Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment No. 3) Regulations 2008

Yes. The noble Baroness reinforces my point. Most of the people who came here, such as the huge number who entered from Poland after accession, have gone back, leading to a net reduction in immigration from the east-EU accession countries, which people were so terrified of when those immigrants first came in. The regulations and the points-based system have nothing to do with those numbers, which we talked about at Question Time. The regulations come under the regime set by Section 51 of the 2006 Act, which gives the Secretary of State power to specify fees for services provided in connection with immigration and nationality, and by Section 42, as amended, of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, which allows the fees to be set at levels higher than the cost of providing the service, as well as to cross-subsidise other services without any clear upper limit. I intervened in the noble Baroness’s speech to say that this event was not annual but almost monthly. To summarise, your Lordships discussed the original fees order on 8 March 2007 and the original regulations three weeks later. Since then, we had amendments to the order on 13 December 2007 and two sets of amendments to the regulations on 25 February 2008 and 17 June 2008. Although it may have been a bit of an exaggeration to say that this happens monthly, this is the sixth time that we have looked at the procedures under the current legislation. This makes it ever more difficult for practitioners and the users of the system to find their way through all the paperwork. The Immigration Law Handbook consolidates legislation up to the point at which it is published, but the current version, from early 2007, has none of these instruments. What Parliament and users need, if we are to understand this avalanche of secondary legislation and comment on it usefully, is a draft consolidation of the original order. I think that this was the noble Baroness’s point. We need consolidation as we go along, including all the amending instruments up to the one under consideration. If the Home Office wanted to be helpful, it could publish the fee regulations, as they would be amended by this instrument, as an appendix to the Explanatory Memorandum each time a new instrument is tabled. There will be many more instruments; we have dealt with only a fraction of the six tiers that are involved in the points-based system. The Library helpfully provided me with the Butterworth consolidation of all the regulations up to the regulation preceding this one. I laboriously inserted into it the amendments provided by this set of regulations, although that should be done by the Home Office. I have handed to the Minister’s officials work that I did over the weekend to consolidate this amendment into the previous ones. If the Minister looks through it, he will find that it is easy to follow because anything that has been removed from the previous regulations has been struck out in red. You can easily look through it and see exactly what these regulations have done. You cannot tell that simply by looking at this set of regulations unless you have the previous five instruments to refer to. The fee for a particular service may reflect the benefit that the Secretary of State thinks will accrue to a successful applicant. However, if that calculation is made, the Secretary of State is not obliged to tell us on what assumptions it was based or to explain how the arithmetic was done. In the case of a tier 1 post-study migrant, we are told that, in the target consultation on the fees and charges to support the points-based system that was undertaken a year ago, one employer respondent agreed that tier 1 and tier 2 applicants should pay slightly higher fees, which presumably means slightly higher than the cost, because they could earn more. Unfortunately, this consultation is not available on the UK Border Agency website or in the Printed Paper Office. I was under the impression that, if any document was referred to in a Motion before the House, it should be made available to Members; if that does not extend to the Explanatory Memorandum where this consultation is referred to, it jolly well ought to. I suggest that where any consultation is mentioned the document should be put on the relevant website and made available in hard copy for noble Lords to refer to either in the House or in Grand Committee. The UKBA internal summary of the consultation, which the agency kindly sent to me when I asked for it, asked for comments on the proposal to set fees for applications under each of the tier 1 categories at levels that would continue to recover more than the normal administrative costs of considering the application. The respondents to the consultation largely agreed, subject to the costs being ““reasonable””. UKBA says that it took on board the suggestion by some respondents that the post-study work migrants should pay less because they start as low earners. This has already been taken into account in setting their fee at £400 compared with £750 for normal tier 1 applicants. What would the amount have to be to recover the pure costs so that users can see whether the actual amounts being charged are slightly higher, which respondents said would be acceptable, or much higher? Why is it not possible in these consultations to give respondents a rough indication of the costs for bare recovery, the additional amount needed to recover the expenditure associated with appeals against refused applications, and the elements of cross-subsidisation? The object of the exercise is to make the successful applicants in tiers 1 and 2 not only pay for the cost of processing their own applications but also cover the additional overheads incurred by