My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s introduction to this statutory instrument, but he raises more rather than fewer questions for me. First, I point out that it would perhaps have been helpful to have debated together this SI and the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2023, debated on Monday 4 December, as many of the arguments raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and others in her regret Motion debate
also apply here. The Home Office may see them as separate but, for the migrant, it is part of a large increase in the visa taxes that they and their dependants have to pay up front.
This SI, alongside all the other legislation that the Government are introducing in relation to immigration, shows that, frankly, the current system is broken. These damaging new rules mean that British employers cannot recruit people they need; more families will be separated by unfair and complex visa requirements; and public confidence in the system has, frankly, been shattered.
One sector particularly severely affected will be our universities and research councils—I declare an interest, as I worked in that sector for 20 years. They will struggle to recruit the best international students because the cost for students, whether undergraduate or graduate students, post-docs or even senior research associates, will rise, because the fees charged by this Government are becoming a real barrier.
This week, Times Higher Education quoted Shashi Singh, who obtained his PhD at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, which is on a par with the absolute best in the world—fewer than 4% of applications to study there are accepted. He is now a senior research associate in molecular biology at the University of Glasgow School of Infection and Immunity, and exactly the sort of world-leading scientist we should be encouraging to stay. He said:
“Last month, I paid £6,000 for settlement of my wife and daughter. When postdocs’ salaries are around £40,000 a year … that’s a huge strain on your family budget”.
He explains that the family cannot afford a car or taxis, because that
“money is needed to buy food or has already been used to pay for visas”.
This year, he, his wife and daughter would have paid a total of £1,718 for their annual health charge. Next year, with the 66% increase, it rises to a total £2,846.
I noticed in his introduction that the Minister said very clearly that the fee was separate to the visa fee. The problem is that those being charged do not feel that it is separate. The graph in the Explanatory Memorandum shows that in fact hardly any fee waivers were granted over the past three years.
In 2021-22, international students contributed £41 billion to our economy. That means that every 11 non-EU students generate £1 million-worth of net economic impact for the UK economy. This covers fees and payments for living costs such as rent and food. The problem is that post-docs such as Shashi will consider not coming to the UK at all. This is exactly the target group whom the Government should be supporting, not trying to deter. Their contribution to their university and their local community, the quality of their research and paying taxes are everything that this Government should aim for with their repeated mantras about “world-beating research”, yet it seems that the current Prime Minister has already forgotten Boris Johnson’s global talent scheme. Will the Minister explain how we will attract and retain the brightest of academics, whether students or post-docs, to deliver world-beating research when the Government are charging them these very large sums for a number of visa taxes?
Frankly, the increase in the health charge is the most extraordinary this year. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s fifth report sets out a range of concerns relating to it. It states that the Government’s methodology is “unconvincing” and does not explain with evidence the justification for this large increase. A more cynical person might feel that “made up on the back of an envelope” would be more appropriate. Certainly, if you read the detail of the Explanatory Memorandum, it is extremely difficult to find the method. The Home Office’s explanation is that there are three elements to the calculation: the overall cost of the NHS, the total population and then a “factor” that adjusts for the fact that migrants tend to use the NHS less than the average person because they are younger on average. So you divide overall cost by the population then multiply by the migrant costs factor to provide an estimate of the cost of the average migrant to the NHS.
The SLSC reiterates the point that the reason the amount has increased so much is because on one of those three data points the Home Office has substantially increased the migrant cost factor, but with no evidence. It is no good turning to the Explanatory Memorandum to the instrument because that provides no details on why the charge is to be increased at a rate well in excess of national health spending. The latter has increased by 25% since the last increase in the health charge, whereas the health charge is increasing by more than two-thirds, as I said earlier. Will the Government undertake to publish the full methodology before this SI is enacted and certainly before it is implemented?
Worse, the impact assessment on page 5 of the SI bundle states:
“Baseline volumes of visa applications are based on Home Office internal planning assumptions. The volumes used are highly uncertain and may not match actual numbers in future published statistics. The impact of increased IHS on volumes is based on assumptions of price elasticity of demand for visas”.
Will the Minister say what “price elasticity” means and how it has helped the Government come to the proposed increase? Surely it must not mean an excuse for charging whatever sum the Government want to increase it by a year, but without that empirical evidence of the background data, it is almost impossible to determine this.
There is a place for immigration and nationality visa fees but they should remain affordable, and if they have to go up, the increase must not be higher than inflationary levels. It is vital for our economy that British employers must be able to hire the workers they need, and those who choose to come to the UK to work or study should be welcomed for the skills and contributions that they bring, no matter how short a time they are here for. Most do not stay; they remain for a limited period only. Everyone should be able to have confidence that the immigration system is functioning properly. Our Benches would make migration work for the UK with merit-based work visas instead of an arbitrary salary threshold, which is a further problem.
At the moment, however, the real issue is how many of our migrants are going to face this enormous surcharge in the NHS fee, which has not been justified in any of the documentation provided by the Home Office.