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The review will be led by Professor Neil Douglas, vice-president of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. It will take evidence widely, including from the British Medical Association (and the Junior Doctors' Committee) and from a sample of junior doctors and consultants engaged in the process.
The review will be completed by the end of March, and the findings published as soon as possible in order for lessons to be learnt and changes to be made ahead of the second round.
In the mean time, round one will continue as planned.
Immigration and Nationality Fees
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Triesman): My honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Liam Byrne) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
Today the Government publish the findings of the consultation paper, A Consultation on a New Charging Regime for Immigration & Nationality Fees, which ran from 30 October to 22 December last year. We also set out the policy on a new charging regime for immigration and nationality fees and the new and proposed in-country fee levels. The FCO is announcing new visa levels today, after agreement by the Privy Council yesterday.
We know that we offer highly competitive immigration services overseas and in-country and we continue to value the contribution made by migrants to the UK’s economic growth and enrichment of our society. In the consultation process we were clear that any changes to the way in which we charge migrant workers and students who come to the UK must not adversely impact on the many benefits that legal migration brings.
During the consultation period, we sent out over 3,000 consultation documents and received 340 formal responses. In addition, we ran a series of 13 sector-based stakeholder events with over 400 participants. These included key stakeholders in the education, business and health and social care sectors, as well as diplomats and representatives of the travel and tourism sector.
We propose to move to a new flexible charging model which balances the services we offer at home and overseas, the entitlements attached to each of these and the price. In this way, we believe that we can set fees at levels that minimise the operational risk to our businesses while generating the revenue for the next four years to help fund the transformation of the immigration system, and maintaining the global
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The new model will involve setting fees taking into account a number of factors, such as value to the migrant and international competitiveness. This will mean that for those routes we believe to be the most sensitive to price increases, or where we believe that wider issues make a strong argument for doing so, we will set fees at cost recovery or below. Those routes that we believe, on the basis of the research, are less sensitive to increases to visa and in-country application fees and bring increased value to migrants in terms of their entitlements would be charged at levels that contribute substantially more to the overall cost of the immigration system.
We attach the proposed in-country fee levels for immigration and nationality applications for which the relevant legislative orders will be introduced in Parliament shortly.
Copies of the consultation response have been placed in the Libraries of the House and may also be downloaded from www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk, www.ukvisas.gov.uk or www.fco.gov.uk.
| Application Type | Current Fee (£) | CP Fee (£) | Total price (£) | New Fee (£) |
| Application Type | Current Fee (£) | New Fee (£) |
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