Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2025

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am fascinated to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, with the information that he has provided to us today; I very much look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that he made. I shall concentrate on only one very small bit of the statutory instrument before us: the bit that relates to the electronic travel authorisation, or ETA.

I serve as the chair of your Lordships’ Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee. We have on a number of occasions looked in a great deal of detail at the planned introduction, and now the actual introduction, of the ETA. It is an authorisation requirement for anybody who does not have a visa and who wants to come here for a short stay from non-visa countries. We welcome the pushing out of the boundaries and the borders that this measure involves, giving us the opportunity to collect information about visitors to our country before they have even arrived, but we have expressed a number of concerns and made a number of recommendations to the Government about it. That is why I am focusing on this one particular issue.

What is proposed here is an increase in the maximum fee from £15 to £16, which of course seems incredibly limited; it is a very small increase. However, as the Minister rightly pointed out, the Government have made it absolutely clear that it is their firm intention that, as soon as time allows, another statutory instrument will come along; this one will increase the current fee from £10, as it is now, to a new maximum of £16. Obviously, that is a very significant 160% increase that we are going to see.

Bear in mind that, when this measure was introduced, we heard a number of things from the previous Government, who, in fairness, introduced it. In a Written Ministerial Statement of 6 June 2023, the then Minister of State for Immigration, Robert Jenrick, said:

“This fee level is competitive with that of equivalent systems run by other countries”,—[Official Report, Commons, 6/6/23; col. 821WS.]


so the £10 is a competitively charged amount. Of course, he was absolutely right. Currently, in Israel, it is £5.61; in South Korea, it is £5.53; in New Zealand, it is £7.68; and in the Seychelles, it is £8.33. In Australia, it is free unless you pay roughly £10 to use the smartphone application. All the EU countries are about to introduce their own similar scheme, and they have already announced that that will cost €7. So, clearly, £10 is of an order of magnitude but is actually slightly higher. By the time we get to £16, it is going to be significantly higher.

I acknowledge there is one aberration in that: the United States. However, if we look back at its history, it had a very much lower figure for a very long time during the measure’s introduction and it has only just recently increased that. So we will be out of line, when the original plan was to be in line and be competitive with other countries. The question is: will that have an impact? The answer is that the committee is concerned that it will have a significant impact on tourism.

To those who think, “Well, what’s the evidence for that?”, I say that we already have some evidence. One of the other things we were concerned about was the original intention for transit passengers to Heathrow and Manchester to have to apply for, and pay for, an ETA; we thought that that would be a disadvantage to Manchester and Heathrow Airports in particular. The current Government have looked at that, and we are pleased that they have decided not to go ahead with it and, temporarily at least, it is not happening.

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[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

It is a brave Minister who continues without his Whip.

I was trying to explain why fees such as the ETA fee must be looked at in the context of the possible impact on tourism. The example I was giving to illustrate it relates to the system that we had until recently, whereby an ETA fee was charged for people who were travelling from a third country through the UK in transit to somewhere else, using Heathrow and Manchester in particular. We as a committee were concerned about that and thought that it would have an impact on tourism; that was backed up when the ETA was introduced initially for a few Gulf countries. As a result of that introduction, Heathrow Airport alone recorded a reduction of 122,000 people transiting through Heathrow from those relatively small countries. That was when the fee was at £10; if it is to go to £16, you can see the impact that it will have on people—not for transit but for people thinking of coming here. There is real, clear evidence that this fee increase being proposed, from £10 to £16, could have a huge impact on tourism.

Of course, our committee expressed a particular concern in relation to these fees in terms of tourism in Northern Ireland and issues in relation to the common travel area between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. This issue was picked up in the 16th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which said:

“We asked the Home Office for any assessments it has made about ETAs to date, especially in relation to Northern Ireland (NI). The Home Office stated that as a result of its monitoring … it was working with a range of government and tourist bodies to ensure that ‘ETAs are not seen as a barrier to cross-border tourism on the island of Ireland’”.


I ask the Minister the very question that the committee suggested, which is

“whether (or when) firmer evidence can be made available on the practical impact of the ETA on”

Northern Ireland tourism. If the Minister has any information, clearly, that would be very helpful. More generally, given that the Minister said that this SI has been introduced following a review of all these fees, can he tell us whether the issue of tourism was taken into account? In particular, can he give a categorical assurance that, when the new SI comes forward—the one that will actually make the increase to the new maximum—the impact assessment will take account of tourism?

I said that Robert Jenrick, when he announced the whole scheme, made two points. His second point was that the £10 charge

“will ensure that the Department’s costs in delivering the scheme are effectively covered across a range of volume scenarios”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/6/23; col. 44WS.]

