Immigration and Asylum Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Debate between Tom Gordon and Blake Stephenson

Committee stage
Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Gordon]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. New clause 11 would require the Secretary of State to make changes to the immigration rules to make provision for leave to enter or remain in the UK to be granted to the family members of refugees and of people granted humanitarian protection. The family reunion route was paused on 4 September 2025, with a stricter system promised from spring 2026 still not in place, as we discussed earlier in Committee. So I ask the Minister: if the Government announce a new settlement route, will there be a new family reunion route, too? We want to see the details of the resettlement scheme announced with this legislation. Obviously, the purpose of this amendment is to make sure we end up with the tens of thousands of people, predominantly women and children who used to use the family reunion visas, able to access it.

I meet many people in my constituency of Harrogate and Knaresborough, from victims of genocide such as the Yazidi people to people who came through the Afghan route. Quite often the distress and additional trauma that is caused by having been separated from their families compounds the issues that they are already trying to grapple with.

With the new rules set to come in under this Bill, there will be issues around refugees being able to hit the income thresholds so that their family members can come with them. That is the purpose of this new clause and I would welcome any news or updates from the Minister further to the questions already put during the course of this Bill Committee.

[Blake Stephenson]

New clause 11 would require the Government to restore refugee family reunion within six months, but I understand that it also widens definitions to include children up to the age of 25, which was not in the hon. Member’s opening remarks, so I hope I am not mistaken.

We oppose this measure. Family reunion, as proposed in new clause 11, would add a further reward to a successful illegal crossing. Every grant would bring the prospect of encouraging a wider family member, and it would create a well-known incentive for families to send one member ahead, sometimes a child, on the most dangerous journey of all. We all want to stop and limit dangerous journeys. Safe and legal routes should be for people from regions of conflict who we choose to help, as we have done for Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. There should not be a reward for illegal and very dangerous crossings. We will not support the new clause, but can I ask the Minister to tell us when the Government intend to publish their replacement for the suspended family reunion route, as I think she intimated they would in the previous debate, and whether the intention is for it to be capped?

[Anna Turley]

New clause 11, tabled by the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, seeks to reopen the refugee family reunion route and greatly expand eligibility to wider family members. The Government took the difficult decision to suspend the refugee family reunion route in September 2025. That was done in response to immediate pressures placed on local authorities and public services by the rapid rise in arrivals in recent years.

The family reunion route had grown exponentially, placing significant and unsustainable pressures on local authorities and public services. Grants rose from approximately 5,500 per annum between 2015 and 2022 to more than 20,000 in the year ending September 2025. As the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire said, we cannot have a situation where families are sending men on dangerous journeys, through other safe countries, to reach these shores with the intention to bring their families. We are extremely keen to prevent that. We want to ensure that there is a sustainable route for families that are genuinely fleeing war and persecution to come to this country, and that was not it.

Suspension remains in place while we are developing the wider reforms to the family migration system. I know that colleagues are on tenterhooks, and I wish I could expand on that further, but I can assure them that they do not have very long to wait at all—as I am sure they can see from the increased media frenzy around these issues. I will not pre-empt the Home Secretary’s announcements, but I reassure colleagues that those announcements are well on their way and they do not have long to wait.

The system we want to see will be fair, controlled and sustainable. The Government recognise the importance of family unity and the distress that separation can cause. We also recognise the contribution that families can make to helping refugees integrate. However, we must ensure that our approach takes account of the capacity of communities to support those arriving.

I want to be clear that suspension does not mean that family members have no way of applying to come to the UK. Other family routes remain available where people meet the relevant requirements, with provisions such as fee waivers available, and a consideration of any exceptional circumstances where an individual may not meet the criteria set out in those routes. In addition, applications under the suspended route that were submitted before the suspension came into force continue to be processed.

New clause 11 would go considerably further than simply restoring the previous arrangements. It would require the Government to establish a new and expansive refugee family reunion scheme within six months, and prescribe a significantly wider group of qualifying family members, including parents, siblings, unmarried adult children and siblings up to the age of 25 and other unspecified family members. This is highly likely to lead to considerably more people arriving than ever before, without any necessity for their sponsor to support them.

