(12 years, 11 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To move that this House regrets that it is not clear from the Impact Assessment or Explanatory Memorandum of the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC 1148) how the findings from the consultation have fed into the development of the policy or the estimates of the costs and benefits of the changes.
Relevant document: 35th Report from the Merits Committee.
My Lords, this statement of changes in Immigration Rules makes a number of changes to those rules and sets out the second set of changes to the rules governing the student immigration system in tier 4 of the points-based system. The tier 4 changes include restricting permission to work during studies for students applying for entry clearance or leave to remain and a restriction in the entitlement to bring dependents, partners and children into the UK.
The statement has been brought to the special attention of the House by the Merits Select Committee in relation to the tier 4 rules. I wish to express my great thanks to that committee for its work in relation to this statement. The House may recall that the Government earlier published a statement of intent, setting out the full planned changes for the student immigration system. However, that statement was laid without the impact assessment for the changes and the committee identified significant gaps in the analysis of the consultation responses. The Government have now laid the impact assessment for the reform of tier 4 of the points-based system.
The impact assessment says that the Government intend to reduce abuse through the immigration system and to reduce net immigration significantly. The impact assessment sets out the policy objectives as being to,
“Reduce the areas of the student route that are prone to abuse … Reduce net migration overall by the end of the current Parliament … Improve selectivity of students to the UK, to ensure they are the brightest and the best … Restore public confidence in the immigration system … and … Ensure that the system is robust and practical to enforce”.
The Opposition have consistently set out their concerns about the impact of this policy. The UK has a worldwide reputation for providing quality education to overseas students. My understanding is that we are the second most popular student destination in the world after the US. Overall, the international student market is estimated to be worth £40 billion to the UK economy. There is very real concern about the impact of the Government’s actions on this very important economic sector and the reputation of the UK generally. I hardly think that the current state of the economy lends itself to being the Government being so cavalier with such an important part of it.
My Lords, I welcome this debate and I am glad that the noble Lord was able to table his Motion. I should say that I am a member of the Merits Committee. It seems to me that the sort of points that have been made in this report are just the sort of thing that the committee is there for. I welcome the debate, although I do not welcome the fact that it is necessary. With regard to the issue of the production of the impact assessment—I will come on to the substantive issue because I cannot resist it—it is not the first time that I will have talked about the importance of scrutiny. It is important both to those who are the proponents of a proposition and to the opponents. The first bunch wants to get it right and the second bunch wants to pick holes in it; there is a unity of purpose there. Making the point, as the Merits Committee has done and as the House is now asked to do, is worth while only if the culture changes and this sort of error or omission—call it what you like—is not repeated. This is the sort of point that the Merits Committee has often had to make by way of a warning shot. The sanction from the committee is to bring the matter to the House.
I recall reading the agenda item and, in order not to make the Hansard writers blush, I will not use the language that I used then when I saw the figures, which are startling. The noble Lord referred to many of them: the 232,000 estimated reduction against the 70,000 to 80,000 estimate given only six or seven months ago, and a net cost of more than £2.4 billion with the UK Border Agency estimated to receive about £160 million less in fee income on the basis of the option chosen against the “do nothing” option.
That takes me to my next point. The committee does not make this point but I will. The options given are not a range but simply the polarised options of “do nothing” or “do this one other thing which we, the Government, are proposing”. So there is a steer to what one might describe as the right answer. So although this was a consultation, it is more akin to some sort of choice. It is not easy or indeed even possible for Parliament to assess what it is being asked to agree in this way. The Merits Committee report was very measured, and I quote from Paragraph 10:
“The Committee recognises the difficulty in developing the estimations of the likely costs and benefits of the changes, particularly given some of the gaps in the data and the potentially complex range of impacts. However, it is not clear from the IA how the findings from the consultation have fed into these estimations”.
That is a pity because the questions asked in the consultation were interesting. Most of them asked for a “yes”, “no”, or “don’t know” answer but one of them asked:
“In the light of the proposals described in this document, what do you think will be the main advantages/disadvantages, including any financial impacts, to you, your business or your sector?”
