Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and I am glad that the noble Lord was able to table his Motion. I should say that I am a member of the Merits Committee. It seems to me that the sort of points that have been made in this report are just the sort of thing that the committee is there for. I welcome the debate, although I do not welcome the fact that it is necessary. With regard to the issue of the production of the impact assessment—I will come on to the substantive issue because I cannot resist it—it is not the first time that I will have talked about the importance of scrutiny. It is important both to those who are the proponents of a proposition and to the opponents. The first bunch wants to get it right and the second bunch wants to pick holes in it; there is a unity of purpose there. Making the point, as the Merits Committee has done and as the House is now asked to do, is worth while only if the culture changes and this sort of error or omission—call it what you like—is not repeated. This is the sort of point that the Merits Committee has often had to make by way of a warning shot. The sanction from the committee is to bring the matter to the House.

I recall reading the agenda item and, in order not to make the Hansard writers blush, I will not use the language that I used then when I saw the figures, which are startling. The noble Lord referred to many of them: the 232,000 estimated reduction against the 70,000 to 80,000 estimate given only six or seven months ago, and a net cost of more than £2.4 billion with the UK Border Agency estimated to receive about £160 million less in fee income on the basis of the option chosen against the “do nothing” option.

That takes me to my next point. The committee does not make this point but I will. The options given are not a range but simply the polarised options of “do nothing” or “do this one other thing which we, the Government, are proposing”. So there is a steer to what one might describe as the right answer. So although this was a consultation, it is more akin to some sort of choice. It is not easy or indeed even possible for Parliament to assess what it is being asked to agree in this way. The Merits Committee report was very measured, and I quote from Paragraph 10:

“The Committee recognises the difficulty in developing the estimations of the likely costs and benefits of the changes, particularly given some of the gaps in the data and the potentially complex range of impacts. However, it is not clear from the IA how the findings from the consultation have fed into these estimations”.

That is a pity because the questions asked in the consultation were interesting. Most of them asked for a “yes”, “no”, or “don’t know” answer but one of them asked:

“In the light of the proposals described in this document, what do you think will be the main advantages/disadvantages, including any financial impacts, to you, your business or your sector?”

That is just the sort of thing that should be made publicly available. That is the purpose of the consultation. The background questions which consultees were asked would also have been useful in informing the debate. They were asked:

“How many students (approximately) started new courses at your institution in the 2009/2010 academic year?”

and,

“What is your estimate of overseas students (non-EEA) as a proportion of your total student population?”

As I say, that is just the sort of thing that we should be able to see to put the changes into context.

In the end, of course, what matters is the policy. Many noble Lords across a number of debates, including many of my noble friends, have made very clear our real concerns with some of the policy objectives. Even if we support a reduction in net migration, we do not believe in clamping down on student visas. We do not believe that is in the long-term reputational interests of the UK, nor its social, political and wider economic interests. I am not convinced it is even coherent within its own terms. I have commented before on the term “the brightest and the best”. That begs an awful lot of questions. We cannot assess the success—a term I use deliberately—without knowing how many students leave at the end of their course, which we—I do not just mean Parliament—are not adequately equipped to do. There is an increase of one when an individual arrives in the country and when he leaves there is a decrease of one.

--- Later in debate ---

Noble Lords have made several other points. As I have already indicated, I will respond to them in writing. I reiterate that the Government have gone to great lengths to seek the views of the public and the sector, and to take account of those views in developing our final policy. In the light of this thorough approach to consultation and an explanation of our calculations, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will feel able to withdraw his Motion.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I wonder if the noble Earl could clarify—if not now, then at a later time—the basis of the use of the responses to the consultation. I was not entirely clear whether he was saying that it was factual information that was not used, and that other sources were used, or whether it was something wider than that.

[Earl Attlee]

My main point was that the consultation was responding to the policy rather than giving us detailed data on the likely effect of the policy.