Family and Work Visas

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South and Mid Down) (SDLP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered eligibility for family and work visas.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard, and to have the opportunity to highlight the impact of some changes introduced earlier this year by the previous Government, and how they are landing with public services and the economy in Northern Ireland. As with any set of rules, I appreciate that there will be winners and losers, but these changes have had a negative impact in many areas, and it is important to ensure that the specific consequences for our region are factored into the current review. Flexibility in understanding regional differences is important to ensure that we build a system that allows businesses to grow and wages to rise, while hopefully the Stormont Executive and the UK Government’s missions get a grip on our skills shortages.

Let me say from the outset that I appreciate that for many the issue of immigration is vexed and politically contested—certainly here—and I do not propose that we spend this hour talking about it in generalities. For what it is worth, I will say that the Social Democratic and Labour party, which I represent, is internationalist, pro-worker and pragmatic, and we want to see a fair immigration system that enriches our society and economy and allows talented people to come here and build a life, as many Irish people have done around the world for many generations.

We also appreciate that people see challenges for infrastructure and services—housing shortages are often cited—but we contend that the problem is that the proven value and economic impact of overseas workers in the UK economy has not in the past been properly directed and spent in health, housing and transport. Overall, the statistics bear out the fact that this aspect of immigration has washed its own face economically, and we are quite determined that decent and essential workers do not carry the can of years of failure to invest those gains properly. It is also a fact that our economic reliance on immigration is in part a consequence of inadequate skills investment, and I firmly support the aim of training and properly rewarding a local workforce. However, the rules and changes that will hopefully come have to deal with the economy that we have, not just the economy that we want to create.

Although the scope and parameters of immigration are a legitimate subject of debate, and I respect the right of any Government to devise policy, the current framework is detrimental to our local economy and services. I will focus specifically on the five-point plan that the right hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Cleverly) announced in December 2023, which came into effect earlier this year, in the hope that the Government will reform aspects of the changes. Like many, I believe that those changes were electorally motivated; they were a last roll of the dice for a Government on their way out—from the minds who brought us the Rwanda scheme and other things—and they did not necessarily fit in with economic needs. The changes are: the prohibition on dependants of social care workers; the increase in the baseline minimum salary for a skilled worker visa; the shortening of the list of eligible roles on the immigration salary list; the increase in the threshold for a partner visa to £29,000, with proposals to increase that further next year; and the changes to the graduate visa, which the Migration Advisory Committee found no significant abuse of and recommended maintaining.

I will briefly set the context of the Northern Ireland economy. Overall, wages are lower in Northern Ireland, with a median full-time average of around £32,900 versus about £35,000 for the UK generally. From the get-go, that differential impacts businesses in different ways. We, of course, share a land border with the rest of Ireland, and while Brexit has made labour mobility more complicated than it was, there is a lot of such movement, with thousands of people crossing the border for work every day. That means that there is competition for talent.

With an open and dynamic economy, the Republic of Ireland has consistently invested in skills and education, even through the crash years, and created real opportunities to attract talent. That has not been the case in the north. By comparison, many northern businesses struggle —as, increasingly, do public services, with growing numbers of healthcare workers fleeing our truly broken system for the opportunity to work down south with better standards of care and better rates of pay.

Sadly, one of Northern Ireland’s top exports continues to be our young people. We invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in their primary and post-primary education, with many then feeling the need to move to Britain or to the Republic in search of university places, which we artificially cap, better career opportunities, or—for many—a more stable and tolerant society. That is the real immigration problem that Northern Ireland needs to grapple with. I appreciate that not all of that is within the Minister’s remit, but it was important for me to set out the environment in which local Northern Irish businesses are operating, and therefore the context of the further squeezes that the visa changes are applying.

The changes were not designed to support our economy or public services, and the negative impact is felt both economically and in terms of the myths they propagate. Just last week, a small child in my constituency was injured by broken glass caused by masonry being thrown through the window of their family home, which they share with a health worker parent. That was due to race hate, which reached a crescendo in many places, including my constituency, in August; that was in very large part due to hype coming from the media and at times from this Parliament.

The parent of that child is one of 12,000 immigrant workers in the Northern Ireland health and social care system—and thank God for them. Many are nurses, doctors and social care workers. The average wage for a care worker is £11.58 per hour. That is pennies above the minimum wage, lower than many retail or hospitality jobs, and the care sector understandably has a higher turnover. With tens of thousands of vacancies in that sector across the UK, it seemed bizarre that the Government made it even less attractive by legislating to separate workers from their families should they come from overseas. The general secretary of Unison put it well when she said that the Government were

“playing roulette with essential services just to placate its backbenchers”.

