Immigration and Asylum Bill (Fifth sitting)

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Anna Turley]

It is good to see you again this morning, Mr Stuart, and good morning to all colleagues. We start our debate by moving on to part 2 of the Bill, which relates to article 8 of the European convention on human rights. Article 8, the right to a family life, is an important protection, but it is a qualified right. That means that it can be balanced against a public interest—such as the safety of the community or the security of our borders—where that outweighs an individual’s personal rights. We will not step away from our belief that the right to family and private life must be respected and upheld. However, we have been clear that we must strike the right balance between the rights of the individual and fairness to the UK public, and, crucially, bear down on abuse of the system.

As set out in our impact assessment, each main applicant granted first time on article 8 grounds carries an estimated lifetime cost to the taxpayer of about £141,000, equating to approximately £4.9 billion for those granted in 2025 alone. Home Office analysis suggests that 71% of first-time grants on the basis of article 8 were to individuals who had entered illegally and/or overstayed. If the same applied to the estimated 42,000 first-time grants in 2025, this would mean that 30,000 overstayers and illegal entrants would have been allowed to stay last year on the basis of article 8. Between 1 April 2016 and November 2021, of 1,011 foreign national offender deportation appeals allowed on human rights grounds, 70% were solely on article 8 grounds. And with 77,000 applications granted on article 8 grounds last year, this is having a significant effect on our ability to enforce our immigration laws.

Therefore, in this Bill, we are changing how article 8 is applied in the UK immigration system, to restore public confidence and ensure that the UK application of rights is in line with the Strasbourg court. The application of article 8 will be tightened to prevent misuse of the system and ensure that the public interest in maintaining effective immigration control carries proper weight in immigration decisions. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has made clear, the abuse of human rights law does not just erode the public’s support for our immigration system; it erodes their support for the very idea of having such laws at all. For those who believe that those laws matter, it is essential that we reform them to end their abuse. The reforms will put more emphasis on compliance with our rules and contribution to our economy and to our society.

Clause 17 aims to bring greater clarity and control to entry clearance applications that engage article 8, protecting genuine family relationships while preventing weak or tenuous claims from undermining public confidence. Taken with the reforms in clauses 18 and 19, which we will come to in forthcoming groups and which tighten key elements of the article 8 assessment, it strengthens our ability to enforce the immigration rules and create a fairer, more controlled system.

The clause amends the definition of a human rights claim in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to create a “sponsor human rights claim”. This will lay the foundations to allow UK-based sponsors to make an entry clearance application for an overseas family member to join them in the UK if the application relies on the sponsor’s article 8 right to family life. It will also enable the sponsor to appeal to the immigration tribunal if the Home Office refuses their application. I want to be very clear that only individuals with a specified status, including British citizens and those with other lawful residence, will be able to make a sponsor human rights claim. They need to establish a genuine family life claim and show that refusal would disproportionately interfere with their article 8 rights. These reforms do not create a new migration route or entitlement to come to the UK. They simply ensure a correct process that is based on the UK sponsor, not the family abroad.

The clause will affect sponsors who wish to rely on article 8 family life because their family member does not meet the entry clearance requirement under the family routes and immigration rules. Enabling the UK-based sponsor to apply will focus attention on the circumstances and article 8 rights of the sponsor, rather than the overseas family member. This reflects the established legal position that it is the sponsor who is within the UK jurisdiction for the purposes of article 8 decision making. The focus on the rights of the UK sponsor is intended to reduce expansive interpretation of where article 8 rights are found to exist, and to prevent article 8 becoming a route for those with tenuous family links to the UK.

Too often, the focus can be on the circumstances of the applicants abroad, whereas the main legal question should be whether there is a disproportionate interference with the family life of the UK-based sponsor.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Will clause 17 make it easier for people to come to the UK on an article 8 basis if we do not specify where sponsor human rights claims can be made?

[Anna Turley]

I thank my hon. Friend for asking a really important question, because it is right that we clarify this matter. The clause does not make it easier for overseas family members to enter the UK. Sponsors will still need to meet a very high threshold to argue successfully that it would be a breach of their article 8 rights if the Home Office refused their family member entry to the UK. Strict requirements for the procedure sponsors must follow to make an application, which will be set out in the immigration rules.

The focus on the rights of the UK sponsor is intended to reduce expansive interpretation of where article 8 rights are found to exist, and to prevent article 8 from becoming a route for those with tenuous family links to the UK. Too often, the focus can be on the circumstances of the applicants abroad, whereas the main legal question should be whether there is a disproportionate influence on the family life of the UK-based sponsor.

