“I just wanted to save my life,” says Dhanabal, who came to Britain from India to study. But it was only the visa that came with the university place that interested him, and his plan was always to stay on after it expired.
The 26-year-old relies on cash-in-hand jobs to survive, waiting in Sheffield for a call from a mystery man he calls “the boss” to give him construction or cleaning work for “pocket money” and food.
“I had no idea when I came to the UK how my life would be – I just wanted to leave India,” says softly spoken Dhanabal, who is wearing a grey tracksuit, with a neat haircut and beard. “I didn’t think about what it would be like here.”
Dhanabal – we’re not using his family name – says his politics got him into trouble with the Indian police and he paid an agency £7,000 to arrange a university place in Britain.
Image: Dhanabal’s story is a rare insight into the life of a visa overstayer
Sky News has seen a copy of his passport, which shows he arrived in 2021 on a student visa that was due to expire a few months ago.
He did a month of a master’s course in business management at a university in the north of England, he says, but found it “too hard”. The college where Dhanabal was given a place told us they couldn’t comment on individual cases because of student confidentiality.
His story is a rare insight into the world of those who overstay their visas and go underground.
The system has “collapsed”, says Vasuki Murahathas, who has worked as an immigration solicitor for 24 years. She estimates the number of calls from overstayers asking for advice has gone up 50% in the last year. There’s no way of independently verifying this.
Her desperate clients want to know how to switch to working visas – which she says the government has just made more difficult – or find other ways to legally stay in the UK.
People “disappear and hide”, she says, because they can’t find sponsors for jobs, often falling into poverty and low paid cash-in-hand work when they can’t find a way to sort out their immigration situation.
“Some are really suffering,” she says. “The government is allowing people to come as students – they want more people to come as skilled workers but people are misusing the system to enter the UK.
“Some people are coming knowing they can overstay and no one can do anything.”
Image: Immigration solicitor Vasuki Murahathas
Dhanabal is not the only person who is struggling to survive after coming to the UK on a student visa which has now either been curtailed or expired.
Suresh, 35, shows us into a back garden in London where he is mowing the lawn and tidying the pathway. He tugs on the green jumper he is wearing, as he explains how he has been given clothes, not money, in exchange for his day’s work.
“Sometimes people offer me food, sometimes I get £10 or £20,” he says matter-of-factly. “Sometimes I do gardening or cleaning jobs. I don’t get work every day. It’s a hard life. One day I will be okay.”
Suresh has lived like this for seven years after arriving from India on a student visa. He didn’t start the course at the university in Wales where he was awarded a place.
“I don’t want to go to college,” he admits.
Image: Suresh is paid in clothes for clearing a garden
Some 1.1 million prospective students and their family members who came on study visas from January 2021 to March 2023.
But the Home Office told Sky News it can’t provide data on exactly how many people have overstayed visas over the last three years.
The most recent statistics available are for the year ending March 2020 – which showed there were 1.9 million visas that expired during that time. There was no record of departure for 83,600 people whose work, study or family visa expired in that period.
Of that number, there were 54,689 people who arrived on tourist visas and 7,236 people who came on student visas unaccounted for.
Universities in the UK rely on the millions of pounds foreign students bring with them in tuition fees. According to data from the HESA – the statutory data collection agency for UK higher education institutions – there were 679,970 international students studying in the UK in 2021/22.
‘Overstaying is against the law’
But potential abuse of student visas as a way to get to the UK means universities are under pressure to weed out applicants who aren’t genuine.
The body which represents universities in the UK says targets set by the government for course completion and enrolment by international students are currently being met.
Some 85% of international students must complete their course, and 90% must at least enrol otherwise a university is at risk of being banned from recruiting from abroad.
Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, says the sector is “very well” equipped to address the issue and is “trying to ensure that those people that are applying to come to the UK” are “genuine students and that they’re here to study”.
A Home Office spokesperson says: “Those who have no right to remain in the UK and do not return home voluntarily should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them. Overstaying is against the law, unnecessarily costs the taxpayer money, and is unfair on law-abiding migrants who come to the UK through the legal channels.”
Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial welfare bill has passed its first hurdle in the Commons despite a sizeable rebellion from his MPs.
The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill, aimed at saving £5.5bn, was backed by a majority of 75 on Tuesday evening.
A total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill – the largest rebellion since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.
After multiple concessions made due to threats of a Labour rebellion, many MPs questioned what they were voting for as the bill had been severely stripped down.
They ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the bill voted through “is not expected to deliver any savings over the next four years” because the savings from reducing the Universal Credit health element for new claimants will be roughly offset by the cost of increasing the UC standard allowance.
More from Politics
Just 90 minutes before voting started on Tuesday evening, disabilities minister Stephen Timms announced the last of a series of concessions made as dozens of Labour MPs spoke of their fears for disabled and sick people if the bill was made law.
In a major U-turn, he said changes in eligibility for the personal independence payment (PIP), the main disability payment to help pay for extra costs incurred, would not take place until a review he is carrying out into the benefit is published in autumn 2026.
An amendment brought by Labour MP Rachael Maskell, which aimed to prevent the bill progressing to the next stage, was defeated but 44 Labour MPs voted for it.
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Welfare bill blows ‘black hole’ in chancellor’s accounts
A Number 10 source told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby: “Change isn’t easy, we’ve always known that, we’re determined to deliver on the mandate the country gave us, to make Britain work for hardworking people.
“We accept the will of the house, and want to take colleagues with us, our destination – a social security system that supports the most vulnerable, and enables people to thrive – remains.”
But the Conservative shadow chancellor Mel Stride called the vote “farcical” and said the government “ended up in this terrible situation” because they “rushed it”.
He warned the markets “will have noticed that when it comes to taking tougher decisions about controlling and spending, this government has been found wanting”.
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‘Absolutely lessons to learn’ after welfare vote
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall said: “I wish we’d got to this point in a different way. And there are absolutely lessons to learn.
“But I think it’s really important we pass this bill at the second reading, it put some really important reforms to the welfare system – tackling work disincentives, making sure that people with severe conditions would no longer be assessed and alongside our investment in employment support this will help people get back to work, because that’s the brighter future for them.”
She made further concessions on Monday in the hope the rebels’ fears would be allayed, but many were concerned the PIP eligibility was going to be changed at the same time the review was published, meaning its findings would not be taken into account.
Her changes were:
• Current PIP claimants, and any up to November 2026, would have the same eligibility criteria as they do now, instead of the stricter measure proposed
• A consultation into PIP to be “co-produced” with disabled people and published in autumn 2026
• For existing and future Universal Credit (UC) claimants, the combined value of the standard UC allowance and the health top-up will rise “at least in line with inflation” every year for the rest of this parliament
• The UC health top-up, for people with limited ability to work due to a disability or long-term sickness, will get a £300m boost next year – doubling the current amount – then rising to £800m the year after and £1bn in 2028/29.
Labour’s welfare reforms bill has passed, with 335 MPs voting in favour and 260 against.
It came after the government watered down the bill earlier this evening, making a dramatic last-minute concession to the demands of would-be rebel MPs who were concerned about the damage the policy would do to disabled people.
The government has a working majority of 166, so it would have taken 84 rebels to defeat the bill.
In total, 49 Labour MPs still voted against the bill despite the concessions. No MPs from other parties voted alongside the government, although three MPs elected for Labour who have since had the whip removed did so.
Which Labour MPs rebelled?
Last week, 127 Labour MPs signed what they called a “reasoned amendment”, a letter stating their objection to the bill as it was.
The government responded with some concessions to try and win back the rebels, which was enough to convince some of them. But they were still ultimately forced to make more changes today.
In total, 68 MPs who signed the initial “reasoned amendment” eventually voted in favour of the bill.
Nine in 10 MPs elected for the first time at the 2024 general election voted with the government.
