Immigration Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that it is a fundamental mistake to subject international university students to further hurdles, barriers and restrictions. Instead, I believe this House should send a clear message to the Government: international students should be encouraged, welcomed and supported. This carve-out amendment would send that message, and I hope it will find wide support. I note that in adding my name to this amendment, I am joined by noble Lords from all sides of the House. Indeed, it is characteristic of our debates about international students that there is consensus among the parties. We know that at the highest level of the coalition, Cabinet Ministers recognise the absurdity of policy which drives the Government to stifle the UK’s prospects for growth in higher education exports—despite the fact that this is now one of our most important export markets and one with the strongest potential for growth.

While we invent new restrictions, our competitors are going to considerable lengths to reduce them. Australia, as is so often the case, has done us the favour of experimenting with draconian visa restrictions and has learnt from that experiment. The consequence was that students went elsewhere. After a wholesale review—the Knight review—Australia has rapidly set about undoing the damage that it inflicted on itself, streamlining visa processes and offering more generous post-study work opportunities as part of a dramatic about-face on immigration policy in relation to students. Nevertheless, Australia reckons it will take a decade to recover its former position.

We are not doomed to repeat that mistake, but we must stop being complacent about what is happening, which is why this amendment is so necessary. Ministers repeatedly quote partial UCAS and visa application figures as though they disprove the concrete enrolment data. The Minister must know that visa applications do not always translate into enrolments and that a relatively small proportion of international students apply through UCAS anyway—not least because UCAS does not deal with postgraduate admissions.

Recently, the right honourable Oliver Letwin used a Telegraph interview to point out that the Government’s net migration target was “statistical nonsense”. I agree. As senior Liberal Democrats have pointed out, it is not in fact coalition policy, but a Conservative pledge. It appears to me staggeringly unlikely that the target will be met. Can the Minister assure the House that he will use his influence to persuade his colleagues in the Government that this is the right time to withdraw gracefully from the position they have got themselves into?

I put it to the Minister that measures such as the ones we are dealing with in the Bill are part of a wider attempt to make the UK as unattractive as possible to those who might come here. Since students are the largest category of visa applicant, it particularly targets them. Since the majority of student visa applicants are now bound for our universities—because the Government have made it next to impossible for everyone else—they, in turn, are particularly hard hit. I agree that many other groups will be hit by the residential tenancy and NHS surcharge provisions in the Bill, and I shall certainly join other noble Lords in supporting amendments that would reduce the impact of the Bill on all migrants, not just students. Meanwhile, I urge noble Lords not to be distracted by arguments that the amendment we are now debating will not help other groups.

I understand the charge that support for this amendment looks like special pleading from the university lobby, but it misses the point: the overwhelming majority of those affected by these measures will be students, many of them living away from home for the first time. There seems a real risk that those students will choose to go elsewhere if they are faced with high initial charges for access to NHS services and are prevented from securing accommodation in advance of their arrival. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and others that the wholesale exemption of students would be preferable to piecemeal improvement.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, 20 years ago, along with my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Radice, I was invited by the late, great—I use the word advisedly—Lord Dahrendorf, one of the most remarkable international figures ever to grace your Lordships’ House, to be a visiting parliamentary fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. We were the first two. I am sure I speak for the noble Lord, Lord Radice, who is not in his place. We were immensely impressed by this postgraduate Oxford college, which attracted students from all over the world. Many of them went on to hold positions of high importance and real influence in their native countries but always had a sense of real gratitude, affection and, indeed, obligation to the institution at which they had studied here.

I am still a member of the Senior Common Room at St Antony’s and just a couple of weeks ago I was talking to our present warden, Professor Margaret MacMillan, herself an eminent Canadian historian who has just written a most remarkable book on the origins of the First World War. She said that at the moment there are students from 73 different countries at St Antony’s, and that many current Governments of the world include those who received at least part of their education there. I believe there are four or five in the Mexican Government alone.

That is truly remarkable but it is not unique to St Antony’s, eminent as that institution is. When students come to this country and study, they contribute far more than they obtain, and go back with a knowledge and affection for the United Kingdom. Of course, that does not apply just at postgraduate level. In the fair city of Lincoln, where I now live, we have two universities: the University of Lincoln, which has in a remarkably short space of time become a very significant university; and the smaller Bishop Grosseteste University, which began more than 100 years ago as an Anglican teacher training college and is now a proper university. Both those universities have students from a variety of countries.

As the head of another college said to me not long ago, we are in danger of making those who consider applying feel that they are not entirely welcome here. I cannot for the life of me believe that that is our intention. Of course it is not. I know it is not the Prime Minister’s; I know it is emphatically not the view of my noble friend the Minister. Nevertheless, as we all know, perceptions in politics are very important. There are, in India in particular, young men and women who believe that they are not as welcome as we should make them feel.