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[Melanie Onn]

The Minister mentioned sham relationships. Will she clarify who will be eligible to act as a sponsor?

[Anna Turley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Basically, anyone who is a British citizen will be eligible to become a sponsor, I believe. Forgive me, I did not want to mislead her by getting the wrong answer, but yes, I was right: individuals with specified status in the UK, including British citizens, settled persons and those with certain other lawful residence will be able to make a sponsor human rights claim. They will need to establish a genuine family life claim—we will talk about that in more detail in the following clauses—and show that refusal would disproportionately interfere with their article 8 rights. As I said, the reforms do not create a new migration route or entitlement; they simply ensure that human rights claims for those who are settled British citizens, settled persons and those with residence here are raised and considered through the correct process.

I thank the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire for tabling amendment 94. It would enable the Home Office to designate a place only when a sponsor human rights claim can be made via statutory instrument subject to the affirmative procedure. The Bill does not require the definition of a designated place to be the subject of regulations, as there are currently no plans to specify the geographical place from where such claims can be made. The focus of article 8 is on whether the individual in the UK making a sponsorship claim has a strong enough claim, not where the family is based. That is because a UK-based sponsor will be expected to make their claim through a paid-for online application. We will use the immigration rules to specify the procedures that applicants must follow to make a sponsor human rights claim. That will allow us to go into the necessary level of technical detail, while retaining flexibility to make changes as we implement the new application process.

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In contrast, human rights claims are normally made via an application for leave to enter or remain in the UK, and that is the process we would expect applicants to follow when making a sponsor human rights claim. That allows for claims to be made in an ordered and structured way, for caseworkers to consider relevant evidence and for the Home Office to take a fee where that is required. Restoring order, predictability and consistency to article 8 decision making is at the core of these reforms.

[Melanie Onn]

Does the Minister have any thoughts about what the fee structure might look like?

[Anna Turley]

That is an important point. I will be delighted to provide more evidence as we go through due process. We must make sure that they are proportionate and do not push people into poverty, but it is important that we are charging people a fee where they are bringing family members to this country under article 8. For the reasons I have set out, the Government do not support the amendment.

Amendment 112 would require the Home Office to carry out safeguarding checks on individuals who make a sponsor human rights claim and that any information uncovered in these checks is considered when the Home Office determines that claim. I thank the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) for raising the importance of safeguarding vulnerable migrants, particularly children and victims of domestic abuse, in this amendment. It is a really important issue and one that will be fully considered in the design and implementation of the application process for sponsor human rights claims. As clause 17 simply paves the way for changing how an entry clearance application relying on article 8 family life can be made, we do not believe this level of detail is required in the primary legislation.

The immigration rules already contain safeguards to protect children coming to the UK to join family members who could put them at risk of harm. However, we will fully consider if additional safeguarding requirements are necessary as we develop the procedural requirements for sponsor human rights claims in the immigration rules, because an important point is made through amendment 112. This is a safeguarding proposal that we would support in principle when the application process is designed. I hope that hon. Members are reassured that our support for the principle is on the record through this Committee.

[Anna Turley]

Absolutely. We will of course come on to talk about modern slavery and so on later in the Bill. Protection for vulnerable people is at the heart of what this Bill is about.

Where a UK-based sponsor is young or vulnerable and unable to complete an application, they can give permission to someone else to enter their details, but for those who are vulnerable overseas, existing safeguarding measures are already in place to identify any indicators of coercion, exploitation or trafficking. We will of course consider how these measures can be further strengthened to enhance the identification and management of risk, but our approach ensures that vulnerable individuals are protected while maintaining the integrity of the system, through ensuring the rights of UK-based sponsors are the focus of entry clearance decisions that engage article 8.

We feel that a blanket rule to prevent individuals who have been convicted of these criminal behaviours would not be compatible with the EHCR, which necessitates an individualised assessment, but we are keen to make sure that safeguarding requirements are done through the immigration rules to protect anyone at risk of domestic abuse from their sponsor.

[Melanie Onn]

I want to press the Minister on this point. I am quite taken with amendment 112, and some of the issues to do with sponsors it raises are incredibly serious. I hear the Minister’s comment about not being explicit in primary legislation, but will she explain in simple details, for my understanding, how we will ensure that nobody convicted of an offence involving domestic abuse, stalking, sexual offending or forced marriage will be able to be a sponsor for the purposes of article 8 claims?