That is just the sort of thing that should be made publicly available. That is the purpose of the consultation. The background questions which consultees were asked would also have been useful in informing the debate. They were asked:
“How many students (approximately) started new courses at your institution in the 2009/2010 academic year?”
and,
“What is your estimate of overseas students (non-EEA) as a proportion of your total student population?”
As I say, that is just the sort of thing that we should be able to see to put the changes into context.
In the end, of course, what matters is the policy. Many noble Lords across a number of debates, including many of my noble friends, have made very clear our real concerns with some of the policy objectives. Even if we support a reduction in net migration, we do not believe in clamping down on student visas. We do not believe that is in the long-term reputational interests of the UK, nor its social, political and wider economic interests. I am not convinced it is even coherent within its own terms. I have commented before on the term “the brightest and the best”. That begs an awful lot of questions. We cannot assess the success—a term I use deliberately—without knowing how many students leave at the end of their course, which we—I do not just mean Parliament—are not adequately equipped to do. There is an increase of one when an individual arrives in the country and when he leaves there is a decrease of one.
My Lords, I join my noble friend in welcoming the Motion that has been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord, Hunt, and I find myself in substantial and almost entire agreement with every single word that he spoke in support of it. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hamwee on the sterling work that she does on the Merits Committee which has resulted in bringing this matter before the House, and not for the first time. I remind your Lordships that this is the second occasion in a row when the Merits Committee has commented on a statement of changes in the Immigration Rules. That indicates to me that all is not well in the direction of the UKBA. I often thought that the separate management of the UKBA was a mistake. At a time when the Government are looking for economies, they could perhaps do worse than to consider bringing it back under the umbrella of the Home Office.
The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, uses the wording of the Merits Committee report and is none the worse for that. It regrets that it is not clear from the IA or the Explanatory Memorandum how the findings from the consultation have fed into the development of the policy or the estimate of the costs and benefits of the changes. As far as I can see, that is not an opinion, but a fact.
In the most glaring case of a discrepancy between the responses to the consultation questionnaire and the statement, 85 per cent of the respondents disagreed with the proposal further to restrict students’ paid work when there is no evidence that it has impaired their academic performance and when fee increases have made it much harder for students to pay their way. There are many other instances where significant minority responses have been overridden. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about the considerable uncertainties affecting student numbers and the costs and benefits laid out in the impact assessment, which I shall come to discuss in a few minutes.
As one would expect, more than three-quarters of English language school respondents disagreed with the proposal to require all tier 4 students to demonstrate level B2 English proficiency, a requirement which will be a major problem for many schools and private colleges of further education. The IA states that unless English language schools can attract either EU students or student visitor route applicants, they face going out of business. The replacement estimate of 80 per cent, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred, is not only difficult to believe but pure guesswork. Schools say that a £1 billion industry is being put in jeopardy.
The Government have recognised the particular difficulties of the English language sector, however, by creating the extended student visa route, allowing applicants to come here for 11 months, which is non-renewable. They are not allowed to work or bring in dependants, or to switch into other routes including tier 4. When this was announced in December 2010, the Minister said that he would monitor it closely to ensure that it did not become a loophole and take a decision on whether to make it permanent in due course. I understand that it is working well so far. I should like the Minister to tell us when a decision will be taken on incorporating this route into the rules.
In the past, some English language and FE colleges have been used as a way of gaining entry to the UK with the intention of working illegally. It would be useful to know whether the Minister has details of the attendance records of those admitted under the extended student visa route since it came into force on January 10, and if not, how else he is monitoring the new route. I hope that the bogus colleges have been eliminated since it was provided that overseas students could apply only to those schools which are accredited and the list of schools was reduced by some 90 per cent to 1,500, all of which are registered with the UKBA. But there may still be a residual problem with individuals who apply to a genuine college simply to gain entry. If so, what obligations do the colleges have to report unexplained absences to the UKBA, and are any statistics available on those absences as an indication of the use of education as a continuing route to illegal entry? I ask this question believing that the loophole has been finally closed, but it would be useful to have that reassurance from the Minister.
