Tougher visa rules for foreign workers – including ban on bringing families and raising minimum salary requirement

Published

2 years ago

December 4, 2023

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A new five-point plan to reduce immigration has been announced by the government, which includes banning care workers from bringing over their families and increasing the minimum salary for a skilled worker visa.

Home Secretary James Cleverly has come under pressure since taking office three weeks ago to show he is taking a hardline on immigration.

Follow live: What do the numbers tell us about UK migration?

Conservatives are angry about the latest thwarting of the Rwanda deportation scheme in the courts and net migration hitting 745,000 last year.

Today’s five-point plan – which is “more robust” than any previous government’s stance on migration, according to Mr Cleverly – includes measures on health and care visas, skilled worker visas, family visas, the shortage occupation list and student visas.

The measures are:

• Health and care visas: Overseas care workers will not be able to bring family dependants, to end the “abuse of the health and care visa”. Care firms that want to sponsor people for visa applications will need to be regulated by the Care Quality Commission;

• Skilled worker visa minimum salary change: The threshold for an application will rise to £38,700 – although health and care workers will still be able to earn less before applying for the route;

• Shortage occupation list: The government wants to “scrap cut-price shortage labour from overseas” by reforming the way people working in short-staffed sectors can apply to come to the UK. This will include axing the 20% discount applied to the minimum salary for people looking for a visa for shortage occupations. The types of jobs on the list will also be reviewed and reduced;

• Family visas: The minimum threshold for a family visa will also be raised to £38,700 to “ensure people only bring dependants whom they can support financially”. Currently, it stands at the 2012 rate of £18,600;

• Student visas: Following the tightening of who can bring in family members on student visas earlier this year, the government will ask the Migration Advisory Committee to review the graduate route “to prevent abuse and protect the integrity and quality of UK higher education”.

Home secretary knows he needs to sound tough on migration

This is an enormously important statement for the new home secretary.

Barely three weeks into the job, he has seen his polling among Conservative members plummet as he faces pressure over legal and illegal migration.

Today he addressed the former.

A rise in the skilled worker salary threshold, a ban on health and care workers bringing dependants to the UK and a scrapping of the shortage occupation list are among the measures announced to curb net migration.

The clamp down is seen as a win for the immigration minister Robert Jenrick, who is understood to have been pushing for a more hardline approach.

Discomfort in the party has been palpable after the net migration figure for 2022 was revised up to 745,000 last month – the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledged to bring down net migration; Boris Johnson talked about cutting the number to 250,000.

Will today’s statement make a difference?

The home secretary says the package, and existing plans to reduce student dependents, will mean more than 300,000 people who came to the UK last year would now not be able to.

But there are still questions – like how different the Immigration salary discount list will actually be from the scrapped shortage occupation list?

It seems likely workers from abroad will still be able to undercut British workers in some sectors, which won’t please right wing MPs.

On the other side, there are of course concerns too over a workforce shortage and a need to fill jobs, not least in healthcare.

Today we saw a significant statement on legal migration, a new treaty with Rwanda could come as soon as tomorrow.

The home secretary knows he needs to sound tough to appeal to his party. This could well be his most significant week yet.

Mr Cleverly claimed these measures – as well as the previously announced measures on students – would mean that 300,000 people who entered the UK last year would not have been able to.

He also re-announced plans to raise the increase of the immigration health surcharge from £624 to £1,035.

He told MPs: “When our country voted to leave the European Union, we voted to take back control of our
borders.

“Thanks to this Conservative government, we now have a points-based immigration system
through which we control who comes to the UK.

“We prioritise the skills and talent we need to grow our economy and support our NHS – and
we have a competitive visa system for globally-mobile talent.”

He added: “Immigration policy must be fair, consistent, legal, and sustainable.”

Asked by Tory MP Damian Green how many care workers are expected to be dissuaded by the removal of family dependents from their visa, Mr Cleverly said it was not estimated that fewer people would be working in the UK health and care sector – hoping domestic supply can fill any gaps.

The home secretary told MPs the plan aims to stop “approximately 120,000 dependants” coming in on health and care visas.

