Improving the UK Visa System

We must draw a line at the smallest of organisations being able to sponsor visas, and we must set clear limits on the proportion of an organisation’s workforce that can be made up of people on work visas. For that to be possible, the Home Office must publish the relevant data, rather than fobbing off MPs by saying that it can only be collected at a disproportionate cost. The real cost is in turning a blind eye to loopholes in our visa system. Inspections need to be regular and transparent, so that the British public can see the system working for them.

The Home Office has claimed that it regularly reviews the organisations eligible to sponsor visas, but just a cursory check finds organisations that are long defunct. The former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy remains on the list, despite being abolished in February 2023. If Government are not joined up enough to remove historical Departments, how can there be any faith in the adequacy of checks on tens of thousands of smaller organisations across the country?

Employees who break the rules get a slap on the wrist, and repeat offenders are allowed to get back their licence to sponsor visas in as little as two years. We must be tougher. Bans on sponsoring visas should be incurred after one failed action plan following a B rating. Those bans should be permanent, with penalties for directors to stop them moving on to sponsor visas at their next rogue outfit.

In addition, too many public bodies have come to rely on immigration to fill job roles. That is ludicrous at a time when 1.1 million young British people are not in employment, education or training. The public sector should lead from the front and only sponsor visas in cases where candidates bring genuinely world-class expertise.

Astonishingly, thousands of visas are also being issued for religious and charity work to those who meet pathetically low financial requirements. Would you believe that £2,270 in the bank is enough for a religious minister to bring in a family of five for three years? A robust visa system would scrap those routes entirely. The hard truth is that they are being used to take advantage of Britain’s good will, and that must stop.

Work is not the only area where there is a problem. If someone has a high-paid, skilled job in the UK and their passport is from all but one country, they can bring their non-British spouse to the UK on a five-year dependent visa for around £1,500 in application fees. However, if a British citizen is bringing their non-British spouse to the UK for five years, that will set them back over £3,200 in fees and require two family visas. That is madness. What possible justification can there be for it to be more expensive and more difficult for British citizens to bring a non-British spouse to the UK? Even the family visa is not exclusive to citizens. Settled individuals have the same right to sponsor family visas that British citizens do. That is not fair to British citizens.

On student visas, our universities have a commercial incentive to fill lecture halls with international students, and the UK’s visa policy hands international student graduates the right to live and work in any job they like through the graduate visa. As a result, the UK takes the second largest number of international students of any country in the world—750,000 in the past couple of years. Far from attracting the best and the brightest, the visa system fails to distinguish between the quality of students.

The Government have repeatedly promised to smash the gangs, yet they are opening a new back door to Britain for organised criminals to exploit. In a further insult to the British public, the Government initially denied meeting with Duolingo, yet a recent response to a freedom of information request shows that the Minister for Investment met Duolingo in September 2025 to discuss its offer on English language testing. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that and apologise to the British public.

All that raises serious questions about the Government’s seriousness on UK border security. There are also questions to answer about whether the £816 million contract is good value for money. The Department will have received a letter from the Public Accounts Committee, on which I serve, inviting officials to brief the Committee, and I hope the offer will be taken up. It is clear from a YouGov poll that the majority of adults from across every political party, gender and socioeconomic group oppose a move to remote-only testing for an English visa application, so why on earth would the Home Office pursue that course?

In answer to my written parliamentary questions, the Minister alluded to the changes delivering a “net positive” financial benefit for the Department. In plain English, that means that the Home Office are looking to trade the security of high-stakes English language testing for cash for the Department. I would appreciate a response from the Minister on that point. What other reason could there be for the Government’s diverging from our Australian and Canadian allies, who have both recently rejected proposals to move testing online?

We do not permit remote-only testing for driving theory tests, “Life in the UK” tests or GCSEs, so how can we, with a clear conscience, permit it for the test that decides who makes the UK their home? Has the Home Office consulted the National Cyber Security Centre on the threat model for fully remote testing? The reality is clear for all to see: a fully remote model cannot match the security of in-person supervised testing. Are Ministers so naive that they cannot see the disaster coming down the tracks?

I hope that much of my speech will not come as a surprise to the Minister—I have asked him enough questions on this topic, and I have been told that my “Backdoors to Britain” report, which I published in March, has been read. I am grateful for the responses to it that I received from the Department. However, given the inadequacy of the Government’s response so far, I am not satisfied that they have listened to my concerns and those of many in the country.

I hope that the Minister’s response will reflect on the seriousness of these issues and demonstrate that the Government understand the problem. The British people do not want a blame game; this problem is too important for point scoring. I recognise that the responsibility for the problems in our visa system lies with both the current and with previous Governments, but the responsibility to act now lies with current Ministers. They need to be ambitious and brave but also thorough and serious.

It is crucial that we improve the visa rules and the compliance and enforcement system. More than almost any other system, it defines who we are as a nation and what it means to be part of our community. The conversation about how we get our visa system to work in the national interest must involve all of us, regardless of our politics. I look forward to hearing contributions from colleagues from right across the political divide.

Could the Minister also tell us whether the Home Office has consulted the National Cyber Security Centre on the threat model for fully remote English language testing, including AI-enabled cheating, impersonation, organised fraud and cross-border cyber-risks? Perhaps he could explain why the Government are moving towards remote-by-default testing when other high-stakes assessment bodies are moving in the opposite direction. For example, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants is ending remote invigilation, and the Law School Admission Council, which runs the law school admission test for US schools, is returning to in-person testing to protect security and integrity. Could he tell us whether the Home Office English language testing system will be independently regulated to the same standard as the current secure English language tests, and whether Ofqual will have a formal role? What fall-back arrangements are in place if security, reliability or integrity problems emerge after the contract is awarded, including whether the Home Office could realistically switch provider or return to higher-assurance in-person provision?

I appreciate that the Minister and his colleagues inherited a system that was buckling under the strain, and I also appreciate the hard work of the many civil servants trying to make it work, but I would appreciate any answers that the Minister can give.

The consequences are already being felt. Skilled worker visa applications in 2025 were 59% lower than in 2023 when work migration peaked. Construction companies, health trusts and care homes are facing chronic staff shortages. Universities are also under pressure, as tougher restrictions on international students reduce applications and cut vital tuition income. Migrant workers are at the heart of the systems that care for our sick and elderly, build our homes, grow our food and drive innovation.

Public opinion recognises this, more than Ministers often admit. British Future’s latest immigration tracker survey has shown that more than 60% of the public support increasing or maintaining numbers of nurses, doctors, care home workers, engineers, seasonal agricultural workers, academics, teachers and IT experts, while more than half support increasing or maintaining numbers of construction workers, catering staff and lorry drivers.