An additional problem has been created for the English language sector in that the Government suddenly decided at the end of July, without any consultation, that it was going to be subject to a new inspection regime in substitution for the one that has been operated—as far as I am concerned, perfectly satisfactorily —by the British Council for many years. This will be a monopoly handed to the Independent Schools Inspectorate, which has no experience or knowledge of the sector and intends to charge four times as much as the British Council has in the past. Since the BC/Accreditation UK inspection scheme is fit for purpose, which I ask the Minister to acknowledge, the right answer as proposed by the schools is that BIS and DfE should jointly designate the private further education sector as subject to regulation and approve BC/Accreditation UK as an inspection body under the powers of the Education Act 2002. Would my noble friend the Minister be kind enough to comment on that proposal? I shall ask him to address the overall problems of the sector that English UK has drawn to my attention, which are too numerous, complex and potentially disastrous to be covered adequately in this debate.
The rationale for the statement is clearly set out in the impact assessment: that too many migrants have been allowed to enter the UK and that the Government's aim is to reduce the level of net migration to sustainable levels. As students make up the majority of non-EU immigrants, yet we do not propose putting a limit on their numbers, we have to make it harder for student applicants to enter and harder to sustain themselves by working part-time while they are studying if they are not the brightest and best. Deterring students from coming to Britain will certainly reduce the numbers, but on the Government’s own estimate it will do so at a cost of £2.4 billion a year to the economy—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee—and possibly even more in the long term. Of course it is necessary to ensure that every student who enters the UK is studying at a bona fide education institution towards a qualification that will enhance their prospects when they return home, as the IA emphasises, but the statement does nothing directly to eliminate bogus providers, which I presume, as I have said already, have been eliminated by the inspection regimes put in place over recent years. It concentrates entirely on making life harder for all students, the legitimate as well as those who in the past have used the education route as a means of entering the country with the intention of illegal working.
It has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend that no impact assessment was published for the previous statement of changes. The one that we are looking at today, although it does not say so, covers both this and the previous statement. Will the Government give an undertaking that Parliament will never again be asked to consider changes to the Immigration Rules unless we are provided with an IA?
The IA states that we need to filter out those who contribute least and who pose the highest immigration risk. There may be good reasons for the accreditation by Ofsted and its devolved equivalents of all tier 4 sponsors and for making them all highly trusted sponsors, as suggested in the IA, but are these changes in the statement? I do not see them either in the statement or in the Explanatory Memorandum. HTS accreditation costs £14,000, and I am told that all colleges, including those offering only the extended student visitor courses of up to 11 months not covered by tier 4, need to obtain this status in order to be considered favourably by applicants and their agents overseas.
I do not see, either, the changes in the English Language requirement mentioned on page 11 of the impact assessment, demanding B2 for undergraduates and above, and B1 for lower-level courses. Perhaps the Minister could point out where this is mentioned in the statement. There is enough paperwork to be digested in assessing the statement without the inclusion of text that refers to some other provision.
The estimates given for the reduction in student numbers and the costs and benefits arising from the changes in this statement and its predecessor, taken together, are subject to huge margins of uncertainty, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out. Increases in the levels of fees are bound to put off many applicants as well and the danger is that the combined effect of these increases and the present changes, together with increased competition from overseas, will seriously damage an industry that, according to an independent study for BIS, produces something like £14 billion of annual exports, potentially increasing to £26 billion in 2025. Reductions in the fee income from overseas students may undermine the high standards that we have always maintained in both higher and further education, driving students into the arms of our competitors and producing negative feedback—a threat not taken into consideration in the IA. Nor has account been taken of the intangible loss of the tens of thousands of former students who have attended our universities and colleges of further education all over the world and the links that they have with the United Kingdom.
The Government’s commitment to reducing immigration numbers, and their inability to attack other routes such as work or asylum, have led them to concentrate on education, relying on dodgy and unverifiable statistics and ignoring inconvenient responses to the consultation to arrive at conclusions already determined. I certainly hope that I am wrong in fearing the damage that may be caused by the measures that we are taking. I hope that my noble friend will be able to offer me an assurance that the Government will closely monitor the immediate effects of the changes in this and the previous statement on the higher and further education sector, and be prepared with remedial policies if it does turn out that we have impaired the contribution that they make to our economy by even more than the £2.4 billion we are already throwing away.
