UK Borders Bill

We have been diverted into a discussion about previous fees that were set under the order that has already been passed and how those were determined. I wrote to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, pointing out that the consultation to which the Minster has referred included no persons or groups that were representative of spouses and that when spouses discovered the level of the fees, as given by my noble friend, for indefinite leave to remain, they were horrified. I cannot imagine how the Secretary of State determined that the level of benefits accruing to someone who brought a spouse into this country had suddenly increased from £350 to £750, irrespective of the means of the applicant. The Minister has said that they compared this fee with comparable levels in other countries. I challenge him on that, and I challenged the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland. I sent her a list of countries which I had checked. In every case, the fee was less than the £750 that we were charging. I could not find a single country where the fee for indefinite leave to remain was more than £750. I am afraid that the Minister has been wrongly briefed, and he should go back to the department and find out what fee levels are charged for indefinite leave to remain in a number of other countries. The point of raising this was that, by giving the Secretary of State carte blanche, we have absolutely no idea what he is going to charge under Clause 20. The fees are not to be paid by the applicants, but by the sponsors. Here, for example, we have a spouse who is bringing his wife into the United Kingdom. He is already going to pay £2,059 when, suddenly, another fee is going to be charged on top of that; but nobody has any idea what it is. I urge the Minister to at least try to find some organisations representing the interests of spouses so that they are not missed out of the consultation that he undertakes on this occasion. However, I am pleased to hear that he will consult other interests. The universities may well have something to say about this; it may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I pointed out that the universities are already anxious because the fees paid by incoming students are already making them less competitive than some of the institutions in, say, the United States. If the universities are now to be asked to pay a sponsor’s fee on top of the rest of the expenses associated with students coming to the United Kingdom, they will have to load that on to the fees and become even less economic than they are already. I appeal the Minister to ensure that, when he undertakes the consultation on the level of fees to be charged under Clause 20, he brings in both universities and organisations representing families—not just spouses, of course. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, this applies also to people bringing in elderly dependent relatives.