Partner and Spousal Visas: Minimum Income

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your guidance this morning, Sir George. I congratulate and thank all those who have contributed to the debate so far, especially the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who secured it and made an excellent introductory speech. The introduction of the increased minimum income requirement—going from £29,000 a year last month to £38,700 a year by some point next year—is both cruel and foolish. Not that the Conservative party really needs me to advise it, but it is fundamentally unconservative, if we take conservatism to be about the family and pragmatic economics. I will say more on that in a moment or two.

I will start with a question for the Minister that I think gets to the heart of it all. The Home Office has said that the policy is all about ensuring that families that include a migrant are not a burden to the state. Can he define what constitutes a burden to the state, given that an individual on a spousal visa has no recourse to public funds? That is the first question I would like him to consider. Then, as others have pointed out, what on earth led him to make that decision on the basis of no meaningful evidence or research? His own Migration Advisory Committee advised against it. Only three years ago, it stated that it was

“concerned that previous analysis may have given too much weight to the fiscal contribution of such migrants and insufficient attention to the benefits that accrue, to both the family and society, from the route.”

Why did the Government not take note of that? When we think about the benefits to family and society, we could talk about the economic impact in an area such as mine, which desperately depends on a large proportion of migrants to make our economy, our social care and healthcare, and our hospitality and tourism industry work.

The families themselves are surely the most important aspect, and that is what I will focus on next. A number of people, including the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) who has just spoken, have mentioned the significant impact on families. We will see an increase in the length of separation before visas are obtained, if they are at all, for different parts of the family. Often, this will involve British children—not that it is any better if they are not born in the UK or are not British.

The impact on women will evidentially be far greater than the impact on men. As things stand, as of last month’s increase, 36% of employed women and 58% of men earn enough to meet the £29,000 threshold, but, from next year, only 21% of women and 39% of men will be able to meet the threshold. As suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), there will be regional disparities as well. I assume that £38,700 is around an average salary within London, maybe even below thst, but in the north-west of England it most definitely is not. If we are concerned about levelling up, the policy will do damage to businesses and families in Cumbria and other parts of the north of England.

The reality is that the new change will force British and settled mothers into solo parenting. It will force them into a position where they will not be able to work because of childcare requirements. There will be additional costs for the state, and it will cause heartache, pain, sadness and separation for families up and down our country. It will make it much harder, rather than easier, for mixed nationality families to integrate into society, so the social disbenefits are huge as well. British citizens and settled residents are very badly affected by these rules.

Again, if we are putting a positive spin on what Conservative party ethics are about, so often we hear about family values—I believe very much in the importance of the family—yet this policy takes an absolute torpedo to family life. It causes sadness, mental health problems, distress and lack of educational attainment. It forces people into solo parenting completely against the will of both those involved in the relationship. Frankly, it is wicked, deeply cruel and utterly counterproductive. Either it will fail—there has been a lot of evidence from Members who have spoken so far that it will fail to drive down net migration, which is bad from a competence point of view—or it will work, which will be even worse. The foolishness of it is enormous.

We know that the minimum income requirement does not directly affect people working in care, but the refusal to allow care workers to bring a spouse with them absolutely will have an impact on social care. To look at the impact in Cumbria, one in five social care jobs within our county is currently vacant. Those vacancies happen for a number of reasons, but fundamentally our workforce is far too small. That is partly caused by the Government’s failure to help us tackle the affordable housing crisis in our communities. We see second homes and holiday lets gobbling up the homes that local people—or people who might become local—could live in, so where is our workforce to contribute to every part of our economy?

We are also, of course, damaged by silly visa rules that make it impossible for us to recruit people from overseas to supplement our workforce. People will often say that, we should be making sure that we tackle the care crisis by paying people better. Abso-blooming-lutely, so why are the Government not doing that? The Liberal Democrats have a policy—which I am not saying is the answer to everything—saying that we should increase the minimum wage in social care by £2, to £13.44. That would at least mean that care providers would be paying their workers more than they would be paid if they worked in the supermarket, or in other roles, when the current situation leads to many people leaving social care. But there is no sign of that happening whatsoever, and what little those care providers can do to bring in workers from overseas is being damaged by this Government.

