The government’s announcement last week that it would award public sector workers wage increases in line with the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies came with a sting in its tail. It was the minimum that teachers, police officers and doctors – who have seen their real pay decline over the past decade – should have been able to expect. But not only have ministers failed to rule out that these pay rises will be paid for with public service cuts elsewhere; they have said they will be partly funded through huge increases in the fees levied on migrant workers.
The immigrant NHS surcharge will now increase by more than £400 to just over £1,000 per person per year. Immigration and nationality fees are also being put up by 15% to 20%. A family of four moving to the UK will now be liable for fees of at least £33,000 over five years in order to permanently settle here; this is significantly higher than the equivalent fees and charges in many other European countries and the United States. These inflated charges will almost certainly apply to people who have already moved here and who won’t have budgeted for them, and will particularly hit those workers who are accompanied by family members.
The outcome will be greater hardship for those who come here to work, and fewer people who decide they can afford to do so. This is now a stated objective of government policy – Rishi Sunak has said that net migration levels are “too high”. Yet the sharp inconsistency in his position is that net migration hit a record high of just over 600,000 as a result of the significant liberalisation of the non-EU immigration system that he has overseen in order to fill skills gaps, including in the NHS and the care sector. Sunak is trying to have it both ways: to rely on immigration to keep public services running and boost economic growth, but also to send a signal that he is more anti-immigration than his track record may imply.
Even worse than the government’s dissonance on immigration is its morally abhorrent position on refugees. It has rebranded people fleeing countries like Syria and Afghanistan as “illegal migrants” if they claim asylum after arriving in the UK through irregular routes, as is their right under the 1951 Refugee Convention. To listen to ministers, one would think Britain is overrun with people who have abused the asylum system and the generosity of the state.
This is simply not the case. The UK is home to a tiny fraction of the world’s refugees. More than three-quarters of displaced people live in low- and middle- income countries; Turkey is home to 3.1 million refugees. Germany, meanwhile, has 2.1 million, but in the UK that figure was around 230,000 in November last year. The UK receives far fewer asylum applications per head than the EU average. Three-quarters of asylum claims from those arriving in the UK are successful in the first instance; and around half of those who appeal after their initial rejection get the decision overturned by the Home Office. The biggest issues in the asylum system are the number of people risking their lives to cross the Channel in small boats, which has steadily increased as it has become more difficult to travel to the UK by other means, and the huge delays in processing asylum claims. For many people, they are taking years to process, creating higher costs for the taxpayer and keeping traumatised individuals who are entitled to refugee status trapped in the limbo of abject poverty, unable to work and pay taxes.
Instead of focusing on this latter issue – entirely in the government’s power to resolve – Sunak has put all his energy on his pledge to “stop small boats” by making it impossible to claim asylum in the UK outside pre-approved settlement schemes, which are effectively limited to people from Ukraine and Hong Kong. His “illegal immigration” bill gives the government draconian powers to detain almost everyone arriving in the UK with the intention of claiming asylum, and to deport them to a “safe” third country. The government’s stated hope is this would lead to a dramatic reduction in people attempting to claim asylum in the UK.
The Home Office’s own analysis suggests that these deterrent effects are unlikely to transpire; partly because asylum seekers tend to have little understanding of how asylum policies differ by country. This policy is not only totally unethical, it is unworkable; it will very simply create the need for the government to detain a growing pool of tens of thousands of people seeking asylum. There is no agreement with a “safe” third country in place; the modestly sized deal with Rwanda – which has a 100% rejection rate for refugees from Syria and Afghanistan – has been ruled unlawful by the court of appeal, which deemed it insufficiently safe for refugees.
It last week emerged that immigration minister Robert Jenrick ordered the painting over of child-friendly murals at an immigration reception and detention centres where children are accommodated. Ratcheting up immigration fees; culling efforts to make traumatised children slightly more at ease: these are expressions of performative nastiness from a party that is bereft of ideas and has substituted unkindness to people from elsewhere in the world for a governing purpose. It is those fleeing conflict and torture, to whom we owe only compassion and kindness, who will pay the highest price.
