Oral Answers to Questions

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

As I said, we used feedback from the sector—we surveyed about 10,000 different providers—to come up with the rates, and as we progress we continue to talk and work closely with it. There has been a lot of positivity about the rates we set out, in particular for one and two-year-olds, and the £200 million we are putting in this year and the £288 million we will be putting in next year.

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

One thing I am most concerned about in terms of educational attainment in early years and primary is food insecurity, which is rising in all our constituencies. Much of this is devolved, of course, but I do not want to see hungry kids anywhere and hungry kids cannot learn. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that seven out of 10 children in families on universal credit are not entitled to free school meals. Do Ministers not agree that they should be?

[Claire Coutinho]

We have increased the number of children on free school meals to the highest ever level. We also have programmes such as the holiday activities and food programme—one of the things I visited over the recess—which is providing nutritious meals alongside activities. We are doing a lot to support parents with the cost of living, too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight institutes of technology; we are investing £300 million in 21 around the country, which is an example of the Government’s investment in skills. He will know that the Lancashire and Cumbria IOT is a collaboration between further education colleges, universities and employers driving an employer-led curriculum to meet local skills needs in science, technology, engineering and maths. IOTs are involved in the regeneration of areas such as Blackpool and are expected to commence delivery from September.

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

All hon. Members agree that the skills agenda is vital for the future of the economy, but the loss of the European social fund has been devastating for skills providers. Surely the Minister agrees that the UK Exchequer should match the ESF money lost across all four home nations.

[Robert Halfon]

These matters are, of course, for the Treasury, but I am proud that the Government are investing £3.8 billion extra in skills over this Parliament, as well as £2.7 billion in apprenticeships.

International Students: Contribution to the UK

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the contribution of international students to the UK.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer, and to see so many colleagues here today.

The contribution that international students make to our domestic society and economy is a subject close to my heart. I was an international student and did my Erasmus year at Heidelberg University, and I did a master’s at the College of Europe in Warsaw. Prior to that, I studied in Scotland’s near abroad—Yorkshire—at Leeds University, and at Nottingham Law School. We must not lose sight of the important fact that so many of the world’s best and brightest are willing to come to our countries and work with us towards the light of science.

I declare an interest as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary university group. It is a pleasure to see so many good colleagues from the group present, and I look forward to the discussion. I am grateful to a number of organisations for the briefs that we have had prior to the debate, particularly Stirling University in my constituency, Forth Valley College, Universities Scotland, Universities UK, the Russell Group, Imperial College London and UCAS. I refer colleagues to the House of Commons Library brief, which provides a really good state of play on where things are and a very helpful overview of the situation.

I stress that this is a good news story. Since I came into the House of Commons in 2019, I hope it has been clear that I do not do point scoring. I am here to work towards a common ambition: I want to see the UK do well. Global Britain is not the Scottish National party’s project. I believe that Scotland’s best future is as an independent state back in the European Union, and we will have a referendum about that in due course—it is not for today. In the meantime, it is important for me to say to colleagues that I do not wish global Britain harm. If I were trying to undermine global Britain, I would cut the international aid budget, defund the BBC World Service, shut down British Council organisations worldwide and jeopardise our contacts with the European Union. All those things are happening under the Government right now, and I ask the Minister, whom I do not regard as part of the problem, to urge his colleagues to stop them.

This is a success story and a good news story. The contribution that international students make to Scotland and the UK is significant, but it is a success story that cannot be taken for granted. Scotland and the UK have a huge interest in this issue, although Scotland’s interest is disproportionate. In 2020-21, 24.1% of university enrolments in Scotland came from outwith the UK, compared with 22.2% in England, 21.3% in Northern Ireland, and 14.9% in Wales. All the home nations have a significant interest in retaining and attracting international students, but Scotland has a disproportionate interest in doing so. We have an interest in the UK Government’s policies, particularly on immigration, that threaten progress on this matter, which is surely in all our interests.

In 2020-21, we had 5,000 international students based at Stirling University—30% of the campus-based student population. UK-wide, the number is obviously bigger, with 605,100 international students at various higher education institutions across all our constituencies and countries. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of the world’s best and brightest, who have paid us the supreme compliment of coming to our home to work with us. I am conscious that a number are watching, and I say to them, “You are welcome here. You are welcome in our society. You enrich our society by your presence, and you enrich the institution that you are committed to. You are working with us towards a global science.”