[Anna Turley]

I share my hon. Friend’s view. When I saw this amendment, I thought the principle was really important. When we come to write the immigration rules, we would absolutely want to make sure that it is at the heart of them. We would not ever want to see someone convicted of domestic violence, anything to do with child protection or any of the issues outlined in the amendment ever being a sponsor to bring anybody into this country. I hope that the Committee is reassured by my placing all of that on record: when the immigration rules come to be written I would hope and expect to see that at the heart of them, with those protections in there.

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[Anna Turley]

I can absolutely undertake to provide as much information as I can to the Committee on that issue. We may not know how many children somebody has in another country. Unless they have put in an article 8 claim, we would not necessarily know about their family members, so it may be a little difficult for us to predict that. However, I can undertake, and give my commitment to the Committee, that we will do our best to get as close to a figure as we can and to provide that to the Committee.

To continue on the rationale for opposing amendment 112, we already have safeguarding measures in place across the immigration system to identify indicators of coercion, exploitation and trafficking. We will consider whether these measures can be further strengthened to improve the identification and mitigation of risk. Our approach ensures that vulnerable individuals are protected while maintaining the integrity of the system by ensuring that the rights of UK-based sponsors are the focus of entry clearance decisions that engage article 8.

Clause 17 does not exempt human rights claims from the general certification power in section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which applies irrespective of whether the claimant can reside in the listed safe countries. That means that we will be able to prevent appeals by certifying human rights claims that are bound to fail. Although it may be relevant to consider whether the UK-based sponsor is able to reside with a family member abroad, that will be done as part of the substantive article 8 assessment.

[Melanie Onn]

Will the Minister confirm whether clause 17 will be the way that people who have refugee status are expected to sponsor family members?

[Anna Turley]

As I set out at the beginning, it will be those who have a settled status. My understanding is that those that have a settled refugee status will be able to apply. Again, I can get confirmation for my hon. Friend on that point.

Amendments 95 and 96 taken together would mean that sponsor human rights claims can be made inadmissible or certified as clearly unfounded in the same way as other human rights claims. Applying section 80A or section 94(3) of the 2002 Act to sponsor human rights claims would preclude, in many cases, a substantive assessment of the claim if the sponsor were a national of, or able to reside in, any of the safe countries listed in the Act. In most cases, it would not be reasonable to refuse to consider a sponsor human rights claim fully, just because the sponsor making it was able to reside in one of those safe countries. For that reason, the Government cannot accept amendment 95.

As the Committee will be aware, I have tabled amendments to part 3 of the Bill to insert a new schedule that provides greater clarity on the Government’s approach to the core protection model. We will debate those amendments and the new schedule later in Committee.

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[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart.

I thank the Minister for her opening remarks, and indeed for pre-empting and answering some of the questions that I have in my speech. It is almost as if she might have had a spy in my team, looking at the questions that I might ask. For these debates on the ECHR, we perhaps had a dry run yesterday in the first Opposition day debate.

Let me start by saying that the Opposition oppose clause 17—perhaps not a surprise to Members, as we said so in our reasoned amendment on Second Reading—and we will vote against its standing part of the Bill. Our amendments are tabled to test the Government’s reasoning. Some of our points have already been answered by the Minister, but I will go through them for the record. If the Committee decides to keep the clause, we submit that our amendments would limit the damage that it will cause.

Clause 17 is the first clause of part 2 of the Bill, which the Government believe is the answer on article 8 of the ECHR. That makes this the right place to ask the question on which the whole debate on part 2 will turn: does the Bill change what a court must do when someone says that article 8 prevents their removal, or does it simply change what the court should have regard to? I will deal first with clause 17 itself and then with what it tells us about the Bill as a whole.

The clause creates a new statutory category of “sponsor human rights claim”. This would enable someone already situated in the UK to submit an application directly to the Secretary of State, at a location designated by the Secretary of State. Such a claim would assert that refusing a member of their family entry to the UK would breach article 8. Subsection (1)(d) then brings those sponsor claims within the scope of the human rights appeals framework set out in part 5 of the 2002 Act. As the explanatory notes confirm, the effect is that the UK-based sponsor becomes the claimant, with the right to appeal.

As the Minister went through, subsections (3) to (7) then carve out sponsor claims from the provisions that apply to other human rights claims in the 2002 Act. They cannot be declared inadmissible under section 80A of the 2002 Act; they cannot be certified as clearly unfounded under section 94; they sit outside the statutory timeframe in section 86B—I suspect that the civil servants might be looking those up now for the Minister—and there are bespoke rules on pending and abandoned appeals.

