The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
Hywel
Williams
Blunt,
Mr. Crispin
(Reigate)
(Con)
Boswell,
Mr. Tim
(Daventry)
(Con)
Brady,
Mr. Graham
(Altrincham and Sale, West)
(Con)
Brake,
Tom
(Carshalton and Wallington)
(LD)
Clelland,
Mr. David
(Tyne Bridge)
(Lab)
Dhanda,
Mr. Parmjit
(Gloucester)
(Lab)
Fisher,
Mark
(Stoke-on-Trent, Central)
(Lab)
Green,
Damian
(Ashford)
(Con)
Griffiths,
Nigel
(Edinburgh, South)
(Lab)
Gwynne,
Andrew
(Denton and Reddish)
(Lab)
Hillier,
Meg
(Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department)Huhne,
Chris
(Eastleigh)
(LD)
McCabe,
Steve
(Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's
Treasury)
Mahmood,
Mr. Khalid
(Birmingham, Perry Barr)
(Lab)
Scott,
Mr. Lee
(Ilford, North)
(Con)
Wilson,
Phil
(Sedgefield) (Lab)
Glenn
McKee, Committee Clerk
attended the Committee
Fifth
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Tuesday 4
November
2008
[Hywel
Williams in the
Chair]
Draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment No. 3) Regulations 2008
4.30
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Meg
Hillier): I beg to
move,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Immigration and Nationality
(Fees) (Amendment No. 3) Regulations
2008.
People,
particularly members of the Committee, know that the Government are
undergoing the biggest shake up of Britains borders for more
than 45 years, and we are determined to drive through the real
improvements to the immigration system that we have said we should
deliver. I will not repeat what current and previous immigration
Ministers have said on that, but our fees for migrants aim to reflect
the benefit to the applicant and reduce the impact of the cost to the
UK taxpayer.
We have
recently laid immigration rules and, indeed, laid the rules today for
tiers 2 and 5 of the points-based system. The regulations we are
debating today deal with setting fees for parts of the points-based
system. In setting fees for this year, we are continuing to apply the
principle on the basis of the value of the applicant. In order
to do so we are using the powers set out in section 42 of the Asylum
and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, which was
amendment by section 20 of the UK Borders Act 2007. In simple terms, we
are seeking a greater contribution from those who benefit the
most, and that includes the fees covered today.
Perhaps it
might help if I give a summary of those fees. We will be talking about
the Council of Europe social charter countries, and tier 1 as a general
category and as a transition application, which is intended for those
who were perhaps halfway through their application when the
points-based system was introduced. We will also discuss tier 2 for all
categories, tier 1 for post-study leave to remain for personal
applicants, and multi-tier sponsor licence fees. The latter relate to
sponsors who have perhaps sponsored someone at a lower level, are
seeking to increase their sponsorship licence to include a higher tier,
and need to pay the additional fee in its
place.
For
the tier 1 post study leave to remain fee, we propose a £600 fee
for an application to be made in person at a public inquiry office. We
propose a reduced entrance clearance fee for workers from states that
have ratified the 1961 Council of Europe social charter, which will be
90 per cent. of the
fee.
Mr.
Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): I am a relative newcomer to
this area, although I am on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe. Is that provision unique to the social charter, or are there
are any other concessions or administrative requirements set by the
frame of membership of and accession to the Council of Europe, rather
than, for example, the European economic
area?
Meg
Hillier: I will go into that in a little more detail
later, but we currently have a slightly different approach to that
group of people. Previously, we did not charge them a fee for doing
that. We propose a 90 per cent. fee because we think that that strikes
the right balance between cost recovery and the need to ensure that
those who use and benefit from the system pay for it.
The
multi-tier sponsor licence fee will be £600, and that is in
cases involving a medium or large sponsor, which tends to be a bigger
company that already holds a tier 4 or 5 licence, so they would be
lifting it to a higher-level licence to take in sponsor applicants in
the higher
tiers.
As
we know from the work that we have done, the facility for applying in
person is highly valued by customers. The first applicants under the
points-based system will be able to make an application in person under
our phased implementation of that system. We estimate that that route
will have generated an income of £2.6 million by
March 2009.
The 10 per
cent. fee reduction that the hon. Member for Daventry asked about is
offered to workers who are nationals of states that have ratified the
Council of Europe social charter. In reality, that applies to Turkey,
Croatia and Macedonia, so nationals of those countries applying for
entry clearance will get that. We think that we have set the fee at a
reasonable rate in the context of our relationship with those
countries, and to recover the sums
required.
