Immigration: International Students

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, there is no cap on the number of students who come here. As long as students are compliant with immigration rules, they should make only a very limited contribution to the migration numbers. The Government’s ultimate goal is to get migration numbers down to the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, but that will take time.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the student situation has moved on? The problem has always been the 70,000 for whom there is no evidence of departure. That is roughly half the size of the British Army. Therefore, the issue has to be tackled. However, exit checks are coming into force and fairly soon we will have a much better handle on how many are overstaying. That, I suggest, will make it much easier to deal with the policy changes that a number of noble Lords have suggested.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right to bring up exit checks. The Home Office continues to analyse and assess the element of the exit check data which has been in place since April last year in relation to specific cohorts, in order to understand the extent to which the estimates provided are statistically robust. That level of detail is not yet available but the noble Lord is right to raise this issue.