The impact of immigration changes – your guess is as good as the Home Office’s

That was the statement that announced a review of the graduate route, and scooped up the previous announcements on the NHS Surcharge, the ban on dependants for PGTs, and stopping international students from switching to a skilled visa route ahead of course completion.

That, along with various other announcements (including the controversial skilled worker thresholds and the family policy) generated a figure of 300,000 fewer people coming in – causing Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Con) to ask his right hon Friend to “put in the Library” the analysis behind his statement.

And here it is, at a high level, anyway. A more detailed impact assessment has been produced for changes affecting the student route – but is “still awaiting final Departmental clearances.”

It does all make you wonder how ministers can announce something that will have X or Y impact only to then have to wait for the analysis underpinning said impact. It can feel like it’s all being done on the back of a fag packet, and while I’m sure there’s a straightforward explanation, there just isn’t one that springs to mind.

Anyway, to the paper. The published immigration statistics for the year ending September 2023 that we got in November said that the baseline (grant) volumes of sponsored study visas were 486,107 granted to main applicants, and 152,980 to dependants.

That’s around 0.31 dependants per main applicant, but not all main applicants are eligible to bring dependants – because undergraduates can’t bring dependants.

So the four questions for the civil servants were:

• What’s the likely impact of the IHS surcharge and/or the skilled worker switch before course completion ban?
• To what extent will the measure(s) put off students from coming in general?
• How many of those that brought dependants brought no dependants, assuming a hit on main applicants for those that did?
• How many that did are PGRs v PGTs, on the basis that PGRs still can?

First we’re told that the impact of the skilled-worker-switch-before-course-completion ban is assessed to be “small” and so hasn’t been quantified. Ditto the IHS uplift. Hmmm.

Then we’re told that the figures only include “first round direct impacts” and do not include any adjustment for a potential behavioural response of students dissuaded from studying in the UK. And subsequent impacts on the Graduate Route are also not considered in this paper.

So what’s left is information on the level of study of main applicants (PGT v PGR) and information on dependants associated with the main applicant.

It may or may nor surprise you to learn (it surprised me) that the Home Office doesn’t actually explicitly collect level of study information when it gives out a study visa – so has had to develop an “experimental methodology” involving assigning course titles to derive a level of study:

The methodology assigns level of study in a matching process which uses HESA data at the first stage to assign level of study to main applicants (higher confidence matching) and then text within course titles at the second stage to assign level of study to those not already matched (lower confidence matching). It should be noted that course titles are recorded in a free text field by Home Office caseworkers.

Every day’s a school day, especially at the Home Office.

Anyway, while we don’t get told how many PGTs the HO reckons it’s issued visas to, we do get told that 92 per cent of dependants were associated with a study visa main applicant on a postgraduate taught course.

Astonishingly, when comparing estimates of main applicants and dependants in this exercise with published Home Office immigration statistics, the number identified through this exercise is lower than published statistics. How can that be?

Part of this can be explained by the fact in-country applications are not counted but it also suggests that not all dependants have been identified and linked to main applicants. It has been assumed that the unlinked applications are unbiased and the linked applications form a representative sample of students and dependants.

Remarkable.

So when the ratios are applied to the 152,980 student dependant applications in the year ending September 2023, the analysis suggests around 140,000 student dependants would not have been eligible to come to the UK – so about 12,000 of the 152,980 were attached to PGRs (we’re also talking students on stuff like Chevening, Commonwealth and Marshall scholarship schemes, and students who give birth whilst on the student route, whose dependant(s) are allowed to stay.)

Then on the percentage that bring dependants, the paper says that Home Office management information, in conjunction with a number of assumptions, indicates that 19 per cent of study visa main applicants on a PGT course are accompanied by one or more dependants.

So OK, you’re thinking – what’s the Home Office’s estimate on the number of students who can no longer bring a dependant not coming at all?

The behavioural response of main applicants is uncertain and there is a lack of evidence to determine how many students (who bring dependants) will be dissuaded, as such, this impact has not been included in this paper.

They don’t know, haven’t tried to guess, and haven’t included them in the table that gets to Cleverly’s overall 300k.

So the overall figure ignores any impact on the graduate route, (for now) assumes that every student who’s here with dependants would have come anyway, ignores any impact from the skilled-worker-switch-before-course-completion ban, ignores any impact of the IHS going up, ignores the negative general mood music surrounding the UK and ignores the negative specific mood music surrounding the “review” of the graduate route.

Several conspiracy theories are available. One could be that they know all of the things they’ve ignored will have a huge impact and are storing them up for another “we’re getting numbers down” announcement. Another could be that they know all of the things they’ve ignored will have a huge impact and hid them from the Treasury and the Department for Education. Another could be that the whole thing was cobbled together at the very last minute on very shaky numbers so Cleverly could look tough having replaced Braverman, and having done the actual analysis, it’s going have much more of an impact than they realised, and so they’re now being careful with release to avoid looking like clowns and falling out with the Treasury and DfE.

This is, lest we forget, from the same stellar team that impact assessed the (re-introduction of the) graduate route in 2019 and didn’t include any mention of dependants at all. Maybe they’re lowballing the decrease this time having lowballed the increase last time.

Either way, this doesn’t feel like a good way to run a country. It feels more like chaos.