Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

As the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, said, my name is on Amendment No. 22. I am grateful for his support for that amendment, the purpose of which is to probe the scope of the meaning of ““dependant””—the person for whom appeal rights can be restored by regulations under new Section 88A(1)(b). It is unclear whether a spouse, fiancé, unmarried partner or civil partner would be regarded as a dependant. The heading in the current Immigration Rules is ““Family Members””, of which dependent relatives are a subset. I hope that that will be the case under the Bill, but I would welcome clarification of that. Amendment No. 22 includes a reference at the end to ““such other persons””; it would give the Secretary of State the power to prescribe those other persons by regulations simply because new categories sometimes appear, most famously in the case of civil partners.