Family visa salary threshold levels may not be hiked under a Labour government, says a top immigration expert.
Britons currently need to earn at least £29,000 a year to sponsor a loved one to come and live in the UK from abroad.
The wage threshold is set to rise to £34,500 later this year, and then again to £38,700 in early 2025.
But Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, told The Standard: “At the time it was introduced, Labour said that they had concerns about it.
“So, there is an important question there about whether they would lower the threshold, or not.
“The Conservative government said that they planned to increase it further but it’s not baked into the rules.
“Given that Labour has said that they had concerns about the threshold initially, I would assume that they would not necessarily go ahead with the Conservative policy of further increases.”
Ms Sumption was one of a number of experts who have raised questions over what Labour would do in government given that Sir Keir Starmer is days away from No10, if the polls are right.
The spotlight has shifted to Labour as the Tories are still 20 points behind in the polls after a faltering election campaign.
Labour has said it would ask the Government independent immigration advisers, the Migration Advisory Committee, to review how the family visa scheme is working and the impact it is having on workers and business, if it gets into power.
London mayor Sadiq Khan is among senior party figures who have criticised the scheme.
Labour would ditch the Rwanda scheme, which the Tories have failed to implement, and process asylum claims including from people who have crossed the Channel in “small boats”.
It would also seek to boost the number of deals with other nations to return failed asylum seekers.
Ms Sumption added: “My biggest question on returns agreements is whether they are still contemplating a return agreement with the EU because that is basically the biggest returns agreement that you could potentially get, if it allowed the UK to return asylum seekers to safe third countries in Europe.”
Labour’s manifesto is “very vague on what they would do to work visas,” she added, with its broad aim to reform the points-based system.
A Labour spokesman said: “Labour will stop the Tories’ asylum system chaos and go after the criminal gangs who trade in driving this crisis.
”We will create a new Border Security Command, with hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers, and cross-border police officers.
“We will seek a new security agreement with the EU to ensure access to real-time intelligence and enable our policing teams to lead joint investigations with their European counterparts.”
Major questions remain as to what the next government will do on the social care crisis, ailing NHS, cost-of-living crisis, homes shortage, courts system delays, overcrowded prisons, and growing welfare bill.
“The debate on tax and spending policy has been dominated by arguments about how a series of relatively small spending pledges would be funded,” Resolution Foundation research director James Smith told The Standard.
“But such debates are a sideshow compared to big questions about how the next government would manage the uncertainties facing the public finances.
“All this means that the fiscal debate has become detached from the fiscal reality.”
Some £19 billion of cuts to unprotected departments, including justice, the Home Office and local government are “baked into post-election spending plans,” he added.
Labour is yet to commit to a date to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, with the Tories saying 2030.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has stressed: “Labour’s manifesto is chock full of reviews and strategies.
“It contains a detailed diagnosis of ‘the problem’ in many areas, and a welcome recognition that many of these issues are interrelated.
“All good. But no sense of what it will do when it finds it needs more resources to deal with these issues.”
Health experts at the Nuffield Trust have praised “commendable ambitions” to drive down waiting times, improve GP access and reform social care in Labour’s manifesto but warn of a “stunning lack of detail” on how key pledges will be delivered.
The Institute for Government highighted how the austerity period hit capital spending budgets for the Department of Health and Social Care, Department for Education and Ministry of Justice so hard that by 2015/16 they were down by 18 per cent, 17 per cent and 69 per cent respectively relative to 2007/08 in real terms.
Capital spending has increased more quickly in recent years, the IfG added, but maintenance backlogs in each service are “still at record highs”.
Sir Keir has slowed down the implementation of Labour’s £28 billion green economy plan.
Ahead of an election, it may have been a politically astute move, as the Tories pushed more populist, less pro-zero action, and Labour so desperately sought to persuade voters to trust it with the nation’s purse.
“Economic prudence may be Labour’s guiding principle,” said Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Earth.
“But there’s nothing prudent about failing to invest in the measures that will safeguard our future.”