My Lords, I should like briefly to add to the comments made by both my noble friends, with whom I am in total agreement. Indeed, I very much welcome today’s debate. I declare an interest as chairman of the Council of the School of Pharmacy, University of London.
It is already very clear through this debate that the process and outcome of the consultation, impact assessment and change in the rules have been grossly unsatisfactory. Although it was rather strange, I suppose that the qualified welcome given by some institutions to the March statement by the Home Secretary and the attendant statement of intent was explained by the fact that many in higher education were expecting worse. However, that does not mean that any of them are by any manner of means in agreement with the current state of play.
I want to talk, in particular, about the closure of the post-study work route visa, on which I have asked quite a number of questions over the past two years. The Government’s response to the Home Affairs Select Committee and correspondence to me from the immigration ministry are interesting in that they show that the Minister and the Home Office seem to have greatly underestimated the importance of the post-study work aspect of coming to a United Kingdom university.
As vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary China Group, I have had a great deal of contact over the years with Chinese students in particular. I believe that some 80,000 to 100,000 students from China are here at any one time. The opportunity to undertake what is essentially an internship with a UK business after graduating, to prepare for a career back in China, has played a very important part in the decision by Chinese students to come here. In the response to the Home Affairs Select Committee report, the Minister said:
“We want to ensure students come for a limited period and to study not to work”.
In his letter to me of 27 July, the Minister put it rather differently:
“Tier 4 should be about coming to the UK to gain a high-quality education and not about finding a route to work in the UK through undertaking a course”.
However, that completely misunderstands the reason for the post-study work route visa. It is a route to having brief work experience here in the UK and thereafter to working long-term back in the home country with the skills acquired.
The tier 2 route visa will be granted only on a case-by-case basis. If we were able to unpack the responses to the consultation, which we are not, I am sure that a better solution could easily be found—certainly looking at the evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee—to tighten up the PSWR mechanism under tier 4. That would be much more satisfactory. As it is, it will make our higher education institutions much less attractive to overseas students. As we know, and as has been mentioned by all speakers so far, the impact assessment for the new rules came out extremely late in a very unsatisfactory fashion. That, as we also know, was commented on by the Merits Committee on two occasions, and we now know that some £3.5 billion gross of income and economic activity could be at risk as a result. That potentially has a huge impact on our education sector and it puts that sector considerably at risk on the basis of little evidence of abuse of the post-study work route visa.
It is right to say, as the Merits Committee does, that it is not clear from the impact assessment or the Explanatory Memorandum to the June statement how the findings from the consultation have fed into the development of the policy or the estimates of the costs and benefits of the changes. I think that that is an entirely uncontroversial statement in the light of what we have heard today. That is despite the statement in paragraph 8.1 of the statement of changes. As we know, the consultation was rushed through in only a month, which itself was grossly unsatisfactory and, sadly, these new rules have taken effect in those circumstances. It is vital that the new rules are kept under review and I hope that the Minister can give an undertaking that that will happen after a very short period of operation. It would have been better if these rules had not gone through but, on the basis that they have, I very much hope that the Minister can give an undertaking that such a review will take place.
The experience of Australia is an extremely salutary lesson in these circumstances. When the Immigration Rules were changed, as the Home Affairs Select Committee reported, there was a slump in applications from overseas to Australian universities, from which they are still recovering.
Finally, the Home Affairs Select Committee report, which is an extremely good document, said that the committee members were not persuaded that students are migrants. The Minister, in his reply to the report, said that he disagreed, claiming that the definition was long-standing under UN measures. That does not make it right. It is high time that rationality prevailed and that students are not regarded as migrants unless they are here for the longer term after graduating.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for the opportunity to debate this Motion. A large number of points have been raised. I am eager to deal with the issues to which they give rise but clearly I shall have to deal with most of them in writing, as noble Lords have been quite wide-ranging.
The Motion before us deals with changes to tier 4 of the immigration system covering international students. The issue at hand is how the findings from the consultation have fed into the development of the policy and the estimates of the costs and benefits of the changes.