unsuccessful applicants, including the cost of the appeal system and the cross-subsidisation of other elements of the points-based system. As I have said before, this makes it more expensive for a non-EU national to come to the UK under the points-based system than any other country in the world, including Australia, about which we had an argument with the Minister’s predecessor over the actual figures. I have proved to my own satisfaction that our costs are higher than those of the Australians. In the previous regulations there was an exemption from tier 1 general and tier 2 entry clearance applications for citizens of both CESC and CERSC states, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. However, as I understand it, that was a mistake. Citizens of the CESC states will now pay 10 per cent less than the tier 1 standard entry clearance fee of £600 with a similar concession on tier 2. We have not ratified the revised Social Charter and perhaps the Minister will confirm that we have no foreseeable intention of doing so. We are therefore not obliged and never were obliged to make any concession to non-EU signatories to the CERSC. On the other hand, the exemption from charge in respect of all tier 1 and tier 2 leave to remain applications made either by CESC or CERSC nationals is maintained because these exemptions were in place before. It is confusing to have what looks like a permanent distinction in the entry clearance and leave to remain treatment from CESC and CERSC nationals respectively. When the points-based system was first announced, it was billed as a simplification of the immigration system, but with every development it becomes more and more complex. Would the Minister explain the distinction between the CESC and the CERSC states? I share the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that we have not had a proper explanation of that treatment. As regards the application for sponsor licences, the Explanatory Memorandum states that there was agreement among respondents that large businesses should pay higher fees so that small businesses and charities could be cross-subsidised. Again, no figures were given and the unpublished consultation shows that there was a, "““general request from all the sectors to provide actual figures””." The universities, in particular, said that the Home Office lacks understanding of the enrolment process, which involves setting out fees in their prospectuses well in advance. The fee for a sponsorship licence for tier 4 migrants—students—is £1,000, which I suppose is not a significant cost when spread across the number of foreign students attending most universities with a unified system of admission, but is it fair in the case of universities such as Oxford, where admission is determined by the colleges? The universities make the point that they are charities but, although there was a promise by the Government that charities would pay a reduced sponsorship licence fee, that has not been honoured. Universities pay the same as any other large sponsor. I do not see the amount of the fee for individual certificates of sponsorship, which are required from institutions of higher education. In its written evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry, Managing Migration: The Points-Based System, Universities UK said that it would like a more considered and staged implementation and a more flexible approach to the certificate process for tier 4. In 2006-07, there were more than 239,000 non-EU international students at UK higher education institutions and almost 20 per cent of the staff were non-UK, to say nothing of the large number of visiting academics who come here on short visits. Those international students and staff make a vital contribution to the sector academically, culturally and financially, and there needs to be far more advance notice of the introduction of the PBS as it affects them. The chairman of ILPA, giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on 8 July, said that when tier 1 went live on 29 January, and again when the next phase of tier 1 implementation happened on 30 June, the guidance notes for the sponsors were published on the same day, making it impossible for employers to check their practices for compliance in advance. If the same thing happens on 25 November, HEIs will be in serious difficulties. We want an assurance from the Government that they will discuss the timing with the HEIs and agree with them on a suitable interval between the publication of the guidance and the rollout of further tiers, especially tier 4, going live. The universities also protest that they are being given no chance to test the sponsorship management system, which is the IT system into which they are required to input details of their tier 2 and tier 5 employees on 25 November, yet that system is required to operate from that day onwards not only here in the UK but at every visa post in the world. I have, with the noble Lord’s assistance, a paper that I received from Universities UK, setting out those and further points of concern about the regulations—I will not go into further detail on that, because he will have that in writing. Finally, unemployment was already increasing at the fastest rate since the early 1990s before the world financial crash; redundancies were increasing and job vacancies were falling. UKBA figures in August showed that the number of eastern European EU migrants applying to the worker registration scheme in the second quarter of 2008 had fallen to the lowest level since accession. Presumably, as redundancies soar and vacancies plummet, the number of foreign workers in tiers 1 and 2 needed by the economy has already shrunk. It would be useful to know what the Government estimate the numbers in those categories will be over the next 12 months.