Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for at least attempting to speak; it is always good to have some moral support from the Conservative Back Benches. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for introducing this; as an honorary member of the terriers, I am very happy to be here. Most of my fellow terror of terriers, that being the collective noun for terriers, are otherwise engaged, and there seems to be quite enough terror around without inflicting any more of it on the governing party.

My own experience with a regret Motion—I think it was the only one I have done—had to do with the adoption fund. I tabled it, there was a debate and I said at the end that I did not intend to take it to a vote and would abstain if there was a vote, because I thought it was a non-party political issue. The two opposition parties decided, in their wisdom, to take it to a vote, and we won, slightly to my embarrassment. I will try not to repeat that: it is the law of unintended consequences.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, covered most of the key points. We genuinely welcome the waiver for children in care, but I ask the Minister to reflect on why we keep returning to this subject again and again. It is partly from a sense of gentle but persistent moral outrage. The barriers that are being put in the way of children who have an absolute and total right to UK nationality seem completely disproportionate and, frankly, morally wrong. To have a fee that is so far above the costs makes one ask oneself: where is the moral compass behind this approach to the way children are treated? When one looks at the highly detailed and, in my view, invasive process that families have to go through in order to demonstrate that their children are, first, eligible, and secondly, that they would have enormous difficulty in paying the fee, I think it is genuinely intrusive and really quite objectionable.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned the details that caseworkers have to go into:

“Caseworkers should normally expect to see information and evidence relating to the applicant’s and parent’s income—”


remember, the applicant is a child—

“their accommodation, the type and adequacy of accommodation, the amount of the rent/mortgage, or of their contribution towards this, and outgoings in terms of spending on things like food and utility bills. This information should be supported by independent evidence, such as their pay slips, bank statements, tenancy agreements and utility bills.”

If any of us had to go through such a process, I wonder how easily we would have access to all that information. I suspect that it would be with a high degree of difficulty.

Having looked at the guidance for caseworkers, I very much hope—and I would like to be reassured, given the complexity of the caseworker guidance—that there is an initiative for specialist training to be given to the caseworkers who will be carrying this out, to ensure that they are completely confident in their ability, and that the Home Office is completely confident in their ability, to conduct these assessments to the professional level required. If not, one will be inviting a process whereby there will be a greater number of appeals against some of the decisions than there needs to be, with all the costs involved and the discomfort for the people involved. That is something that I hope will be the case. Indeed, if the child and the family are refused and the application is denied, they will then have the pleasure of paying an additional £372 for an internal review, which seems to be adding insult to injury.

One thing that the Home Office has undoubtedly been accruing over the last few years is really quite significant legal costs, as it is, again and again, going either to the High Court or to the Supreme Court to answer challenges that are being made about some of these policies and the decisions that are being taken. I would be very grateful, if the Home Office is able to do the sums, to know how much, year on year over the last five years, the Home Office has had to expend on legal fees in specific pursuit of these types of cases. I have a horrible feeling that a not insignificant proportion of the so-called profit—the difference between the cost of the application and the actual fee being charged—is expended on legal fees. That does not seem a very good way of justifying the high level of fees.

In looking at the impact assessment—and I would recommend reading it if any of your Lordships are having trouble sleeping—there is something rather peculiar in it. It mentions, as the Government have often mentioned, that one of the rationales for the very high level of fee, apart from it providing extra income for the system, is that it reflects,

“the benefits that accrue to an individual as a result of a successful application”.

That is in paragraph 16 of the impact assessment. But if you then fast forward to paragraph 79, there is a list of 14 bullet points which are the purported benefits that accrue to an individual or a child if they are successful in getting UK citizenship. That is fine, but you then go to paragraph 80, and what it says about the 14 benefits is,

“These benefits are largely intangible and not able to be monetised, and the Home Office do not have data on the proportions of applicants who would receive different benefits”.


On the one hand, they are saying that one of the justifications for the high level of fee are the benefits that accrue to an individual who is successful in applying. On the other hand, they are saying those benefits are intangible and unable to be monetised. So, please discuss and provide answers on the back of an envelope because I do not follow that. It does worry me, and I would like to have an explanation, if not this evening, then certainly in writing.

