Bonds for selected UK visitors

The UK Home Office plans to run a pilot program from November which will need financial bonds from selected visitors. The program will run for twelve months to test the effectiveness of bonds as a deterrent against visa abuse, such as overstaying. This pilot scheme will operate in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ghana.

The scheme will be highly selective and focused on the highest risk applicants. We will not require all visitors from the selected pilot countries to pay a bond. The number of bonds issued during the program will be limited.

The level of the bond will be set at £3,000 per adult; children under 18 will be exempt. The bond payment will be returned if the visitor returns home after their visit visa has expired and within the time period specified by their visa.

To bring the scheme into force, the Home Secretary will lay a Commencement Order before Parliament to activate the power in the Immigration and Nationality Act 1999 to require a bond from visitors, and make changes to the Immigration Rules to set up the pilot scheme.

Home Secretary Theresa May said that this is the next step in ensuring our immigration system is more selective, bringing down net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands while still welcoming the brightest and the best to Britain.

"In the long run we're interested in a system of bonds that deters overstaying and recovers costs if a foreign national has used our public services," a spokesman for the UK Home Office said.

"We're planning a pilot scheme that focuses on overstayers and examines a couple of different ways of applying bonds.

The scheme will apply to visitor visas, but if the scheme is successful we'd like to be able to apply it on an intelligence-led basis on any visa route and any country," he said.

Following careful evaluation, the Home Secretary will then decide whether to set up a permanent scheme.