Draft Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2023

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 General Committees

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert, and I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. Following the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and related changes to the immigration rules in March this year, this order is the next stage of a lengthy process to implement the Government’s planned electronic travel authorisation system. Ministers have set themselves the ambitious target to begin issuing ETAs to people from Qatar and other Gulf states this autumn and for the scheme to be fully operational by the end of next year.

With respect to the new ETA system, the scope of this order is limited to fees to be charged and requirements for applicants to submit biometric information. A number of the most important issues about how the scheme will work and what impact it will have are left for another day. Nevertheless, while we are here, I would like to put a few questions to the Minister on issues where further detail about the Government’s plans would be of great assistance to Members, to ensure that the process is being adequately managed and scrutinised.

The new ETA system is a major undertaking, and its effects will be wide ranging. Significant numbers of UK-bound travellers who do not need a visa will be required to obtain formal clearance to enter the UK for the first time. Whether or not the system will function as it should depends, to a substantial degree, on the effectiveness of new technologies that are still in development. That is an important point, not least because the history of Departments and major IT projects is not a particularly happy one.

In this case, the ETA system will require applications to be made, and eventually biometric information to be submitted, online or via a new app, which has yet to see the light of day. The Government say that even the decision-making process may be automated. That will take highly sophisticated technologies, and robust testing will be essential before the new system comes online. Can the Minister therefore provide an update on what progress has been made with the development of those technologies to date, and whether he believes that the Home Office is currently on track to meet the deadlines that it has set for the roll-out of those changes?

If we look beyond the administration of the new system, there are serious questions about its potential impacts, especially on the tourism sector and the wider economy, including how travel across the border with Ireland might be affected. As things stand, I have yet to be convinced that Ministers are taking adequate steps to address the concerns raised by stakeholders and to mitigate any unintended consequences.

With regard to tourism, the impact assessment published alongside this order recognises that it is reasonable to expect a fall in tourist numbers once the ETA has been implemented, and revenues can be expected to decrease as a result. Concerns about the implications for cross-border travel between Northern Ireland and the Republic are especially acute in this sector. However, the impact assessment fails to capture the different effects that the ETA may have across the UK’s different nations and regions. That is a significant oversight and one that I hope Ministers intend to address.

Will the Minister therefore set out what steps the Home Office plans to take to mitigate any adverse effects on the tourist trade that these changes may have across the UK—including but not limited to the effects in Northern Ireland? Given that we are dealing with an order that addresses fees, can the Minister tell us what consideration the Government have given to the potential merits of ringfencing some of the income generated from applicants’ fees as a means of providing financial support to any businesses that may find themselves struggling with the transition?

Alongside the measures pertaining to ETAs, this order makes changes to the maximum fee levels applicable to a range of UK visa routes. For the most part, the proposed increases are relatively modest. The notable exception is for student visas. At present, applicants cannot be charged more than £490, but the order would increase the maximum fee to £600. That equates to a more than 20% increase on the current level, with significant potential implications for international student numbers. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the other place has noted, the scale of the increase is particularly striking when measured against the actual cost to the Home Office of processing those visas, which is less than half of what the applicants have to pay.

The Government’s impact assessment for the student visa fee increase acknowledges that this potential change is likely to have significant knock-on effects on the number of visas granted to international students and, as a result, the revenue from tuition fees, on which so many of our leading universities remain reliant. On the face of it, that appears to be in direct contradiction to the strategy of the Minister’s colleagues at the Department for Education, which—the last time I checked—was to increase the overall number of international students. Whether this is more an example of poor Government co-ordination or whether increasing application fees is part of a new, deliberate strategy overall to reduce the number of student visas is unclear to me. Again, any light that the Minister can shed on what otherwise looks to me like some fairly muddled thinking between different Departments would be much appreciated.

I thank the Minister and look forward to his comments.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for his support for many of the measures in this package—in particular, the ETA, which is an important long-term project for the United Kingdom that will go a significant way to improving our border security and bring us in line with many other developed countries. I said in my opening remarks that all of us who travel to the United States, for example, will have long been familiar with its equivalent. It is right that the UK now produces its own version. We are not alone in this. The European Union is in the process of developing its version of the ETA, which was due to be rolled out this year. It is likely to be delayed, but we await news from the European Commission. All of us are united in our shared view that it is right that sovereign countries—such as the United Kingdom—should know as much as possible about individuals prior to their arrival on the soil of those countries, and the ETA is the key way in which we do that.

