Global Migration and Mobility (EUC Report)

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, and EU Sub-Committee F for an excellent report and strong and clear recommendations on the specific issues. I declare a past interest as an alumna of Churchill College, Cambridge; I worked at Cambridge University for 10 years and subsequently ran the Association of Universities in the East of England until I joined your Lordships’ House. Interestingly, that last organisation did an impact assessment on universities in the regional economy. It found that the contribution of international students was significant, and higher than that of domestic students, because they had to find accommodation, travel more and remain in the holidays. That is certainly a point worth noting.

Noble Lords will have gathered that I am yet another speaker who wants to focus on paragraphs 181 to 189 of the report, on international students and the net migration targets. I start by thanking the Government for the small step forward in the publication of the disaggregated numbers from the student target. However, as the report says, that does not address the heart of the problem, which is not purely statistical.

The report refers to the perception that overseas students are not welcome in the UK. This time a year ago I was talking to a professor at a highly trusted sponsor university—a member of the Russell group, not Oxbridge—who had recruited a PhD student in his speciality in biology, one of the best students, he felt, in the world. The student had complied with all the university’s requirements and he had created a financial package that included teaching within that university. For some bizarre reason, UKBA suddenly decided that that did not constitute a financial guarantee. There was then a four-month debate, during which time the professor lost that PhD student to America. The PhD’s undergraduate university has said that that is the last time it will recommend that one of its top students applies to the UK. The professor was absolutely furious. I have raised this matter in your Lordships’ House before and I know that UUK and other bodies have been chasing it. However, this is the kind of soft influence issue that is doing real damage. As we all know, you need only one bad incident in the past to change some of the technical details. The word has gone round that there is a problem.

The recruitment of international students is a highly competitive business and UK universities have the world-leading teaching and research credentials that are essential to compete in this market. This perception is beginning to have an impact. Earlier in the year, statistics showed that numbers were holding up. However, the position now being reported by universities is beginning to look worrying.

I spent the recent Whitsun Recess in France and it was evident that the French Government had realised that they had not been able to attract the best international students because all university courses are taught in French. There is therefore now a proposal that some courses should now be taught in English for at least the first year, alongside French language courses, to help France get back into this competitive market. Unsurprisingly, the Académie Francaise was outraged, but in newspapers and on TV, academics and politicians lined up to say that this market was not open to France while it failed to use English as the teaching base language for at least the first year. After all, they said, English is the lingua franca. A French academic friend told me that this move has been sparked in part by the recognition that international students are saying loud and clear that they believe that the UK does not welcome them. So a country like France, which does not automatically teach in English, is now fighting for a corner of the market.

The lesson for us is that all these other nations are jumping on the bandwagon. It is not even a matter of being content with present numbers or stability, as referred to by the Government. The worry is that this is rather like a football league table. We will plummet from the premiership down to the championship simply because other countries will suddenly start to move ahead.

A recent survey of 537 Chinese high school students revealed that over the past 12 months, only 60% of those who had previously said that they preferred the UK as a destination still do so. The reasons they gave included recent changes to the visa regulations and the weak economic outlook in the UK. This is important because China alone was responsible for the modest increase in international students in Scotland between 2010-11 and 2011-12.

The largest fall in international students is at the postgraduate level, and the timing suggests that the removal of the post-study work route may have been a significant factor, as postgraduate studies were very popular before. Staff at universities regard the closure of the tier 1 post-study work route to be the single biggest factor in reducing demand from international students. While the UK Government have highlighted that working in this country after graduation is still a possibility for students able to meet the criteria, there is real confusion regarding the new schemes because of their complexity. This has resulted in some of them being undersubscribed, despite high demand. I return to my earlier theme about perception. Whether it is true or not, if the word is going around that the schemes are not attractive, we will be shooting ourselves in the foot once again.

Postgraduate students, whether domestic or international, play a key role in research, and we ignore at our peril their contribution to science, innovation, and growth and productivity in the UK. Sir Andre Geim, the Nobel prize-winner from the University of Manchester, has said that the identification of graphene,

“would probably not have happened if I had been unable to employ great non-EU PhD students and post-docs”.

These same students have helped to contribute to the UK success in the academic ranking of world universities. In 2012 we had two in the top 10 and five in the top 50. These rankings include Nobel prize-winners, Fields prize winners, publications and so on. That is extremely significant to students when they are considering top universities to come to.

Our higher education system is a major source of our soft power and influence in the world, which help to secure economic and foreign policy objectives for the UK. For how much longer will that be the case if we remove ourselves from consideration by prospective students? The Government keep saying that they are using international figures for data aggregation. Surely in the much more mobile 21st century it is time for the UK to return to the international community and reopen the debate about whether it is appropriate to keep these figures in, especially as it is now much easier to track students as they leave university and either return home or work for a limited period.

Perhaps I may conclude by asking the Minister if he will endorse the statement made earlier today by the Immigration Minister, Mark Harper, in the debate in another place. He committed to work in partnership with our universities to continue increasing the number of international students who come to our excellent universities from around the globe. He is right, because if that is correct and if we are right that the numbers are beginning to decline, we will need to extend a strong and positive welcome, principally through the visa process, to signal that the UK is still open to international students. Welcome as pop-ups at Gatwick Airport are—it is a start—it is far too late in the process for international students who are considering coming to the UK for their education.