Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Lord Murray of Blidworth Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak briefly in support of the case made by my noble friend Lady Royall. I regret that we are having this debate in this way this evening but it has been extremely powerful.

I thank the Minister for his personal response to my letter. When I raised the issue of the Chevening scholars some weeks ago, I had a very thoughtful and generous response from him in which he pointed out that the four countries targeted for the ban have seen a spike of 470% in the number of applicants. We may question how that came about—there are many different reasons—but it does not dent the problem created by a blanket ban, which creates enormous, perverse, inhumane and unjust consequences for a very small number of people. The people I want to focus on are a lightning rod, and an exemplar of what happens when people become collateral damage in policies that may have the best intentions but have the most profound and serious consequences for individuals who are, as has been said across the House in different circumstances, already extremely vulnerable and likely to be made more vulnerable by the situation they are placed in.

In that respect, I refer to the case that I know well: the University of Sussex, which, like LSE, is one of the two universities that have taken the majority of Chevening scholars. Noble Lords will know about the reputation of its Institute of Development Studies. I declare an interest as I have a PhD from the University of Sussex and was on its council for many years. Sussex had an extraordinary reputation for developing leaders of the third world. A prime example of this was South Africa. So many leaders from post-apartheid South Africa went to the Institute of Development Studies and then went back to South Africa to create the foundations of democracy. That is what Sussex has been doing with the Chevening scholars over many years.

The numbers of these Chevening scholars are tiny: in the six years to 2024, there were 119 Afghan recipients, 58 from Cameroon, 65 from Myanmar and 101 from the Sudan. What the vice-chancellor has said is that, because of our reputation for development studies and as a global university, many Chevening alumni have, as we would expect and as so brilliantly described by my noble friend Lady Royall, gone on to hold senior positions in government and in political service and public service. They have been the leaders on which the future of these countries has depended, and we look now in some terror at how those countries will build their futures if they do not have these brave, principled women as well as men—we have already been given some idea of the implications for women, and we wish there had been an impact statement on how women will be disadvantaged by this.

What I found most difficult to understand, alongside why no exception could be made for the Chevening scholars, was that these young people had gone through all the hoops, they were at their final stage and they were scheduled for interview when the scheme was declared closed, with no appeal and no way back. I feel that it is a dishonourable position to have put the country in, to have put the universities in and to have put the FCDO in, frankly, as the funder and organiser of the scheme. It sends an extraordinarily bad signal because these people not only take the soft power, the skills, the huge generosity and intelligence back with them and the knowledge of what Britain can offer but contribute so much.

My simple question to the Minister, for whom I have enormous respect, as we all do around this House, is this: if this is not a permanent arrangement, can there not be, even at this stage, some flexibility for a clearly identifiable group of people to whom we owe so much? Can we have a more generous appreciation, perhaps even in the language of the Home Office, of the implications and an acknowledgement of what this signals to the rest of the world as well as to people in this country?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I know what a lonely place the Government Dispatch Box can be when one is introducing a firm bit of immigration legislation. One notes immediately the surreal disconnection between the Overton window of the views in this House and the views in the country at large. I am afraid that the Minister’s evening is not going to get any better because I have to declare that I entirely support the Government’s position in relation to these rule changes.

The short point is that these are changes that are necessary to reduce the abuse of the immigration system. They are a sensible and proportionate use of the power to make changes in the Immigration Rules. I particularly support the measures in relation to the reduction of the period granted for asylum claims, to allow the review to occur after two and a half years and, furthermore, to allow a review prior to the grant of indefinite leave to remain. Under the present scheme, the situation in the United Kingdom is much more generous than that of our colleagues across the channel. This is a sensible rebalancing, and I congratulate the Home Office on bringing forward these measures.

Furthermore, in relation to the visa brake, which has been the topic of a good deal of conversation in the speeches that we have heard this evening, these are sensible measures in my submission. One can see from the statistics that the abuse of student visas in order to allow people to claim asylum had become completely apparent. Between 2021 and the year ending September 2025, the proportion of Afghan asylum claims to study visas was 95%, while applications by students from Myanmar soared sixteenfold over the same period. Claims in the year ending September 2025 by students from Cameroon and Sudan rose by more than 330% in 2021, posing an unsustainable threat to the UK’s asylum system. Faced with that, the Government had little choice, I submit, but to address the question that these people applying for student visas intended to come here to claim asylum. It was a backdoor route into the country, and the Government have rightly taken steps to stop it until that problem can be resolved.

The only regret that I have is that the opposition appears to come from the Government’s Back Benches in both this House and the other place, and it is reportedly present even in their senior ranks. So I say to the noble Lord the Minister: keep at it, you are doing well and do not be put off by the siren voices behind you.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

This is an important debate on an important issue. The case has been made by every speaker so far making detailed points on the policies and the problems that they create. I want to put on record my concern and my support for the comments that have been made by my noble friends and other Members of the House.

Although much of the debate has focused on specific problems and the specifics of the proposal, I think a view should be taken of the proposals as a whole. There are some necessary changes, and we know what they are, but taken as a whole we have to ask ourselves whether this the sort of country we want to be. To me, the answer is no. I just want to make that general point and put it on record.

The second issue—and I think this has come out clearly from the debate, particularly from the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard—is that the whole process of us being here at 10.10 pm on a Tuesday night with unwhipped business means that this debate has not had the significance that it should have done. It is only those who have strong feelings about this issue who have come. The whole process, the fact that there was no debate in the Commons, and this archaic process we have landed ourselves with—I know it is only from 1971—is totally inappropriate to the task at hand. The review of immigration laws, which is a big political issue in this country, should not have been handled in this way.