Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2016

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the Committee considers this statutory instrument. This fees order is to be made using the charging provisions in Sections 68 to 70 of the Immigration Act 2014, which consolidated and simplified the charging provisions from three previous Acts. The order sets out the maximum amounts that may be charged for broad categories of immigration and nationality functions for the next four years, which is the expected life of the order. Maximum fee amounts are ceilings which limit the amount that may be charged in subsequent fee regulations.

Like the previous order, the maximum amount for each category is set to accommodate the highest individual fee in each category. In most cases, the categories will contain a number of different, individual fees. I want to make it exceptionally clear that the maximum amounts are not targets that the Home Office will seek to charge by the end of the four-year period. These maximums will allow the Home Office to adjust fees within these ceilings in order to be responsive over the next four years to the needs of customers, the department and the taxpayer, and to meet the Government’s objective of a border, immigration and citizenship system by 2019-20 that is fully funded by those who use it and benefit most, as announced in the spending review.

The fees order will also enable us to expand the scope of our premium service fees, which will facilitate the introduction of new services in addition to those already offered. The amendments will also provide greater flexibility to deliver services directly to customers and organisations that request increased or tailored levels of support. The introduction of such premium services does not replace or seek to charge for those services that are currently provided for free. We continue to ensure that the appropriate measures are in place to enable scrutiny of our proposals, while immigration and nationality fees will continue to be transparent and set in the best interests of the United Kingdom.

The legislative framework does not allow for the Home Office to put up fees whenever it likes. The legislation requires that immigration and nationality fees proposals must be considered and approved by Her Majesty’s Treasury. They are also agreed by the cross-governmental home affairs committee and an impact assessment is produced on the proposals prior to fees legislation being presented to Parliament. We expect that most fee levels will be subject to an annual review during the four-year period and that fee level changes will be subject to the same cross-governmental approval process. The individual fee levels will be set out in negative regulations. We expect shortly to lay regulations setting out the fees for 2016-17.

We have published a fees table that shows our intentions for individual fees in 2016-17, and I will now explain our proposals. Consideration of the impact of fees on businesses, educational institutions and economic growth continues to be balanced with the government policy that users of a system should pay more towards its costs and therefore reduce the burden on the UK taxpayer. To support the Government’s approach towards recovering an increased proportion of immigration and visa costs and the transition to a self-financing border, immigration and citizenship system, we propose to apply incremental increases to most immigration and nationality categories.

The proposed increases do not impose any additional costs on business. To support economic growth, we intend to make relatively small fee increases for applications related to work, study and visit, which will increase by 2% next year. For example, the fees for short-term visit visas and tier 4 student visas would rise by £2 and £6 respectively.

A number of visa and immigration fees will continue to be set at or below the estimated processing cost. The highest proposed increases in fees in 2016 are for optional services that offer an enhanced level of convenience and for routes that provide the most benefits and entitlements —for example, requests for enhanced application services and for indefinite leave to remain.

I know that noble Lords will all support a border and immigration system that controls immigration for the benefit of the UK while improving services to customers and reducing the cost to the taxpayer. I believe that this fees order, as an enabling provision, will help us to achieve this, and I commend it to the committee.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining the order. I am, however, a little confused about how much revenue the Home Office intends to generate through this mechanism. The Explanatory Memorandum states:

“This Order sets out chargeable immigration functions and maximum fee amounts which provide for immigration fees to increase at a rate above inflation”.

Understandably, it could be that in order to ensure that the cost of processing these applications—for visas or whatever—is met, the fees have to be set above inflation because the cost of processing them is increasing at a rate above inflation. No one would have any concern about full cost recovery. One would expect that a person applying for a visa would pay the full cost of providing that service.

The impact assessment talks about the Home Office having to ensure that fees for immigration and nationality services make a substantial contribution to the cost of running the immigration system. This seems slightly different from simply recovering the costs incurred. The impact assessment goes on to say that government intervention is necessary to ensure a balanced Home Office budget. It later states that,

“the Home Office estimates that 100% of the costs of front-line Immigration, Border and Citizenship operations will be recovered through fees”.

