Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warns visa changes will harm family relationships
Changes to visa rules in a drive to curb immigration numbers will have a “negative impact” on critical family relationships, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.
While the Most Rev Justin Welby said the government was “rightly concerned” with reducing legal migration figures, he warned there would be “a cost to be paid” as a result of some of the restrictions being introduced.
Stressing the importance of families to society, the top Anglican cleric argued the government “must not set a series of hurdles for them to jump over”.
Mr Welby also said the two-child benefit cap was “not a good policy” and the moral case for scrapping it was “beyond any question”.
Under a package of measures unveiled this week, overseas health and care workers will be prevented from bringing their dependants to the UK, while Britons must be earning at least £38,700 if they want to bring foreign family members.
The dramatic increase of the threshold – more than double the previous limit of £18,600 – to above the median income for a full-time employee has sparked criticism.
Net migration hit a record 745,000 in 2022, although it is estimated to have fallen to 672,000 in the year to June 2023.
The move to limit legal arrivals comes as the government seeks to press ahead with its controversial Rwanda asylum plan in a bid to stop illegal crossings on small boats.
Speaking in parliament, Mr Welby called on the government to take action to promote the “flourishing” of families.
He said: “This week we hear that many people in this country will be prevented from living together with their spouse, child or children, elderly parents, as a result of a big increase in the minimum income requirement for family visas.
“The government is rightly concerned with bringing down the legal migration figures and I’m not, you’ll be relieved to know, going into the politics of that.
“But there is a cost to be paid in terms of the negative impact this will have on married and family relationships for those who live and work and contribute to our life together, particularly in social care.”
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Government unveils immigration plan
The archbishop pressed for the application to policy of a “family test”, introduced in 2014 under then prime minister David Cameron, now Lord Cameron, and said it should be on the front of every piece of legislation.
Mr Welby said: “The state is useful to the family, the family is indispensable to the state. A lack of strong families undermines our whole society.
“Government needs families to work. They must not set a series of hurdles for them to jump over.”
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He also pointed to estimates by campaigners that ditching the two-child benefit limit “would lift a quarter of a million children out of poverty”.
Mr Welby added: “The moral case is beyond any question, yet the unfair penalty applied to additional children affects their educational outcomes, mental and physical health, their likelihood to require public support from public services later on.
“It is not a good policy.
“Will the government and the opposition, should they become the government at some point, consider removing the two-child limit and addressing other systems and policy choices which keep family in poverty?”
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He urged all political parties to “place flourishing families and households as a key objective” within their manifestos at the next general election.
His comments came during the annual debate he leads in the House of Lords, with this year’s topic Love Matters, The Report Of The Archbishops’ Commission On Families and Households.
Victims of the infected blood scandal will get £210,000 as an interim compensation payment from as early as this summer, the government has announced.
Cabinet minister John Glen told parliament the initial payment will be given to people living with the effects of contaminated blood “within 90 days, starting in the summer”.
Infected people who die between now and the payments being made will get the money sent to their estates, he added.
Mr Glen said: “As the prime minister made clear yesterday, there is no restriction on the budget. Where we need to pay, we will pay.
“We will minimise delays, we will address the recommendations of Sir Brian Langstaff with respect to that – speed and efficiency, and removing as much complexity as possible.”
The minister did not confirm the cost of the compensation package, but former justice secretary Robert Buckland said it could be upwards of £10 billion.
Mr Glen’s announcement came the day after a report into the scandal was published following a seven-year inquiry.
More than 30,000 Britons were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 3,000 people died.
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Blood scandal: A look at the details
Mr Glen also announced:
• The Infected Blood Compensation Authority – an “arm’s length body” – has been established to administer compensation, with Sir Robert Francis KC as the interim chair
• Anyone directly or indirectly infected by NHS blood, blood products or tissue contaminated with HIV or Hepatitis C, or developed a chronic infection from blood contaminated with Hepatitis B is eligible for compensation
• If someone would have been eligible but has died, compensation will be paid to their estate
• When a victim has been accepted onto the scheme, their affected partners, parents, siblings, children, friends and family who acted as carers of them can claim in their own right
• People who are registered with an existing infected blood support scheme will be automatically eligible for compensation to minimise the distress of proving they should be
• There will be five types of compensation: an injury impact award, social impact award (to acknowledge the stigma or social isolation from being infected), autonomy award (for disrupted family/private life), care award (for past and future care needs), and financial loss award (for past and future financial losses caused by being infected)
• Compensation will be offered in a lump sum or periodic payments
• The family of anyone who has died will get a single lump sum
• Any payments will be exempt from income, capital gains and inheritance tax
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• Payments will not count towards means tested benefit assessments
• All recipients can appeal their compensation
• Final payments will start before the end of the year
• No immediate changes to existing infected blood support scheme payments – they will continue until 31 March 2025 and will not be deducted from new compensation
• From 1 April 2025, any support scheme payments received will be counted towards final compensation
• Nobody will receive less in compensation than they would have received in support payments.
Sir Brian Langstaff lead the review into the scandal
Sir Brian Langstaff, chair of the inquiry, found the scandal was “not an accident” and its failures lie with “successive governments, the NHS, and blood services”.
He said the response from governments of different stripes and the NHS “compounded” victims’ suffering.
This included the “deliberate destruction of some documents” by Department of Health workers, in what Sir Brian described as a “pervasive cover-up” and “downright deception”.
“It could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided. And I report that it should have been,” he said, adding the “scale of what happened is horrifying” for victims and their families.
Victims and their families welcomed the report following decades of not being believed.
Rishi Sunak offered a “wholehearted and unequivocal” apology to the victims following the report’s publication, saying it was a “day of shame for the British state”.
He promised compensation would be given to victims and those affected, adding: “Whatever it costs to deliver this scheme, we will pay it.”
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