Starmer could put brakes on plan to increase income threshold for migrant spouses

Sir Keir Starmer is considering putting the brakes on the Tory-backed plan to increase the salary threshold for migrant spouses.

The income threshold needed to bring a foreign partner to the UK was raised from £18,600 to £29,000 earlier this year as part of a package of measures to reduce net migration by around 300,000.

Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has paused plans to further increase the threshold to £38,700 next year and asked the migration advisory committee (MAC) to review the level at which it should be set.

In a statement to the Commons, she told MPs that the Government needed to “balance a respect for family life while also ensuring the economic well-being of the UK is maintained”.

She added: “The Minimum Income Requirement (for the family visa) is currently set at £29,000 and there will be no further changes until the MAC review is complete.”

The plans to raise the threshold to £38,700 provoked a major backlash when they were announced last December by James Cleverly, the former Home Secretary. Migration experts warned weddings would be canceled and thousands of relationships affected.

The government also went against advice from Home Office officials not to raise the threshold to £38,700. They warned that the move would probably be defeated in the courts on the basis of family rights enshrined in the Human Rights Act and equality laws.

Brian Bell, the current chairman of the MAC, had also raised concerns over the policy, pointing out that the change would only have a “quite small” effect on net migration and was likely to be outweighed by the negative impact on Britons seeking to bring their partners to the UK.

He said in a briefing: “You should think about the benefit in terms of the welfare of people in Britain. These are British citizens who want to bring their partners with them to live in Britain. There’s a social benefit and a welfare benefit of doing that, which I don’t think should be ignored.”

Mr Bell also said he could not see any logical justification for increasing the threshold to £38,700, which puts it on par with the new salary threshold required by foreign skilled workers seeking to come to the UK. It is above the median average salary for full-time workers in the UK last year, which stood at £34,963.

He said the MAC had originally advised that the threshold for bringing in a foreign partner should be set at the level of earnings required for a citizen to not be eligible for benefits. This was why it was originally fixed at £18,600 in 2011, but had not been uprated in line with inflation.

Although the MAC will not announce the results of its review until after the summer, it could opt for a figure in the mid-£20,000s if it follows the same logic, potentially below the current £29,000.

Mr Cleverly, now the shadow home secretary, said: “This change will open the doors at our borders and ensure that net migration keeps climbing, and the British people will pick up the bill.”

Ms Cooper has, however, said that Labor will continue with all the other Tory measures designed to reduce net migration from its current high of 685,000 in the year to December 2023.

These include restrictions on foreign students and care workers bringing family members to the UK, raising the salary threshold for skilled workers visas from £26,200 to £38,700 and abolishing the 20 per cent going rate discount so employers can no longer pay migrants less than UK workers in shortage occupations.

Ms Cooper also commissioned the MAC to investigate ways in which the IT and engineering sectors could be weaned off their reliance on foreign workers by training and recruiting more domestic British staff.

“Whilst we will always benefit from international skills and talent, including to keep us globally competitive, immigration must not be used as an alternative to addressing skills shortages and labor market failures here in the UK. For that reason, we are setting out a new approach,” she said.