Stuart C McDonald
Main Page: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)Partner and Spousal Visas: Minimum Income
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Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to be called so early in this debate on what is effectively a Tory means test on marriage. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing it. I almost never disagree with anything he says in a debate, and today is no exception. I thank him for his work in ensuring that we have this opportunity.
It is about seven years since I led a debate on the same subject in this room, but the thresholds are now even more arbitrarily brutal and the number of people whose lives will be destroyed is even greater. With more people than ever falling in love with someone from another country, the Government are making it more difficult than ever for those couples to enjoy their family life here. Let us not forget that Brexit, too, means that more people are impacted because our EU friends can no longer benefit from free movement but must seek to satisfy what are already the most draconian family visa rules in the world before the Government implement these changes.
The Government are basically saying to many of our children and to future generations, “You can fall in love with whoever you wish, but if you want to marry a non-UK national and you are not earning whatever arbitrary sum we decide, you will need to go and live somewhere else. You can have the love of your life. You can have your country and the right to live here. But you can’t have both.” That is just not normal. No other countries are so cruelly anti-family, and it particularly sticks in the craw given that so many members of the Government have enjoyed international marriages here in the UK. It is one rule for the Government and one rule for everybody else—so much for the Conservative party claiming to be the party of the family. This is not a small c conservative policy or a pro-family policy at all. It is a desperate and reactionary policy, playing politics with the family lives of our children and future generations.
At least when we had this debate seven years ago, the Government could point to the advice of the Migration Advisory Committee to justify the figure that they had alighted on as the appropriate threshold. They now seem to have picked some random numbers, ultimately matching it up with a tier 2 work visa threshold that some people need to satisfy. The utterly critical question for the Minister today is: why have the Government decided that that particular number is appropriate? To my mind, they might as well match it up with the Prime Minister’s salary. If the Minister cannot explain the logic behind it, not only is the policy utterly immoral, but it may be irrational and illegal.
Neither have the Government bothered to assess the impact that it has had on couples or their children—or, perhaps more accurately, they have assessed the impact; they are just not going to publish that. Back in 2015, the then Children’s Commissioner for England did the Government’s job for them with her report entitled “Skype families”, which showed tens of thousands of children having been negatively impacted by the rules. It states:
“They are living separated from a parent with reported stress, anxiety and difficulties for the children and their families…Children and families surveyed reported a number of emotional and behavioural problems for children who were living with parents who were separated inside and outside the UK. Many parents reported that their children had become clingy and dependent on one parent; children often suffered from separation anxiety and became socially withdrawn, and some described children having difficulty socialising and experiencing problems at school.
Parents described how children displayed eating and sleeping problems; slow or poor language development, and can display anger and violence toward peers and family.
Some children said that they feel guilty and blame themselves for the absence of a parent.”
What a horrific policy to impose on children. The tweaks made in recent years have not fixed that damage at all.
The Government have previously justified these moves and policies on the grounds of families having to show that they can support themselves and of a strange integration argument, but those arguments have always been fig leaves and they are particularly so now. Ensuring self-sufficiency has never really been what this is about, because, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central pointed out, the Government do not actually bother to properly consider whether the person coming to the UK will be able to earn towards the financial target. It does not matter that the spouse coming to the country is well qualified, has good prospects of finding work or has other forms of support available. That is all disregarded. As has been pointed out, the Home Office will automatically ensure that their visa is subject to a no recourse to public funds condition anyway.
This is even less about self-sufficiency now, because there is absolutely no link between the thresholds that the Government have picked and the notion of self-sufficiency. The numbers are totally irrational, unless the Minister is saying that nobody earning less per year than £29,000, or £39,000 from next year, is capable of supporting their spouse. That is an extraordinary proposition. It would also have lots of implications for the Government’s policies on public sector pay, the minimum wage, social security and lots more. Indeed, as the Children’s Commissioner report highlighted, these rules mean that people unable to bring their spouses in have needed to have greater reliance on social security than they otherwise would, as they struggled to juggle work and caring responsibilities without their life partner by their side.
