Higher Education and Research Bill

Ben Howlett Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is being selective. I can easily point to the 8% increase in visas from Chinese nationals in 2016. Overall, if we look at the numbers since 2011, visa applications are up by 10%, but let us not get distracted further. I will take a further intervention and then I shall move on.

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has been a great advocate on this issue for a long time. I personally thank him for delivering these amendments. Given that there will be a new duty on institutions to give out their numbers of international students, what will happen to institutions that, for any reason, do not give that information to HESA under the terms of the enforcement powers?

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. We would expect all higher education providers on the OFS register to be compliant with the duties and conditions imposed on them. If they are not, the OFS has a range of regulatory tools at its disposal to deal with such eventualities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend makes a further point about the Government’s still having a long way to go in understanding and realising what that international sector is all about. That is why it is so disappointing that the Minister will not go further—in fact, the truth is that he cannot go further. He and his colleagues have been sat on from a great height by No. 10 and by the Home Office. That is the reality. The Tory party and its members are split down the middle on this issue. It is an unedifying shambles that the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), who is retiring, presciently commented on in The Times today. It is a shambles that Labour, in government, would have no part in.

During this election campaign, we will continue to press for the removal of students from net migration statistics for public policy purposes, and although I genuinely welcome the new designated body that the Minister has talked about, the truth is exactly as the hon. Member for Bedford said: it leaves the Minister without a visible means of support in delivering the objective that he will no doubt fervently wish could be delivered under that process.

The problems and weaknesses of the Bill have been substantial, not least as regards the wilful obtuseness of the Government to do anything to make a pre-Brexit Bill—conceived when the Minister and the Government at the time assumed that Brexit would fall—fit for a post-Brexit world. They could have put it out to pre-legislative scrutiny, but they did not. They could have paused it. That was quite rightly argued for by the University and College Union, the Council for the Defence of British Universities and others, including distinguished figures across the sector and in this House, not least the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright)—but they did not.

It has been left to us—by us, I mean not just the Labour party, but the other opposition parties in this House and in the House of Lords—to make the arguments in this place. A concerted effort has been made by cross-Benchers, Lib Dem peers, the noble Lord Hannay and the small but important group of Conservative peers, including Lord Patten, who have wrinkled their noses at, and fought ferociously against, the technocratic complexities and central dictation in the Bill. Those things risk blunting the creativity and dynamism of our HE sector, whether delivered at an old university such as Oxford or Cambridge, at the many dynamic new universities which MillionPlus celebrated at its 25th anniversary last night, or in the further education sector. I pay tribute to the Government for extending HE awarding powers to the FE sector, not least because my college, Blackpool Fylde College, will be one of the first to benefit.

The Americans have a saying that goes something like, “When you get lemons, you have to try to make lemonade,” and that is what we have all tried to do. We have tried to make a flawed Bill better fit for purpose, and to help, not hinder, the dynamism that I have talked about. We have had a decent thrash at it; without that decent thrash and the work of the House of Lords, I think it would have been a very poor Bill indeed.

[Ben Howlett]

You will be pleased to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that my remarks in this debate will be short. I think all hon. Members have something else to do right now.

I have championed universities for the last six years, and I have debated with many different Members from across the House. In the last two years, it has been a great privilege to be vice-chair of the all-party group on students, together with my friend the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). I wish him every success, and I hope to be able to join him in continuing to represent students in Parliament after 8 June. I have 23,000 students in my constituency, spread across two universities: Bath Spa University and the University of Bath. Both universities have a large complement of international students, who are absolutely vital. We have had debates in this place for years about how much they contribute to our local and national economies.

I am pleased that the Bill has been introduced. The student community and the higher education sector as a whole have called for such legislation since 2011, when Lord Willetts introduced new law in this area, and I hope that this Bill will receive Royal Assent later today. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for all his work on the Bill. He has been a great champion of the higher education sector and international students, and the Bill is testament to all his work.

I turn quickly to Lords amendment 156 and Government amendments (a), (b) and (c) in lieu. As has been said, it is incredibly welcome that the Minister and the Department for Education have listened to a campaign group of MPs and placed on the Higher Education Statistics Agency, or the designated body, a duty to report on the number of international students. That makes a massive difference, and it represents a significant change in the Government’s tone. I thank the Minister for listening to us and delivering that amendment.

I want to give a bit of a shout-out to Members who have made a big contribution to the campaign, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell), for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller), and my right hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). They are great champions for their student communities and for international students. I pay tribute to Opposition colleagues who have also championed that case.

I am delighted that the Department for Education has produced the amendment. If the outcome of the election on 8 June is favourable, I guarantee not only to the Government but to my constituents that I will continue—in collaboration with Universities UK, the Russell Group and MillionPlus—to make the case for taking international students out of the overall immigration figures. It is very peculiar that they are still included. If I am around after 8 June, as I hope to be, I will make such representations along with colleagues. I hope that they will all be re-elected, too, so that we can make this final carve-out in the interests of my constituents, students, international students and the UK’s reputation overseas. I wish everybody a huge amount of luck in the forthcoming general election.