Rightwing Conservatives have expressed concern at the decision to U-turn on more than doubling the minimum salary needed for British nationals bringing foreign relatives to the UK, in yet another sign of the party’s continued splits on migration. In a surprise and low-key announcement on Thursday evening, the Home Office said the threshold would still rise significantly from the current £18,600, but to £29,000 instead of the £38,700 initially announced earlier this month. The revised proposal, reported without fanfare via a parliamentary answer in the Lords, said the threshold would be increased “incrementally” and would still hit £38,700, but gave no timescale for when this element would happen. In another apparent climbdown, people who already have a family visa and want to renew it will have to meet only the current income requirement, rather than the increased threshold, a Home Office factsheet said. This would also be the case for children seeking to join or move with parents. The changes form part of a wider crackdown intended to reduce net migration by about 300,000, set out by James Cleverly, the home secretary, after fury among some Tories when data released in November showed net inward migration had been 745,000 in the year to December 2022. Although the increase in the family visa salary requirement was expected to contribute only about 10,000 to the overall planned reduction, some Conservative MPs on the right of the party said the watering down of this element was a worrying sign. Jonathan Gullis, who was a minister in Liz Truss’s brief administration, tweeted: “Legal migration to the UK is too high and unsustainable. That is why the government was right to introduce tough and necessary new measures to get numbers down, and demonstrate control of our borders. This decision is deeply disappointing and undermines our efforts.”
John Hayes, who chairs the Common Sense Group of rightwing Conservatives, called for the timetable for the increase to £38,700 to be set out. “If we’re going to £38,700, which seems to be very sensible, then that needs to be done with speed so that people know where they stand,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. David Jones, the deputy chair of the Brexit-minded European Research Group, told the PA news agency: “The government should have stuck to its guns. Yesterday’s decision was a regrettable sign of weakness, made worse by the fact that parliament was not sitting and therefore was unable to interrogate ministers on the reasons for the decision.” Miriam Cates, whose New Conservative grouping is also on the right of the party, told MailOnline: “Reducing the threshold for spousal visas so soon after promising a crackdown does not bode well.” While these are the voices Cleverly would have expected to have spoken out, the force of opinion emphasises the risks of backsliding any more on a migration crackdown which, while cheering some Tory MPs, prompted anguish among many families and predictions of mass vacancies in the health and care sectors. Reunite Families, a campaign group for people affected by immigration rules, said £29,000 was “still very high for most families”, adding: “It excludes over half of the population from sponsoring a foreign spouse and is much higher than the minimum wage so those on lower salaries are still being told their family is not welcome here.” The revised policy, announced in a written parliamentary answer by the Conservative peer and junior Home Office minister Andrew Sharpe, says the minimum income requirement “will be increased in incremental stages to give predictability”. This would begin next spring with the increase to £29,000, pegged as the 25th percentile of earnings for jobs eligible for skilled worker visas. This would subsequently rise to the 40th percentile, which would currently make it £34,500, and then the 50th percentile, now £38,700 – the new minimum threshold also for a skilled worker visa. However, the answer gave no details about when the moves beyond £29,000 would happen. Asked when this would take place, Home Office officials pointed to a statement and factsheet, which also did not set this out.