Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Of course, we cannot resolve the issue of the refugee status of resettled Syrian refugees through the Bill. This amendment does, however, provide an opportunity to address one of the problems it causes, as well as help those on other resettlement schemes and young asylum seekers who have been given permission to remain. We are talking about a particularly vulnerable group of young people. Would it not be a wonderful thing if we could open up to them the whole world of higher education in this country? I hope very much that the Minister will take this away, discuss it with colleagues in the Home Office and DfID and respond more positively than the Higher Education Minister did when it was debated in the Commons.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it is my privilege to have added my name to this amendment. My favourite Christmas card of the past year came from a refugee from Burundi. Last summer, when I visited Burundi, I accessed the rector of the university that she had had to flee and arranged for her qualifications from that university to be released and forwarded to her in this country so that she could commence university, which she will do in September this year. It was a huge relief to her because without that piece of paper she would have had to return and undertake A-levels. In her Christmas card she not only thanked me, but said that it was being able to access higher education straightaway that made her feel welcome and wanted, and that we believed in integrating her into our country.

Amendment 443, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, would allow all refugees resettled to the UK, including the Syrian refugees being resettled at present, as well as those young people who have made applications for asylum who are granted a form of leave other than refugee status, to access student finance and home fees. It is an important amendment because it addresses one element of how we as a country treat people to whom we have said we will offer protection. Currently, individuals with refugee status can access student finance and qualify for home fee status from the moment they are awarded their protection. However, those with a slightly different status—that of humanitarian protection —are treated differently. Those with humanitarian protection have to be able to show at the start of the academic year that they have been ordinarily resident for at least three years to be able to receive financial support. This is the case despite people granted humanitarian protection having been found to be at real risk of suffering if they were to return to their country of origin. This includes risk of the death penalty, unlawful killing and torture.

The group most impacted by this are the Syrian refugees currently being resettled under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, as these refugees are granted humanitarian protection rather than refugee status. The result of this is that a young Syrian refugee who arrived in the UK would not qualify for student finance until the start of the academic year in 2020. The only exception to this, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out, is in Scotland.

I currently serve on the inquiry of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees looking at the experience of refugees once they are settled in their status. We have heard from many witnesses, including refugees themselves, that there are several barriers to successful integration, and one of the most often cited is access to education. Amendment 443 would remove at least one of the barriers.

Subsection (2)(a) of the proposed new clause would ensure that all resettled refugees, no matter what status they were given or where in the UK they were placed, could access student support immediately. Subsection (2)(b) would make student finance available for those who were granted humanitarian protection after making an application for asylum. For people granted humanitarian protection after applying for asylum, their future is clearly in the United Kingdom, so they should be allowed to access university education in order to build their lives here and to be able fully to contribute to society.

Subsection (2)(b) would also provide access to student finance and home fee status to people who had applied for asylum and then been granted another form of immigration leave. Again, the Government have accepted that the immediate future of such individuals is in the UK and so they should be given every opportunity to contribute and develop, yet they face significant hurdles in doing so. This is because, in 2012, the Government changed the rules so that potential university students in this situation could no longer access student finance and would be reclassified as international students, meaning that they would face much higher fees.

The Supreme Court found these rules discriminatory and, as a result, a new criterion of “long residence” was introduced. However, young people who have gone through the asylum process, including those children who arrive as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, are unlikely to meet the long residency criteria and so will have to watch their school peers go off to university, leaving them behind.

This amendment is not about creating special circumstances for refugees and other people who have arrived in the UK seeking asylum. Instead, it is about removing the existing barriers that prevent young people who came to the UK seeking protection and who are capable of attending university fulfilling their potential and gaining the skills and knowledge that will then allow them to participate fully in, and contribute to, the United Kingdom. I hope that the Minister will offer some support and agreement for the amendment, because it would help refugees feel more welcome.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, am glad to have my name on the amendment. Appreciation and tribute should be offered to those universities which of their own initiative are doing what they can to meet the challenge in the current situation, but that is obviously not adequate.

In the long debates on this Bill, we have constantly returned to the argument about the quality and tradition of our universities. It is really rather sad to see universities with that quality and tradition caught up in such an oppressive and negative administrative policy.

I relate this to another amendment which we shall discuss quite soon, about security and terrorism. In the awful problems relating to security which we face, a key issue is the battle for the minds of the young. We want young people to have good education which helps them to form a more responsible and enlightened view about society and their role within it.

The potential students to whom we refer have been through the most dreadful experiences. It is important to keep reminding ourselves of that: they have been through harrowing experiences, and very seldom is it their fault. We have to look at the situation as they see it, and how they talk of it with their friends and contemporaries. They see it as oppressive and negative. It is not helping to build stability and peace in the world. If we take security and peace in the world seriously, we should want to do everything we can to meet this challenge and to enable potential students to have the advantage of education. I very much hope that the Minister will take on board the seriousness of this issue and try to meet it in some way in his response.

I sometimes worry already about the anecdotal evidence that I hear about how negative attitudes are beginning to build up across the world, and not just in the places from where those potential students come. I worry about how far the United Kingdom is really the sort of place in which they want to come and study, whether it really is the warm, welcoming society which it has traditionally been. There is too much evidence of a culture of “no”, of rejection, unless there is an exception. This amendment would help to meet that situation and I hope that the Minister will find an opportunity to say something positive in response.