Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023

Motion to Regret

Moved by

That this House regrets that the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023, which increase fees by above inflation for a range of immigration and nationality applications, will (1) increase financial barriers to children securing their rights to British citizenship, (2) cause other individuals to fall out of lawful immigration status and face significant debt and precarity, (3) increase the operational burden on the Home Office, and (4) damage the United Kingdom’s economy; and calls on His Majesty’s Government to consider and develop policies to support individuals, families, and businesses adversely affected by these changes.

My Lords, this is only the third regret Motion I have brought in my 12 years in your Lordships’ House, and, like the other two, it concerns the crippling level of fees. I declare my position as a RAMP associate.

I will focus mainly on the 20% increase in the route to settlement, entry clearance and indefinite leave to remain fees for those on a five or 10-year route to settlement, and on the same increase in children’s citizenship fees, which is the subject of the previous regret Motions and a matter of great concern to a group of us who have come to be known as “the terriers”, as we never give up. Unfortunately, however, a number of the terriers who wanted to support the Motion could not be here today.

I will start with some general points. The first raises the procedural criticism voiced by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee:

“Regrettably, this is the third instrument from the Home Office in just over a month that has breached the convention that at least 21 days should be allowed between laying an instrument and bringing it into effect. In none of the cases has it been clear that urgent action is essential, and in this case the breach seems clear-cut as it resulted from the Home Office’s failure to organise its paperwork in time”.

The committee has written to the Minister concerned to seek assurances that there will be no further unjustified breaches that restrict parliamentary scrutiny in this way, and I hope the Minister can give us that assurance today.

The committee was critical of the failure to publish the impact assessment and equalities impact assessment until after the regulations were laid. Praxis, in its briefing on behalf of a group of 15 organisations working on migration issues—I am grateful to Praxis for its help—argues that the EIA fails to consider properly the impact the fee increases will have on those with protected characteristics, especially where there is no fee waiver. It states:

In the Explanatory Memorandum, the Home Office describes the increases in the various fees as “proportionate”, given that most of them have not been subject to significant increases since 2018. This argument might carry more weight were the fees not already so high—according to one of the submissions to the SLSC, seven to 10 times the cost of processing them. The House of Commons Library points to how, over the last couple of decades, fees have increased significantly and, while the comparisons are not exact, suggests that overall,

“UK immigration costs are much higher than those in many other countries.”

As for child citizenship fees, a former Conservative Home Secretary described them as

“a huge amount of money”.

At £1,214, they are now just over £700 more than it costs to process them. For adults, the excess is now almost £850. How can such sums possibly be justified?

The SLSC did not feel able to adjudicate on the question of fee levels and acknowledged the Home Office’s point that the increases since 2018 have been limited. “Nevertheless”, it stated,

“we understand the potential impact of these large increases in fees on those required to pay them”,

and I will turn to this vital point.

But first, for those on the leave to remain five or 10-year routes, it has to be remembered that in addition to the fee increases in these regulations, already in operation, they face other costs: the immigration health surcharge and repeated extension applications, the costs of both of which are also due to increase. When all these fees are raised, as anticipated, someone on the 10-year route could be paying as much as nearly £19,000 in total for just one adult, never mind children, and excluding the cost of registering biometrics, which must be done at every application. Can the Minister tell us when the repeated extension application fees will be raised; or, better still, can he reassure us that they will not be, given the extra burden they will create?

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, people on the 10-year route to settlement are disproportionately likely to be on a low income, and its recent destitution study found migrants to be overrepresented. Not surprisingly, even prior to the fees increase, recent research by the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit found that visa applications are forcing many of them into debts of tens of thousands of pounds. This has left many migrants unable to cover their most basic needs, and vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking. For those who cannot pay, the result can be a loss of lawful immigration status and, with it, the right to work, rent a home or access healthcare safely. Research by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has shown that the inability to meet the cost of these is already a key factor in the loss of legal immigration status. Other research with young migrants has documented the profound impact on mental health and well-being.

For the children required to pay the citizenship registration fee, the consequences of not being able to do so can be profound. The High Court found, on the basis of a mass of evidence, that children so excluded were made to feel alienated. It can affect their right to enter higher education and, in adulthood, makes them vulnerable to the hostile/compliant environment policy, with echoes of the Windrush scandal. In the words of the PRCBC, they enter adulthood “facing significant disadvantages”, even when they were born in the UK. This has particular implications for those in poverty or living with disabilities.

One example is Harriet, who was born in and has always lived in the UK. She has always lived with significant disabilities. Her lone mother could not afford the fee when she was a child, when there was no waiver. Now that she is an adult, without the possibility of a waiver, she is unlikely ever to be able to afford the increased fee and to secure the citizenship to which she has been entitled since the age of 10. Can the Minister tell us what steps were taken to assess whether the children’s fee increase was in the best interests of the child, as is required by law? On the face of it, it is difficult to see how a 20% increase in a fee that had already been described as “huge” by a former Home Secretary could be in a child’s best interests.