Research and analysis

RPC opinion: impact of Immigration and Asylum Bill (revised submission)

Updated 13 October 2026

Lead department: Home Office

Summary of proposal: the bill contains immigration, asylum and modern slavery measures. This opinion focuses on the measures identified in the IA as having business impacts:

• Pillar 3, Measure 11, Public Interest Test
• Pillar 4, Measure 16, Prevention of Modern Slavery (transparency in supply chains)

Submission type: impact assessment – originally submitted 30 June 2026, resubmitted 4 September 2026

Legislation type: primary

Implementation date: 2027

RPC reference: RPC-HO-26177-IA(2)

Date of issue: 2 October 2026

RPC opinion

Fit for purpose

As originally submitted the IA was not fit for purpose. Following a red opinion, the department has provided further evidence and explanation on the identification of options and justification for the preferred way forward. The IA now provides a proportionate basis for the measures identified as having direct business impacts: Measure 11, Public Interest Test, and Measure 16, Prevention of Modern Slavery (transparency in supply chains).

The IA would be improved by testing the sensitivity of familiarisation and administrative costs, which appear to be unrealistically low, to alternative assumptions on professional time, organisational processes and hourly cost; weighing unmonetised impacts more consistently across the scorecard; and setting out measure-specific monitoring indicators and data sources.

RPC summary

Rationale: Green

The IA explains the policy purpose of Measure 11, Public Interest Test, and Measure 16, Prevention of Modern Slavery, and links these measures to the wider objectives of the bill. The IA would be improved by drawing out more explicitly why existing arrangements are insufficient, separating the case for intervention from the case for the department’s preferred design.

Identification of options: Green

The department has now provided an explanation of the options development process. The IA now explains why alternative approaches, including non-regulatory, were not preferred. It would be improved by presenting the critical success factor comparison more systematically. The small and micro business assessment is sufficient: Measure 16 applies to businesses with turnover of £36 million or more, while Measure 11 is expected to have a small familiarisation impact on legal sector businesses.

Justification for preferred way forward: Green

The IA now provides sufficient explanation to justify the preferred way forward, explaining why regulatory options are necessary over non regulatory alternatives. It would be improved by testing the sensitivity of familiarisation estimates, which appear unrealistically low, to alternative assumptions on professional time and hourly cost.

Regulatory scorecard: Weak

The IA now provides a summary of expected impacts on business with an Equivalent Annualised Net Direct Cost to Business (EANDCB) of £0.2 million. Monetised impacts rest largely on detailed fiscal estimates plus a very small EANDCB which appears unrealistically low, while significant unmonetised impacts are weighed inconsistently. Business impact is assessed as positive, largely on reduced criminality, but the same effect does not shift the household assessment from neutral. The IA should weigh unmonetised impacts consistently across categories.

Monitoring and evaluation: Satisfactory

The IA includes a monitoring and evaluation plan identifying data sources relevant to implementation and compliance. It would be improved by setting out measure-specific research questions, indicators and data sources, including how familiarisation burdens and reporting compliance will be assessed.

Summary of proposal

The bill contains a range of immigration, asylum and modern slavery measures. This opinion considers the two measures identified in the IA as having direct business impacts: Pillar 3, Measure 11, Public Interest Test; and Pillar 4, Measure 16, Prevention of Modern Slavery (transparency in supply chains). Measure 11 would reform the public interest test in relation to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Measure 16 would amend the modern slavery transparency in supply chains framework, including through changes associated with reporting and use of a central registry. The IA states that most measures in the bill are not expected to have business impacts.

Response to red opinion

As originally submitted, the IA was not fit for purpose because it did not provide a sufficient explanation of the options considered for the measures within scope, or a sufficient justification for the preferred way forward. The IA explained that no long-list or options analysis had been developed because the bill formed part of a published policy commitment. The red opinion noted that this was an insufficient analytical basis for omitting options analysis, particularly where the preferred approach imposes new familiarisation or reporting requirements.

In response, the department has provided an explanation of the options considered and clarified why alternative approaches were not taken forward. The IA now provides sufficient evidence and analysis to support the case for the preferred approaches to Measures 11 and 16.