The Government are presenting these changes as a tightening of the rules: overseas family members may not claim, because the sponsor must. However, our reasoned amendment on Second Reading set out our concern that the Bill would allow sponsor human rights claims and so enable people outside the UK to enter on human rights grounds. There is nothing in the evidence, nor in what the Minister said in her opening remarks, to convince me that that concern was misplaced, so I have a few points to go through, if I may.

[Melanie Onn]

Is the shadow Minister’s principal concern that the clause will result in an increase in overseas human rights claims?

[Blake Stephenson]

Yes, and fundamentally I think the clause is tinkering around the edges with the application of the ECHR. We have been here before; I will come on to this later in my speech. Successive Governments have tried to do this, but my fundamental concern is that the clause will not work.

Let me turn first to the drafting. The explanatory notes say that overseas article 8 applications must be made by the sponsor, but the clause defines a claim as made

“at a place designated by the Secretary of State”.

As the House of Commons Library points out, it deals with the appeal stage; it does not say how claims are lodged in the first place. Minister, where in the Bill is the provision that stops an overseas family member applying? Which places will be designated and by what regulations, rules or guidance?

Who holds the right of appeal today? In written evidence submitted to the Committee, the Bar Council stated:

“Until now, an application for entry clearance to come to the UK had to be made by the person overseas and any appeal against refusal had to be brought by them.”

Clause 17 would now give the UK-based sponsor an appeal of their own. Does the Minister accept that clause 17 introduces a right of appeal that currently does not exist today? If so, how is clause 17 in any way, as she says, tightening the rules?

Secondly, I want to discuss the exemptions. Clause 17 leaves inadmissibility and certification in place for other human rights claims. Why should a sponsor claim be exempt from both? On amendments 95 and 96, I note that the Government have adopted our amendment 96, for which I am grateful. I am sure that they did so for their own good reasons, not just to copy and paste an Opposition amendment. Those amendments were tabled to remove those exemptions. They were probing amendments, but let us assume that amendment 96 probed sufficiently for it to be taken on board by the Government. If the Minister cannot explain to the Committee for what reason a sponsor claim would be treated more favourably than any other human rights claim, the exemptions should go. Perhaps she could address that point on amendment 95 in more detail.

There is a point of drafting to consider in whether the clause actually works at all. Clause 52(5) ties the commencement of clause 17(3) to section 59 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and clause 17(5) to section 50 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 when it comes fully into force. The Minister may not have the answers to a complicated drafting question, but perhaps during the course of today’s debate, her civil servants might provide an answer. I note that section 50 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act is not yet in force, and that schedule 1 to this Bill would repeal it. Would the Minister explain how clause 17(5) is meant to commence? If there is an error in drafting, will it be corrected?

I will move on to the interaction with family reunion. Three witnesses in our oral evidence sessions—Vicky Tennant of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Jon Featonby of the Refugee Council and Angela Afzal of the International Rescue Committee—took views very different from the Opposition on the Bill, but their evidence is relevant as we scrutinise the clause. Ms Tennant told us that the Bill’s presumption of cohabitation

“is a difficult threshold to make”––[Official Report, Immigration and Asylum Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2026; c. 9, Q7.]

in the refugee context, particularly given the suspension of the refugee family reunion route. Mr Featonby estimated that probably 20,000 people have been unable to apply since that route was suspended just over a year ago. Ms Afzal warned that families could be encouraged to resort to smugglers to reunite.

The written evidence goes a bit further. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association tells us that the human rights claim

“may be the only realistic remaining path”

for refugee families while the dedicated route is suspended. The Bar Council told us that it will be the “only practical gateway”. The British Red Cross highlights that 12,888 family reunion visas were granted in the year to June 2026, and that the core protection status of cause 21 is expected to carry “no family reunion rights” at all.

Although I draw different conclusions, the dedicated route has been suspended, and the clause creates a statutory sponsor claim with a right to appeal and without safe country filters. The people with expertise in this field who gave evidence expect that it will become the main entry route, so are the Government not simply closing one back door and opening another? What assessment has the Home Office made of those numbers?

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Even if the Home Office wants to play hardball on the interpretation of mental illness, I have every confidence that the courts will overturn lots—perhaps the majority—of its decisions. In any case, we will be back into the system we currently have, with the ultimate authority of the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court interpreting the ECHR and the Human Rights Act. This provision will take us no further forward.

