Lord Sahota
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Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, if refugees living in the UK can demonstrate that they are in stable employment and contributing to society, and that their families would not be dependent on public funds, will their families be allowed to join them in this country?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
As my noble friend will guess from the questions I have had to date, we paused the family reunion scheme on 4 September pending a review, and we expect to bring forward proposals by April of next year. I am not in a position to give my noble friend a foretaste of what those proposals will be, because the purpose of us pausing the scheme is to examine the reasons why the increase has happened; to look at the pressures that have brought, potentially, 18% of reunion visas from Syria, 17% from Iran and 12% from Afghanistan; to look at what the drivers of that are and at how we can provide an appropriate level of family reunion—but in a context whereby we put some more strictures on what family reunion means.