we have already had about the damaging impact it will have on some of the most deprived members of our community. I hope I can take it as read that I oppose this schedule in the same way that I have opposed the clauses. Instead, on the helpful advice of the Public Bill Office, I wish to use this debate as an opportunity to draw attention to the needs of an even more deprived and vulnerable group who cannot even count on a miserable 1% increase in benefits, and that is asylum-seeking families reliant on asylum support.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and I raised this issue briefly during Second Reading. The Minister responded, correctly, that asylum seeker benefit rates are a matter for the Home Office and are not within the scope of the Bill. He kindly said he would draw our remarks to the attention of colleagues in the Home Office. We are, of course, aware that asylum seeker benefit rates are not within the scope of the Bill; that is the very reason why we raise the question. They should be part of its scope and treated in the same way as other social security benefits when it comes to uprating policy. As I have given the Minister’s office notice that I planned to raise this issue in this context, I hope that the Minister will be able to address the substance of our remarks when she comes to respond.

The right reverend Prelate and I, together with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, remember the all-party parliamentary inquiry into asylum support for children and young people, set up by the Children’s Society. I would like to put on record my thanks to the Children’s Society for all the work it has done on this important issue and for its briefing for today’s debate. That briefing draws on the findings of our inquiry. We found that the current asylum support system is forcing thousands of children and young people seeking safety in the UK into severe poverty. We were shocked to hear of instances where children were left destitute and homeless, entirely without institutional support, and forced to rely on food parcels or charitable donations. This cannot be right.

It is estimated that there are 10,000 children living on asylum support. The panel heard powerful evidence of the reality for those living on as little as £5 a day, whose parents are forced to skip meals to feed their children and are unable to buy warm clothing in the winter. Some families find current levels of support particularly difficult, including pregnant women and lone mothers with young children—and families of a disabled child, because asylum support does not offer families any standard additional support when a family member has a disability. With regard to pregnant women, one particularly shocking example brought to our attention was a mother having to walk home from hospital in the snow with her newborn baby in her arms because she had no money.

Just last week, Maternity Action and the Refugee Council published a report which gave more examples of the problems faced by pregnant and nursing women who had insufficient money to meet their most basic needs. Most asylum-seeking parents are not allowed to work, leaving families totally reliant on state support; paid work is not a route out of poverty for them. Asylum support levels differ significantly from income support and other mainstream benefit levels. Until 1999, asylum support was set at 90% of income support, after which levels of support were reduced to 70%, with the justification that asylum seekers in accommodation no longer had to pay utility bills. There is currently no statutory provision to make an annual uprating of levels of asylum support in line with increasing costs of living. I acknowledge that the previous Government did not set a good precedent on the uprating of asylum support. I therefore hope that my own party will at least be open to rethinking our policy on this.

Asylum support rates have not been raised in 2012-13, so they have effectively been frozen without any announcement to justify this. When I asked a Written Question about this, the Answer was that there was not only no statutory obligation to carry out an annual review but no obligation even to make an announcement. There should be, in both cases. As it is, I was told:

“There are no current plans to change asylum support rates”,

although the Government,

“will continue to keep them under review”.—[Official Report, 15/1/13; col. WA 121.]

If the rates are frozen for a second year in succession, that will mean a cut of 6.2% in relation to income support payments over the last two years, making it even more difficult for families to survive. Can the Minister please explain which factors are taken into account when keeping asylum support rates under review? What is the actual process for deciding how and when they will be uprated?

The inquiry recommended that asylum support for families also provided with accommodation should be aligned with mainstream benefit rates paid for living expenses. Where accommodation includes utilities, which would normally be expected to be paid from living expenses, it is appropriate to make a deduction. However, such a deduction must be reasonable. The inquiry argued that the rates of support should never fall below 70% of income support. As it is, asylum support now bears no relation to income support.

The inquiry was particularly concerned about the situation of families on Section 4 support, which may be provided if a child is born after an asylum claim had been refused but where the family are, for some reason, unable to leave the UK. Almost 800 children are being supported under Section 4, some for many years. Under Section 4, the amount provided is even lower and the use of a cashless system—the azure card, as it is called—can be degrading and wasteful because it can be used only in certain designated shops. The inquiry recommended that this particularly inhumane form of asylum support be abolished entirely and replaced with a single cash-based support system for all children and their families who need asylum support while they are in the UK.

Given that asylum support rates were not increased in 2012-13, they should be raised as a matter of urgency for the 2013-14 financial year and thereafter increased annually, at the very least in line with income support, along with other benefits in the schedule. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain the rationale for treating asylum support differently from mainstream social security benefits when it comes to annual upratings. Ministers frequently refer to the Government’s ongoing review of asylum support when questioned on these issues, including recently in response to a Written Question from the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, which referred to our all-party inquiry. In his Written Answer, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, said that the Government would consider our findings as part of this ongoing review. Will the Minister please tell us whether the Government will respond to the all-party inquiry’s report? How long will this ongoing review go on, and when can we expect an outcome?

