Draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2022

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2022.

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

The Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2016 sets out the immigration and nationality functions for which a fee is to be charged, and the maximum amount that can be charged for each function. Members will have noticed that the draft order is not the longest piece of immigration legislation that we have ever considered in a Delegated Legislation Committee, given that it seeks to make only two changes to the fees order, specifically amendments to the maximum amount that can be charged for two application types: entry clearance as a visitor for a period of up to six months, more commonly known as the short-term visit visa; and entry clearance or leave to remain as a student.

I want to make it clear at the outset that the changes do not alter the fees paid by customers. Specific fee levels are set out in separate legislation, namely the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018, and those levels are not impacted by the amendments we are debating. The changes in the draft amendment order, however, will serve to increase the flexibility on fees in future.

The maximum amount that can be charged for a short-term visit visa will increase by £35, from £95 to £130. That will align the fee maximum to the published unit cost for that product. The maximum amount for entry clearance or limited leave as a student will be raised by £10, from £480 to £490. That relatively small increase will provide some additional headroom on student fees, in particular those close to the existing maximum.

For background, both changes mark the first time that the maximum amounts will have increased since 2016. They will provide additional flexibility on those fees, allowing the Home Office to consider a balanced approach to fee changes across our visa routes.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

The Minister and I have history, and I like him as a person. It is interesting that these amounts are a ceiling, but I wonder whether he has seen the figures from 2019. He talks about student visas, but in the five years to 2019 the fee for limited leave to remain went up by 79% and that for indefinite leave to remain by 119%. At the time, there was an excellent comment in The Times Thunderer page—by me, actually—headlined, “Home Office must be stopped from running fees racket”, because apparently processing costs had gone down in that time, although the fees went up. I am pleased that he is setting a ceiling, but will he bear in mind that fees have been ratcheted up and up in the years until now and will he ensure that it really is a ceiling, to keep the fees down?

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. As she says, we get on well. It is good to get that totally independent analysis—in quality and method—in the article that she wrote for The Times.

Over recent years, immigration fees have generally risen so that more of the costs of the migration system are borne by those who use it, rather than by the wider taxpayer. Colleagues will have realised that in the past couple of years there has been a big difference in the income from fees because of the pandemic. Inevitably, wider funding from the taxpayer has increased.

The changes we are discussing specifically will be only to the maximums for two routes. They will reflect the current unit costs, in particular for the short-term visit visas, although, as I said, the draft order will not change the fee to be paid by applicants. That would need a separate statutory instrument to alter the fees themselves.

We are conscious that we need to ensure that our routes are competitive and give value to those who apply for them. One of the core rules in the rest of our work is to simplify our immigration system to reduce the amount of times that people need to instruct a lawyer to help them with their application, which in many cases can represent a significant cost that might not be seen as a fee, but affects how much people end up paying to secure their status in this country.

Changes under consideration by the Home Office are about adjustments to simplify the range of fees payable by customers, including removing specific additional charges and consolidating what people are required to pay into one overarching fee. A good example is removing the biometric enrolment fees charged alongside certain applications, with these costs recovered through the main application fees instead, which we believe is a simpler and much more transparent approach to the cost of a visa. We will of course share further details about some of the changes we are looking to make with colleagues and the House when we are in a position to do so.

Colleagues will be aware that migration and borders functions are largely funded by immigration and nationality fees as part of the Home Office spending settlement to reduce the burden on the taxpayer more widely. It is critical that any changes are funded by other changes within the system. It is therefore vital that the maximum amount set out in the fees order allows appropriate choices to be made on individual routes to support a balanced approach overall to the fees we charge. I emphasise again that we are not changing any fee levels through the order. Any changes to specific fees would be subject to cross-Government consultation and further parliamentary clearance and would be implemented through fees regulations, not this order, I therefore hope Committee members see the need for it.