When the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, started, he told us about the importance of overseas students. He is, of course, quite right and I absolutely agree with him, but only in respect of genuine students who have come here to study at our world-class academic institutions. That is why we are devoting our attention particularly to the private education sector, where there is much abuse, although we are doing well to reduce it. However, I am at one with the noble Lord regarding universities. He will know that they enjoy considerable advantages under our policies. For example, we have introduced flexibility into universities on the English language requirements, on the ability to work and on the ability to bring in dependants.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about loss of income from the UKBA. Although there will be a reduction in fees paid to the UKBA, the agency has made allowance for this in its business planning. I hope that he agrees that the UKBA exists to keep our borders secure and not just to turn over visa fees. He claimed the credit for the previous action to deal with bogus students but the previous Government only started that and left this Government with considerable work to do.
The noble Lord referred to the 35th report from your Lordships’ Merits Committee, which states that:
“The Committee regrets that it is not clear from the IA or the Explanatory Memorandum how the findings from the consultation have fed into the development of the policy or the estimates of the costs and benefits of the changes”.
Your Lordships will recall that the House debated the first set of changes to the student route on 16 May. At that time, the impact assessment for the student changes had not been published. However, the impact assessment for the changes to the student route was published when we made the second set of changes on 13 June. I reiterate my previous reassurance that we are quite clear that it is right and proper to provide the Merits Committee with the information necessary for it to do its job.
However, the issue having been raised, it would be remiss of me not to put this again in the context of the previous practice in this area. While it is generally accepted as good practice, there is no legal obligation for the UKBA to consult on changes to the Immigration Rules. In March 2010, the previous Government made significant changes to tier 4—the student route—without a formal public consultation. Despite taking the views of key partners, they did not publish any formal explanation of the findings. Similarly, in March 2006, following consultation, the previous Government published their policy for a points-based system but did not publish the 517 consultations that they received.
I am satisfied that this Government have gone to great lengths to seek the views of the public and of the sector, and to take account of these views in developing our final policy. On 23 November 2010, the Home Secretary informed Parliament that she intended to hold a public consultation on reforming the student visa system. This process began on 7 December, when the Home Secretary announced our proposals and the consultation paper was published. The consultation ran until 31 January 2011—shorter than a standard 12 weeks but that was in order to announce decisions at a time that would allow the sector and students to plan for the following academic year.
Our consultation received over 30,000 responses—10 times as many as the consultation on economic routes—and officials spoke to representatives of over 200 institutions during the consultation period. On 22 March, the Home Secretary made a full statement in the other place setting out the detail of the Government’s decisions, and the public reaction and data that had informed those decisions. On 31 March, we published a detailed statement of intent describing the full policy package and lay changes to the Immigration Rules to implement the first changes resulting from the consultation, which came into effect on 21 April. On 13 June, we lay the second set of changes to the Immigration Rules and published the impact assessment.
It is true that, like the previous Government, we have not published every consultation response. As I mentioned, there were over 30,000 responses online and over 200 longer written responses. We published a summary of the online responses to all questions asked and answered in the consultation. We also indicated the level of support in relation to every response. We felt that this was helpful information for Parliament and interested parties to have. The government code of practice on consultations states that:
“Following a consultation exercise, the Government should provide a summary of who responded to the consultation exercise and a summary of the views expressed … Consideration should be given to publishing the individual responses received”,
but, in this instance, the volume of responses made that impracticable.
The level of response demonstrates a high level of public engagement with the policy development processes. The changes that we have made to our final policy show that we have genuinely listened to and taken account of the views expressed. For example, we initially proposed raising the minimum level of English to an upper immediate level and required secure English language tests for all students. This received a clear, negative response from institutions, who indicated that pre-university pathway courses provided a vital route for international students to access our world-class universities.
My Lords, I wonder if the noble Earl could clarify—if not now, then at a later time—the basis of the use of the responses to the consultation. I was not entirely clear whether he was saying that it was factual information that was not used, and that other sources were used, or whether it was something wider than that.
My main point was that the consultation was responding to the policy rather than giving us detailed data on the likely effect of the policy.
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who seems to be working very hard today.