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a member of the board of governors at Manchester Metropolitan University. I agree with much of what the hon. Member is saying, except about independence for Scotland. I believe we are stronger together.

I endorse the hon. Member’s point about the value that is added by international students, particularly in commuter universities such as Manchester Metropolitan. Our students may have less opportunity to travel abroad because of caring and other responsibilities, and being able to mix with international students who come to our country to study gives them an important connection to the global economy into which they will graduate.

[Alyn Smith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, except for the part about independence, which we will probably come back to at some point. I strongly agree with her, and I pay tribute to her for the power of work she has done in the all-party parliamentary universities group.

I thank the international students who so enrich our communities and institutions by their presence—and that is before we get on to the economics. It is the dismal science, but the economic impact is considerable. To be clear with colleagues, that is not my starting point; I do not regard universities as money-making widget factories. Universities are seats of learning, seats of exchange and seats of research. They form a globally interconnected network of the exchange of people, ideas and knowledge.

There are only two things that drive human progress—science and art—and universities have a crucial role to play in that. It was Isaac Asimov who said:

“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.”

Science is global. Universities are global by their very nature, and the exchange of students, people and ideas is fundamental to what they do. However, I am Scottish, and the money does not hurt.

The contribution of international students is significant. We have calculated that international students contribute £66.4 million net to the Stirling economy. For the whole of Scotland, their contribution is £1.94 billion net, and for the UK economy, a single cohort of international students contributes £25.9 billion net. At a time of straitened budgets and economic turbulence, we need to safeguard that progress, not undermine it either deliberately or by accident.

I am conscious of time, so I will wrap up on two particular points about the Government’s rhetoric, which risks undermining progress, and about EU relations, in which there is huge opportunity that the Government could unlock by changing course.

The comments by the Home Secretary and various other members of the Government about limiting international students are wrong politically, societally and economically. Limiting international students would be a “hammer blow”. Those are not my words, but those of Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK. I will ask the Minister some questions from Universities UK that I think it is worth putting on the record—I appreciate that I am blindsiding him slightly, so I will happily accept a letter after the debate.

What assessments have the UK Government made of the economic cost—including the loss of tuition-fee income, living cost expenditure and knock-on expenditure —of restricting the number of international students and their dependants entering the UK’s world-leading university sector? Are the Government committed to retaining the graduate visa route established in 2021? That fact that it is under threat is utterly wrongheaded, but it has been called into question by some senior people, so I would be very grateful for reassurance that it is safe. Are the Government committed to the successful international strategy outlined in 2019, including the target to host 600,000 international students, which has since been achieved, and to bring in £35 billion of export income every year by 2030?

Before turning to EU links, I declare an interest: I was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2019, and as a member of its Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, I helped draft some of the regulations on Horizon Europe and on student and educational exchanges, so this matter is close to my heart. Scotland and the UK are research-intensive places, and Scottish and UK involvement in the EU frameworks for this stuff is a win-win-win for everybody. I regret deeply that the UK has left the European Union, but I am not here to fight old battles. There are ways of interacting with what is going on in the EU that stop short of EU membership.

I was in Brussels recently and in Berlin just the other week. There is a real willingness on the part of our European friends to see the UK play a full part in institutions and networks such as Horizon Europe, Erasmus+, Copernicus and Euratom. As I have said, it is a win-win-win to be part of those projects, but a chill is under way: in Erasmus, there has been a huge reduction in the number of EU nationals applying to UK institutions, which is deeply regrettable.

On 22 July, the EU announced the cancellation of 115 grants for UK-based scientists because they were not part of the reference networks or frameworks. There is a big prize here: Horizon Europe is worth €95.5 billion, and that money could—but does not—work towards not just the EU’s science but our own. The single biggest thing blocking progress on all those fronts, and that holds back our universities and academics, is the lack of trust between the UK Government and the EU.

That lack of trust has crystallised around the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. The fact that the UK introduced that Bill, which has been passed by the House of Commons and is now in the other place, calls into question the UK’s good faith on all of this stuff. The EU will not allow us an ad hoc, legally undefined membership when the UK is clearly willing to rip up legal order, as it has done with the Bill.

