Do the Tories know their own immigration policy?

The past two weeks have seen upset, frustration and confusion within the Tory Party – all over a policy that was announced in May.

The ‘Deportations Bill’ – which was being worked up long before it was first put forward almost six months ago – was meant to showcase the party’s hard edge on immigration. Instead, it has exposed how muddled that edge has become.

The Bill – developed as amendments that then became a Private Member’s Bill, but was treated internally as core policy – proposed several headline-grabbing changes. Chief among them: revoking indefinite leave to remain (ILR) – which allows foreign nationals to live, work and study in the UK permanently – from anyone earning below £38,700 or claiming benefits, and the policy would have applied to anyone granted ILR who had not gone on to gain British citizenship.

Those policies positioned the party as radical, but they also left unanswered questions that lingered quietly until this month. Then came an interview with Katie Lam, the shadow home office minister and ‘rising Tory star’, who said of the new ILR policy that there are “a large number” of legally settled migrants who should have their right to stay revoked so that they can “go home”, leaving behind a more “culturally coherent” country.

Complaints soon flooded into the Whips’ Office. Lam was swiftly spoken to by the Chief Whip, alongside conversations with Philp, Policy Renewal head Neil O’Brien, and party leader Kemi Badenoch. Some MPs were offended by her phrasing; others, by the policy itself. 

When it comes to the former, it revolves around language. The ILR policy isn’t one that would have an effect on the idea of “culture coherence” nor would withdrawing or denying ILR necessarily lead to deportations where people would “go home”.

With the latter, either people didn’t know about one of the party’s flagship immigration policies (and didn’t like it when they found out), or they didn’t fully understand it (with its implications and unanswered questions). As one MP puts it: “It seems nobody knew the policy until this big row.” Another MP even asked me: “Have I voted on this?”

Neither option is ideal really, and the policy area has become muddled, with a Tory whip telling me: “It is messy, and very weird given how long it has been ‘policy’ for.”

So much so that, when Badenoch’s spokesman initially said Lam was “broadly in line” with party policy on Wednesday, they have now gone further and confirmed to ConservativeHome yesterday afternoon that Lam – their own shadow home office minister – had “misunderstood” the policy.

Badenoch herself told reporters at a speech yesterday morning that Lam “just stated it imprecisely”.

The suggestion that Lam misunderstood the policy has led to a number of Tory sources claiming she “has been thrown to the wolves” and facing an “unacceptable personal attack”. Others say she is “lucky to have escaped with just that” and that Lam has “avoided the obvious option” of being removed from her Home Office brief – something being pushed for by the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson.

But Badenoch, for her part, has tried to put on a positive spin on Peston: “I’m thrilled we are talking about this … nobody wanted to talk about them [ILR policy when it was first announced].” Now, however, it requires an attempt to reconcile first rhetoric with new reality.

At the heart of the confusion was whether the ILR revocation could apply retrospectively. The mismatch it seems is mainly over the idea of retrospective application – and that revocation of ILR could apply broadly. A backlash over this element, that it goes too far, has forced a softened stance.

Take in March this year, Lam in a Bill Committee, there on behalf of the Party, said: “The new clause covers revocation, or the circumstances in which we believe that indefinite leave to remain status should be removed from an individual to whom it has been granted.”

Now Badenoch says: “No, we’re not being retrospective. When we put that amendment through, it was for a live Bill, so it wouldn’t have been retrospective. It was applied to a specific cohort.”

She insisted the party wanted to make their immigration policy “coherent” when pressed about the changes, but denied that the move was to appease moderate members of her Party.

One shadow cabinet minister expands, telling ConservativeHome that Badenoch wants “to clarify”, not only post Lam, but “post Jenrick” and his comments that he “didn’t see another white face” in an area of Birmingham, on “what we think and how we should approach those with ILR” to set the record straight.

Both Labour and Reform were quick to pounce, pointing back to what the Tories set out in Parliament, accusing them of changing tack. As one Tory adviser tells me: “We can make mistakes but for it to be in the one area where we are so affected by credibility makes it very awkward.”

“It’s an omnishambles without the detail,” they sighed. “If our selling point over Reform is credibility, we need to act like it – not do a Theresa May ‘nothing has changed’ routine.”

They are not alone. Another Tory source messages to say: “Establishing a strict cohort is a change.” They say that what the Tories originally put forward deals with revocation of existing status, status which has already been granted, which by definition would be retrospective. Plus the amendments Badenoch is referring to were gathered into a distinct bill and never referred to a specific cohort of post-21.

The only mention of 2021 that ConservativeHome was pointed back to is in a February BBC story before the policy was even officially announced, referencing “the party wants the government to adopt the changes, backdated to 2021”. But it is nowhere in the party’s documents, whether that be their Deportations Bill website or Parliamentary legislation. What there is is a section entitled “Revocation of ILR in certain circumstances” – “creating new powers to revoke ILR – allowing us to remove those who have become a burden to the UK”.

But a Tory source insists that the BBC article captures all the policy – and that it was designed with the cohort of the points based system in mind, who will start to qualify for ILR from next year. The Commons amendments “intended”, they said, to push the government into dealing with that post-21 cohort before they could get ILR. 

Intention may be true, the thing is intention is not really how policy works. As one MP tells me, based on what the party had put out: “I think they were genuinely open to retrospective application for anybody with ILR and without citizenship.” Based on official documentation from the party, you would be forgiven for believing the same.

It has led exactly to a situation that Badenoch herself has been so keen to avoid. In one of her keynote speeches back in January, just before these ILR policies came to fruition, she said: “We were making announcements without proper plans… those mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later. That is going to stop under my leadership.” 

Lots of questions emerged first, without the obvious answers that seem to be getting worked out later – like would the Party be deporting people when they reach pension age and their incomes fall and it is technically a social protection? Badenoch ended up answering this on Peston: “That won’t apply.” But perhaps it is the sort of thing that should have been made clear with the announcement in the first place. The result has been a policy that appears both overreaching and underdefined.

So what happened where this seems to have slipped through the net? Some claim it is because a headline grabbing pitch was needed at the time on an issue that the Tories weren’t trusted on (leading to overcompensation for the ‘Boriswave’), others that some of the wider consequences simply weren’t understood (so the argument to defend the policy and finesse its details wasn’t had straight away). It is one of those issues where fault seems to be shared rather than laying at anyone’s door.

For now, the Party says ILR amendments have been “superseded” by the decision to leave the European Convention on Human Rights “changing the calculus”. When quizzed on whether instead of stripping ILR from migrants on benefits, benefits would be withdrawn from migrants as leaving the ECHR would allow, Badenoch told Peston that leaving the ECHR means “we can soften them [the parameters of the policy]” – and “many things”, noticeably not all, “have not changed”. 

Philp however maintains there has been “no change” to the ILR policy since their first amendments in February (despite in May emphasising to the Commons that it would “ensure that those who have become a burden can be removed”) – and a party source emphasises that the doubling of length of time to qualify for ILR remains policy, and will be coupled with leaving the ECHR. “All very simple”. Right?

If you feel confused, you’re not alone. Many Tory MPs are in precisely the same position.

Attention now turns to Neil O’Brien, the industrious head of the Party’s Policy Renewal, who has been tasked with crafting an “end-to-end immigration policy” that may finally make sense of it all. Fans of his say he has been working round the clock – including sending emails at 3am – to deliver that coherence where confusion seems to have reigned.

The rest of the party will be hoping he succeeds, before any more avoidable policy rows come stumbling over the detail.