Legal Migration

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answers to the earlier questions. I shall avoid the temptation to discuss the proposals in general—I just wanted to focus on the significant impact that they are going to have on our higher education system. Perhaps I should mention that members of my family are employed in higher education. I am sure that the Minister understands that higher education is one of our success stories in generating public good and also, as an export, generating income for the country. Unfortunately, we have developed a system of funding higher education that depends on legal migrants; the education of UK citizens and residents depends on generating a flow of overseas participants in higher education who count as legal migrants. If the number of foreign students declines, that will have a direct and immediate impact on the education that we provide for UK residents.

My question was in a sense forestalled by the question from my noble friend, but the Government have to do more to indicate that they really stand by the policy of encouraging people to come to this country to benefit from the higher education that we can provide, because otherwise it will harm them and harm us. The policy is already having an impact; even the Statement itself will have deterred some foreign students from coming to this country, and the proposal to limit the number of family members who can come will have an impact on the students coming to this country, and hence on the education that we can provide for UK residents. Will the Minister assure us that he is seized of the point and that it is an issue that the Government will consider carefully in the light of the impact statements to which he has referred?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. Obviously, the universities and the education sector provide an enormous amount of good to the country in many ways, including, of course, in terms of soft power. As the noble Lord indicated, it is an export industry. We have reconfirmed our intention to attract the best and brightest. Our manifesto committed to establishing the graduate route. More than 100,000 people last year to September 2023 were issued visas for the graduate route. We have asked the Migration Advisory Committee to review this route to ensure that it is fit for purpose and prevent abuse, protecting the quality and integrity of UK higher education. However, as I said earlier, I note the noble Lord’s points and broadly agree.