Student Visas

Debate between Baroness Blackstone and Lord Murray of Blidworth

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The noble Lord raises an issue with which I am familiar and there is much to commend in what he says. Certainly, it is something that I will look into.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think the Minister answered the second part of the question asked by the noble Lord on the Liberal Democrat Benches. Why are we continuing to define international students as immigrants when they are clearly not in that category? Is he aware that nearly all OECD countries that have international students in considerable numbers do not define them as immigrants or migrants? They define them in a special category as overseas students. Why do we not move to doing that?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

It is clear that the students who have these visas are entitled to work for 20 hours a week, the dependants of students are entitled to work in an unrestricted way and they are obviously users of services provided by the state. For all those reasons, it makes sense that they be included in the net migration figures.

Windrush Lessons Learned Review: Implementation of Recommendations

Debate between Baroness Blackstone and Lord Murray of Blidworth

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I do not have that information to hand; I will need to find that out and write to the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister’s Answer to my noble friend on the Front Bench on the meeting of claims for compensation was a bit complacent. Can he explain why the number of claims that were dealt with last year was much lower than in the previous year? There must be some reason for that. Can he also comment on the remarks made by Wendy Williams in her report on the delays to the training of officials dealing with the Windrush scandal? Why has this been delayed and what steps is he taking as the Minister responsible for dealing with this problem?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

On the reduction, I hope the answer is demonstrated by the following statistics. Some 4,558 claims have been received by the Windrush compensation scheme, for which, as I said a moment ago, the total amount of compensation offered has been £59.58 million. There are 2,699 claims with final decisions—that is 59%—and 1,967 concluded claims: those are claims that received a final payment, a nil offer that has not been challenged in 60 days or rejected on eligibility, or claims that have been withdrawn. As regards the work in progress, there are 1,859 claims, and preliminary offers have been made in 666 of those. Only 522 claims are more than a year old.