Student Visas

Lord Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, how universities deal with this is largely a matter for them. I believe that I was right to draw the attention of the House to those measures which we eventually agreed in the Immigration Act to deal with this matter. It should make it much easier to monitor and deal with in future, but we have to deal with things at present. I emphasise that the vast majority of students here are genuine and are here to study. We want to make sure that we give them our support. We want to make sure that the vast majority of educational institutions are genuine and doing their best for their students’ education. We will invite the Department for Education, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, the Scottish funding agencies, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to join a working group on how we offer support to genuine students who find themselves in situations not of their making as a result of the measures that we are taking today.

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

My Lords, it is very pleasing that the Minister managed to make some sympathetic remarks about overseas students. I thought that the initial Statement, which, I appreciate, was read in the House of Commons, was deeply depressing, seeing students as a threat and not an opportunity or enrichment of this country, and seeing the issue in terms of immigration and not of educational policy. Is not the real explanation of this problem to do with privatisation? We are not talking about universities; we are talking about a whole range of privately funded colleges and institutions, many of them in London, which do not observe the strict academic and educational standards of our universities, of one of which I had the privilege of being a vice-chancellor. The institution that is under criticism is a hived-off institution to deal with English language teaching. I hope that the Minister, who I know to be a very progressive-minded man, will take the opportunity to affirm that real universities observe the highest standards in inquiring into the educational and personal background of students. It is really quite unfair of the Statement made in the House of Commons to confuse them with a number of far inferior institutions.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am sorry that the noble Lord has taken that view of the Statement. I think that it described why we were taking action this day to deal with particular institutions. I stayed for the questions after seeing my honourable friend Mr Brokenshire make his Statement, and he was at pains to emphasise that our relationship with universities is very important to us, because £2.8 billion—or is it 2.8%?—of the British economy is in the educational sector. I shall not rise to the fly that the noble Lord has cast across me about privatisation. I do not think that that matters. The truth of the matter is that all education institutions, whether public or private, must conduct themselves in a proper fashion. That is what we are seeking to emphasise. However, as I think I made clear earlier, I believe in the universities of this country. They enhance our lives and prosperity and enable us to have a presence in the world that we would not have without their international role.