Can the Minister, whose department has conducted this review, tell us whether the increase that is being proposed is as a result of evidence that the £10 is insufficient to cover the costs of the operation of ETA; or whether this is in fact just a way of making additional money for the Exchequer? I am sure that he will be able to answer that and will have the figures to back it up.

I just say to the Minister that, given that we see in the notes for this particular SI that the longer-term effect is to bring £260 million-odd into the Exchequer, I suspect that the fee increase for ETA is about adding to that. However, I also warn him that, if tourism is seriously affected in the way I have suggested, the Government will not be able to make that amount of money.

My final point is about the ease of operating the ETA system. If it is difficult to operate, that will put people off bothering and it will stop people even thinking of coming to this country as tourists and perhaps also for business sessions, and so on. When we looked at the ETA introduction, we were concerned about the lack of different languages in which the information about ETA was being provided. The then Government actually agreed with us and accepted that official information relating to ETA should be made available in a wider number of languages “as soon as possible”, including French, German and Spanish. So can the noble Lord tell us whether this has happened?

I should tell him that, prior to this meeting, I sought to find out for myself whether I could get details of how ETA operates in other languages. I could not. So I asked our good friends in the Library whether they could find out, and they told me that they too could not find any evidence that information is provided in any language other than English. They pointed out to me that, of course, some platforms have a translate option—that might be the clever way out—but, when we checked some of the platforms, we could not get the ETA to translate into different languages. So the evidence I have shows that what was promised has not been done. Of course, it may have an impact on people choosing to come to this country if they find it hard to get this information. So perhaps the Minister can address this.

There are many other issues with the ETA operation which are not relevant to the SI, so I will not raise them now, but the Committee and the Justice and Home Affairs Committee are very keen to have an opportunity to discuss those issues with the Minister. However, in the meantime, on this SI and the proposed future SI, I very much look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Foster, who raised serious questions about the ETA and whether there will be an impact. He provided evidence to show that having an ETA at the current level, before any increases, is already having an impact. One of the general themes I will cover is what the impact assessment does not say about the impact on businesses, including tourism in this case, and other areas that I will come to. This is yet another charge that has gone up, adding to overheads, and it is becoming a problem in certain sectors.

It is also a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, who outlined many of the problems that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has been reporting on over the years. I look forward to the Minister’s response to his questions.

I will start on an optimistic note, given our debate on the previous SI. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee does not often hand out commendations in its reports, but it has commended the Minister and his officials on the Explanatory Memorandum, which was very helpful. With my calculator out, I did a lot of calculations and, although Minister may be irritated by some of the questions he gets, it is actually because we understand what is happening. That needs to be to be credited because we have not necessarily been able to give that credit in the past. The impact assessment was helpful, but I am not sure that it asked the right people about the impact. I will come back to that in a second.

Paragraph 29 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s 16th report says that

“the net benefit of the changes is relatively small. Further, we note that in some scenarios set out in”

the impact assessment,

“the costs of the changes outweigh the benefits. This possibility arises because … it is ‘highly uncertain’ what goods and services visitors and visa-holders consume, and how many of those are provided”

by British businesses. Can the Minister comment further on this, or is the impact assessment just guesswork? That is the perhaps slightly unfair approach to trying to translate what the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said.

I say that because the maxima level set here is, pretty broadly, a 7% increase. I very much echo the comments made by my noble friend; the Government have made it very plain that when they do introduce fee rises—as opposed to setting a new maxima—most of them will go up to the new maxima. As the impact assessment says, the Government are trying to ensure that they can cover the costs of migration and the staffing for that, but I am concerned because 7% seems high.

For example, the pension triple lock is increasing by 4% this year. Many felt that was too high in the current financial circumstances. I am not going to comment on that but am trying to weigh it up as 7% seems to be a general increase, if not for the next year. I know the Minister will say it is only a maxima, but we heard elsewhere that there is an intention in most cases to go to that.

It is true that in paragraph 5.2, the EM says:

“The department is seeking to implement changes to fees to generate additional income from end users to support the funding of the migration and borders system and reduce reliance on funding from the taxpayer”.


However, the increases that are not 7% are the ones that really worry me. They seem bizarre and, in one particular case, ill thought through. For example, the skilled worker and temporary worker fees have both been increased by over 100%: from £239 to a £525 maxima for the skilled worker fee and from £25 to £55 for the temporary worker maxima. The reality is that in just over seven months, this Government have increased other costs to businesses—not Home Office costs, I grant you—but it is difficult and tedious for employers to recruit staff from overseas at the moment. I am not commenting on whether it was right or wrong, but the previous Government really tightened down on who could come to work here. Part of that was to start increasing substantially the costs that businesses and individuals coming here had to pay.

