Family Visas: Income Requirement

Debate between Katie Lam and Ayoub Khan

Monday 20th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Katie Lam]

It is far from a slur. I will come on to more statistical analysis of fiscal costs in a moment, but if a migrant to this country represents a fiscal cost, that is a fact, not an insult. This Labour Government, as we know, have also committed to lowering migration. We do not know by how much or when, so I would be grateful if the Minister could enlighten us on that.

The hon. Members for Stroud (Dr Opher) and for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) pointed out that spousal and partner visas accounted for only 5% of visas issued last year, but 58,000 people is still a huge number, and it is only our—to quote the Prime Minister—“sky-high” level of overall migration that makes it seem small. In fact, it is almost as much as the entire cumulative net migration to Britain for the 25 years leading up to 1997. In the past four years, more people have moved to the UK under a spousal visa than live in Exeter, Ipswich or Blackpool, and that number is rising sharply. There is some indication that, as the previous Government tightened the rules around dependants and salary thresholds for work visas, people turned to the family route instead. Numbers in the second quarter of 2024 were up a third on the same time in 2023 and were four times as high as in the second quarter of 2022.

It is worth remembering that any and every Briton can marry any foreign citizen who can get a visa here. This country has issued some 5 million visas in the past five years, so the system is hardly stringent. The question is not, “Should British citizens be able to bring their foreign spouses to the UK?” It is, “Does it benefit the country as a whole for British citizens on lower salaries to bring foreign spouses here who are unable to get a visa any other way?” By definition, those spouses fall outside the already excessively broad conditions that we have set for being able to come to this country in their own right. I hope it is some comfort to the constituent of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) to hear that there is no minimum income requirement if a spouse is disabled or on personal independence payment.

The hon. Members for Stroud, for Sheffield Central and for North Ayrshire and Arran reminded us that those coming here have no immediate right to welfare support. That implies that there are no costs to that migration, but that is wrong. After five years, a person who has come here on a family visa can apply for indefinite leave to remain. If they get it—95% of ILR applicants are successful—they qualify for welfare, social housing, NHS care and everything else, and that costs money. The salary threshold exists because people who move to this country—even those who are spouses of citizens—must be able to sustain themselves financially within their family, or the whole system will fall to pieces, even more than it already has.

[Ayoub Khan]

On the point about what a spouse costs the state in terms of public services, surely the income generated by the working spouse would mean that they are not entitled to receive benefits of any kind.

[Katie Lam]

As I just explained, if the person has been here for five years and applies for indefinite leave to remain, and it is granted—as almost all indefinite leave to remain applications are—they are entitled to full welfare, social housing, NHS care and everything else the state provides to its citizens.

That point about indefinite leave to remain is especially relevant to family visas. Ten years after arrival, only 7%, or one in 14, of those who come here on student visas, and 21%, or one in five, of those who came on work visas, have ILR. For family visas, it is 83%, or five out of every six people. That is why the Migration Advisory Committee’s initial impact assessment of the policy found £500 million in welfare cost savings and £500 million more in public service savings from the introduction of the £18,000 minimum income requirement, and that was when far fewer people were using that route to come here.

But the cost-benefit analysis that counts is not that of the Migration Advisory Committee, but that of the British people. They want mass migration to end, and they are sick of broken promises. The numbers must come down across the whole system. The last Government were therefore right to introduce this reform, and it does not bode well that this Prime Minister, for all his talk, decided at the first opportunity to back out of it.