It goes on to say that it is right that,

“those who use and benefit directly from the UK migration system make an appropriate contribution to meeting its costs”.

Later it refers to the comprehensive spending review, which requires further reductions in the Home Office budget over the next four years. This suggests that fees are being increased simply to cover a hole in the Home Office budget created by the comprehensive spending review. Indeed, the impact assessment says that some fees are set above the cost of delivery. It goes on to say that significant efficiency savings are being made in the immigration system within the Home Office, but that:

“It is appropriate that any remaining shortfall”—

presumably the shortfall in the funding provided by the comprehensive spending review—

“should be met by those who use and benefit from the service”.

The Minister has just said that the immigration service works to the benefit of the UK. It is therefore not simply a case of the immigration system working for the benefit of those people who seek leave to visit the UK or to remain; it benefits all of us. Are those people who apply—that is, only those on whom the Home Office can impose a fee—going to be landed with the shortfall between the efficiency savings and what is provided by the comprehensive spending review for the immigration services? It does not seem reasonable that we should penalise those seeking visas and other services simply because the comprehensive spending review penalised the Immigration Service in that settlement.

Can the Minister reassure the Committee that these fee increases will not be used to target certain categories of applicant? There could be a potential for discrimination if that were the case. How much of the shortfall in the Home Office funding for the Immigration Service do the Government expect to make up by increasing the fees? Are we talking about the overall Home Office funding shortfall, the shortfall in front-line immigration services or the shortfall in the services that provide visas and so on?

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his explanation of the purpose and intention of this SI. The order sets out the functions in connection with immigration and nationality for which the Secretary of State may charge a fee, including how fees are to be calculated and maximum fee amounts. Specific fees will be set within the agreed limits in regulations subject to the negative resolution procedure.

The Government’s objective in doing this is to achieve a self-financing border, immigration and citizenship system. This SI replaces the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2015 and is intended to sustain increases to fees set out in subsequent regulations under the negative procedure over the next four years.

In similar vein to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is it the intention that the fees set will be related to an applicant’s ability to pay? That does not appear to be a factor to be taken into consideration. If that is not the case, how will the requirement under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 be met? Under that section, the Secretary of State is required to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in the UK in carrying out any function in relation to immigration, asylum or nationality. Such an issue may surely arise if an adult applies for settlement but does not apply for a child or children at the same time because they cannot afford the fee. Presumably Section 55 makes it affordable for children and their families who meet the criteria to make immigration applications for a secure status.

The order sets out the maximum fee for a review of a decision in connection with immigration or nationality, which I think is £400. The Government argued during the passage of the Immigration Act 2014 that administrative review would be cheaper than bringing an appeal. However, the proposed maximum suggests that that might not necessarily be the case. Do the Government intend to provide an independent appeals procedure?

The fees provided for in the SI are uneven and, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, suggest that they are being used as a means to encourage or deter would-be applicants from particular groups or categories from making applications. Is that in fact the Government’s approach so far as setting the fees is concerned? It would appear to be the case.

Table 6 of the order makes provision for fees for expedited processing. This almost brings us back to the discussion we had yesterday about tier 1. It is already the case that premium service centres are offered by the Home Office and generate considerable revenue for it. However, some have argued that a twin-track system is developing in which insufficient attention is paid to ensuring that ordinary applications are processed in a timely manner. Those who are rich or desperate or both can pay for the premium service. There is a concern that more premium services, which are forecast and provided for under this SI, would mean a second-class service for everyone else. That concern has been expressed and raised in a number of quarters. Is that a fair comment or concern? It would seem to have some validity. If the response is going to be, “No, it is not a fair comment or concern”, why would the Government say that that was not the case?

The Minister mentioned in his explanation that the intention was that there would be no further increases in the maximum amounts in this SI within the next four years—or at least, as I understood it, they were to be there for the following four years. Can the Government give a guarantee that this will happen and that those maximum figures to which reference was made will not be increased again over the four-year period, or during the four-year period to which the Minister referred? We have concerns about the level of some of these fees because some of the incremental increases are indeed quite considerable. Obviously, the aim of some of the questions I have raised is to seek the Government’s response to those points.