Home Office to Double NHS Surcharge to £400
The government has announced that the annual healthcare surcharge will be doubled from £200 to £400. The NHS surcharge is payable by any non-EU migrants who are coming to the UK for 6 months or longer. For a non-EU spouse of a British citizen applying from outside the UK for a 30-month fiance visa, the applicant would be charged £600 on top of the £1,464 visa fee. When the changes are implemented, this will rise to £1,200.
The discounted scheme for students and individuals applying for the youth mobility scheme will also double from £150 to £300. This means that non-EU students applying for a study visa will now face a £900 NHS charge for a three-year course.
The increase will raise an additional £220m a year for the NHS, which is struggling to cope with budget cuts. Ministers said that the increase in NHS surcharge contributions would ensure that migrants put in a “fair contribution” towards the healthcare system. However, it has been criticised as it may negatively impact the NHS by making it more difficult to recruit overseas workers.
These changes aren’t as steep as the Conservatives initially promised, as their 2017 manifesto outlined plans to triple the NHS surcharge. This charge is often linked to the issue of “health tourism”, where people come to the UK, usually for a short time, to access NHS services and then leave. However, the charge will only be applicable to people applying for a visa for longer than 6 months, so it is unlikely to impact health tourism.
In 2016, the government paid £674m to countries throughout Europe for healthcare but only received £49m in return. According to the fact-checking website Full Fact, health tourism only took up about 0.3% of the entire NHS budget for the year.
Health minister, James O’Shaughnessy said: “Our NHS is always there when you need it, paid for by British taxpayers. We welcome long-term migrants using the NHS, but it is only right that they make a fair contribution to its long-term sustainability. By increasing the surcharge so that it better reflects the actual costs of using health services, this government is providing an extra £220m a year to support the NHS.”
Immigration status and current accounts
Who is affected? Why your account is closing
Your account is closing. This is because you are present in the United Kingdom without leave to enter or remain and the Secretary of State for the Home Department considers you should not be provided with access to banking services.
The Secretary of State has notified your bank or building society that it is under an obligation to close an account operated by or for you in accordance with section 40G of the Immigration Act 2014 (as amended by the Immigration Act 2016). For these purposes, an account is operated by or for you if you are the account holder or a signatory or identified as a beneficiary in relation to the account.
You have been refused a current account
Banks and building societies are required to carry out immigration status checks on people applying for current accounts. Under the Immigration Act 2014 they must refuse your application for a new current account (or an application to add you as a signatory or identified beneficiary to a new or existing current account) if you are a disqualified person.
You may be disqualified if you are in the UK and need leave to enter or remain (under the Immigration Act 1971) and don’t have leave to be here. This could be because you:
never had leave to enter or remain (because you entered the UK illegally)
had leave but stayed after it expired or was revoked
are an European Economic Area (EEA) national subject to deportation action who has exhausted all rights of appeal
Your account has been closed
Banks and building societies are required to carry out immigration status checks on people who hold current accounts. If you are identified as being disqualified from holding an account, then, under the Immigration Act 2014 the bank or building society must close your accounts (or restrict access where you are a signatory or identified beneficiary, or the account is jointly held with a non-disqualified person).
You may be disqualified if you are in the UK and need leave to enter or remain (under the Immigration Act 1971) and don’t have leave to be here. This could be because you:
never had leave to enter or remain (because you entered the UK illegally)
had leave, but stayed after it expired or was revoked
are an European Economic Area national subject to deportation action who has exhausted all rights of appeal.
The Home Office has the power under the Immigration Act 2014 to apply for a freezing order in relation to current accounts for disqualified persons.
Query the decision
If a bank or building society refuses your application for a current account or closes your current account under the Immigration Act 2014, it will normally tell you why. If you believe there’s been a mistake, you should contact the Home Office with evidence of your lawful immigration status. If you have a right to be in the UK, the Home Office will change your details so you can re-apply to open a current account or re-open your existing account.
Complaints Allocation Hub
UK Visas and Immigration
20 Wellesley Road
7th Floor
Lunar House
Croydon
CR9 2BY
Email: complaints@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Phone: 0300 123 4979
UKVI< Updated 29 January 2018
New immigration bail and detention powers in force from today
When, in 2015, the government and the Home Office announced a major reform in immigration policy, no one knew exactly what was to follow and what the changes would take.
But in the last 2-3 years, we are witnessing that these changes are coming quickly and that they are less and more often at the expense of the applicants and immigrants.
Significant changes to immigration detention powers and a new status called “immigration bail” come into force today, 15 January 2018. The Immigration Act 2016 (Commencement No. 7 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2017 commence sections 61(1) and (2) and 66 of the Immigration Act 2016 and most of the immigration bail provisions set out in Schedule 10. As the explanatory note summarises:
Schedule 10 introduces a new framework for immigration bail, replacing a legal framework containing six different legal statuses (including immigration bail and temporary admission) with a single power of immigration bail.
This power to grant bail is conferred on both the Secretary of State and the First-tier Tribunal, in the former case by paragraph 1(1) and (2) of Schedule 10 and in the latter case by paragraph 1(3). The difference is that the Secretary of State may grant bail where a person is not detained but is liable to detention but there is no equivalent power for the tribunal.
Immigration bail applications to the Secretary of State must be made on a new form Bail 401 published overnight. It promises that “the Home Office will respond within 10 working days”.
Applications to the tribunal are made on a new version of form B1. Compared with the old form B1, the new tribunal bail form incorporates some welcome simplification of language (e.g. “recognizance” is now referred to as “financial condition”). There is no longer a section asking for consent to electronic monitoring in Section 3 of the form, but Section 5 now contains a Yes/No consent to future management of bail being transferred to the Home Office.
A further point of detail: the transitional provisions in the regulations cited above erroneously cited 20 November 2017 as the date of changeover from the old system(s) of immigration bail to the new. Last week that was corrected to 15 January 2018 by the Immigration Act 2016 (Commencement No. 7 and Transitional Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2018.
The overhauled immigration detention framework
The practical effect of this new framework is a significant expansion of immigration detention powers. For starters, a tribunal is no longer permitted to grant bail in any circumstances for eight days after arrival or where removal is within 14 days: see Schedule 10(3).
An additional news and the problem is that Bail can now be imposed even on a person who cannot lawfully be detained, including where “the Secretary of State is considering whether to make a deportation order against the person under section 5(1) of the Immigration Act 1971”: see Schedule 10(1)(5).
Schedule 10 continues:
A grant of immigration bail to a person does not prevent the person’s subsequent detention…
So even if someone is granted bail, they can still be detained.
The Home Office may unilaterally vary bail conditions without judicial scrutiny, for example by increasing reporting frequency – Schedule 10(6).
No doubt, all these changes are against the inters of applicants.
And that is not all. Schedule 10(10)(1) provides:
An immigration officer or a constable may arrest without warrant a person on immigration bail if the immigration officer or constable—
(a) has reasonable grounds for believing that the person is likely to fail to comply with a bail condition, or
(b) has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person is failing, or has failed, to comply with a bail condition.
In other words, someone can be arrested for possible future breaches of bail conditions. The only test is whether the immigration or police officer has “reasonable grounds for believing.”
Combined with the Home Office’s power, in other circumstances, to ignore a tribunal’s grant of bail, the jaded practitioner might be forgiven for wondering how much more pummelling the concept of “bail” can take.
In any case, from now on the persons on the bail are not any longer safe anymore even if the bail is given by the Court.