Rationale

Problem under consideration

The IA provides a sufficient explanation of the problems that Measures 11 and 16 seek to address. For Measure 11, the department explains that the proposal forms part of wider Article 8 reform and concerns the Public Interest Test. The problem is that the existing statutory framework does not reflect the government’s intended approach to balancing Article 8 rights with the public interest in immigration and asylum decision-making. The IA links the measure to the wider objective of reforming the immigration system.

For Measure 16, the IA explains that the measure relates to modern slavery transparency in supply chains and is intended to improve reporting practices. The problem is that current reporting arrangements do not provide the level of transparency, consistency or compliance that the department considers necessary to support effective scrutiny of organisations’ modern slavery statements. The IA identifies the relevant business population as organisations with turnover of £36 million or more.

Argument for intervention

Measure 11 requires primary legislation because it changes the statutory framework relevant to Article 8 decision-making. Measure 16 similarly concerns changes to statutory reporting requirements under the modern slavery transparency in supply chains framework. This supports the case that legislation is an appropriate route for delivering the intended changes.

The IA would be improved by drawing out more explicitly why existing arrangements are insufficient. For Measure 11, this could include clearer discussion of why the current public interest test does not deliver the intended outcomes. For Measure 16, the IA could explain more clearly why current transparency in supply chains requirements and existing reporting arrangements are insufficient to secure the desired reporting improvements. This would help distinguish the case for intervention from the case for the department’s preferred design.

Objectives and theory of change

The IA now sets out the objectives of the policies in more detail and the policy intent behind the relevant pillars but would be improved by using the SMART framework to set out when specific measurable changes are anticipated. The department provides a logic model for Pillar 3 including Measure 11, which could be improved with the inclusion of any supporting evidence linking the policy inputs to the outputs and outcomes.

Identification of options

Identification of long-list options

Following the red opinion, the department has now provided an explanation of the options considered. For Measure 11, four options were considered: doing nothing; introducing primary legislation to clarify and tighten the Article 8 statutory framework (preferred); pursuing a litigation strategy to encourage a more restrictive interpretation of the existing framework; and updating operational guidance and decision-maker training.

For Measure 16, options were developed against each of three objectives: improving statement quality, improving compliance monitoring and strengthening enforcement. The preferred package combines mandatory reporting topics aligned to existing statutory guidance; mandatory publication to the Modern Slavery Statement Registry with a reporting deadline and group-statement clarity; and civil penalties of up to £1 million or 1% of turnover.

Consideration of alternative options to regulation

The IA now provides sufficient consideration of alternatives to regulation. For Measure 11, the department has explained why non-legislative implementation would not deliver the intended effect. For Measure 16, the department has explained why voluntary reporting improvements or non-statutory registry arrangements would not be sufficient.

Justification for short-listed options

The department has now provided a sufficient explanation for discarding options, assessing each against critical success factors covering strategic fit, value for money, affordability, achievability, enforceability and business impact. For Measure 11, the non-legislative alternatives — a litigation strategy, and revised guidance and training — were discounted because they could not amend the primary legislation underpinning the Article 8 framework, and so would not deliver the intended legal certainty, consistency or durability; their effectiveness would remain contingent on judicial interpretation.

For Measure 16, alternative reporting standards (for example the OECD Due Diligence Guidelines) and a bespoke, consultation-led topic set were discounted as largely duplicative of the March 2025 statutory guidance and disproportionately costly for limited additional benefit; registry-only and Home Office approval models were discounted on compliance-clarity and resource grounds; and late-filing fees and the existing High Court injunction were considered insufficiently deterrent or disproportionate to the breach.

Overall, the approach to identifying and appraising options would have been improved by more closely following a process similar to that set out in the Green Book. The options framework-filter is typically used to generate a set of longlist options, which are assessed against the critical success factors to generate a shortlist of options which are subjected to further cost benefit analysis to identify the preferred way forward. However, the IA appears to start with a shortlist of options which are assessed against critical success factors to identify the way forward.

Small and micro business assessment

For Measure 16, the IA states that the policy will affect businesses with turnover of £36 million or more, meaning that small and micro businesses are not expected to be directly in scope. For Measure 11, the IA states that there will be familiarisation costs across the legal sector and that these will have a small impact on small and medium-sized businesses.

