Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of adopting the proposals on visa renewal processes recommended by the report entitled We Are Here: Routes To Regularisation For The UK’s Undocumented Population, published by The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in April 2021.

The Home Office is committed to improving how we meet the differing needs of the public we serve, including by ensuring our systems and processes become as simple and straightforward as possible. All our fees are kept under review and we offer several fee waivers and exceptions from the need to pay an application fee.

Given a person’s circumstances can change, we believe we have the right balance between the length of visas we issue and the need to check people still meet the requirements of the Immigration Rules. In addition, many visas are already aligned to a person’s employment or their course of study and a renewal does not need to happen until a major change in their circumstances.

We are currently analysing responses to the consultation on the new plan for immigration and will be responding in full.