Migration: University-sponsored Students

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Clement-Jones]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to excluding university-sponsored students from the United Kingdom’s net migration statistics.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the UK uses the internationally agreed definition of a migrant, which is someone coming to or leaving the United Kingdom for a period exceeding 12 months. It is right that students intending to stay for that period should be counted because during their stay they are part of the resident population and contribute to pressure on public services infrastructure. It is not appropriate to discount them from net migration statistics.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, the department makes no distinction between temporary and permanent migration. Many other countries do, and still fall within the UN definitions. That means that the Home Office is targeting net migration figures that include overseas students, which is directly contrary to the policy of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Surely now that the e-Borders system will be able to track very closely non-EEA students and other citizens coming into this country, it is time to exclude those students from the net migration figures and have a unified government policy.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am afraid that in terms of migration my noble friend has got it right. I do not think he would want me to adjust the figures purely to achieve the ends that he suggests, as there might be complaints from the House that we were fiddling the figures, and I do not want to be accused of that. We stick by the long-standing international United Nations measure that students who come to the UK for more than a year are counted as migrants.