Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026: Impact Assessment, published on 30 June 2026, what estimate has been made of the average cost to the public purse of dependants remaining in the United Kingdom.

In the Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026: Impact Assessment, the costs and benefits associated with the Article 8 reforms have been quantified for the individuals directly impacted. Table 13 in Appendix A1 states that 81% of in-country family and private life visa grants were main applicants and 19% were dependants.

The Impact Assessment sets out a lifetime fiscal cost of -£141,000 per main applicant on the Family and Private Life route. In line with the Migration Advisory Committee’s methodology for estimating the lifetime fiscal impact of family partner visas, which did not account for the dependants of these main applicants, the equivalent lifetime fiscal cost of dependants has not been calculated, either for Article 8 or Asylum claimants.

The analysis produced by the Migration Advisory Committee can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisory-committee-annual-report-2025/migration-advisory-committee-mac-annual-report-2025-accessible#chapter-1-fiscal-analysis-of-the-family-visa