To me, the integration argument makes even less sense. Why will someone earning £40,000 or their spouse integrate better than a person earning £30,000 or their spouse? Again, as per the Children’s Commissioner:
“There is no evidence to suggest that integration has been enhanced but there is evidence that it has been reduced.”
What this is really about is politics: shaving a couple of percentage points off net migration, sending a signal—a dog whistle, really—and doing untold damage to people’s lives.
Alongside these rules, couples are also hit by the extraordinary fees and up-front health charges, which provide yet another brutal barrier. My constituent, Stephen, previously served in the forces, but has since worked in oil and gas. For the moment, he does meet the rules and requirements, but his entire income is now spent on paying for the medicines required to keep his wife, who he met in 2011, alive. He meets the rules but he cannot pay these fees and charges up-front. At this rate, he may never get to bring his wife and her daughter to the UK. Can the Minister provide any hope to my constituent that an application would be accepted, even though these fees cannot be met up front? These are rotten rules from a rotten Government, and I very much hope that the next one does better.
The Minister for Legal Migration and the Border (Tom Pursglove)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this debate. This is an important issue, and we have heard a variety of opinions. Members raised many points of clarification and asked many questions, and I will try to deal with as many as possible.
It might first be helpful if I set out the background to the decision to raise the minimum income requirement, which in the interest of brevity I will refer to as the MIR. Net migration is too high, and we must get it to a more sustainable place with better balance. In the year to June 2023, it was estimated to be 672,000. Last year, we set out measures to bring the number down by tightening the rules on care workers and skilled workers and ensuring that people can support the family members they bring over.
The British people want decisive action, and we are delivering the change that we promised. We are lifting the pressure on public services and protecting British workers with the utmost urgency, and we have set out and implemented a comprehensive plan to do so.
Tom Pursglove
I will take a couple of interventions early. I am conscious that there is a lot that I need to respond to, but I will gladly take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.
Stuart C. McDonald
The Minister mentioned public opinion, but I rather suspect that if the Government canvassed public opinion, they would find that people are shocked and appalled that their friends and colleagues are being split apart from their spouses. He prays in aid public opinion, but what research have the Government done on the proposals?
Tom Pursglove
There are materially relevant elements of the policy that have not been reflected in any Members’ comments. Later, I will come to the safeguards, which I think most people would think are fair and reasonable.
We are taking a fair approach to tackle net migration. It will not only bring down the numbers substantially but address the injustice of a system that, if left untouched, would enable employers to recruit cheap labour from overseas at the expense of the British worker, and put unsustainable pressure on our most vital public services.
Tom Pursglove
The truth is that in the remarks from the shadow Front Bencher there was no clarification of the Opposition’s stance on whether they would seek to cancel the package of net migration measures that are already in train. People can draw their own conclusions on that.
The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) raised a whole host of different issues in relation to borders and migration policy, including the issue of care workers. I would argue that seeing 120,000 dependants coming with 100,000 care workers is just not sustainable. He also raised the issue of illegal migration and conflated the legal migration piece with the illegal migration piece. Again, I make no apology for the steps the Government are taking, including through the legislation we passed yesterday, to try to put out of business the evil criminal gangs who put people in small boats, take their money, send them to sea, and have no regard as to whether they get here safely or not. We saw the consequences of that yet again this morning, in the most terrible and tragic of ways.
We are making strong headway in delivering our package of measures on net migration, with further improvements to modernise and enhance the security of the UK border continuing throughout 2024. The decision to raise the MIR is a key part of our plan to reduce overall migration levels. Taken together, the changes we are implementing will mean that the 300,000 people who came to the UK last year would not now be able to come. The right to family life is a qualified right, and in making our decision we carefully balanced that right against the legitimate aim to protect the UK’s economic wellbeing.
Tom Pursglove
I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman. I am conscious that I want to allow the hon. Member for Sheffield Central the time to say a few words at the end.
The MIR was introduced in July 2012 to ensure that family migrants could be supported at a reasonable level, so that they do not unreasonably become a burden on the British taxpayer, and to help to ensure that they can participate sufficiently in everyday life to facilitate their integration into British society.