I think that since so much of what we are discussing and will continue to discuss—I hope not for the next few years—is to do with the judgment that is being made by the Home Office on what the children’s best interests are, and that comes up repeatedly when the Home Office’s rationale is tested in the High Court or the Supreme Court. It would seem eminently sensible to publish how the Home Office assesses the children’s best interests, partly in the interests of the Home Office so nobody worries or wonders anymore if it has something to hide, but also to help those organisations which are there to try to help those individuals, who have a right to citizenship, to go through the application process with much greater clarity about how the Home Office actually measures and assesses one’s best interests. That seems self-evident, so as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, we would appreciate a proper, reasoned explanation for why the Government have currently no plans to publish this. Perhaps they would be prepared to meet us to discuss this, or at least to say that they have this under review and, at some point in the future, may take a decision to publish.

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for moving this Motion of Regret, and for her introduction. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for his contribution also. I support all the points they have made, so I will not elaborate on them further. But I want to underline and reinforce the points they made because we are talking about children who have a statutory right to citizenship, and to put so many obstacles in their way seems to me to be totally disproportionate and, as we said, cannot be morally justified.

Picking up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I think it would be very helpful if the Home Office published the assessment of what are the children’s best interests, because it would be helpful to know what they are. It would be helpful also if it can provide confirmation, and a more detailed explanation, of the steps being taken to ensure the citizenship rights of all looked-after children are being secured by their local authority.

Of course, we need to review the application form and guidance to decision-makers on the fee waiver to ensure that the waiver is accessible, because we have heard how complicated it really is. I think the Government need to end the charging of citizenship registration fees at above the administrative cost and the subsidising of the immigration system from statutory citizenship rights. As I said, I do not understand why this should be subsidised through this particular source. They also need to remove the review fee for looked-after children and children for whom a waiver of the registration fee has been granted. These are a few things which it would be helpful if we could actually argue.

I have not been part of the terrier group so far, but when I saw the regret Motion and had a conversation with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I was moved to stay on and add my support to this regret Motion. I very much hope that we will get some confirmation and some concessions from the Home Office.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for bringing this regret Motion and for so comprehensively setting out the grounds for it.

Time after time in this House and in Grand Committee, other noble Lords and I have questioned the policy that border and immigration systems have to be self-funding. The argument that those using the system should pay for it could just as easily be made for other systems such as the education system or the National Health Service. To say that only those who apply for a passport or visa or for UK nationality use or benefit from border and immigration services is clearly false. Everyone in the UK benefits from border control and control over who receives temporary or permanent leave to remain in the UK, and from the granting of UK citizenship. For example, in terms of counterterrorism, it has been shown that those people who acquire British citizenship are far more likely to show loyalty to the country than those who do not.

The premise is also false in that citizens from EU, EEA and 10 other countries benefit from visa-free entry to the UK and use Border Force services to enter the UK—none of whom at this time pays a penny towards the cost of border control or immigration services. Not only are those who apply for a UK passport, a visa to enter the UK or UK citizenship subsidising border and immigration services that benefit all UK citizens; they are also subsidising hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors who enter the UK every year without the need for a visa.

When asked why the Home Office is unique in being required to make border and immigration services self-funding, the only answer is, “Because this is government policy.” Can the Minister tell the House why it is government policy, and why, for example, the NHS is not required to be self-funding? The safety and security of the people is supposed to be the Government’s primary responsibility, yet a major part of ensuring that—ensuring that foreign criminals and others not conducive to the public good do not enter the UK, for example—has to be self-funding. Why?

On the other aspect of the regret Motion, whether it is in the best interests of children to charge them for securing their right to UK citizenship, let alone £596 over the cost of processing an application, the answer is clearly no. Let us imagine the case of a young person who has come to the UK as a young child, whose parent or parents are legally in the UK, who perhaps finds the transition to life in the UK difficult and does not receive the love and support any child should reasonably expect from his parent or parents, and who goes off the rails, makes mistakes as a teenager and ends up with a custodial sentence of 12 months or more. Is this young person likely to know about and understand the consequences of not claiming the UK nationality he is entitled to before he is deported by the Home Office as a foreign national criminal? Is this person likely to live with a family who can afford over £1,000 to claim the right to UK nationality they are entitled to?

It is not just that. To qualify for the discretionary waiver on the grounds of affordability, as the noble Baroness has said, a long and complex process of means-testing must be gone through, in which even the guidance to Home Office caseworkers is complicated. Every penny of income and expenditure must be accounted for; money spent on “luxuries” or non-essential items such as a holiday would disqualify the family from the fee waiver. What do the Government mean by “luxuries”? Anything more than 43p per person per week spent on laundry and toilet paper, anything more than 69p per person spent on toiletries, and anything more than £3.01 spent on clothing and footwear is considered non-essential. How many of us could say how much we spent on toilet paper a week over the last six months?