Blake Stephenson is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Mid-Bedfordshire. He is the Shadow Treasury PPS and has worked in the City.
Since my election to Parliament in July 2024, one thing has been made loud and clear to me by constituents: Britain’s immigration system, and by extension our controls on both legal and illegal migration are broken.
For too long, people in the United Kingdom have voted to lower immigration and seen it only rise. This has been driven in part by illegal immigration, and much of the political attention has been devoted to this problem and the potential solutions over the past two years.
Yet, in the same period since the General Election, more than 1.3 million entry clearance visas have been granted, even excluding visitors. Not enough voices in politics are talking about the scale or complexity of this issue, or what it means for Britain. That is why I have decided to investigate exactly what is going on inside Britain’s legal migration system.
I have put more than 100 questions to the Government about the migration system and what I have discovered is truly shocking. There is a basic inability to answer simple questions in Government; and the system itself is full of loopholes that could be exploited by malicious actors seeking access to Britain.
Tens of thousands of companies, nearly 17,000 in total, registered to sponsor visas have five or fewer employees. More than 3,000 of these have just one. Defunct organisations remain listed to sponsor visas and organisations forcibly removed from the list for failing to comply with their responsibilities can simply re-apply to sponsor visas after a short period of time.
The Government has no idea how many people on Social Care Worker Visas are still working in social care – or even how many are still in the UK!
Universities have a commercial interest to import as many students as possible, but access to the UK on a Student Visa becomes a gateway to long term residence in the UK – and thousands of students entering the UK are doing so to study at low ranked institutions on low grade courses with weak employment opportunities.
Studying a degree in English is considered as long-term proof of English language competency in the visa system. Yet universities, regardless of their commercial incentive to accept students, can set their own testing standards for English language. Unsurprisingly, these standards are unlikely to be rigorous. Students that go on to complete a course – even a foreign language course – are rewarded with proof they speak English regardless of whether they actually can.
At the same time, the Government is heedlessly pressing ahead with plans to move Home Office English language testing to a fully remote system, despite serious security concerns. A consortium of leading British firms has already withdrawn from the Home Office’s tender process, warning that the proposal “exposes the UK’s immigration system to weaker security.”
The Government has repeatedly pledged to “smash the gangs,” yet this decision risks opening a new backdoor into Britain – creating a new entry route to the UK for fraudsters and organised criminals to exploit. Rather than strengthening border controls, it could significantly undermine them.
This approach is likely to become a major scandal. It also raises legitimate questions about why the Government is pursuing remote testing after initially committing to in-person assessments, which are far less vulnerable to cheating. Concerning details are emerging regarding the role of Peter Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, in lobbying the Home Office on behalf of the US tech firm, Duolingo – widely expected to benefit from the shift online and secure the £816 million contract. The Government initially denied meeting Duolingo, but a recent Government FOI response shows the Minister of Investment met with Duolingo in September 2025 to discuss their offer on English Language testing.
Thousands of visas are handed out for charity and religious work with minimal controls or financial requirements. If we genuinely need migration to fill roles to carry out charitable or religious work, can we really afford not to ensure that these people will have the financial means to support themselves?
Visa applicants face an easier and cheaper process to bring their non-British spouses to the UK than British citizens do; and citizens and settled residents follow the same process. Immediately upon settlement, newly settled residents are able to sponsor visas for their family members to come to the UK.
Thousands of visas are being issued by the public sector, including local Councils – taxpayers’ money being spent to bring workers in from abroad, rather than training or upskilling the British workforce.
Ongoing monitoring of compliance with visa conditions is unacceptably weak – the biggest example being that there are zero records of which National Insurance numbers are connected to visas. Visa holders are not required to maintain an up-to-date address with the Government – so the Government has no idea where they are between visa applications. Basic data about visas and visa compliance is often unavailable or very difficult to obtain and inconsistent.
All of this adds up to a system woefully unequipped to cope with the movements of millions of immigrants, both those already settled in the UK as well as those continuing to enter the UK in very high numbers.
If the British public cannot have confidence that their immigration system is working for them and to their benefit, then we need radical change. Backdoors to Britain, my new report, examines the problem, demonstrating that we cannot have confidence that the system is working for British people, and makes thirty common sense recommendations to fix the visa system.
These recommendations would ensure that the UK benefits from the best and brightest talent that the world has to offer but would close the doors of Britain to those who have very little to contribute and will not benefit our country. They would slam the doors on those who seek to undermine our nation and take advantage of our hospitality, preventing vulnerabilities in the system from facilitating their entry.
It would put British citizens first – not because we aren’t a generous country, but because we are a country whose generosity is not unlimited, and we must ensure that that our generosity is returned to being in the interests of our own citizens.