We
have also removed the fee exemption for workers under the 1996 Council
of Europe revised social charter, which means that workers from
Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine
will now pay the standard entry clearance fee. To some members of the
Committee who have been following this issue, that might seem odd,
given that only in April did we introduce the fee exemption, but on
reflection we think it right to make the amendment now, so that we
maximise our income from those benefiting from our services, while
managing the risk of potentially spurious claims from applicants who
could claim at any time without incurring any fee. The fear is that
that would increase the costs to the UK taxpayer without an equal
increase in revenue. The change is entirely within the extent of our
obligations under the Council of Europe social charter, and it is a
reasonable balance to have struck. We are examining any other changes
that can be made overall to fee structures from April next year, at
which point we can introduce anything that we have considered in the
interim that may need to be
included.
Mr.
Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West) (Con): The hon.
Lady said that the fee structure varies according to the perceived
value to the applicant. Will she give the Committee a little more
detail about how that value is assessed and explain the relationship
between the actual level of the fee and the quantity of that
value?
Meg
Hillier: We have to strike a number of balancesa
matter that I am happy to go into with the hon. Gentleman. We must
cover the cost of the end-to-end immigration system in this country.
Under Treasury rules, we are
allowed to set the fees that we do to recover
£100 million a year more than we spend on the
process. It is important to achieve a balance across the whole so that
we have fees that meet international market
requirements.
Let
us consider, for example, student fees. Were we to charge the actual
cost to the individual student, many students would pay their money,
take their choice and try to study in another country where the fees
were lower. With each issue, we have to strike a balance in the context
of the international marketplace in which, effectively, migrants choose
to work, as well as making sure that the UK taxpayer is not
disbenefited and that we balance the benefit to the individual worker.
We have looked at that in several ways, and organisations such as the
Migration Advisory Committee help to advise on the benefits both to
individuals and to the UK economy.
Tom
Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): The Minister may
have received, as I am sure other hon. Members have, an e-mail from
Alison Harvey, the general secretary of the Immigration Law
Practitioners Association. She made an interesting point about
actual cost, and about whether members of the Committee can find out
from the hon. Lady the actual average cost of processing the different
applications, so that we can make a comparison with what is being
charged.
Meg
Hillier: The actual cost to the UK is
about £2 million a year, and we recover about a third of
that from visa fees. Although some individuals may worry and argue
about the cost, we must achieve a balance overall in respect of
financial input into the immigration
system.
Tom
Brake: I thank the Minister for giving me the overall
figure, but I wanted to home in on the cost of individual tier 1
applications and so on. I wanted a breakdown per different type of
application.
Meg
Hillier: As I have explained, we have to recover fees for
the end-to-end immigration process. I went into a lot of detail in
response to the intervention from the hon. Member for Altrincham and
Sale, West about how we try to strike that balance. Rather than charge
the actual cost for each tier, we try to achieve a balance overall;
otherwise, we would be reducing the competitiveness of UK universities
in terms of recruiting students from abroad. That is one example, but
there are others. I pledge to look into such issues for the hon. Member
for Carshalton and Wallington, and to see what information I can
provide in writing to him and to other members of the Committee, if
that is
helpful.
Mr.
Boswell: If, as I think the Minister has conceded, there
is an element of cross-subsidy for market reasons, will she ensure
that, whatever the fees actually charged to the individual, they are
reasonable in administrative law terms in respect of the costs incurred
of that individuals application, and report to us on
that?
Meg
Hillier: I am very happy to reassure the hon. Gentleman
that we always aim to be reasonable in respect of such costs. As we
know, there are benefits to many applicants in accessing the various
services that the UK offers, including the UK workplace, and the fees
reflect that benefit overall. It is always a difficult judgment. When
speaking to audiences, many people
raise the issues of fees, but many also recognise the benefits that they
receive for those fees. It is therefore a moot point, but we get the
balance right, and I am glad to have the broad support of Opposition
Members on this
issue.
I
believe that I have covered the sponsor licence fee. It is an unusual
category of application for which we expect volumes to be negligible,
so we are not expecting a lot of people to be affected by that. The
fees proposed here are all fair and proportionate. They recover the
costs of considering the application and make that important
contribution to the end-to-end costs of the system which, if they are
not paid for by people going through the immigration system, have to be
recovered elsewhere by the UK taxpayer. As representatives of the UK
taxpayer, I am sure that we all agree that we need to make matters
fair.
The changes
proposed today are a vital step as we move toward a fairer and more
effective immigration system, and I commend the regulations to the
Committee.
