Immigration

Adrian Bailey Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I cannot support the motion. I welcome the opportunity to debate this issue, because it is very important, but I find it surprising that the House of Commons, through the motion, is inviting the Government to take any measures they want in order to reach a particularly arbitrary target. I cannot possibly support that.

Today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) said, the Business, Enterprise and Skills Committee reported on its inquiry into student visas. The central recommendation of the report is that student visas be taken out of the net migration statistics. That is consistent with the recommendations made by the Home Affairs Committee, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, and, earlier this week, the Public Accounts Committee. The evidence in favour of doing so is overwhelming, because there is currently a contradiction at the heart of Government policy. On one hand, the Government are extolling the virtues of growth and imploring UK Trade & Investment to expand British exports throughout the world, and on the other, the Home Office is sending out a message that because of our migration statistics we have to curb the number of migrants to this country.

Given the fact that students represent about half the current level of migration, there is absolutely no way that the Government can achieve this particular target without curbing student migration. Indeed, it has been estimated that to reach even the Government’s figures would cost £2 billion to £3 billion a year in vital export earnings. To reach the motion’s figures would mean that the figure for student migration was nil, which would cost vastly more. The simple solution for the Government is to remove those figures from those used to measure net migration, and then we can have a debate on what the public are really concerned about, not the level of student migration.

There was a mini-debate earlier about the Home Office’s assessment, but all the evidence shows that only a tiny proportion of those students who come here to study actually stay on as permanent migrants. The existing statistical basis of our migration figures is grossly misleading with regard to the real impact that students have on migration. I would have liked to have time to address a whole range of other issues, but that is the central point that the Government need to embrace and I hope that the new Minister will listen to the collective wisdom of several Select Committees and act on it.