Student Visas

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate and on the comprehensive way in which he set out the wide range of issues that arise from the changes that the Government are making. Other hon. Members have also spoken about those matters, and I will not cover ground that has already been covered. I will focus on two areas of which I have intimate knowledge: my constituency, Newcastle upon Tyne Central, and my area of expertise, science and engineering.

As hon. Members undoubtedly know, Newcastle is a great university town. Newcastle university, in my constituency, was founded in the 19th century by, among others, the great industrialist Lord Armstrong. When my father was a student there in the 1950s, it was known as King’s college, Durham. I do not whether, as a Commonwealth citizen, he required a student visa at the time, but if he did, I am very glad that he acquired one.

My mother was a student at Northumbria university, or Newcastle polytechnic as it was, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown). Born in Newcastle, she certainly did not require a visa, although given that she was in her 50s when she finally got to go to university, a university education was in many ways a foreign country to her.

My point is that Newcastle has a long and proud history of educating a wide and diverse range of students from all kinds of backgrounds and from all over the world. It is therefore not surprising that I feel strongly about this subject. I am proud that Newcastle is a favoured destination of UK and international students. It attracts students from all over the world. Newcastle university has 3,000 international students from more than 110 countries, while Northumbria university has students studying degrees at partner institutions in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Seoul and elsewhere.

Students are therefore a vital part of our economy, contributing much to our businesses, our bars and clubs and our cultural life. Why on earth would we want to put up a sign saying “Do not come and study here”? I am afraid that that is increasingly the impression that we are giving and I will cite two case studies that exemplify that.

First, student A, studying biochemistry, sent the UKBA a request for a certificate of approval in February. Despite faxing and phoning, with the support of my office, for many months, she still has not had her passport back. Her student visa expires in July, and she cannot apply for a new visa without her passport, which the UKBA still has.

The second example is a student who is studying for a doctorate in marine engineering. He is in his final year. He has applied for a visa, which has been refused as the UKBA states that he should have completed his doctorate by now. However, with his application, he submitted a letter from the university explaining that the external examiner was ill, so it would require some more months to finish. The refusal took no account of the fact that the student had been in Newcastle for six years, with legal visas, paying substantial sums to the university in addition to rent and living expenses in Newcastle.

Those are just two examples of the many cases that my office has had to deal with. They mainly involve students in the middle of degrees or doctoral work, who thus have proven study records and whom the university has decided are able to complete their courses. Often the wording of the refusal has included factors not applicable to the case, showing that a form letter was used, rather than consideration being given to the individual applications. All the students refused visas who contacted my office were studying STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects. That may be because Newcastle attracts STEM students. It may be because the UKBA particularly dislikes STEM students. If that is the case, I hope that the Minister will explain why.

The view of those in the university to whom I have spoken and who have contacted me is that the refusals have much more to do with not exceeding quotas than the lack of merit of the individual applications. Why on earth would we do this? There is a shortage of UK and EU STEM students. International STEM students enable departments to have the scale to undertake a wider range of courses and high-quality research in fields that might otherwise be closed down.

As the Campaign for Science and Engineering recently said,

“Nearly 40% of the UK’s scientific output from 2002-2007 involved international collaborations, so it is actually a positive aspect of UK higher education that students are exposed to a diverse peer group from the outset.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central said, the impact assessment for the proposals that we are discussing has confirmed the huge loss to the economy. It also confirms that the drive to cut overseas student numbers will reduce overall net migration by about 48,000 a year between now and the next general election. I am very afraid that we will lose many of the people whom we do not need or want to lose. We are in a globally competitive environment. Our universities and our country need to be competitive in that environment. We cannot and should not hang up a global “Closed” sign above our universities.

[Mr Joe Benton (in the Chair)]

I remind the final two Back-Bench speakers that the winding-up speeches will start at 5 o’clock.