The new clause would also cut across established routes that already make specific provision for these relationships, including Appendix Child Relative for vulnerable children joining a close relative with protection status, and the Adult Dependant Relative route for adults requiring long-term, personal care. Those routes contain carefully designed eligibility, dependency, care, maintenance and accommodation requirements. The new clause risks creating an overlapping route for the same cohorts without specifying any safeguards that would apply, potentially undermining the workings of our wider family migration system.

The new clause would further enable children to sponsor their parents and siblings, which is something that was not possible under the previous route. We must consider the incentives that such a change would create. If a child reaching the UK alone could subsequently provide a route for other family members to join them, there is a real risk that smuggling gangs could exploit that expectation, leading to more children being sent on dangerous journeys, including on small boats. That would put children at greater risk of abuse and death.

The proposals tabled by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough should also be considered together. Amendment 54 would have provided that requirements being imposed must demonstrate that arriving family members could be suitably supported and accommodated by their sponsor. Together, these proposals, if accepted, would pre-empt the Government’s ongoing work that I have mentioned on our future family migration framework by constraining our ability to consider refugee family reunion alongside the wider reforms that we are making. It would be premature to prescribe the outcome of that work in the Bill. They are also likely to lead to a large increase in arrivals, which would further exacerbate existing pressures on local authorities and public services.

The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough should consider how the consequences of such a surge in arrivals, if these proposals were enacted, would be managed. Where would families live if suitable accommodation had not been secured? Who would meet their immediate needs if their sponsor could not support them? Do we expect already stretched local authorities and public services to support those arrivals? If children are allowed to sponsor, as he proposes, a child cannot be expected to obtain a sufficient income or secure suitable accommodation for an arriving family, so who would meet those needs? What assessment has he made of the additional resources that would be needed, and how does he propose these costs should be met?

Those responsibilities simply cannot be left for local authorities to resolve after families arrive. They have practical consequences for homelessness services, temporary accommodation, children’s services and school places, as well as the local people who rely on those services. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough to withdraw the new clause.

Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Tom Gordon and Blake Stephenson

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Blake Stephenson]

Q The same question, briefly, Will. Do you also have any international experience that it might be worth us hearing about, maybe from Australia and so on?

Dr Prescott: Building on what the others have said, there are obviously bits in the Bill that are very positive. The expansion of the reporting requirements—again, you have learned a bit from the Australian experience and the Canadian experience—into public sector organisations is obviously very positive. But, to build on the earlier point, the ultimate way to improve confidence is to improve processes in the system. It is about making sure that organisations have a dedicated point of contact so that there is someone who is directly responsible for modern slavery in first responder organisations. It is about improving and standardising training so that people know what signs to look for when they are dealing with potential victims. That is the best way to stop the last-minute claims, which, though small in number—I think Eleanor said they are less than 2%—have a disproportionate psychological effect. That will also be much better for victims. A lot more attention needs to be on improving the processes, improving the training and making sure someone is actually responsible in first responder organisations.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

Q We have already mentioned the European convention on human rights, and other articles are involved too. Ms Tennant and Ms Lyons, can you comment on the fact that clause 36 would place an additional burden of proof and onus on the victim to self-identify? We know that the state has a duty under the ECHR and other obligations, such as the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. What is the interplay between making it a harder barrier for people to self-identify and realise that they are a victim of modern-day slavery, and the other articles that are engaged?

Eleanor Lyons: Most of the survivors I have spoken to—I have a summit that draws together 15 lived experience advisory panels from across the UK—did not realise they were being exploited; it took them years of help and support to understand what was happening to them and to feel comfortable talking about it. That is why the premise is there that it should be the state’s responsibility to identify victims of modern slavery and offer them support in their recovery journey. That also has a very practical implication in terms of trying to stop re-trafficking and re-exploitation taking place, and to stop harm increasing.

Clause 36, on the credibility assessment, is problematic because it says to safeguarding professionals, and it puts into law, that it is okay to question victims’ credibility if time has passed before they have come forward, if there are inconsistencies in what they have said or if they are exploited in the same way as someone else. That is an issue across all victim cohorts who have gone through horrific experiences. It is completely unacceptable that we are putting that into primary legislation. That part of the Bill should absolutely be removed completely.