Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2025

Lord Rowlands Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, this fees order sets out the immigration and nationality functions for which a fee is to be charged and the maximum amount that can be charged in relation to each of those functions. Within the order, we propose a number of changes that will facilitate major government policy.

Fees charged by the Home Office for immigration and nationality applications are an essential part of the department’s funding settlement and help to support the sustainable operation of the migration and borders system while reducing reliance on taxpayer funding. It is important, therefore, that we have sufficient flexibility within the department’s legislation to set fees at levels that support this funding approach. This amendment order will play an essential role in delivering this flexibility while also helping to ensure that our legislation remains current and reflects changes in the wider migration and borders system.

I will go into more detail on each of the changes that we propose, but, to summarise, this order covers a number of areas. First, it will increase the fee maxima that can be set for the electronic travel authorisation—ETA—for sponsorship on work routes, for naturalisation as a British citizen or British Overseas Territory citizen, and for certain nationality services. It will also remove the fee provision related to the electronic visa waiver and make consequential amendments to the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 to remove the fee.

I turn to the changes we propose to the fee maximas. The figures set out in this order act as a ceiling within which the Home Office is able to make changes to fee levels by laying separate legislation and seeking agreement across government. It is sensible to keep these maximas under review, to ensure that the order continues to support our fees and funding objectives. The changes we propose today, which are accompanied by an economic impact assessment, will provide the necessary flexibility to make changes to fee levels where they are required to ensure that the sustainability of the migration and borders system is maintained.

I emphasise that the actual fee levels that are charged to those seeking to enter or remain in the UK are not changing in this order. Any changes to the fee levels will be made through separate legislation and will also be accompanied by full economic impact assessments. However, in laying this order, we have sought to provide some clarity to Parliament and the public about our intention to increase certain fees when parliamentary time allows and when further orders are brought forward. We will, first, increase the fee maxima applying to an application for an electronic travel authorisation—ETA—from £15 to £16, in order to facilitate a subsequent increase in the chargeable fee from £10 to £16. The fee maxima that applies to certificates of sponsorship, which are assigned by employers to employees who need a visa to work and stay in the United Kingdom, will increase from £300 to £525. This maxima increase will also apply to the successor sponsor a worker process, which is being rolled out on a phased basis currently. In both cases, the chargeable fee for the main category of application will increase from £239 to £525.

We will also increase from £1,500 to £1,605 the fee maximum that applies to adult applications made to naturalise as a British citizen or a British Overseas Territory citizen. This will facilitate a subsequent increase in the chargeable fee for applications to naturalise a British citizen to the new maximum level. We will also increase the fee maxima that apply to various nationality-related services, which include an amendment to the certificate of registration or naturalisation and the supply of a certified copy of a document granted under current or former nationality Acts or, indeed, the supply of any of the documents specified in Table 7 in this fees order. All these will increase from £400 to £428. The review of a decision related to immigration and nationality will increase from £450 to £482, and the issuance of a document confirming that a person has the right of abode in the United Kingdom will be increased from £550 to £589.

To be clear to the Grand Committee, although we have announced our intention to increase fee levels later this year, they will not be increased until we lay separate legislation, the immigration and nationality fees regulation, which will be subject to agreement and approval by Parliament.

Finally, we will remove from this order the chargeable function from an electronic visa waiver and make the necessary amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Fees Regulations to remove the fee. This change is being made because the electronic fee visa waiver has been replaced by the ETA for nationals of Qatar from October 2023 and for nationals of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from February 2024. The changes we will be making through this order are vital to provide flexibility to amend fee levels. They will subsequently have to have the approval of Parliament to ensure that the system is sustainably funded. I emphasise once again, there is no fee increase today through this order, but I move the principle so that Parliament, the public and those who want to access those services know where they stand for a future planning purpose.

[Lord Rowlands (Lab)]

My Lords, it was my pleasure for the past three years to have served on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It has reported on a whole series of immigration and nationality fees, and it is in that context that I wish to raise a particular, serious issue that has arisen. That committee has never questioned the need or requirement for such fees, or that they should be appropriate and should match the costs. However, an extraordinary situation has arisen in the context of some of the fees that have been charged by the Home Office. That is, a whole series of fees have been charged unlawfully, in that it proved to be the case, after years of these fees being charged, that there is no statutory basis for doing so.