One of the costs I am particularly concerned about—we have just had a vote on this and there will be more before the evening is done—is on the increase to employers’ national insurance contributions. Not only are these increasing, but the floor for payment is lowered to include many lower-paid workers. Migrant workers filling gaps in our economy, such as in social care, hospices, agriculture and hospitality, are much more likely to be in those sectors where the margins for businesses are extremely low.

Our social care sector is already in complete crisis. Only today, there are reports of care at home being removed and clients being told they will have to leave their home and move into care homes, solely because of the economics of the increased national insurance contributions and the high costs associated with care delivered in a home setting. To have extra fees for migrant workers—often paid for by the businesses because the migrant workers just do not have their own resources—is going to add further to those sectoral problems. I wonder why the impact assessment says there are no financial implications from a 100% increase in these fees.

If these increases are as set out in paragraph 5.2 of the EM, did the Home Office actually seek advice from some of the sectors most reliant on overseas workers, whether skilled or temporary? I am slightly less worried about the very high-value skilled workers, where an employer will not only take on somebody at a high salary but be prepared to manage an oncost. It is those who are given temporary leave to work here, or in the health sector, where we know they have been granted.

Finally, paragraph 5.10 sets out the increase for the review of a decision related to immigration and nationality. The main fee maxima is increased by 7% and I have already commented on that. Hidden a few lines further down is a really shocking increase from £80 to £480 for an administrative review of a decision. This is nothing to do with the relevance of costs and I wonder if it is a financial punishment. An administrative review is very different to a review by a panel or senior officer, as referred to earlier in that section. Can the Minister explain why this particular administrative review has now hit the same maxima level as the much more complex and personnel-intensive level required under the main type of panel review?

By the way, it is interesting to note that, at paragraph 11.1, that particular increase has not been highlighted, whereas others have. I wonder why that might happen. The reason why the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, my noble friend Lord Foster and I are raising these issues is to try to understand the strategy behind these increases, as opposed to just a reason to raise money. We are concerned that at least some of them may backfire and stop the increase in growth that this Government are keen to see.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I will give my noble friend what I would say is a guarded response: I hope so. It is my intention that that will not happen again. I cannot verbally legislate today to say that mistakes will not be made by Ministers and/or officials downstream, but I hope that lessons have been learned. The moment it was drawn to this Government’s attention, we introduced legislation to regulate the current level of fees that were being proposed and, through the proposed Bill, cover legislatively the backdated gap that was in place. I hope I can give my noble friend that assurance. Certainly, it is something that current Ministers are aware of and do not wish to have—but, as ever, it is a human system, as my noble friend knows.

I turn to the meat of other points that were made noble Lords. I welcome the support of His Majesty’s Opposition Front Bench. The noble Lords, Lord Foster and Lord Cameron, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised the impact on tourism, on jobs and on a range of other things. Let me put this into context again. The Government have to cover the costs of the immigration border control system. This is potentially helping with any future decisions taken—not the increase today, but any future decisions—to meet the costs of that system and to put in place measures to ensure that we have border control for tourism and employment, as well as the measures we are taking separately in the immigration Bill to look at illegal migration. It is important that we regulate that and that the taxpayer gets resource back from it. We have taken decisions, which may not be popular with the noble Baroness, to look at how we can potentially raise money from that. As I said, we will bring forward further impact assessments and proposals on the actual figures for each of the sectors that she mentioned, but we have made a judgment that we have to cover those costs and we must ensure we can do that.

The Government have a growth agenda. We do not want to hinder growth in jobs or in tourism; we want people to come to the United Kingdom. The question I throw back to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, is: would a fee of £16 deter somebody from coming to the United Kingdom on a tourist visit? I think he said yes from a sedentary position. That is a judgment we will have to examine and look at. The impact assessment shows a marginal impact. It is something we will have to look at. When and if we bring forward proposals on the rise from £10 to a potential maximum in the future, we will look at those issues. I do not know—do I not go to America because it costs me £35 or whatever it is for an ESTA? Do I not go to France, in due course, when I am charged a fee for its equivalent of an ESTA? Do I not go to Spain, to Greece or to other countries? Alternatively, do I absorb that as part of my tourism package?

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

There is a great deal of research evidence on this very point. Going to America turns out to be very different from going to a country within the European Union. Going to a Schengen area country turns out to be very different now from going to the UK, because of course you can get one document to get into all the different countries. There is a great deal of evidence already about this, and when we bear in mind that this country has higher VAT on, for instance, accommodation, tourist attractions and so on than most other countries, we are already at a disadvantage. All I am grateful for is that the Minister has assured me that we are going to have full consultation and a full impact assessment when he brings the next stage forward.