Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made an assessment on the impact of the changes to immigration rules on those currently in the visa renewal process.

In relation to the 2026 Spring Rules change, the Home Office has updated our identity requirements. The change to Rule 34(5)(a) will reduce the need for applicants to keep having to attend a Visa and Citizenship Application Service (VCAS) centre every time they make an immigration application for further permission to stay in the UK. This change will enable applicants who have previously enrolled their biometrics under controlled conditions, such as at a VCAS centre, and who are making a new in-country immigration application, to have their identity reused. The change to facilitate the re-use of digital identity neither creates new powers nor extends identity reuse to applicants overseas but will have required one-off implementation costs to the public sector. While unquantified, these implementation costs are likely to be offset by ongoing efficiency savings from modernising, digitising and streamlining application processes, which improve the customer experience whilst maintaining public safety.

In respect of wider Spring Rules changes, the Home Office has produced two impact assessments and two economic notes for the four Immigration Rules changes which met the threshold for requiring one. These are published alongside the Exploratory Memorandum and Statement of Changes on the GOV.UK website: Statement of changes to the Immigration Rules: HC 1691, 5 March 2026 - GOV.UK.