Higher Education: EUC Report

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the significance of the report we are debating can hardly be exaggerated, for two main reasons. First, the future competitiveness of the European Union in a knowledge-based global economy will crucially depend on the capacity and quality of its higher education sector. Currently European countries—those within the eurozone and those outside it such as Britain—are losing competitiveness and market share at a rate that bodes ill for our future.

Secondly, the higher education sector is one of the relatively few parts of the European economy that has a credible prospect of growth and of playing a leadership role in an increasingly interdependent world. It could be, as it already is for this country, a major source of invisible exports and what is often called soft power for the foreseeable future. Add the fact that with four out of the top 20 universities in the world, according to a recently published league table, Britain is by a long distance the most effective European performer in this sector, and you have an overwhelming case for congratulating my noble friend Lady Young on her committee’s excellent and informative report and her introduction of it today.

I also congratulate my noble friend on deploring the short-sighted decision that led to the committee’s disappearance at the beginning of the Session. The sub-committee I chair, which has taken on responsibility for scrutinising that area of EU policy, will do its best to keep up the high standards set by its predecessor, but it will be a hard act to follow and I am delighted that the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, will be providing continuity.

If, as I believe, Britain is in the lead among European countries in the higher education sector, should we be afraid of more competition, more co-operation at the European level and more exchanges of students and staff, as this report recommends? Quite the contrary, I would argue. Our main competitors in the field of higher education are not other European countries but countries such as the US, Canada and Australia. What other European country in such a relatively strong position—say, France in agriculture or Germany in industry—would not be out there actively seeking to shape Europe’s policies in this field, to influence the evolution of the Bologna process, which aims to strengthen the sector in Europe? However, there is little or no sign of the Government doing that. You could comb the speeches of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Business Secretary and the Minister for Europe and you would find no trace of that kind of thinking. Let us hope that the Minister will make a modest contribution to filling that lacuna when she replies to this debate.

This report recommends, quite rightly in my view, that Britain should be working in the negotiations for a multiannual financial framework for the next five or seven years, which are currently under way in Brussels, for a larger share of scarce EU resources to go to higher education and research than in previous budgets. This must be in our national as well as in the wider European interest. But here, as elsewhere, the dead hand of Her Majesty’s Treasury is insisting that we oppose any increases anywhere out of fear of triggering an overall increase in the budget ceiling. That is a recipe for losing the support of other like-minded member states which want to see the budget shifting away from the old pattern and the old priorities and giving more weight to the objectives of the European Union’s 2020 agenda in which this sector figures prominently. It will encourage an eventual outcome which consists merely of the top-slicing of existing patterns of expenditure. What a wasted opportunity that would be. I hope that the Minister can show more flexibility than that.

One issue not covered by the report, although I was glad to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and others refer to it, is that of student visas for non-EU undergraduates, postgraduates and teaching staff wishing to come to our universities, perhaps because this is not a matter of policy for the EU as such. However, it could critically affect our ability to play a leadership role in Europe and more widely and have a negative impact on the capacity of this sector to enhance our and the rest of Europe’s invisible exports to, and future influence in, the great emerging economies such as those of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria and Indonesia.

A recent report from the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee of the House of Commons has highlighted just how misguided and damaging is the Government’s policy of lumping those who come to study here in the wider category of immigrants and imposing their targets for reducing immigration on overseas students, whose numbers it is surely in our national interest to increase, not decrease, since they bring resources to this country and to our universities. In the light of that report and of the many other representations made to the Government by the universities and those of us who have raised the matter in this House, I urge the Government to rethink this aberrant policy.

This is not just a matter of changing the statistical presentation of immigration, which up to now has included students together with other immigrants; that is, everyone who comes here for a year or more. What is being sought—and I emphasise this—is to exclude students from the public policy implications and impact of the Government’s target of reducing net immigration to the “tens of thousands” by 2015. When the Minister for Higher Education spoke to Universities UK early last month, he said that the Government would in future disaggregate the statistics and present the statistics for students separately from those for other immigrants. That could be a step in the right direction, but it was not the step that matters. The step that matters is for the Government to state categorically that they do not include students in the public policy implications of their objective of reducing net migration to tens of thousands by 2015. Until they say that, this sector will get squeezed in the way that it has been squeezed already, and it will go on being squeezed if that statement is not made. I hope that the Minister replying to this debate will be able to say, at the very least, that a review of that policy is now under way.