Visas

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am quite happy to take noble Lords’ concerns back to my honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, but noble Lords have not explained to me where the difficulties lie, and we have not announced the results of the consultation.

[Lord West of Spithead]

I declare an interest as yet another chancellor of a university. The Minister explained that the Government have very good intentions in this. It is quite clear from all those in universities to whom I have spoken, and from the concerns of those involved in universities, that they do not understand that from what they have seen of these proposals. I ask the Minister to get them together and explain these good intentions so that we can clarify whether they are or not. At the moment, those involved are not at all persuaded, and I find the proposals difficult to understand as well.

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord makes a useful point. We clearly need to do more work to explain the situation to the academic institutions.