Immigration and Asylum Bill
15 October 2026
Contents updated on 15 Oct 2026
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Immigration and Asylum Bill House of Commons
Follow its sittings00:05 - 01:06
Speaker 1
Order. We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. We continue line-by-line scrutiny of the Immigration and Asylum Bill. Before we begin, I'd like to remind members to switch off their electronic devices or put them on silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings.
The selection list for today's sitting is available in the room and on the parliamentary website. This shows how the clauses, schedules, and selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. Members are reminded to bob and catch my eye if they wish to speak in any debate. We begin with group 14 and government amendment 130 to clause 17, with which it will be convenient to consider government amendment 131, amendments 94, 112, and 95, government amendment 96, amendment 97, and clause 17 stand part. And I call the Minister to move government amendment 130.
01:06 - 01:36
Speaker 2
Thank you very much, Mr. Stewart. It's good to see you again this morning and good morning to all colleagues today. We start our debate by moving on to part two of the bill, which relates to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8, the right to a family life, is an important protection, but it is a qualified right. That means it can be balanced against the public interest, such as the safety of the community or the security of our borders, where this outweighs an individual's personal rights.
01:36 - 03:36
Speaker 4
We will not step away from our belief that the right to family and private life must be respected and upheld. However, we have been clear that we must strike the right balance between the rights of the individual and fairness to the UK public, and crucially, as we bear down on abuse of the system. As set out in our impact assessment, each main applicant granted first time on Article 8 grounds carries an estimated lifetime cost to the taxpayer of around £141,000, equating to approximately £4.9 billion for those granted in 2025 alone. Indeed, Home Office analysis suggests that 71% of first-time grants on the basis of Article 8 were to individuals who had entered illegally and/or overstayed. If the same applied to the 42,000 estimated first-time grants in 2025, this would mean 30,000 overstayers and illegal entrants would have been allowed to stay last year on the basis of Article 8.
Between the 1st of April 2016 and November 2021, of 1,011 foreign national offender deportation appeals that were allowed on human rights grounds, 70% were solely on Article 8 grounds. And with 77,000 applications granted on Article 8 grounds last year, it is having a significant effect on our ability to enforce our immigration rules. Therefore, in this bill, we are changing how Article 8 is applied in the UK immigration system to restore public confidence and ensure that the UK application of rights is in line with the Strasbourg Court. The application of Article 8 will be tightened to prevent misuse of the system and ensure that the public interest in maintaining effective immigration control carries proper weight in immigration decisions. As the Home Secretary has made clear, the abuse of human rights law does not just erode the public's support for our immigration system, it erodes their support for the very idea of having such laws at all.
03:36 - 03:47
Speaker 3
For those who believe these laws matter, it is essential that we reform them to end their abuse. The reforms will put more emphasis on compliance with our rules and contribution to our economy and to our society.
03:47 - 06:08
Speaker 4
So starting first today with clause 17. This aims to bring greater clarity and control to entry clearance applications which engage Article 8, protecting genuine family relationships while preventing weak or tenuous claims from undermining public confidence. Taken with the reforms at clauses 18 and 19, which we'll come to in forthcoming groups, which tighten key elements of the Article 8 assessment, it strengthens our ability to enforce the immigration rules and create a fairer, more controlled system. So clause 17 amends the definition of a human rights claim in the 2002 Nationality and Asylum Act to create a sponsor human rights claim. This will lay the foundations to allow UK-based sponsors to make an entry clearance application for an overseas family member to join them in the UK if the application relies on the sponsor's Article 8 right to family life.
It will also enable the sponsor to appeal to the immigration tribunal if the Home Office refuses their application. I want to be very clear that only individuals with a specified status, including British citizens and those of other lawful residents, will be able to make a sponsor human rights claim. They need to establish a genuine family life claim and show that refusal would disproportionately interfere with their Article 8 rights. These reforms do not create a new migration route or entitlement to come to the UK. They simply ensure a correct process that is based on the UK sponsor, not the family abroad.
The clause will affect sponsors who wish to rely on Article 8 family life because their family member does not meet the entry clearance requirement under the family routes in immigration rules. Enabling the UK-based sponsor to apply will focus attention on the circumstances and Article 8 rights of the sponsor rather than the overseas family member. This reflects the established legal position that it is the sponsor who is within the UK jurisdiction for the purpose of Article 8 decision-making. The focus on the rights of the UK sponsor is intended to reduce expansive interpretation of where Article 8 rights are found to exist and prevent Article 8 becoming a route for those with tenuous family links to the UK. Too often the focus can be on the circumstances of the applicants abroad, whereas the main legal question should be whether there is a disproportionate interference with the family life of the UK-based sponsor.
06:08 - 06:09
Will the Minister give way?