Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2011

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Avebury

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for his careful explanation of the order that is in front of us.

This order is drawn to the special attention of the House by the Merits Committee, but it does not say what is unusual about the order or what distinguishes it from other orders covered by the same report; particularly the three orders dealing with amendments of fees for other services. According to its terms of reference, there are four grounds on which the Merits Committee may draw the attention of the House to an instrument, draft or proposal, and in this case your Lordships may think that the only ones that might apply—or should apply—are,

“that it is politically or legally important or gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House”.

Assuming that is the case, the only matters of substance raised in the delegated legislation Committee of another place were the effect of the order on Bangladeshi and Chinese restaurants, and the question of whether UKBA would be able to cope with the workload of dealing with applications.

Since the Government have taken steps to reduce the number of immigrants the burden will be eased, but the 5,200 cut in UKBA staff is more than proportional to the reduction in the number of cases that they are expected to process.

The predicted effect of the fee increases on applications varies between zero and 2.5 per cent in the case of an application by a tier four student to change his course, which has been free in the past but is now to cost £386. On top of that, the requirements for tier four applicants have been tightened up further. Applicants from outside a university, for example, will have to present a test certificate from an independent test provider of their competence in English to level B2. It would be surprising if these new requirements did not have a larger deterrent effect, and I would be grateful if my noble friend could give us his estimate of the drop in the number of tier four applicants expected from the Home Secretary’s announcement last month. We need this to be able to assess the expected increase in the average productivity of immigration officers dealing with tier 4 cases, and hence to get a feeling of whether the reduction in UKBA staff numbers can be managed without damaging the quality of their decisions.

The rationale of the order is that fees should be set at the correct level to ensure that the income generated contributes adequately towards the costs of running the immigration system. The impact assessment estimates that UKBA income will rise by £65 million as a result of the fee changes proposed, but what will the total income be, and how close will the UKBA be to balancing income with expenditure after the cuts have taken place? I apologise to my noble friend for not having given notice of the questions that I am asking as I would normally do; I just did not have the time.

I understand that the Government have decided to defer implementing the proposed cuts in the UKBA until they have disposed of the remaining legacy cases. Will my noble friend confirm that? How many of those cases were still on the books at the latest convenient date, and what has been the average rate of completion of those cases since the start of 2011? They have always been pretty vague about when the legacy cases are going to be completed. I should have thought, as we were approaching the end of the process, that it ought to be possible to be a bit more precise now.

Under what conditions may the fees themselves be waived? For example, the fees for the registration of a minor as a British citizen are rising significantly. This is money that is intended not just to cover the administrative cost of the application but to make a profit for the UK Border Agency. If a child is prevented from registering as a British citizen for no other reason than a fee, designed to make profits for the UKBA, how does that meet the “child’s best interests” principle under the convention on the rights of the child, to which the Government are a signatory?

I have had a letter just now from Cambridge Assessment, which I think is a firm that is well known to the UKBA for supplying services in English-language skills. It expresses concern that those who cannot pay fees may not be able to learn crucial skills that they need to find work and play a positive role in their communities, as we would all wish. I have not had a chance to discuss this in detail with Cambridge Assessment, but the firm has asked me for a discussion and I am intending to meet it and go into these points in more detail. Has the Minister considered the effects on people who do not contribute to society because they are unable to find the fee for the English-language test?

Another important question relates to the ministerial authorisation on race discrimination, which was covered by a letter on 21 March from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association to the Minister, Damian Green, of which I have seen a copy. This permits the refusal of applications on grounds of specified nationality and the making of additional requirements or examinations that would not be required of another nationality and that may lead to refusal. The applicant will not know, because the specified nationalities will not be made public. He or she will have paid the fee —which is much higher than in previous years and is increasing again—but may be refused by reason of his or her nationality and not on the strength of his or her application. Perhaps the noble Earl would comment on that.

The ILPA letter also makes the general point that if the UKBA is to make a profit from charging fees, it should deliver a commensurate service. For instance, its service standards include timeframes within which applications should be dealt with, but it constantly fails to meet them. There is also the grossly unfair practice of refusing an application that would have been approved under the rules in operation at the time it was made because the rules changed some time later. The least that should happen in those circumstances is that the fee should be refunded.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Earl for his introduction and detailed and helpful explanation, and for agreeing to answer questions not necessarily confined to this order. As he said, the fees contained in the order are set in the context of the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2011, which we debated some weeks ago.

I was interested by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I have not taken it that this has been drawn to the special attention of the House. There are three categories in the report: instruments drawn to the special attention of the House, other instruments of interest and instruments that are not drawn to the special attention of the House and which presumably are not thought to be of interest either. That probably explains why the Merits Committee has not given any further explanation of its consideration of this. I suspect that it has an intrinsic interest in the fees structure arising from the decision of the Government to move to a flexible charging model aimed at allowing the UKBA to generate sufficient revenue.

The noble Lord raised very apposite questions. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will not be surprised if I mention the context in which we debate this, and the responsibilities of the UKBA. The agency is expecting a reduction of 5,000 staff. Almost every day, Ministers talk about the new responsibilities of the UKBA. I have raised this matter on a number of occasions but have yet to receive a response to my concern about whether the UKBA is in a position to take a massive reduction in the number of its staff when it is having new responsibilities constantly placed on it. Perhaps the noble Earl will comment on that.

We have already discussed the principle of the fees increase. This is our opportunity to look at some of the detail, and I will ask the noble Earl a few questions. Annexe 5 contains an interesting estimate of the decrease in annual applications. The estimate appears to be related in part to elasticity assumptions contained in Annexe 4. I note that on page 12 of the impact assessment there is some discussion of the methodology of estimating the decrease in applications. I will not tempt fate or put the noble Earl through agony by asking for an explanation of the methodology, but perhaps he would comment on how robust the methodology is, and how accurate are the estimates in Annexe 5. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, suggested, they will have a knock-on impact on the resources that will be made available to the UKBA.

I also refer the noble Earl to page 13 of the impact assessment, where the consequence of the fees increase is expected to cost the UK economy £24.4 million in 2011-12, and £89.4 million over the next four years. My reckoning from the tables contained there is that the net result, taking account of the extra income through the fee charges, is a very small benefit of around £4 million per year. Can the noble Earl confirm that? To me, this means that the benefits are therefore extremely marginal. They might be advantageous in relation to Home Office funding and the funding of the UKBA, but because of the consequences to the UK economy, the overall profit and loss account seems to come out even. On that basis, can the noble Earl comment on whether this is really an appropriate way forward?