Sir Keir Starmer's plans to move English tests for migrants seeking visas in the UK to online only have been ridiculed as a "fundamental mistake" by a senior Labour peer. Lord Smith, a former Cabinet minister under Sir Tony Blair, slammed Labour's £816 million move to replace in-person tests with a fully online approach as "foolish".
Under the new Home Office system, which could be operational by December, English exams for visas would become "fully digital" and could be sat at a location of an applicant's choosing. Currently the majority of the in-person English tests are carried out by a consortium called the English Language Testing System (IELTS).
In a letter to the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood last month, the IELTS warned having tests solely online could open the door to fraudsters and criminal gangs.
And writing in the Telegraph Lord Smith said it would be "foolish to persist” and forge ahead with online-only tests.
He wrote: "The present system of tests taking place in person in secure locations around the world works well. These plans risk putting all of this in jeopardy. I urge the Government to think again."
Lord Smith added that the change to the system seemed to go against the Home Secretary's own stated mission to raise the level of English standard which migrants need to obtain a visa from the equivalent of GCSE to A-level.
He added: "Yet the Home Office are currently in serious danger of making a fundamental mistake in relation to this.”
The BBC reported last month how the present system requires migrants to show they can speak English to internationally recognised standards by taking tests at one of more than 1,300 test centres around the world.
But in November last year, the Home Office launched a tender, external for "fully remote" English tests to run for five years from December 2026 at the earliest.
The Home Office said it would not comment in detail on a live tender and was still in the process of finding a provider who would meet the highest thresholds of data security and fraud prevention.
