Nationality and Borders Bill (Fifth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Pursglove]

Thank you, Sir Roger. I appreciate that. I also appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s strength of feeling on this matter. I was Parliamentary Private Secretary, several years ago, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby who was Immigration Minister, and I learned a lot from him. He got to the nub of the issue of fees. The truth is that there is a level of fee that is set. There is constant parliamentary scrutiny of those fees, as I have described. There is a level of cost associated with that. Any fee level that is incurred over and above that is actually invested into the wider nationality and borders system and helps to pay for the services that are provided.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Minister refers to the contribution of the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby. That was a challenge to give a commitment that fees should not be set at a level that does other than reflect cost. I hope the Minister will take advantage of that opportunity. As he is beginning to develop his argument, he is suggesting that fees are set at a higher level in order to reinvest in the Home Office. That is what other people have described and The Times reported in 2019 as profit of quite significant proportion.

[Tom Pursglove]

I will gladly take away the Committee’s feedback on fees. As I have said, fees are kept under constant review and are subject to parliamentary scrutiny. I have no doubt that members of the Committee, and indeed Members across the House, will want to scrutinise any fees orders and fees regulations that are brought forward, express views on them and, as they see fit, either support them or take issue with them.

To return to the focus of the amendments and the clause, removing these fees during the passage of the Bill would undermine the existing legal framework without proper consideration of sustainability and fairness for the UK taxpayer. It would also reduce clarity in the fees structure by creating an alternative mechanism for controlling fees.

Beginning with amendments 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, the aim of which is to limit the Secretary of State’s power to charge a fee for applying for British overseas territories citizenship, I can reassure the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East that I am sympathetic to the view that a fee should not be charged in cases where a person missed out on becoming a British citizen automatically due to historical anomalies. The provisions in the Bill are about righting historical wrongs, and I can give the Committee my assurance that we will look carefully at where fees should be waived via the fees regulations. However, as I have outlined, that is not a matter for this Bill and it should be remedied through secondary legislation, in line with other changes to immigration and nationality fees.