Justification for preferred way forward

Identifying impacts and scale

The IA gives an indication of the likely scale of the impact and the uncertainty around it. Following the red opinion, the department has quantified Measure 11 familiarisation costs at around £0.03 million (central), based on the affected population of immigration advisers and legal professionals and transparent assumptions on reading time and wage rates.

For Measure 16, it has set out the underlying familiarisation and registry-upload assumptions — the affected population, time per organisation and wage rates — supported by methodology annexes. Together these give an Equivalent Annualised Net Direct Cost to Business of £0.2 million, mainly incurred by the estimated 22,000 businesses affected.

The assumed familiarisation costs appear unrealistically low. For example, for Measure 11, lawyers are assumed to spend about five minutes reading the changes and take no further action. In practice, organisations would have internal processes, for example, staff training and governance, that are likely to increase the cost of adjusting to the new requirements beyond initial reading time.

For Measure 16, the IA assumes 30 minutes is allocated to familiarisation and registering for the reporting service with an ongoing resource of 30 minutes to submit the modern slavery statement. However, the IA does not include any costs associated with preparing new content that may be required given the IA states that organisations currently report only against a subset of the 6 specified areas.

For public bodies brought into scope of the requirements, the IA estimates between 15 and 35 hours will be required to prepare a statement, indicating there are resource costs for preparing new content. These costs should have been explicitly reflected.

The IA would be improved by testing the sensitivity of the estimates to alternative assumptions on preparing new content, time spent on organisational processes, professional time and hourly cost, including whether a fee-rate basis better reflects the opportunity cost of legal professionals’ time. However, the RPC acknowledges that even a materially higher estimate would still remain small in absolute terms.

The IA now addresses possible wider macroeconomic impacts through labour market changes arising from the measures. Reduced immigration reducing the supply of labour could raise businesses’ costs. It notes that migration does not affect employment outcomes for the existing UK-born population, and that the new measures will make little difference to overall UK migration. The RPC notes that the impact on employment of UK-born workers is not the same as the overall impact on business from any overall labour market effects.

The approach of not quantifying such effects is justified by the small change in overall migration (just over 10,000 not all of whom are in the working population) caused by the measures. However, given that the IA notes there is uncertainty over the change in migration and also considers fiscal impacts of the changes in some detail, it could have devoted more analysis to labour market issues.

Counterfactual and baseline

For Measure 11, the counterfactual is that the current Article 8 public interest test would continue to apply without the legislative changes proposed in the bill. For Measure 16, the counterfactual is that the existing modern slavery transparency in supply chains framework would continue without the proposed changes to reporting practices and registry requirements. This is a reasonable baseline against which to assess the preferred approaches.

Selection of the preferred option

The department has explained how Measure 11 supports the intended Article 8 reform and how Measure 16 supports improved modern slavery reporting practices. The IA now provides a clearer line from the problem identified, through the options considered, to the preferred way forward. This addresses the concern in the red opinion that the preferred approach had been asserted mainly by reference to the bill forming part of a published policy commitment. The IA could be clearer when setting out the costs and benefits for Measure 11 that although the NPSV is negative over the 10 year appraisal period, it may be net beneficial over the long-term given the estimates of the net lifetime impact of Article 8 migrants presented elsewhere.

Regulatory scorecard

Part A

The scorecard identifies business impacts for Measures 11 and 16 and provides quantified estimates. However, the assessment rests heavily on detailed fiscal estimates alongside a very small EANDCB, while significant unmonetised impacts are not always coherently weighed. The overall business impact is assessed as positive largely on the basis of reduced criminality, but the same effect does not shift the household assessment from neutral. The department has clarified that Pillar 5 has no direct business impacts and amended the IA accordingly.

Part B

The measures within scope are not expected to have significant direct effects on competition, innovation, international trade and investment, or natural capital and decarbonisation.

Monitoring and evaluation

The IA sets out a commitment to review the impacts of the legislation. For Measure 11, the plan should enable the department to understand whether implementation has been clear to legal practitioners and whether any familiarisation burden was proportionate. For Measure 16, the plan should enable the department to monitor registry usage, reporting compliance and whether the measure improves reporting practices.

The plan would be improved by setting out measure-specific research questions, indicators and data sources.