Immigration: Skilled Migrants from Commonwealth Countries

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Of the nearly 1,700 refusals, 88% had differences of more than £10,000, and the average difference across all cases was £27,600, so they were not small differences. On people facing destitution, of course people will be cared for while their applications are being considered. Of course, particularly during the Covid pandemic over the past year, it has been very important to be able to give people that bit of respite because of the difficulties that they will face, first, coming here and, secondly, going back, if their applications are refused.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is rather a serious step to refuse people indefinite leave to remain who have been in this country for 10 years or more. The Minister referred to the non-criminal historic tax discrepancies, which are the cause of the trouble. Will she tell us how long ago these tax discrepancies occurred, on the basis of which indefinite leave to remain is being denied? Have they been recent cases or ones of some 10 years ago? Can she assure me that the statements that the Government are now making from the Dispatch Box have been checked by Ministers to ensure that they are accurate and that these people really are being denied indefinite leave to remain for good, strong reasons?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, most applications for settlement were made around 2016. Some of them go back some years. The reason why they were uncovered was because of the sheer volume that HMRC was noticing as a strange pattern of behaviour. It was sufficiently unusual to draw it to the attention of the Home Office. This is not an attempt to deny ILR—this was a deliberate attempt on the applicants’ part to falsify records so that they matched the self-employed earnings previously declared in tier 1 applications.