On top of that, worse is to follow. In fact, VAT has also in some cases been inappropriately served on some of these fees. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has drawn the special attention of the House to this extraordinary situation. The committee recommended that those fees that were considered unlawful should be suspended until such time as the matter had been resolved. The department refused to do so and, in fact, is continuing unlawfully to charge fees in some areas, despite the recommendations of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

I seek to draw attention to this extraordinary situation. I have been around for a very long time and have never come across the situation where a major government department has behaved in this way. In a three-year period, it collected £50 million without statutory authority. That is an astonishing situation. Therefore, we on the committee have been pressing—indeed, everybody should press—the department to resolve this legislative shambles that has occurred.

It appears that the possible resolution for this situation is that it may require retrospective legislation to sort it out. I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister, first, whether the department now agrees that it is necessary for such retrospective legislation to resolve this legislative fiasco? Secondly, if so, when will that be introduced? He cannot drag his feet any longer. This unlawful imposition of fees has been going on for a long time. I therefore ask the Minister to assure us not only that there will be such legislation but that it will be brought in promptly, so that the intolerable situation that has arisen can be resolved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the contributions from noble Lords and from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. I want to remind the Grand Committee of something it already knows, but it is worth putting it in context at the beginning: there is no increase today in the fee levels, and impact assessments for each potential future fee increase, if this order were to be approved, would be put in place. There would be an impact assessment for each potential new fee level determined by the Government, in due course. That fee level may or may not be put forward by them at some point in the future, up to the maxima being agreed today, and would include an assessment of the impact on tourism, jobs, investment, growth and on the appertaining costs of any fee as a whole.

I know that the Committee knows that, but it is worth putting it in context. This is the hors d’oeuvre to a meal; it is not the main meal, because that will come downstream when potential new fee levels are put before both Houses of Parliament for approval, with an appropriate impact assessment covering the many points made by Members here today.

I will start with my noble friend Lord Rowlands, who I am pleased to see in his place. We shared a long time together in the House of Commons and it is good to see him again here today. He touched on a very important point. First, there is the scrutiny of legislation by the statutory instruments committee, which was also touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. The points my noble friend made about that, and the performance of the Home Office, are well made. They were made in the previous debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton; I am hoping that they will not be made in future debates, for the reasons I outlined then. The Government intend to make sure that statutory instruments have proper Explanatory Memoranda and are thoroughly investigated and overseen by Ministers, and that measures which are brought forward are appropriate and testable by the SI committee, and defensible by Ministers accordingly.

My noble friend Lord Rowlands made a clear reference to the failure to provide legislative cover for fee increases. This was round about April of last year. My first defence is that, as he will know, I was not the Minister responsible at the time. Why it happened is a matter of conjecture, but it has. I am not going to put the proverbial political boot in to previous Ministers or officials. That is where we are and, in their defence, there was a general election, which has impacted upon any timescales to rectify that error, but that error has existed. When it was noticed, measures were brought to the attention of Ministers in the current Government, and we brought forward regulations at around Christmastime. Those were taken through the Grand Committee and the House and approved accordingly, so that the fees now being charged are on a legal statutory basis.

As my noble friend mentioned, that leaves a gap of some months—maybe April to November—where fees were charged accordingly, with no legal backing. He asked, rightly, what measures there are to ensure that we take action on that. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has within it measures to provide retrospective statutory authority for those fees that were charged in connection with services provided by Ecctis Ltd. On that basis, that Bill, which has been published in the House of Commons, is correcting the position on fees charged to date.

Those who have previously been charged have received a service that they have paid for. We want to avoid putting an additional burden on taxpayers, so we do not intend to issue refunds, because although the fee was charged without that legislative cover, the service that the fee provided was still received by the individuals concerned. We are trying to ensure that we regularise not just the situation, as we have now done, but that gap which happened—not on my watch, but it did. It is now being regularised by this legislation, which will be challenged. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also mentioned this point. It is open to scrutiny and to approval, rejection or amendment in this House, but it is the Government’s position to try to resolve something we were not responsible for. I hope that answers my noble friend’s point, but I will happily take an intervention.

[Lord Rowlands (Lab)]

I believe so. The most important thing is: have the lessons been learned as a result of the fiasco that occurred, so that we can be assured that, in future, there will never be a fee that is not statutorily based?