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Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said the statement was an admission of “years of total failure” by the government – claiming that Rishi Sunak is “crashing around all over the place” and “reversing policies he introduced”.

She pointed out that Labour had called for the scrapping of the 20% discount to shortage occupation lists previously.

Sky News understands that Labour is not planning to object to any of the measures announced today, if they require a vote in parliament.

UKHospitality, a trade body for the hospitality sector, said the changes would have stopped 95% of the 8,500 visas granted for chefs and managers last year – which would “worsen the shortages hospitality businesses are facing”.

Politics

Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she is ‘totally’ up for the job of chancellor in first comments since tearful PMQs

Published

45 mins ago

July 3, 2025

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Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she is 'totally' up for the job of chancellor in first comments since tearful PMQs

The chancellor has said she was having a “tough day” yesterday in her first public comments since appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions – but insisted she is “totally” up for the job.

Rachel Reeves told broadcasters: “Clearly I was upset yesterday and everyone could see that. It was a personal issue and I’m not going to go into the details of that.

“My job as chancellor at 12 o’clock on a Wednesday is to be at PMQs next to the prime minister, supporting the government, and that’s what I tried to do.

“I guess the thing that maybe is a bit different between my job and many of your viewers’ is that when I’m having a tough day it’s on the telly and most people don’t have to deal with that.”

Politics latest: PM sets out 10-year NHS plan

She declined to give a reason behind the tears, saying “it was a personal issue” and “it wouldn’t be right” to divulge it.

“People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday. Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job,” she added.

Ms Reeves also said she is “totally” up for the job of chancellor, saying: “This is the job that I’ve always wanted to do. I’m proud of what I’ve delivered as chancellor.”

Asked if she was surprised that Sir Keir Starmer did not back her more strongly during PMQs, she reiterated that she and the prime minister are a “team”, saying: “We fought the election together, we changed the Labour Party together so that we could be in the position to return to power, and over the past year, we’ve worked in lockstep together.”

PM: ‘I was last to appreciate’ that Reeves was crying

The chancellor’s comments come after the prime minister told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby that he “didn’t appreciate” that she was crying behind him at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday because the weekly sessions are “pretty wild”, which is why he did not offer her any support while in the chamber.

He added: “It wasn’t just yesterday – no prime minister ever has had side conversations during PMQs. It does happen in other debates when there’s a bit more time, but in PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang. That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

During PMQs, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded the chancellor the “human shield” for the prime minister’s “incompetence” just hours after he was forced to perform a humiliating U-turn over his controversial welfare bill, leaving a “black hole” in the public finances.

The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill was backed by a majority of 75 in a tense vote on Tuesday evening – but a total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill, which was the largest rebellion in a prime minister’s first year in office since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s lone parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.

Reeves looks transformed – but this has been a disastrous week for the PM

It is a Rachel Reeves transformed that appears in front of the cameras today, nearly 24 hours since one of the most extraordinary PMQs.

Was there a hint of nervousness as she started, aware of the world watching for any signs of human emotion? Was there a touch of feeling in her face as the crowds applauded her?

People will speculate. But Ms Reeves has got through her first public appearance, and can now, she hopes, move on.

The prime minister embraced her as he walked on stage, the health secretary talked her up: “Thanks to her leadership, we have seen wages rising faster than the cost of living.”

A show of solidarity at the top of government, a prime minister and chancellor trying to get on with business.

But be in no doubt today’s speech on a 10-year-plan for the NHS has been overshadowed. Not just by a chancellor in tears, but what that image represents.

A PM who, however assured he appeared today, has marked his first year this week, as Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby put to him, with a “self-inflicted shambles”.

She asked: “How have you got this so wrong? How can you rebuild trust? Are you just in denial?”

They are questions Starmer will be grappling with as he tries to move past a disastrous week.

Ms Reeves has borne a lot of the criticism over the handling of the vote, with some MPs believing that her strict approach to fiscal rules has meant she has approached the ballooning welfare bill from the standpoint of trying to make savings, rather than getting people into work.

Ms Badenoch also said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she will, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

Downing Street scrambled to make clear to journalists that Ms Reeves was “going nowhere”, and the prime minister has since stated publicly that she will remain as chancellor “for many years to come”.