Blake Stephenson is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Mid-Bedfordshire. He is the Shadow Treasury PPS and has worked in the City.
Since my election to Parliament in July 2024, one thing has been made loud and clear to me by constituents: Britain’s immigration system, and by extension our controls on both legal and illegal migration are broken.
For too long, people in the United Kingdom have voted to lower immigration and seen it only rise. This has been driven in part by illegal immigration, and much of the political attention has been devoted to this problem and the potential solutions over the past two years.
Yet, in the same period since the General Election, more than 1.3 million entry clearance visas have been granted, even excluding visitors. Not enough voices in politics are talking about the scale or complexity of this issue, or what it means for Britain. That is why I have decided to investigate exactly what is going on inside Britain’s legal migration system.
I have put more than 100 questions to the Government about the migration system and what I have discovered is truly shocking. There is a basic inability to answer simple questions in Government; and the system itself is full of loopholes that could be exploited by malicious actors seeking access to Britain.
Tens of thousands of companies, nearly 17,000 in total, registered to sponsor visas have five or fewer employees. More than 3,000 of these have just one. Defunct organisations remain listed to sponsor visas and organisations forcibly removed from the list for failing to comply with their responsibilities can simply re-apply to sponsor visas after a short period of time.
The Government has no idea how many people on Social Care Worker Visas are still working in social care – or even how many are still in the UK!
Universities have a commercial interest to import as many students as possible, but access to the UK on a Student Visa becomes a gateway to long term residence in the UK – and thousands of students entering the UK are doing so to study at low ranked institutions on low grade courses with weak employment opportunities.
Studying a degree in English is considered as long-term proof of English language competency in the visa system. Yet universities, regardless of their commercial incentive to accept students, can set their own testing standards for English language. Unsurprisingly, these standards are unlikely to be rigorous. Students that go on to complete a course – even a foreign language course – are rewarded with proof they speak English regardless of whether they actually can.
At the same time, the Government is heedlessly pressing ahead with plans to move Home Office English language testing to a fully remote system, despite serious security concerns. A consortium of leading British firms has already withdrawn from the Home Office’s tender process, warning that the proposal “exposes the UK’s immigration system to weaker security.”
The Government has repeatedly pledged to “smash the gangs,” yet this decision risks opening a new backdoor into Britain – creating a new entry route to the UK for fraudsters and organised criminals to exploit. Rather than strengthening border controls, it could significantly undermine them.
This approach is likely to become a major scandal. It also raises legitimate questions about why the Government is pursuing remote testing after initially committing to in-person assessments, which are far less vulnerable to cheating. Concerning details are emerging regarding the role of Peter Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, in lobbying the Home Office on behalf of the US tech firm, Duolingo – widely expected to benefit from the shift online and secure the £816 million contract. The Government initially denied meeting Duolingo, but a recent Government FOI response shows the Minister of Investment met with Duolingo in September 2025 to discuss their offer on English Language testing.
Thousands of visas are handed out for charity and religious work with minimal controls or financial requirements. If we genuinely need migration to fill roles to carry out charitable or religious work, can we really afford not to ensure that these people will have the financial means to support themselves?
Visa applicants face an easier and cheaper process to bring their non-British spouses to the UK than British citizens do; and citizens and settled residents follow the same process. Immediately upon settlement, newly settled residents are able to sponsor visas for their family members to come to the UK.
Thousands of visas are being issued by the public sector, including local Councils – taxpayers’ money being spent to bring workers in from abroad, rather than training or upskilling the British workforce.
Ongoing monitoring of compliance with visa conditions is unacceptably weak – the biggest example being that there are zero records of which National Insurance numbers are connected to visas. Visa holders are not required to maintain an up-to-date address with the Government – so the Government has no idea where they are between visa applications. Basic data about visas and visa compliance is often unavailable or very difficult to obtain and inconsistent.
All of this adds up to a system woefully unequipped to cope with the movements of millions of immigrants, both those already settled in the UK as well as those continuing to enter the UK in very high numbers.
If the British public cannot have confidence that their immigration system is working for them and to their benefit, then we need radical change. Backdoors to Britain, my new report, examines the problem, demonstrating that we cannot have confidence that the system is working for British people, and makes thirty common sense recommendations to fix the visa system.
These recommendations would ensure that the UK benefits from the best and brightest talent that the world has to offer but would close the doors of Britain to those who have very little to contribute and will not benefit our country. They would slam the doors on those who seek to undermine our nation and take advantage of our hospitality, preventing vulnerabilities in the system from facilitating their entry.
It would put British citizens first – not because we aren’t a generous country, but because we are a country whose generosity is not unlimited, and we must ensure that that our generosity is returned to being in the interests of our own citizens.