Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the (a) set-up and (b) annual running costs of the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority in each of its first five financial years.

Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)

Detailed plans for the new authority are being developed, including costs. As currently set out in the Asylum & Immigration Bill (schedule 2, paragraph 11), once the IIAA is operational, it will publish its annual report and accounts as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of each financial year.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many of the Article 8 cases sampled for the impact assessment for the Immigration and Asylum Bill involved family life with a person outside the core cohabiting family as defined in clause 18; and if she will publish the sample methodology.

Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)

There was no data collected on ‘core cohabiting families’ as part of the Article 8 case sample, which was used in the Impact Assessment for the Immigration and Asylum Bill.

Details of the sample methodology are published in the impact assessment in Annex 3.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many appeals by foreign national offenders are pending before the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) on the latest date for which data is available; and what the average time to determination was for those appeals in (a) 2025 and (b) 2026.

Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The information requested is not held centrally.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an estimate of the number of sponsor human rights claims (a) overall and (b) that will result in appeals under clause 17 of the Immigration and Asylum Bill in each of the first three years after commencement.

Answered by Anna Turley - Minister of State (Home Office)

It is not possible to estimate the number of sponsor human rights claims made in the first three years after commencement as applicants currently apply for entry clearance in their own right and can raise Article 8 grounds as part of that application, or at appeal.

These reforms do not create new rights and entitlements or make it easier for overseas family members to enter the UK. Sponsors will still need to meet a high threshold by showing that refusal of entry would result in a breach of their Article 8 rights.

Every Article 8 case is different and must be decided on its own facts. These reforms are designed to support more consistent decisions, but it is not possible to predict the outcome of individual cases and therefore how many sponsor human rights claims will result in an appeal.

Instead, we will monitor the impact of the reforms by looking at indicators like grant rates, refusal rates, appeal outcomes and the reasons that appeals succeed, to ensure the policy is working as intended.