4.40
pm
Damian
Green (Ashford) (Con): Those who are veterans of the fees
regulations will know already that there is a certain ritualistic
aspect of this discussion, which the Minister has adhered to. We appear
to be getting increasingly regular introductions of fees as the
points-based system comes into being. However, we are now at the stage
at which we are changing existing provisions, which is
alarming.
Like the hon.
Member for Carshalton and Wallington, I have seen the e-mail from the
Immigration Law Practitioners Association. It is slightly
alarmingMinisters ought to be alarmed about this as
wellthat it now describes the system as incomprehensible. If
the specialist lawyers in the field regard the Governments new
legislation as incomprehensible, I would suggest that the general
public are entitled to be genuinely alarmed.
The Minister
knows that we support the idea of reasonable charges for people who
want to come to this country. It is fair that those who want to come
and benefit from living here should be asked to pay for the processing
of their paperwork and to contribute towards the subsequent enforcement
of our immigration rules. We have no problems in principle, but we are
surprised about the rapid change, particularly regarding the exemption
for workers who are nationals of states covered by either the Council
of Europe social charter or the revised social charter.
The Minister
attempted to explain why the exemptions that were introduced barely a
year ago have to be changed so rapidly. However, I did not quite follow
her argument, so I would be grateful if she would address that in her
concluding remarks, not least by telling us why the exemptions have to
be changed so quickly. Have the number of applicants been so great that
a change is seen as a necessary deterrent? She said that exemptions
should not apply with regard to a treaty that we have not ratified, but
that situation also applied last year, so why introduce a change this
year?
I
will be grateful if the Minister addresses one or two other questions.
She will be aware that her Department advised to the Prime Minister
that a recession would lead to rising crime and put strains on
community
cohesion, which I am sure is true, regrettably. However, in that same
memo, there was pertinent concern about the fees that we are
discussing. The document states
that
the
Home Office is managing a number of financial risks, particularly in
respect of...those areas where we heavily depend on fee income
(most especially passports and managed migration). We believe at
present that these can be contained but fee income in particular is
vulnerable to a downturn in economic
activity.
Can
the Minister say whether she has reassessed the anticipated levels of
fee income now that the country is clearly heading into a recession?
What contingency plans is the Home Office making? She said how
important this fee income is. If it is going to reduce, clearly some
Home Office activities will be under threat.
It would be
pertinent to the debate if the Minister could explain where the money
will come from, if the income falls short of expectations. Will it be
cut from other parts of the UK Border Agency, or other parts of the
Home Office budget? Will the fees for those who still want to come here
have to rise still further? If they do have to rise further, presumably
we will be back here again for yet more increases and changes to the
fee structure. The Minister has already said, in her explanation for
charging over and above the costs of processing, that she is attempting
to assess the benefits to those who come here, and also to maintain
Britains competitiveness in the global market for desirable
immigrants who can contribute something. It is noteworthy that she made
a good point about how clearly Britain welcomes foreign students, but
she cannot put the fees up too much for them because they have
alternatives.
It seems that
we could draw the conclusion, therefore, that the Government will try
to set fees by the individual sectors, by each tier and, presumably,
country by country, since they are now discriminating between different
types of country in these regulations. The amount of detailed
calculation that the Government will have to do to meet that balance
for every country and for each individual tier of the points-based
system seems ambitiousI will put it no higher than that.
Ministers are prone to suggest that our idea of having a
straightforward annual limit on the number of work permits issued would
be arbitrary. However, I think that the fees that they
will be setting for individual tiers, with different fees for different
countries depending on which Council of Europe charter they have
signed, will mean that Ministers will end up taking far more arbitrary
decisions than we ever dreamt of.
I have one
last question for the Minister, and I am again grateful to the ILPA for
drawing this to our attention. It
claims:
The
lack of clarity in the fees regulations means that it is not possible
to tell from them what the actual cost of immigration applications or
sponsorship licensing applications are.
It points out that
family members applying for entry clearance for settlement pay
£515 even though many of them will not have the skills or
qualifications to earn high salaries, whereas tier 1 migrants pay only
£95 more than that and, by definition, will be able to afford
it. ILPA suggests, and I think that it is right, that it would be
helpful if UKBA provided information about the actual costs of
different applications in order to show the extent of
cross-subsidisation and the level of profit made.
Although we
have no objection in principle to the idea of charging, or indeed to
the idea of charging more than the actual cost, there are several
detailed questions that I hope the Minister can
address.
4.48
pm