We have chosen to begin later this year with Qatar, which is a small but important partner of the United Kingdom and will enable us to pilot the scheme. After that, a small group of other countries will be included before a wider roll-out next year. As the shadow Minister may be aware, we have chosen to adopt a modest delay to the broader roll-out to ensure that the technology is right, because it is important to the United Kingdom, reputationally and economically, that we get this right and that there are not issues with technology when it is launched.

With regard to the maximum fee of £10, we have considered it very carefully. We want to ensure that that fee meets the true cost of the scheme, which is significant because of the new technology that we are standing up, but also that we are competitive and that we do not put people off, whether they be well-paid business travellers, students or those coming on visit visas or school trips to the United Kingdom, whose income and pockets may not be so deep. We think that £10 is an appropriate level that compares favourably with other countries around the world.

The hon. Gentleman asked an important question about the interface between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in that regard. That is one of the complexities of launching the ETA, because, as he suggests, it does interface with the common travel area. We have had extensive conversations with the Republic of Ireland and with stakeholders in Northern Ireland. I myself have met with the tourist board to discuss its concerns.

As the hon. Gentleman suggests, those concerns are that international visitors coming in on international flights to the Republic, but looking to do short trips to Northern Ireland—either a day trip or a couple of nights for sightseeing, for golf holidays, or for the various other sources of income from tourism in Northern Ireland—might be deterred as a result of the ETA fee. We conclude that the deterrence is limited, bearing in mind the £10 fee and the simple process. In most cases, it can be done by the individual themselves on a smartphone, or with the help of their travel agent or tour-booking company.

However, we do take those concerns seriously and have worked to try to alleviate them. We will be working on the roll-out to ensure that there is a smooth communication plan with all international tour operators that bring travellers to the island of Ireland. We are also working with some of the other important stakeholders, such as insurance companies, so that they understand the scheme and so that someone who unwittingly crosses the border in a car hired in the Republic does not find themselves in a difficult position should they get into an accident in Northern Ireland without having completed the ETA. I can therefore provide the hon. Gentleman with some assurances that we have given the matter a great deal of thought.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the Minister, and I am reassured to hear that a great deal of thought has been given. I have also met with members of the Northern Ireland tourist board, and they have expressed extreme concern about this issue. They feel that their marketing strategy is very much based on an all-of-Ireland approach, and the communication of that to potential customers is, they feel, significantly undermined just by this additional measure. It is almost the symbolic nature of it that impacts on their overall marketing strategy. I want to underline that point and urge the Minister to continue that dialogue with the key stakeholders.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for meeting with stakeholders. I do not want to represent their views, because they remain deeply concerned about this.

However, my point was that we have gone to a lot of trouble both to engage with them and to seek mitigations. The alternatives are not ones that we would consider palatable: not continuing with the roll-out of the ETA; rolling out the ETA only for Great Britain and not for Northern Ireland, which would create a significant security loophole in the ETA and undermine the Union; or, linked to that, imposing some checks at the border between GB and Northern Ireland, and asking individuals who choose to cross from NI to GB to have an ETA and to be willing to show it at that point—again, that is not something that the Government are willing to consider. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman, perhaps with a full explanation of our work with the Republic and stakeholders in this regard.

Lastly, the hon. Gentleman asked about student visa fees. The first point to make is that the fees charged with respect to all these visa and immigration matters are not linked directly to the individual cost of the visas, but to the sustainability of the wider system. We seek to raise sufficient funds that general taxpayers do not fund, or fund to a lesser extent than they would otherwise, our visa and immigration system. There is not a direct link between the cost of any one visa and the fee charged for those reasons.

Furthermore, the policy has been agreed across Government. We worked with the Department for Education, and it supports our proposals. The international education strategy to which the hon. Gentleman referred has been a huge success. It set out a 10-year plan to attract 600,000 students to the United Kingdom, and we met that many years early. Demand for student visas is high, and from the operating data that I have seen—as yet unpublished—it continues to be high. It is not unreasonable to ask international students to pay a higher fee in support the general funding of our immigration and visa system and reduce the cost to the taxpayer of managing the system more generally.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee noted that the actual cost to the Home Office of processing the visas is less than half of what applicants have to pay. So that we can have some transparency on how the increased costs were calculated, does the Minister agree with that analysis

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not have those exact costs to hand, but my point is that it is not right for the taxpayers of this country—with taxes at their current level—to pay yet more to fund our immigration and borders system. It is right that we recover as much of that cost as possible from visitors to the United Kingdom. Of course that is a careful balance, because we want to support the UK being an open country that attracts businesses, tourists and indeed students, but wherever possible, and where it is reasonable, we should try to get that money from international visitors to the UK, rather than leaning yet more on domestic taxpayers.

With that, I thank the members of the Committee for their support this morning. I commend the draft order to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.