[Melanie Onn]

The hon. Member has spent a long time focusing on clause 18. I wonder whether he is going to repeat his comments when we come to the next group of amendments.

[Joe Robertson]

I shall speak to the next group when the time comes. I do not make any apology for focusing on what I see as a major flaw in the legislation. I do not have a political disagreement with the Government; I just think that what they are trying to do is not achieved by this provision. I am certainly not here to give an overall appraisal of the Bill or of this group. That is for the Minister and the shadow Minister. As a Back Bencher, I am here to try to examine, explore and understand what I see as a weakness in the Bill. That is my job in Committee.

[Melanie Onn]

The hon. Gentleman is clearly misunderstanding, because this is not what we are meant to be discussing right now.

[Joe Robertson]

I have it right in front of me. I think the wider points have been made. The hon. Member is obviously desperate to make the decisions that a Chair would ordinarily make. Maybe one day she will be elevated to the position of chairing a Committee. If she would like me to repeat everything I have said, I will be happy to do so in this afternoon’s sitting.

I am slightly reluctant to stop now, because it looks like I have wilted in the face of an intervention from the Government Benches, but I had come to the end of my contribution. I hope I have made my point, even if it is not agreed with.

[Anna Turley]

I thank the hon. Members for Mid Bedfordshire and for Isle of Wight East for their very thorough comments. For me, this absolutely explains the benefit of line-by-line discussion of a Bill. There have been important challenges and critiques, and I will do my best to answer as many as I can—I think the shadow Minister must have had more than 20 or 25 questions; I will endeavour to write to him and the Committee on any that I accidentally overlook.

I really appreciated the statements from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East, but I think my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes was right: he did stray into clause 18, which we will come to this afternoon. I took note of his views and look forward to responding to some of those later.

There is a lot to cover, so I will do my best to race through it. We will have a longer conversation this afternoon about the ECHR, so I will not pre-empt my comments on that. I do want to push back on the accusation that the legislation will not make a difference. At the moment, we have a free-for-all. Courts are basically over-interpreting Strasbourg. There is no real codification in this country of what the right to a family life means, and we are seeing a huge number of cases, as we have discussed. The point of the Bill is to ensure that our provisions will be no different to the position under Strasbourg but will realign the domestic position, because we are currently being far more generous than our international obligations require. I think the Committee can agree that it is important that we do not over-interpret what Strasbourg suggests.

I appreciated the challenge from the shadow Minister about the 2014 Act and not reinforcing any previous errors, but the Government provisions reflect more up-to-date case law, which was not captured by that 2014 Act—for example, the weighting provisions, which will apply to all of family life. I hope, and am sure, that we will have more success than the 2014 Act had.

[Melanie Onn]

The Minister refers to the UK having gone above and beyond its requirements in relation to Strasbourg law. In bringing us into line and not overextending ourselves, I wonder whether there are any other countries with which we could compare ourselves, in terms of where we will find that line and alignment. That might assist us in understanding how this process will work in practice.

[Anna Turley]

I appreciate my hon. Friend raising that point. We have become a country with pull factors that have encouraged people to this country while asylum claims have been going down across Europe. Ours have not been going down at the same pace, and I think our over-interpretation of some of the Strasbourg laws has been a pull factor. So I appreciate her raising that.

I have quite a lot to plough through, so I apologise if there is not a coherent thread to some of these answers. I will try to respond as quickly as possible to as many of the questions as I can. I remind the Committee that, just because family life is established, that does not necessarily mean that the individual will automatically be able to remain in or enter the UK. All cases where family life is found to exist will be considered at the second-stage test, where the courts will have to consider whether it is in the public interest to refuse leave to remain or enter. We will come to the issues that were referred to about mental illness and so on this afternoon, but I am trying to make the point that the partner will still need to meet those substantive tests.

On the family circumstances that we discussed, the vast majority of people seeking to bring a partner will have to meet the rules. That means minimum income and English language. The example that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East gave almost certainly would not meet the bar of a successful article 8 claim, unless there were extremely exceptional circumstances.

On the hon. Member’s point about volumes and numbers, I am struggling to understand what he is asking me to do. Anyone in this country who has a family member outside the UK could put in an appeal for this. There is absolutely no way we could know whether anyone in this room may have a child, a dependant or anyone in another country; that is simply not evidence or information that this country would keep.