Migrants: Indefinite Leave to Remain

Question

11:29:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of migrants expected to apply for indefinite leave to remain over the course of the Parliament, and of the related cost.

Some 162,000 migrants were granted settlement in the year ending December 2024. The Government intend to produce a White Paper later this year on migration policy and will tackle high net migration by taking a different approach, linking migration and broader labour market policies together.

I thank the Minister for the reply. Using ONS and OBR data, it is possible to project that over 800,000 recent migrants could apply for ILR over the course of this Parliament. Some 54% of those are on non-work visas, and those on work visas are predominantly non-net tax contributors. Furthermore, each ILR migrant will have full claim to all benefits, and the right to bring in more dependants on non-work family visas. Does the Minister agree that the coming societal and fiscal impacts are simply unsustainable? Will the Government consider revising the current five-year eligibility rules while there is still time to do so?

The five-year eligibility rule is currently in place, as the noble Lord has mentioned. I have to say to him that I am a sort of hors d’oeuvre ahead of the main course, which will be the net migration White Paper, which will be published very shortly and will address what we need to do in this Parliament in respect of net migration, skills development, producing local skills here and tackling illegal migration. I hope that the noble Lord will bear with me: there will be examination of all those issues in the White Paper, which will be before this House in relatively short order.

My son-in-law, Jair, came to this country more than 20 years ago. Since his arrival here and his obtaining right to remain, he has been permanently employed in various capacities, including as an assistant in a school for deaf children. Latterly, since he obtained UK citizenship 16 years ago, he has been serving as a police officer in Scotland. He has never been a financial burden on the state. Does the Minister agree that, in considering the cost mentioned in the Question, it is also essential to include the benefits that such migrants bring to our society in providing essential public services and giving us practical examples of the benefits of cultural diversity?

I absolutely agree with the noble and learned Lord. We need to value those individuals who come here legally and via legal migration routes. They make a contribution to our society and fulfil many employment roles. They pay their taxes, put a range of cultural improvements into our society and help to improve the mix as a whole. However, I think that the noble and learned Lord will still recognise, to go back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, that that needs to be managed and examined. That is what the White Paper will do: examine the potential pressures and issues. But I want to emphasise that those who are here are welcome and contribute to our society positively.

My Lords, there are some 175,000 Ukrainian migrants in this country, who arrived more than three years ago and are running out of their three years’ leave to stay. What is their status now?

The Government have recently issued a statement revising and extending the Ukrainian scheme, and anybody who is here currently under that Ukrainian scheme will have been notified of the requirements under that. Their status will be regularised as long as the illegal occupation and invasion of Ukraine by the Russian state pertains.

What progress has been made in closing asylum hotels, in line with the Government’s manifesto commitment? How will the Government ensure that those granted indefinite leave to remain contribute to the economy, rather than becoming dependent on state support?

The Government have closed a certain number of asylum hotels—it is in the low teens at the moment. The Government have a commitment to closing such hotels because they are a waste of taxpayers’ resource, and there are better ways to manage what we inherited from the previous Government. Since July, we have removed 19,000 people with no legal right to remain in the United Kingdom. Of those, 5,100 were enforced returns and, since July, we have also tackled 5,400-plus visits on illegal working, and we are improving the situation with removal of foreign national offenders. There is a record that the noble Lord has to defend, and we are trying to unpick that record—and those hotels are his legacy. We will meet our manifesto commitment during this Parliament.

My Lords, are the Government satisfied that UKVI is providing good or, at any rate, reasonable service to applicants for indefinite leave? If you are paying the standard fees rather than for priority or super-priority service, is that one of the services for which you have to provide your credit card details and pay to hold on the phone, listening to a robot—possibly telling you that “Your call is very important to us”—before getting a formulaic and uninformative reply about the progress of your application?

I hope that that is not the experience—and if it is, I hope that the noble Baroness will send me details of the specifics of the experience that she relates. The Home Office does not make a profit from applications; where the fee is higher than the estimated unit cost, there is no profit element. The Home Office keeps all fees under review, and it is its principle to ensure that those who have a potential legal right to apply to stay in the United Kingdom have the facility to do so in a simple and effective way. I hope that the noble Baroness will supply me with the information if there is a specific case to which she wishes to refer.

My Lords, might my noble friend talk with his boss, the Home Secretary—I ought to declare an interest, because I am still involved with higher education—on whether we could in the White Paper at least discuss the critical issue of not getting into the farcical position of trying desperately to recruit full-time higher education students from across the world and then counting them in the net migration figures?

My noble friend tempts me to go into the main course rather than the hors d’oeuvre, which is today’s Question. I cannot trail for him matters that may or may not be in the immigration/net migration White Paper that we will produce in the very near future. We are intending to look at the inheritance that we had from the previous Government but also at the economic needs and training needs of the United Kingdom and how we can upskill the UK workforce, as well as at the impact of net migration students on university places—and the points that the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, mentioned. I hope that my noble friend can have patience, as that will be before this House in relatively short order.

My Lords—

My Lords—

It should be the noble Lord, Lord Alton, next.

The Minister will have seen the letter that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has sent to his right honourable friend the Home Secretary about the plight and fate of those children who went missing from asylum accommodation, overseen by the Home Office at the time. What can he tell us about the numbers still involved, their plight or fate, and what more is being done to identify their whereabouts?

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. It is a priority for the Government to track down and provide safeguarding measures for those children who went missing under the regime of the previous Government. There are approximately 80 to 90 for whom we do not have records of where they are now. It is priority to understand where they are. The responsibility for that lies not just with the Home Office but with local authorities, such as Kent, which had initial responsibility and now has responsibility for safeguarding issues. It is a priority to find them, and I shall update the noble Lord in due course.

My Lords, will the Government’s White Paper abandon the doctrine proclaimed by Tony Blair, and to which subsequent Conservative Ministers, sadly, succumbed, that mass immigration is necessary to promote growth in this country, given that in the ensuing 20 years we have had the highest rate of immigration in our history and the lowest rate of growth? Will they go back and look at the record of Mrs Thatcher—

Oh!

During Mrs Thatcher’s 12 years in office, net immigration was precisely net zero, but we moved from being the slowest-growing economy in Europe to the fastest-growing major economy in Europe.

As I spent most of the period from 1979 to 1990 trying to make sure that Mrs Thatcher was not in office, I cannot really give much comfort to the noble Lord on his request to endorse the policies she undertook. He will have to wait for the migration White Paper that will be coming shortly. Among its key aspects—I can give him a slight taster—will be the ability to develop homegrown skills, to look at skill shortages, and to look at how we upskill individuals to fill those vacancies. I very much value the people who, historically, over many years, before Mrs Thatcher and beyond, have come to the United Kingdom to work and to make their lives. They are valued members of our community, but we need also to look at how they can upskill to meet future challenges.