Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Willetts and Lord Bilimoria

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on the energy he has put into this issue during the process of scrutinising the Bill. The debates we have had on it have made it absolutely clear that on all sides of the House we strongly support legitimate overseas students coming to Britain to study, because it enhances the academic experience of British students, it is good for the overseas students, and it is a great British export.

What the Minister said in signalling again that the policy remains to attract legitimate overseas students was rather more welcome than the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, accepted, although I fully realise why he made the observations that he did. He says that statistics are not the crucial issue and statistics are less important than policy. However, the point we heard a moment ago from the Minister about this new exercise on statistics has considerable potential value. Aside from all the general arguments, one of the frustrations about this debate is a genuine empirical disagreement about how many students from abroad overstay in this country. A lot of the debate and attitudes in Whitehall are shaped by a view that we have a problem of a lot of overstayers. If there is such a problem, we need to tighten the regime. If, however, there is not a problem of overstayers, and it can be established authoritatively that there is not, that would be a significant contribution to the debate.

The statistics at the moment are very unreliable. If someone comes here to study and tells someone doing one of the surveys that they are here to study, stays on and works for a time, then leaves, answering the question, “What have you been doing?”, with, “I’ve been working”, they count as a leaving worker, not as a leaving student. If someone comes here to study, thinking that they will be here for more than a year, but end up leaving Britain after being here for 11 months—many master’s courses are advertised as a year long but you can complete them in 11 months—they do not count as one of those one-year students departing. There are lots of problems like this in the statistics, which have proved a bane in the debate about overseas students and their numbers. I very much hope that the important initiative which the Minister announced today, which was discussed in the other House yesterday, will enable us to get to the bottom of those types of empirical questions. That would be an important contribution to the debate, and I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that those type of questions will be within the scope of this exercise and that we will learn more about it.

I also hope, thinking of all the time that we have spent on attracting overseas students to this country, that we might briefly remind the Government of the importance of encouraging British students to study abroad. Of course, dare one say it, if they were to study abroad for more than a year, it would reduce net migration—not that that is the most important reason for promoting it. However, when one looks at half a million students coming from abroad to study in Britain and 30,000 British students going to study abroad, especially if we are to be a dynamic global presence, even post Brexit, we need to do better at promoting and encouraging British students to go abroad. One way to do that is to make it easier for them to take out loans to finance their study abroad. I hope that we will look at that.

Finally, as this will be my last intervention on the Bill, I congratulate the ministerial team that has successfully brought the Bill to a conclusion. My noble friend Lord Younger has been courteous throughout this debate, and Jo Johnson has been extraordinarily diligent in spending time in this Chamber observing our debates. This is a substantial piece of legislation. We legislate on higher education only once a generation, and this legislation finally puts in place a regulatory regime that matches the realities of higher education in Britain. We could not have carried on with the old grant-giving body being a kind of informal regulator, using its power of the purse to regulate the sector. This is a much better, more lucid, more transparent and more rule-based system.

In our debates in this House, on all sides, it has been clear that we care passionately about the autonomy of higher education institutions and universities, and the provisions, including the new ones we have debated today, enhance that autonomy. Looking back on this debate, one of my regrets is that while we have tended to look at this from an English perspective. From the conversations I have with vice-chancellors, it is clear to me where the biggest threats to autonomy in our universities lie, and it is not in England. The relationship between the Scottish Government and their universities is far more intrusive and overbearing than anything that would be acceptable in England. We have sometimes had an English Minister with English teaching responsibilities facing challenges about autonomy for which he is not responsible. I hope that in the future we will be avid in securing, scrutinising and protecting the autonomy of Scottish universities, which matters enormously in Scotland and more widely. Therefore, we have a better regulatory regime, we have spoken up for autonomy, and, significantly, the focus on teaching has reminded us of the importance of the educational experience in university. After so much attention has been given to research over the years, it is excellent that we have spent so much of our time focusing on teaching.

