Hike in UK's Family Visa minimum income threshold currently shelved by Labour govt

A planned ‘incremental’ hike in the minimum income threshold for British nationals and permanent residents applying to bring family members to join them in the UK, a move impacting several Indian families, has been shelved by the new Labour Party government.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the House of Commons in a written statement this week that there will be no further hike on the current GBP 29,000 annual income requirement until the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) completes a review into the impact of the hikes on families.

The MAC has also been tasked to review the reliance of some key sectors on international recruitment, in particular IT and engineering, which rely on “significant levels” of international recruitment, including from India.

“The family immigration rules, including the minimum income requirement, need to balance a respect for family life with ensuring that the economic wellbeing of the UK is maintained,” Cooper states.

“To help ensure that we reach the right balance and have a solid evidence base for any change, I will commission the MAC to review the financial requirements in the family immigration rules. The minimum income requirement is currently set at GBP 29,000, and there will be no further changes until the MAC review is complete,” she notes.

As part of a package of measures to curb migration in December last year, the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak led Conservative government had announced that from April this year, the minimum salary or income required by British nationals to sponsor long-term Family Visas for spouses or parents will rise from GBP 18,600 to GBP 29,000 and then be followed by further increases to GBP 38,700 – in line with the minimum income requirement for the Skilled Worker Visa route.

Analysts had flagged that this steep hike will have a wide-ranging impact on the family plans of those on lower incomes. Indians made up the second-highest cohort under the Family Visa category in 2023 (5,248), after Pakistanis (14,330) and ahead of Bangladeshis (3,534) as the top three nationalities sponsoring such visas, as per UK Home Office statistics from earlier this year.

Setting out her migration strategy, newly appointed Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has set out plans to strengthen the MAC so that it can highlight key sectors where labor market failures mean that there is an “over-reliance on international recruitment”.

“As a first step, I am commissioning the MAC to review the reliance of key sectors on international recruitment. In particular, I am asking the MAC to look at IT and engineering — occupations that have consistently, over a decade or more, been included on shortage occupation lists and relied on significant levels of international recruitment,” Cooper told the Commons.

“These occupational groups are in the top 10 occupational groups in the UK that have the highest percentage of their workforce made up of new foreign workers who have been issued visas,” she said.

Her plans to strengthen MAC include deployment of additional Home Office staff to its secretariat to ensure it is able to work more strategically to forecast future trends, while continuing to “review and provide independent, evidence-based recommendations on key areas of the immigration system”.

Meanwhile, many of the other Tory government visa curbs have been carried forward by the new Labour regime, including restrictions on overseas students and care workers to bring family dependents on their visas.

Cooper noted: “This government strongly value the economic and academic contribution that international students make to this country, including those here on the graduate visa, and that is why it is important to ensure that the system is effective and not open to abuse.

“Therefore, we will continue with the previously announced measures to ensure that international students, the institutions they are coming to study at and the immigration system as a whole are protected from those who wish to exploit it — working closely with DfE (Department for Education) to ensure that the measures are effective.”

Pointing the finger at the Tories for data showing that “net migration trebled in five years”, the minister said her focus will be on aligning migration policy and visa controls to skills and labor market policies, so that immigration is not used as an “alternative to training or tackling workforce problems” in the country.

(PTI)