I would argue that a review of the treatment of one of the most deprived groups in our community should be treated with a little more urgency. It is shameful that we are willing to allow children and their parents who are seeking asylum in a rich country such as ours to continue to suffer in this way.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness that the payments made to people who have applied for asylum should be treated in the same way as any other benefits and should be subject to review by your Lordships. Instead, as the noble Baroness explained, there is no obligation to uprate the benefits or even to make a statement, nor, in particular, for the Government to explain whether they believe that the payments made to asylum seekers should bear any relationship to those on income support, or whether the two calculations are to be performed on an entirely different basis. If so, what is the underlying rationale behind the amounts paid to people on asylum support?

As the noble Baroness has already said, with her I was a member of the cross-party parliamentary inquiry organised by the Children’s Society into asylum support for children and young people, under the very able chairmanship of my honourable friend Sarah Teather, the former Minister for Children. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in expressing the concern and dismay that we all felt when listening to the stories of suffering and destitution of asylum seekers. The worst-off were those supported under Section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, many of whom were failed asylum seekers who could not be returned to their country of origin because it would not accept them. Under that provision, people have to live in housing and accommodation provided by private agencies, the standard of which often is grossly deficient and lacking in ordinary facilities.

I could not help noticing the contrast with the Statement made earlier today about the arrangements being made for our forces returning from Germany. Quite rightly, £1 billion is being spent on 1,900 new houses for those families, when nothing whatever is spent on the accommodation of people who have applied for asylum.

Section 4 provides support in the form of vouchers which can be redeemed only at certain shops. The value of the azure card, which is intended to provide for all essential living needs, is £70.78 a week, compared with income support for a couple with children of £123.35. Because they have no cash, as the noble Baroness has explained, the recipients cannot do many ordinary things, such as buying stamps, taking a bus or making a telephone call. She gave a particularly lurid example of evidence that we heard about a mother who had to undertake all sorts of physical arrangements with her small child as regards apparatus that was needed. My noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach said, in his brief answer to a question on asylum support on 24 January, that he was surprised to find that there were two levels of benefit within the asylum system. Indeed, one cannot imagine the motive for building this level of complexity into it.

Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Avebury

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. She has raised some very pertinent questions. While I want to focus on the income thresholds, I want also to draw attention to the concerns raised by BID, Bail for Immigration Detainees, about the implications for children of measures to ensure the deportation of foreign criminals.

BID’s experience is that wide powers already exist to deport foreign national ex-offenders, and in the very few appeals against this which are successful it is often because the courts have found that grave harm would be caused to a child by deporting the parents. It says that the Government are now seeking to prevent the courts from upholding the law to protect these families. In the view of BID, the measures do not allow for adequate consideration of the child’s best interests. For example, it does not follow that it is in a child’s best interests, if there is another relative that they can live with in the country, to live with that relative and to be permanently parted from their parents; or, say, if the parents have been in prison and the child has been living in foster care, for them to be deported with their parent to a country that they have never visited before.

Liberty, too, raises concerns about the implications of the changes for children and concludes:

“It is clear from the Government’s proposals that it is paying little more than lip service to the importance of UK children’s interests in immigration decisions … Far from placing children at the heart of immigration decisions, the proposed changes seek to relieve officials of the responsibility for weighing up the interests of a child in any but the most clear cut cases”.

I would welcome the Minister’s response to that and his explanation of how children’s interests will be safeguarded.

As we have heard, the Home Office’s human rights statement and the Home Secretary have emphasised that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the right to respect for privacy and family life, is a qualified right. As my noble friend Lady Smith has already said, we accept that. However, as Liberty argues, there is,

“a delicate balancing exercise to be struck between the rights of the individual and wider social interests in, for example, the reduction of crime and disorder and the protection of the economic interests of the UK”.

Liberty and I do not accept that the proposed changes,

“properly accommodate the fact-sensitive balancing exercise that the right demands”.

Liberty argues that instead they,

“represent a one-size-fits-all approach to complex immigration decisions. … Far from better reflecting the proportionality required under Article 8, the proposed changes seek to circumvent the crucial fact sensitive consideration of decisions involving fundamental rights”.

The Government argue that the income threshold is proportionate in meeting their legitimate aims of safeguarding the economic well-being of the UK. It is a sad day when the economic well-being of the UK depends on keeping apart a few thousand poor families each year without adequate attention being given to safeguarding the well-being of children and their families.

The Migrant Rights Network points out that, because of differences in earnings across different social groups, the new income requirement will disadvantage women, who we know are still on average paid less than men, some minority ethnic groups and people living outside the south-east. My noble friend gave an example that illustrated the unfairness of that fairly arbitrary or one-size-fits-all limit.

