Immigration and Asylum Bill
20 October 2026
Contents updated on 20 Oct 2026
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Immigration and Asylum Bill House of Commons
Follow its sittings00:03 - 00:22
Speaker 4
Good morning everyone. We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. Today we'll continue line-by-line scrutiny of the Immigration and Asylum Bill. Before we begin, I would like to remind members to please switch electronic devices to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during the sittings.
00:22 - 00:54
Speaker 3
The selection for today's sitting is available in the room and on the parliamentary website. This shows how the clauses, schedules, and selected amendments are being grouped together for debate. Members are reminded to bob and catch my eye if they wish to speak in any part of the debate. We begin with group 16, amendment 61 to clause 19, with which it will be convenient to consider amendments 104, 105, and 106, and clause 19 stand part. I call Charm Berry to move amendment 61.
00:54 - 02:53
Speaker 2
Thank you very much, Dr. Marsden. It's a pleasure to have you in the chair today. And yes, I wish to speak to propose amendment 61, which would introduce a public interest test for survivors of violence against women and girls, domestic abuse, and sexual violence into the public interest considerations, and to speak on the matter that we should leave out clause 19. I'll start with clause 19 and what it does. Clause 19 would fundamentally alter the balance that has long existed between Article 8 rights and the public interest by restricting the court's ability to assess the individual circumstances of each case.
Our courts and tribunals carefully balance the right to private and family life against the public interest in an effective immigration system. Our judiciary performs that task every day, helping to deliver justice, uphold the rule of law, and guard against abuse. Yet clause 19 assumes the balance is being struck wrongly, without the government having demonstrated that. Its main evidence is only a 2022 internal sample of Home Office decisions. The existing statutory framework already strongly favors the public interest, particularly in deportation cases, while preserving the ability to consider individual circumstances.
Clause 19 would replace that with a more prescriptive framework. Here are my views on the main changes in clause 19. First, it would require courts to predict whether a person will remain financially independent. This is an inherently speculative exercise because it fails to consider the uncertainties of ordinary life, including illness, disabilities, caring responsibilities, or economic downturns. The effect is likely to discriminate most heavily against disabled people, as well as those with long-term health conditions and caring responsibilities.
02:53 - 06:09
Speaker 1
Second, it would discount genuine family life because of immigration status. Family life formed while a person was here with no leave to remain would be given no weight at all, and then family life formed while their status was precarious would be given little weight. Precarious migration status covers everyone with anything short of indefinite leave to remain or citizenship: care workers, skilled workers, international students, refugees, and partners on the family route. Under the earned settlement proposals, the qualifying periods to become eligible for settlement would be extended to a baseline of 10 years, and in some cases 15 and even 20 years for refugees. Many people will therefore remain in a precarious position for years, during which the relationships they form and the children they raise would count for little or nothing with this clause.
The reality is that family relationships do not cease to exist or be formed just because an immigration status is uncertain.
Strasbourg accepts that precarious status can reduce the weight that is given to family life, but it has not said that it counts for nothing. Actually, in an important case I've been given, Jeunesse versus the Netherlands, the court found a violation even when the applicant had remained without leave for years because of the impact on her children. With a no-weight rule as clause 19, subsection 4 says, there would be no space to assess these cases and retain flexibility and it would weaken protection for children. Finally, and perhaps most alarmingly, when courts assess a child's best interests, they do not look at one factor in isolation. They examine the full picture: a child's age, health, education, friendships, cultural identity, family circumstances, personal development and connection to the UK.
Children are not there defined by a checklist. Yet clause 19 would introduce a closed checklist. It would be unreasonable to expect a child to leave the UK if and only if they would receive no education abroad, face very significant obstacles to integrating there, or suffer a very significant and long-lasting effect. Each is a very high bar. Remarkably, the government's impact assessment describes these factors as a non-exhaustive list, but the bill says if and only if in subsection 7 of clause 19, which is very clearly a closed list.
The bill goes even further than even the government says it intends in terms of its effect on children. I am also concerned that the clause applies to British children too. As drafted, it could result in a British child with a migrant parent either being separated from their parent or having to leave the UK to preserve the family unit. That results in a two-tier British citizenship. The government's own impact assessment lists family separation among the consequences of these reforms and says, with little humanity, that the new test will allow decision-makers to consider whether parents can maintain their relationship with the child from outside the UK or whether a British child can successfully adapt to life abroad.