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Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2008

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their input. As always in our discussions of statutory instruments there are a small number of noble Lords in the Chamber, but key points are always made that are very valuable. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, talked about cross-subsidisation. As I said, the support is for firms that employ fewer than 50 people and for charities. That is what the cross-subsidisation is aimed at. We felt that £300 was a fair and proportionate amount for them. We had a dialogue with them about that figure, and they seemed very content. Indeed, the large firms were also content that there should be some balance here, rather than the smaller firms paying the £1,000. The noble Baroness referred to the £43.2 million. The amount is for the next five years. In the next financial year, the figure will be about £8.7 million. I thank her for broadly supporting the thrust of this. There is no doubt that, when we consult the British public on this, they feel that people should contribute to the costs of the flow of immigrants. That seems to be a popular step. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, raised a number of issues, the first relating to sponsorship and to encouraging people to get into this country. There were concerns about whether student flow into the country would be damaged. Students will know that they are going to a bona fide establishment. We will produce a list of establishments that are accepted. We will look after students coming into this country in the correct way and will make sure that the correct things are done. Therefore, they will benefit from this. The noble Lord also raised the issue of fees for small businesses, including regulations made under Section 51, which is the power that we are using for that. The regulations set fees for above cost or for cross-subsidising. We welcome feedback on student sponsorship and the list of establishments. We have regular dialogue with the stakeholders, including the joint education task force. We hope that we will get some good feedback on that point. On new Regulation 20C, no fees will be charged for asylum seekers. We are aware of representations about the cost of a spouse visa and the need to ensure international competitiveness for family rates. We can confirm that there will be no fee for an asylum or humanitarian protection family member, spouse or child. We have looked at the end-to-end costs of fees, how we arrived at them and how they were administered. We have rounded up just above that level and have increased for inflation. I hope that noble Lords will let me go away and look at the audit, and perhaps I can write on that when I am more aware of all the implications.