Family and Work Visas

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna) for securing this debate. There has been thoughtful consideration of the issues by Members from across the House. I also acknowledge what the hon. Lady did and how she helped her community in August, in those very difficult circumstances. I am grateful to her and to all who have contributed. I will seek to address all the points raised, but I hope that Members will understand that that may be difficult in the time that I have. I will certainly come back in writing if there are outstanding points.

I will deal briefly with a few of the points raised before I go into more detail in my remarks on the contribution of the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down. Some of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) were reflected by others in terms of the quality of caseworking and the service received. As Members of Parliament, we have all experienced those cases and circumstances, so I am glad that the issue he raised has been resolved. Where there are any issues or concerns about whether the system is being fair and how cases are being dealt with, please write to me on those matters. We will certainly look at them in a way that also enables us to learn from what could be happening better and implement those systems.

The point about public confidence raised by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) about immigration is important, but it comes back to the point raised more broadly about having an immigration system that is fair, humane, transparent and compliant with the law, including international law. I am keen to make the broader point that it is important that we continue to have dialogue across the House on matters such as immigration, which need and want a lot of cross-party support to deal with the challenges. That is in the interest of our economy and of fairness, but is also important for our security, so we need to have open and transparent debate on such matters and take the input from colleagues across the House.

I will come back to other points that have been raised during the debate, but on net migration and some of the changes being made, I want to make it clear that the Government recognise and value the contribution of workers from overseas to our economy and our public services, including our NHS, and they would not function without them. The point has been made, and we are very clear, that the immigration system needs to be properly managed and controlled—and that is important for public confidence too.

We are clear that net migration and reliance on overseas recruitment need to come down, and in addition to bringing down levels of overall net migration, our approach will also help ensure that there are better and higher-paid jobs for those who are already resident in the UK. In April 2024, the previous Government introduced a package of changes aimed at reducing overall levels of net migration and tackling abuse in the social care sector. Those changes included requiring any employer in England wishing to recruit international care workers or senior care workers to be registered with the Care Quality Commission and to carry out regulated activity. They also included removing the ability for care workers and senior workers to apply with dependents. The package also replaced the previous shortage occupation list with the immigration salary list.

The Home Secretary confirmed in July that the Government are retaining those changes. We acknowledge the concerns raised and welcome debates such as this one. I also think it is important, in response to some of the issues, that we lay out where we are going further and taking a different approach. We have established a new framework that will link the Migration Advisory Committee’s work with the newly formed Skills England and skills bodies across the UK, as well as the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council and the Department for Work and Pensions, to support a more coherent approach to migration, skills and labour market issues.

I will make a broad point on the issue raised about particular routes and the appendix for domestic abuse. It is extremely important for Members across the House to ensure that we are tackling abuse on any routes. On what is an important safeguard in the system, we are clear that there has to be a high threshold of evidence and that we take steps to tackle abuse wherever we detect that and wherever that occurs. That is extremely important and a clear approach across the Home Office.

On salary requirements, for too long, immigration has been used as an alternative to tackling skills shortages and labour market issues in the UK. The salary requirements that were raised in the spring related to the median salary for occupations, ensuring people continue to be paid at a higher rate than many in the occupation. That, along with the immigration skills charge, are designed to ensure that employers look first at the resident labour market before looking at employing an international worker.

Points about the threshold were raised, and I will come back on a couple of points. For those new to the route since 4 April 2024, who must be paid £38,700 per year or the going rate for their occupation—whichever is higher—the salary floor can be reduced to just over £30,000, depending on tradeable points such as discounts for new entrants. There is some flexibility. Indeed, for those extending visas in this route or working in healthcare or education, who must be paid £29,000 per year or the going rate for their occupation, again, the salary floor can be lowered for roles on the immigration salary list. Those roles in healthcare and education are based on nationally set pay scales or by using tradeable points.

It is important to say that immigration remains a reserved matter, and we will consider the needs of the UK as a whole. Applying different immigration rules to different parts of the UK can complicate the immigration system, harm its integrity and cause difficulty for employers, who need the flexibility to deploy their staff to other parts of the UK. The independent and expert Migration Advisory Committee has repeatedly recommended that we should not operate different salary thresholds for different regions or nations across the UK.

I am aware of the concerns from the fishing industry about labour shortages. In the interests of time, I will just say that I am looking forward to meeting my counterpart in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and I am certainly happy to meet hon. Members to discuss this too. On the Afghan schemes, I will be happy to write to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), but I am very pleased that we were able to open that scheme and see the positive response to it.

Finally, I will speak to family immigration rules. As colleagues will be aware, on 10 September the Home Secretary paused any further increases to the minimum incomes requirement and commissioned the MAC to review the financial requirements in the family immigration rules. This review will ensure that we reach the right balance and have a solid evidence base for any future changes to the minimum income requirement. We expect that conducting a full review of the financial requirements will take approximately nine months. I urge hon. Members to provide views and evidence in response to the MAC’s call for evidence, because I am sure we can all agree that a rich evidence base is essential to ensure that it can make effective recommendations and that policy is informed by evidence.