Far from being a concern for just the public sector, these changes have been raised with me by numerous individual businesses and representatives of sectors including manufacturing, hospitality, transport, fishing and parts of agriculture, some of which, it is fair to say, are dominated by entry-level and casual work. I support all the efforts to organise and support workers within those sectors.

One sector that has been strangled by lack of access to workers—exacerbated by these changes—is the mushroom industry in Northern Ireland. Mushroom workers are still limited to seasonal agricultural worker visas, which restrict workers who come through that route to a six-month stay. But with a training window of several months to get to the required levels of skill and productivity, the industry does not feel that that scheme meets the needs of a year-round crop. Those challenges are exacerbated by the proximity of the industry to the border, and the night and day difference between how farms in the south—

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is highlighting some of the issues with the seasonal agricultural worker scheme. Does she agree that one of the challenges of the scheme, in recent years and going forward, is that it is being extended on only an annual basis? If we want farmers to invest in technology and equipment, we need to give them a proper window to do so.

[Claire Hanna]

Absolutely, and that reflects the feedback I have received from the people who are trying to increase productivity and modernise. Such arbitrary frameworks do not help.

As I have said, the challenges for northern mushroom farms are exacerbated by the differential in investment in similar farming businesses in the south, where a bespoke visa is available for the mushroom sector that permits workers from across the globe to remain for two years. Given those additional subsidies and things like energy costs—it is a high-energy business—how can we expect to achieve the goal that we all share of locally grown food with a low-carbon footprint and profitability? A key aspect of supporting a thriving industry lies in the Government’s hands, and they must ensure that it has access to labour.

Fishing is similarly impacted. My colleague and constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), will touch on the plight of the fishing sector. We worked together consistently on this issue under the previous mandate, as it affects a lot of rural and coastal communities, which depend very much on fishing. The recent paper from the sectoral body, Seafish, assessed the impact of the skilled worker visa changes, and gave a fairly comprehensive breakdown of reliance on overseas crews, along with the sector’s operating losses and reduced profits, which suggests that there are only a few months of viability for a lot of those vessels.

It is not just the food supply that is at risk but infrastructure. Ferries are essential trade routes, as well as moving tens of thousands of people between our islands weekly. Since Brexit, non-national seafarers have no automatic right to work on GB-NI routes, which has impacted companies like Stena Line, which operates crucial routes into Belfast and Warrenpoint. It has augmented its UK and Irish crews using frontier working permits, but those are not being issued any more, which poses a serious risk to service levels. Those seafaring jobs are highly skilled and well renumerated, but the workforce are traditionally global and there has been less of a defined merchant navy pipeline in recent years. This is another industry that has a solution ready to go, and it suggests—similar to the 2022 offshore well boat workers—a targeted and potentially even timebound ferry worker concession that could avert disruption to the passenger and trade lifeline, with almost no cost or impact on the taxpayer, which would buy the industry time to adjust to all the post-Brexit frameworks and skills deficits.

I will turn briefly to the nearly 50% uplift in the skilled worker visa salary. Silotank is a Belfast-based manufacturing business that, among other things, is helping Northern Ireland Water to update its antiquated infrastructure safely and sustainably. Across Northern Ireland, development has come to a halt. Thousands of houses in planning have been delayed for the want of modern drainage. That business is investing heavily in decarbonising its products, with alternative energy sources to its west Belfast plant, but growth is limited by a lack of access to qualified technicians, with no adequate engineering pipeline in Northern Ireland.

Manufacturing NI, the sectoral body, has highlighted a perfect storm for its members: rapid expansion in manufacturing is one of our success stories, I am pleased to say, but we are not making it easy for the industry in many ways, as that is accompanied by a low skill pool and low net migration. Manufacturing NI says that some 80% of its members have low confidence in their ability to fill skilled roles. We lament our sluggish productivity, but it is hard to invest in an economy with labour shortages. The organisation advocates resurrecting a sector-based scheme from the last time Labour was in government, as that would allow temporary 12-month opportunities with a plausible £26,200 minimum salary.

Another recent change was the rise in the minimum salary for sponsoring a spouse or partner, which has gone up to £29,000 and is set to increase. The Migration Observatory called that the most restrictive family reunion policy of any high-income country, citing the existence of thousands of Skype families who are unable to be together because of these rules.

Before the changes, family reunion accounted for some 60,000 people. By definition, those people were joining established and earning family units. Having such a high threshold—if it continues to go up, it will be much higher than average earnings—is forcing many people to choose between their families and their career, which will have a disproportionate impact on women and create an environment in which only the wealthy can choose who they fall in love with.