First of all, I echo the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the work of the Merits Select Committee, of which she is a distinguished member. It is very difficult for noble Lords to go through all the statutory instruments and statements of changes, and without the Committee we would be in a very difficult position as far as parliamentary scrutiny is concerned. Essentially this debate is about two issues. One is parliamentary process and the information provided by the Home Office; and it is also about the policy. On the issue of parliamentary process, it is very important that the Home Office learns lessons from the way in which this statement and previous statements have been produced for when further changes in Immigration Rules are brought before your Lordships’ House.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has said that this is not the first such occasion, and indeed it is not. We come back consistently to this House to debate these changes because of the inadequacy of the department’s approach. The noble Earl said that his department readily takes on board the points made by the Merits Select Committee, but so far it has not. We continuously come back to debate these issues because the Merits Select Committee has identified inadequacies in his department’s approach. I have very little confidence that we will not be back in another few weeks with further discussion on the same basis.
The noble Earl has kindly offered to write to noble Lords on points to which he has not responded—he always does and it is appreciated—and I hope that his department will take this to heart. I thought it was very interesting when the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said that the problem with the IA was that it only had two options: the do-nothing option, or the option of taking what the Home Office wants to do. Rather surprisingly, the Government have come to the view that the Home Office got it right in the first place. I am sure that we are all reassured that, after rigorous consideration of the Home Office’s original proposals, they have indeed, through the IA, come to the view that that is the right approach. Normally on IAs, one seems to get a series of options where I think one can get a more considered view, and I would hope for that in the future.
I too would pay tribute to the ILPA. I thought that the briefing paper it produced for us was, as ever, very comprehensive. Very interesting were the examples that it gave of people who would be badly affected by these proposals and changes. I hope that the noble Earl will have some time to have a look at these examples, because I think that they bring home to us how these changes can have a real impact on people from other countries.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, spoke about the impact of English language schools, and I agreed with everything that he said. I thought that he put a very pertinent point to the noble Earl about the proposal to change from the accreditation scheme to the monopolistic provider that is now going to be provided in relation to inspection, which will be very expensive indeed. The noble Earl gave the reasoned response that he thought this was going to be a more effective and more rigorous scrutiny. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, might feel able to bring this back in some form because I think that it warrants further debate. I am particularly worried about the monopolistic issue and the cost, and I hope that there will be an opportunity to debate this further in due course.
I very much agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who spoke from his experience of the School of Pharmacy. My experience is particularly in the health field. Throughout the world we have wonderful contacts with healthcare systems in other countries, and it is because we have always had this marvellous open door, with people from other countries who often come to help the NHS. My fear is that it is not just the change in the rules that will make a difference but the change in the atmosphere; people from other countries will get the feeling that they are no longer wanted here to study, and that is a major concern.
Yes, my Lords, but surely the point is to deal with the abuse in a holistic way and not stop legitimate people coming here. I fear that the changes will have that dampener impact. I really do.
On the question of consultation, I, like the noble Baroness, was rather confused by the Minister’s response. The Government seem to dismiss these responses because they commented on the policy or because they were unrepresentative. I do not know who decided that they were unrepresentative; it is almost as if the Government have decided that anyone who does not like the policy should not be listened to because they are unrepresentative. I just point out to him—and I am indebted to my noble friend Lord Rosser for referring to this—that the Merits Committee in paragraph 10 says that the committee very much regrets the lack of information and how the findings from the consultation fed into the conclusions and estimates that the Government have made. As the committee says,
“the estimation of costs to educational establishments would benefit from”,
consultees, and it is,
“regrettable as the Government presumably received some useful information given that the consultation specifically asked about the main advantages/disadvantages of the changes”.
If you are commenting on the general policy, I would have thought that you were actually talking about the main advantages and disadvantages of the changes. That really gives the game away. The fact is that all those legitimate organisations involved in education know that this has been a disastrous change in policy; they told the Government that and the Government take no notice. No wonder they have not fed that into the results of this statement of changes.
This has been a thoroughly good debate. Once again, the Government have found themselves rather lonely on this policy. That is because this policy is wrong and highly damaging to this country. I of course withdraw the Motion, but I hope that the Government will listen to what noble Lords have said tonight.