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Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2008

I thank Members of the Committee for the considered debate and the various points raised. I will try to answer the specific points put to me. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, asked whether tiers 4 and 5 would not recover costs while tiers 1 and 2 could. The answer is yes. It breaks down that the net benefit in the tier 1 area is about £561 million to the Exchequer; in tier 2 it is about £237 million; whereas in tier 5 we lose £31 million. We are not recouping all our costs on tiers 4 and 5. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that they are set annually. Of course, we will come back to the House each time we wish to change them. The UK Border Agency is confident that it has the resources to deal with all these measures expeditiously. The fees secure the necessary financial resources to allow that expeditious delivery. In totality, we expect to generate in the region of £685 million in 2008-09, contributing significantly to the £2 billion we will spend on securing our border and managing the immigration system. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked why we had set the fees at this level. We aim to keep the fees for the PBS route similar to the level of the pre-existing comparable route. We have increased several of the fees by approximately 3 per cent. Fees for new services or applications reflect the true operational costs of the system, while taking into account the value of a successful application in terms of entitlements and benefits to the migrant. Indeed, the British public at large feel that that is appropriate, as they get benefits from doing this. I have already mentioned that tiers 1 and 2 are higher than tiers 4 and 5. The majority of people we consulted supported our proposals. Some people felt that the fees could have been higher than they are, so we came to a sensible balance on that. We justify these fees by having debated with and talked to all the people involved—I hate the word ““stakeholders””. We set higher fees in those areas where we have in accordance with comprehensive research, looking at those thresholds. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for telling me about his questions on Buddhist monks just before the debate, but I had no time to get a response. I will confront my noble friend Lord Malloch-Brown and ask him why he did not tell me that this had been asked; it has slightly caught me out. I think that tier 2 deals with religion but I take the point about people not being paid and whether one should look at tier 5 if they are coming to undertake non-graduate teaching. I am pretty certain that we have held discussions with the Buddhist community, but I hope that I may come back to the noble Lord in writing on that specific point.