All this has a consequence, of course, and that is not just the misery from those people who cannot get care, or the hard work for those people who work in social care and have to work extra hours under enormous pressure, doing shorter and shorter visits because there are not enough colleagues to do the job. Twenty four per cent of the beds in the Morecambe Bay hospitals are occupied by people who are medically fit to leave but cannot get out with a care package because we do not have the carers. These policies make that situation even worse, and the people who are hurt by it are my constituents who cannot get care, and indeed my constituents who are not able to bring their families with them, which is just cruel and miserable.

The minimum income requirement affects those people working in hospitality and tourism. I tell the Minister that 63% of the hospitality and tourism businesses in the Lake district and wider Cumbria are working below capacity—unable to meet a demand that is there—because they cannot find the staff. In the Lake district, 80% of the working age population is already working in hospitality and tourism. There is no reservoir of unused labour that could be turned into workers in hospitality and tourism.

Therefore the Government’s policies—and this makes it even worse—mean that our economy is not able to punch at its weight. We could be contributing so much more to growth in our country. Some 20 million people visit the lakes every single year, and there are 60,000 jobs in hospitality and tourism in Cumbria, but we cannot punch at the weight we should be able to because the Government are tying the hands of hospitality and tourism businesses. It is economically stupid, and it is deeply damaging to individuals.

Let us go back to what we now know: 79% of women and 61% of men will not meet the minimum income requirement, so Cumbria can perhaps expect up to two thirds of its overseas staff to leave. What a miserable and stupid thing this is to do. As others have alluded to, the Government are choosing this policy because they believe that there is a very anti-immigrant view out there, and they are want to do things—last night’s votes, and all the rest of it, are all part and parcel of this dog-whistle, or indeed foghorn, politics—to try to demonstrate that they are as beastly about immigrants as parties to the right of them. That is incredibly stupid. There are two forms of leadership. One is where you spy where you think that the crowd is going, and you run around the front of it and pretend that it was all your idea in the first place. That is pathetic, and it is not leadership. The second is that you know what is right and you make the case for it.

I think that all of us in this room believe, to one degree or another, in our having secure borders and controlling migration. Given that we have taken back control—not that being in the EU stopped us controlling our borders, but given that we are in a situation where we control migration policy, I have a radical suggestion for the Minister: how about controlling migration in Britain’s interests, rather than doing us harm in the process? This policy harms my constituents. It harms people from Appleby through Ambleside, Arnside, Kendal and Kirkby Stephen to Kirkby Lonsdale. People who rely on care, and who have hospitality and tourism businesses, are damaged by it. But the worst-off are those people who are at the heart of it.

I will not mention names, but there is a constituent of mine from Windermere whose husband is from overseas, and they spent more than a year separated, after being married for some time, because of the policy we already have, which is about to get worse. She refers to the situation as “a hard, cruel process”. It is hard and cruel for her and her family.

I will not quote too many details, but here is a message from someone I will call a former constituent. As far as I am concerned, he is absolutely somebody I am proud to represent. He currently lives here with his non-British wife and two children. He says:

“I grew up and lived most of my life in Kendal, but will probably never be able to return now—at least not with my wife. There’s very little chance I could earn the proposed £38,700 needed for a spouse visa. It’s way too high, and will only serve to break up genuine families who only want to live an honest life back in the UK.”

My town and my community have been robbed of that family. For them to come back, they would have to be divided. This policy is stupid and cruel, and it should be cancelled.

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, there are two more Back Benchers seeking to make a speech. I remind them that, at 10.30 am, I will be calling the Front Bench spokespersons from the three parties, so if they both co-operate, we can get them both in.