That compares with fewer than three quarters of MPs who were voted in before that.
A total of 42 Labour MPs also voted in favour of an amendment that would have stopped the bill from even going to a vote at all. That was voted down by 328 votes to 149.
How does the rebellion compare historically?
If the wording of the bill had remained unchanged and 127 MPs or more had voted against it on Tuesday, it would have been up there as one of the biggest rebellions in British parliamentary history.
As it happened, it was still higher than the largest recorded during Tony Blair’s first year as PM, when 47 of his Labour colleagues (including Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, who also voted against the bill on Tuesday) voted no to his plan to cut benefits for single-parent families.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
A 92-year-old man has been sentenced to life with a minimum term of 20 years in prison for the rape and murder of an elderly widow nearly 60 years ago.
Ryland Headley was found guilty on Monday of killing 75-year-old Louisa Dunne at her Bristol home in June 1967, in what is thought to be the UK’s longest cold case to reach trial, and has been told by the judge he “will die in prison”.
The mother-of-two’s body was found by neighbours after Headley, then a 34-year-old railway worker, forced his way inside the terraced house in the Easton area before attacking her.
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The UK’s longest cold case to reach trial
Police found traces of semen and a palm print on one of the rear windows inside the house – but it was about 20 years before DNA testing.
The case remained unsolved for more than 50 years until Avon and Somerset detectives sent off items from the original investigation and found a DNA match to Headley.
He had moved to Suffolk after the murder and served a prison sentence for raping two elderly women in 1977.
Prosecutors said the convictions showed he had a “tendency” to break into people’s homes at night and, in some cases, “target an elderly woman living alone, to have sex with her despite her attempts to fend him off, and to threaten violence”.
Image: Louisa Dunne in 1933. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Image: Headley during his arrest. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Headley, from Ipswich, who did not give evidence, denied raping and murdering Ms Dunne, but was found guilty of both charges after a trial at Bristol Crown Court.
Detectives said forces across the country are investigating whether Headley could be linked to other unsolved crimes.
Mrs Dunne’s granddaughter, Mary Dainton, who was 20 when her relative was killed, told the court that her murder “had a big impact on my mother, my aunt and her family.
“I don’t think my mother ever recovered from it. The anxiety caused by her mother’s brutal rape and murder clouded the rest of her life.
“The fact the offender wasn’t caught caused my mother to become and remain very ill.
“When people found out about the murder, they withdrew from us. In my experience, there is a stigma attached to rape and murder.”
Image: The front of Louisa Dunne’s home. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Image: Louisa Dunne’s skirt. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Finding out her grandmother’s killer had been caught after almost six decades “turned my life upside down,” she said.
“I feel sad and very tired, which has affected the relationships I have with those close to me. I didn’t expect to deal with something of such emotional significance at this stage of my life.
“It saddens me deeply that all the people who knew and loved Louisa are not here to see that justice has been done.”
Image: Palmprint images. Pic: Avon and Somerset Constabulary
After her statement, Mr Justice Sweeting told Mrs Dainton: “It is not easy to talk about matters like this in public.
“Thank you very much for doing it in such a clear and dignified way.”
The judge told Headley his crimes showed “a complete disregard for human life and dignity.
“Mrs Dunne was vulnerable, she was a small elderly woman living alone. You treated her as a means to an end.
“The violation of her home, her body and ultimately her life was a pitiless and cruel act by a depraved man.
“She must have experienced considerable pain and fear before her death,” he said.
Sentencing Headley to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years, the judge told him: “You will never be released, you will die in prison.”
Detective Inspector Dave Marchant of Avon and Somerset Police said Headley was “finally facing justice for the horrific crimes he committed against Louisa in 1967.
“The impact of this crime has cast a long shadow over the city and in particular Louisa’s family, who have had to deal with the sadness and trauma ever since.”
The officer praised Ms Dainton’s “resilience and courage” during what he called a “unique” case and thanked investigators from his own force, as well as South West Forensics, detectives from Suffolk Constabulary, the National Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).