Those examples across sectors are the top-line problems. There are fixes and willing partners in industry, including some low-hanging administrative fixes as the Government work through new policies. Unlike the current policies, however, those new policies need to be based in the economic reality of the world we live in, as well as the environment in which businesses are operating in Northern Ireland, which is qualitatively different to England in many ways.

Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s latest quarterly economic survey confirms that access to skills is a challenge for local businesses across sectors, with three quarters reporting difficulty recruiting and nearly 40% highlighting a negative impact from the changes. Workers face barriers to sustaining and progressing in their employment, and sometimes face less-than-decent treatment at work. The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland highlights that migrant workers are over-represented in low-paid jobs, certainly in their early years. Too much change and a tightening of the rules has created uncertainty, which is a deterrent for some employers who are unsure of the legal framework, and real difficulties for many in changing jobs.

On a separate issue—before I finish and while I have the opportunity—the reform of work-related visas should finally address the unreasonable delay in the right to work for those trapped in a chaotic asylum system. I appreciate that that is a different matter entirely, but we know that it delays integration, increases the cost to the public purse of supporting those people in that time, deprives that person of the dignity of work, and deprives our economy of often incredibly skilled and entrepreneurial people, whom we could absolutely do with.

That reform is in line with the Migration Advisory Committee’s recommendation. It would help to address labour market gaps and would surely give people the right start to a needed new life. I thank you, Mr Pritchard, and the Minister for facilitating this debate, which is brought in the spirit of constructive feedback and hopefully fairer and more pragmatic rules in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna) on securing this important debate. I will limit my remarks to a few key points.

I argue that the current system for family work visas is arbitrary and does not work for anybody. We have shortages in hospitality, care work, medicine and, indeed, dentistry, as I discussed with the Scottish Government this morning—to name just a few areas. I understand that dealing with the domestic skills gap is a priority, but I cannot turn around to my local businesses struggling to keep a full rota, or to the families on a waiting list for social care, and tell them that they just need to wait.

I, too, was contacted by constituents distressed at the increase in the earnings threshold for family visas when it was introduced earlier this year. One constituent wrote to say that his son effectively had to emigrate to live with his partner elsewhere, because as recent graduates they would not be meeting the threshold for years. That is the brain drain playing out right in front of us.

I will make some points in relation to family reunion visas. I would be grateful if the Minister could look into the long delayed application of my constituent, who was granted asylum in March this year and immediately in April applied for his wife and two children to join him. He has not seen them for years and misses them, but he is also deeply worried for their safety. My team first contacted the Home Office about it in August and we were advised that the 24-week turnaround time meant that my constituent could expect a response in October. The Minister can observe that we are now well into November; if I pass on the details of the case, will she look at what can be done to expedite it and ensure that my constituent’s family can be brought back together?

My second point on family reunion is about stage 2 of pathway 1 of the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme. As the Minister will know, it opened in the summer after much delay, and was welcomed and appreciated by Afghans, but there are still issues with it that I hope the Minister can respond to today, or return to her Department and write to me later about. That particular route refers to the separated family members of those who were evacuated under stage 1 of the pathway: those who were identified for evacuation from Afghanistan immediately prior to and following the fall of Kabul.

The first issue is the time limit. Although Afghans were identified for evacuation in a relatively short period, between 13 and 28 August, many were unable to access evacuation flights at that time. We can all remember—certainly those of us who were in the House, and even those who were not—the chaos unfolding as the Taliban came closer and closer to the airport. It took until March the following year for all those identified for evacuation to reach the UK. The ability for them to be reunited with their family, however, is based on being evacuated in that limited August period, not just identified for evacuation. I assume that it must be an oversight to leave families out of the scheme for those people who happened to come a few days, weeks or months later through no fault of their own.

My second question for the Minister is whether she will look into the take-up of the scheme. The application window was open for only a short time—from 30 July to 30 October. The forms are lengthy and the evidence required is, rightly, substantial. Has support been provided to Afghans here and families elsewhere? How is the Home Office responding when families struggle to provide the necessary documentation? That is particularly difficult for families who have fled to Pakistan and may not have access to documentation such as bank statements, marriage certificates and medical records. Will the Home Office consider reopening the application window if it comes to light that the process has not worked, and that families, many of whom served and worked with the UK when we were in Afghanistan, remain separated due to the short timeframe and difficulties in meeting those requirements?

This debate is wide. It is about many things, many people and many places, but at its heart is whether the Home Office is set up to make the processes involved transparent, efficient and effective.