Let us scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. That would unlock progress on all these real-world opportunities and give our university sector and our students an advantage. There is a huge prize to be won. Global Britain is not part of the SNP’s project, but academic exchange is. We very much want to be part of the exchange of ideas and people, and I want to see the UK play a full part in that. I am grateful for the discussion, and I look forward to questions and comments, and, above all, to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alyn Smith]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. It is good to see the emergence of an SNP-Labour-DUP coalition on these matters—together at last. Perhaps we are having a glimpse into the future. Who knows? Aside from our domestic world views, there is a lot of consensus among Opposition parties.

I am grateful to the Minister for his thoughtful response. If he has President Kennedy and the moon landing on his wall, he cannot be all bad. I did not think he was part of the problem before the debate, and he has confirmed today that he is not. However, I have to say that there are elements of the Government and his party who are. There are people who are trying to misrepresent student immigration by talking about the wider problem of immigration. I acknowledge that that needs to be addressed but, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) said powerfully, the failure to address it does not mean that students should bear the brunt of that limitation. I was glad to hear the Minister’s confirmation that the 600,000 target remains in place.

I say to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that David Hume, a great Scottish philosopher, said that the truth emerges from an honest disagreement among friends. We sincerely disagree on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, but I do not doubt for a second the hon. Gentleman’s sincerity. I acknowledge concerns about the Northern Ireland protocol and how it is operating, but there are lots of ways in which it could be reformed within the protocol. The European Commission has put forward a number of proposals that would go a long way to address those concerns, and the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is holding back progress in so many other crucial and important aspects of the higher education sector, for Northern Ireland as well as for the rest of us. We disagree and will have further discussions on this issue, but I do not doubt his sincerity.

Crisis in Iran

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

I am glad that you granted this urgent question today, Mr Speaker. I commend the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing it and the Minister for her answer. The SNP and all of us stand in solidarity with the brave protesters in Iran in their actions against a brutal regime. I grew up in Saudi Arabia; I struggle to sound rational about any morality police anywhere. I am familiar with these men, I am familiar with what they do, and I stand shoulder to shoulder with the UK Government in their efforts to hold them to account.

The protests were triggered by the femicide—to our mind—of Mahsa Amini. There is a clear gender aspect, as I think we can all agree. Writing in The Sunday Times, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has a greater familiarity than anyone with the Iranian regime’s brutality, put it best:

“Mahsa’s death is the latest blow to the people of a country long abused… Women in Iran are desperate. They are furious and restless. They cannot take it anymore.”

I commend the Minister for her statement, but what more can the UK Government do to ensure accountability for the perpetrators of femicide? Do His Majesty’s Government view the murder of Ms Amini as femicide? Further to the point that the hon. Member for Harrow East made about closing the UK mission, may I take another view and say that closing the mission would shut down dialogue when actually we need to continue those efforts in-country?

[Gillian Keegan]

Yes, we need to continue efforts and dialogue in-country. That also holds for continued discussion on the nuclear deal, which has been mentioned. We will always continue to work with our like-minded partners to ensure that Iran is held to account, including via the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the UN General Assembly in New York. At its 51st session, our permanent representative to the UNHRC in Geneva, Ambassador Simon Manley, raised the death of Mahsa Amini and called on Iran

“to carry out independent, transparent investigations into her death and the excessive violence used against subsequent protests.”

We have joined 52 other countries in issuing a joint statement to the Human Rights Council, urging restraint and accountability in Iranian law enforcement. The European Union, Canada and the United States have also sanctioned the morality police and certain individuals, and we will continue to work with those like-minded countries, but we cannot of course comment on any future designations or sanctions.

Support for University Students: Covid-19

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

We made education a priority, which includes higher education, so that students do not have to put their academic journeys or their lives on hold, and we kept a proportion of face-to-face learning going for as long as we could. I agree with my hon. Friend: I want university students back as soon as it is safe to do so, and we have a road map laid out by the Prime Minister last week to enable us to do that.

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP) [V]]

I declare an interest, as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary university group. Students have had a dreadful time throughout this pandemic, and they have had it from all sides. On accommodation in particular, I commend the work of the Stirling students’ union and Stirling University. Stirling University has taken the financial hit from students for empty university accommodation. What discussions has the Minister had with universities and the devolved Administrations to provide additional funding to universities to recognise the financial hit that they have taken so that students do not need to?

[Michelle Donelan]

Education is of course devolved, but I meet on a weekly basis with my counterpart in Scotland, Minister Lochhead. We discuss the issue of accommodation almost every week, and the other pressures that students are facing, in order to have a joined-up and co-ordinated approach that is really getting to the heart of the problems that universities and students are facing.