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Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2011

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for the considered debate given to these regulations. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his comments about the Merits Committee reports. I am sure he is right. I will write on any vital points I do not cover in my response. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked a number of very good questions. He asked about students switching courses. Tier four migrants who applied for leave from 5 October 2009 have to apply and pay a fee to the UK Border Agency to change sponsor as part of a new leave application. Students who applied for leave under tier four of the points-based system between 31 March 2009 and 4 October 2009 would now have to pay the UK Border Agency when they want to change their educational establishment. Currently the UK Border Agency considers the requests from these students when they wish to change their educational establishment and approves or refuses them accordingly. There is a cost to the UK Border Agency for undertaking this work but no fee is charged. In the current economic climate we think it is right that these costs are met by the applicant. It is right that applicants pay this fee as there is a cost to the UK Border Agency of assuring that this switch of establishment does not infringe on the students’ immigration status. Last year we received about 18,000 such applications, although we anticipate a much lower level this year. The proposed fee of £160 will be lower than the £386 that those who were granted leave based on applications dated from 5 October 2009 are required to pay. Changes to the immigration rules will be announced before this fee is introduced. This is part of our process of making sure that those who come here to study are not coming here to work. The noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, talked about some of the reductions in the UK Border Agency. We are aiming to maintain service standards in terms of time and quality as we reduce costs but improve productivity. We are achieving this through investment in technology, moving to electronic rather than paper applications and case files, improved workflow management, and more efficient security-checking arrangements. These fee proposals will ensure that, while we are reducing costs, we are increasing income levels as we shift the contribution for the migration system from the UK taxpayer to the migrants who benefit. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, also made the point about balancing income and expenditure. In 2011-12 the UK immigration system is expected to cost over £2 billion. Our proposals will ensure that we recover approximately 36 per cent through fees from applicants and the services. These additional fee increases are expected to raise approximately an extra £90 million. Of this figure we expect to generate around £65 million from income fees set at levels where they exceed the administrative cost of processing an application. The rest of this figure will come from fees set at or below costs. The remaining costs are met by the UK taxpayer. The Committee should not forget that. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, talked about children born to foreign members of the UK Armed Forces. We believe that all those individuals who are required to register for British nationality should pay a fee to reflect the value of the entitlement that citizenship bestows. We only need to think of current events where Her Majesty’s Armed Forces are repatriating people stuck in difficult situations all around the globe. We already offer significant concessions to those family members by enabling their children to bypass the requirements placed on children of other migrants to obtain settlement in the UK before an application for citizenship can be made. This offers a more accelerated and hence cheaper route to citizenship than that available to family members of other migrants. An application to register for British citizenship is the free choice of the individual, or their parent in the case of children, and is not a requirement placed by the UK Government on a migrant asking to stay. It is charged at £540. By contrast, the fees required to reach a point where a child born overseas to a migrant worker could claim citizenship would be at least £2,322. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked about legacy cases. We estimate that we will have completed these by July 2011. He also asked about refunds for refused applications. The fees are set for the work involved in considering the application, not according to its outcome. He also asked about refusal of nationality. He will understand that this is a debate about fees, so I will write to him on that point. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made an extremely important point about international comparisons. He suggested that perhaps the Chinese would start charging us higher fees. We regularly review the fees charged by the UK against those charged by comparator economies across the globe, and I imagine that the Chinese do the same. However, migration systems and fees are complex. Direct comparisons of price can be difficult because we cannot always compare like with like. Visa fees vary considerably between comparable economies and depend usually on the particular circumstances of the applicant, such as their current location, their category of stay and their relationship to the settled person. Visas can be issued for different lengths of time, can allow more than one visit and can confer particular entitlements to work or bring in dependants. Some countries charge an additional fee for dependant applications.