Family visa income threshold should be lower, review says

The minimum income threshold for family visas should be relaxed, a government-commissioned review has recommended.

A report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has suggested a reduction from the current level of £29,000.

It warned against previous proposals to raise the threshold to the same level as for skilled workers – £38,700 a year – saying it could breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The Conservatives said that the UK should leave the ECHR if it “stops us from setting our own visa rules”.

Article 8 of the ECHR enshrines the right to family life.

The threshold is the minimum income a British citizen or settled resident must earn to bring their partner to join them in the UK.

If the partner is already in the UK on a valid visa, their income also counts towards the minimum figure.

Most applications are made by people not already living in the UK.

The MAC suggested a range of possible new thresholds. It said a level between £23,000 to £25,000 would enable families to support themselves.

A threshold of between £24,000 to £28,000 meanwhile would put more emphasis on economic wellbeing – both of the families themselves and for taxpayers.

It said it did “not understand the rationale” for setting the family visa threshold at the £38,700 level for skilled workers, as the two visas have “completely different objective[s]”.

A £38,700 level would be the “most likely to conflict with international law and obligations”.

It is the government’s decision whether to accept any of the MAC’s recommendations.

Prof Brian Bell, chairman of the MAC, said that balancing family life and economic wellbeing was a “real trade-off”.

“There is a cost to the UK economy and UK taxpayers of having this route, and we should just be honest about that and say there is a trade-off,” he said.

“But similarly, on the other side, people who say ‘we should set it at very high numbers to make sure that we don’t lose any money’ ignore the massive impact that has on families and the destruction of some relationships and the harm it causes to children.”

A higher threshold would also have a “negative impact on the family life of a larger number of people”, the MAC said. It noted many families with lower incomes still earn enough to support themselves even if they do not make a net positive fiscal impact on the country.

It said an adult would need to earn £27,800 to have a neutral impact on the public finances – and £40,400 for a couple to have no impact in the first year a spouse arrived in the UK.

The MAC did not recommend a higher threshold for families with children, saying the impacts on family life for them would be “particularly significant”.

In 2023 the previous Conservative government announced plans to raise the salary threshold to £38,700, as part of plans to cut the level of migration.

But they backed down following criticism that this would keep families apart, settling on a £29,000 threshold with plans to gradually increase it later.

Labour did not implement those further rises when the party came into government and asked the MAC to review the threshold.

The committee said the threshold of £29,000 was already high compared to other high-income countries it had looked at.

The MAC said it “was not possible to predict with any confidence” the impact different thresholds would have on the level of net migration – the difference between those entering and leaving the country.

It did suggest lowering the threshold from £29,000 to roughly £24,000 may increase net migration by up to 8,000 people.

Net migration in 2024 was an estimated 431,000 people, down almost 50% on the previous year.

This followed record high levels in recent years, with the government under political pressure to get numbers down further.

The MAC also criticised the Home Office for its data collection, saying insufficient data “greatly hindered” their review.

A Home Office spokesperson said the government was considering the review’s findings and would respond in due course.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said migration figures remain too high and that the government “must urgently re-instate the Conservative plan to further increase the salary threshold”.

“If the ECHR stops us from setting our own visa rules, from deporting foreign criminals or from putting Britain’s interests first, then we should leave the ECHR,” he said.

The ECHR, which was established in 1950, sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in the 46 signatory countries and is a central part of UK human rights law.

Last month, the government said it would bring forward legislation to clarify how aspects of the ECHR should apply in immigration cases.