The Home Office human rights statement acknowledges that the income threshold may be challenged under Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights in terms of its equalities impact, particularly with regard to whether this constitutes unjustified indirect discrimination against these groups—for example, women and those nationalities who the evidence shows are likely to have lower earnings. Having raised this possibility, the Home Office’s only answer was that this will be mitigated in some cases by the exemption from the income threshold of those in receipt of carer’s allowance, and that certain contributory benefits such as maternity allowance will be allowed to count towards the income threshold. That is welcome as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Otherwise, the Home Office considers that any indirect discrimination is proportionate to public policy objectives. We will see, but I imagine that this will be tested in the courts.

I find it repugnant that we are going to means test family life. Means-testing generally purports to target help on the needy and exclude the better off. This is a reverse means test that excludes the needy, as if people on low incomes have nothing to contribute to this country. The existing “recourse to public funds” rule is already designed to prevent the supposed burden on the taxpayer that we hear so much about. According to Liberty, and as my noble friend has already said, it is being replaced by a far blunter instrument.

The impact statement makes a virtue of the shift from a more discretionary approach, which it says is complicated for caseworkers to operate, yet in other areas of policy the Government favour more discretionary approaches and say that we have to get away from a one-size-fits-all approach. Indeed, as Liberty argues, the proposed changes as a whole contain an armoury of blunt instruments which, far from better reflecting Article 8 and the Immigration Rules, may well leave the rules in breach of it.

The changes reflect badly on a Government who claim to be the most family-friendly Government ever and who are supposed to be applying a family test to all their domestic policy decisions, as they suggest that some families are considered not to matter because of their immigration status and their poverty.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, this is a very important debate, focusing as it does on family and children’s rights. We have all heard from organisations such as the ones that have been mentioned, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—Liberty, Bail for Immigration Detainees, and so on—and I shall rely on the evidence that has been given to them in my later remarks.

Since these changes were published, a further three sets of changes have appeared: HC 514 of eight pages, HC 565 comprising 56 pages and Cm 8423 with 276 pages. These latter two statements spell out in detail how decisions on leave to enter or remain are to be made, following the rulings of the Supreme Court in Alvi. To summarise, at the risk of oversimplification, Alvi said that statements in guidance and elsewhere that were not in the Immigration Rules, such as particular types of evidence that have to be submitted with an application, were unlawful because they had not been laid before Parliament as required by the parent Act. I realise that we are not talking about these subsequent statements of changes this evening, but obviously the legal advisers and their clients who are considering the effects of HC 194 will have to look at these other instruments as well. It would be astonishing if, given the length and complexity of all the changes taken together, there were not a steep rise in the number of applications rejected because of some minor omission or mistake.

My first example is from the organisation BritCits, which defends the interests of families who are affected by this set of changes. Rob is a British professional musician with a first-class degree in music. He has taught music and performed at concerts, has an eight year-old son and lives in a detached house in Huddersfield. He fell in love with and married an Indonesian woman and his wife applied for a spouse visa on 26 June. As a self-employed worker, he submitted three years of bank statements—originals and copies—and everything as requested, leaving no stone unturned. For over two months the message was that the application was under process at the British embassy, until early September when an e-mail arrived asking for the spouse to take an SELT English test. The e-mail indicated that if she did not submit this within seven days, the application would be rejected. Despite the short notice, the wife took the test and submitted it on time. A month later, they received a message saying that the application was refused because of the English test. Rob was amazed because his wife’s English was extremely good. On inquiry, they found that she had passed the reading, writing and listening requirements but had inadvertently omitted the speaking part. A lawyer advised them that the only remedy was to lodge a fresh application, at a cost of £900. The same thing happened to a friend of mine. It is not an uncommon experience for people to make a minor error and find that the whole application has been rejected. The UKBA does not give applicants a chance of remedying minor omissions of this sort.

The Motion says that the Government have not demonstrated that the specific minimum financial requirement is the most effective way to deliver fairness. That stricture can also be extended to the provisions dealing with savings. This may answer part of the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning: I quote the example of a woman with three children applying to join her husband who would have to show evidence of savings of £62,500, which is well beyond the resources of most young families.

A four-page guide produced by UKBA tells applicants that they need to read Appendix FM-SE, another 26 pages of dense prose, which was added to the rules on 20 July, specifying what supporting documents may or not be supplied as evidence of compliance with particular financial requirements. The sums involved are undoubtedly substantial and they mean that many spouses and children who would have been able to satisfy the previous requirement—that they could be supported and accommodated without reliance on public funds—will now be denied entry. That is, indeed, the letter of government policy. The Migration Advisory Committee estimates that if the financial requirement in this set of rules had been in force in 2011, it would have excluded 45% of successful applicants, even though all those spouses and children were assessed as not needing access to public funds.