Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of changes to visa sponsorship costs and salary thresholds on small to medium-sized enterprises.

Where changes to fee legislation are made, impact assessments are produced which identify potential impacts resulting from the changes. This includes a recent published impact assessment covering the impact of changes to fees, including those for sponsor licences, that came into effect on 8 April 2026: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2026/44/pdfs/ukia_20260044_en.pdf.

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has recommended that salary thresholds are updated in line with updated data from the Office for National Statistics or, in the case of health and education occupations, national pay scales. As our Immigration White Paper set out, we will ensure that international recruitment is never a cheap alternative to fair pay and we encourage businesses to invest in the domestic workforce.