I therefore thank the Ministers, and I thank their Bill team for the way in which it has engaged with many of us as we have had questions to make sense of specific proposals and try to engage with them. Indeed, this has been a cross-party debate. We have had excellent interventions from experts on the Cross Benches, people who work in and understand higher education, which has enormously enhanced our debate. We have heard from the Opposition Benches—I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made an important contribution from the Opposition Front Bench—and from the Lib Dem Benches. Occasionally I had to remind myself that we had worked on this together in coalition and that some of the measures that were now proving so controversial could trace their origins to a Government in whom there was even a Secretary of State I worked with who belonged to a certain party opposite. However, all parties have worked together on this, and we can be proud of the Bill that is now going forward.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I echo much of what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, but I want to start with the reference that the Prime Minister made to the “unelected House of Lords” when she announced the election. This unelected House is at its best when it does what it has done with this Bill. It is probably one of the most amended Bills in the history of Parliament, with more than 500 amendments, and that is because of the expertise that exists across the board in this House—a breadth and depth of expertise that no other Chamber in the world comes anywhere close to by a factor of maybe 10. A former Universities Minister has just spoken and we have heard from chancellors and vice-chancellors of universities, former vice-chancellors of universities such as Cambridge and the heads of Oxbridge colleges—and I could go on. Where in the world would you get that? We have had it with this Bill.

I thank the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for having always been polite and decent, and for having listened. We may not be where a lot of us want to be, but the Government have listened and there has been a lot of movement. I, too, acknowledge the commitment of the Minister, Jo Johnson. I have never seen a Minister so assiduous in attending the stages of a Bill in the way that he has with this one, and it shows visibly that he is listening. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the initiative that he has taken on this amendment. He is a former pro-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, where today I am proud to be chancellor.

Normally, you are not meant to repeat things at various stages of a Bill—you cannot make another Second Reading speech later on. However, in this case new information and new reports have been coming out at every stage. For example, the UUK report suddenly revealed that the contribution of international students is much higher than we had ever thought. Figures of £13 billion or £14 billion were quoted, but the figure is actually £26 billion a year. That is new information to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was trying to do with this amendment. On top of that, we have had, hot off the press, the Education Committee’s report entitled Exiting the EU: Challenges and Opportunities for Higher Education, dated 25 April.

Before I go any further, there is a unanimous consensus around the country—let alone in this House, where we won this amendment by close to 100 votes—that international students should not be included in the net migration figures. The National Union of Students has stated:

“We are concerned that—as long as international students are included within net migration statistics—policies that adversely impact international students owing to the Government’s desire to reduce levels of immigration will only exacerbate”.


It also said:

“The Government’s abject failure to offer anything substantial on removing international students from net migration targets is”,


in its words,

“outrageous. There is immense support for doing so, from cross-party parliamentarians, from UK students and from the general public. It is unacceptable that the government continues to ignore this support”.

I come to the House of Commons Education Committee’s report, which no one has spoken about and which has just been published—on 25 April. It contains a whole section on international students and the migration target. It says very clearly that the 100,000 target still exists, yet we all know that the latest figure for overall net migration is 273,000. The excuse that the Government give every time we challenge them to remove international students from the net migration figures is that the UN rules mean that we have to include them and treat them as immigrants—and those are indeed the UN rules.

The Government’s other answer is always, “There is no cap on the number of international students. Any number is welcome”. However, the danger lies in the perception that is created by continuing to include them in the figure and treat them as immigrants. The Home Secretary at the Conservative Party conference spoke about possibly reducing the number of international students. That is scary—and it is a message that goes to the outside world. The Commons Education Committee said the majority of its written evidence and witnesses at its meetings were very clear that international students should be removed from the net migration target, which would,

“help offset risks to higher education from leaving the EU”.

It continued:

“Our evidence was unanimous in saying that international students were a positive force”,


for education, contributing £25.8 billion a year and creating more than 200,000 jobs, and contributing to the richness of our universities, as well as to the UK’s soft power.