Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

There are a number of interesting ideas on the very important issue of how we protect vulnerable witnesses. As the hon. Lady will know and I am sure will welcome, we have now introduced a pilot scheme whereby young, vulnerable witnesses do not have to go through the whole courtroom ordeal. In three courts, they can now be interviewed beforehand and the interview recorded and played back to the jury. That is one of a number of ideas we are taking forward to ensure that young and vulnerable witnesses in particular are given better protection than they have ever had before.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), meaningful work and training has an important role to play in reducing recidivism and encouraging rehabilitation. In developing future policy, will the Minister consider the success of the social investment bond at Her Majesty’s prison Peterborough?

Immigration Queues (UK Airports)

Debate between Damian Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Given the news that next year Hungary will issue Hungarian passports to ethnic Hungarians who do not live in the European Union, I am somewhat surprised by the Minister’s rather nonchalant response to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). Why in this particular situation is it impossible for a sovereign nation to disaggregate in respect of its treatment between its own citizens and European Union citizens, and why are we not doing more, for instance on criminal records checks of EU citizens at our ports of entry?

[Damian Green]

Criminal records checks depend on the quality of information we get from the sending country, and that will differ between different European countries. I am conscious of my hon. Friend’s attitude to the EU, but as we are talking about the immigration laws under the current laws of this country, I think we have said enough on that particular topic for this afternoon.

Immigration

Debate between Damian Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are no border controls between southern Ireland and Northern Ireland because we all subsist in the common travel area. However, I am happy to tell him, as I think I have before in this House, that I am shortly to visit Dublin to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Irish Government that will strengthen the common travel area. He makes a valid point, from his constituency interest in the port of Stranraer, that we need to ensure that the common travel area is as robust as it should be. I am determined to do that and so are the Government of the Irish Republic.

Under e-Borders, we already screen more than 90% of non-EU flights and more than 55% of all flights into and out of the UK. We are continually extending the number of routes and carriers covered. More than 10,000 wanted criminals, including murderers, rapists and those responsible for smuggling drugs or humans into the country, have been arrested at the border as a result of such advance passenger screening. As a result of joint working with the French authorities and the use of improved technology, it has become even more difficult for clandestines to evade border controls. That has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of attempts to cross illegally from France to Dover from more than 29,000 in 2009 to 9,700 in 2010. That is a significant strengthening of our border between Calais and Dover.

To move on to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), we are tackling those who come here illegally as well as those who have come for a limited amount of time and then not gone home. We are making life more uncomfortable for those people. Those who are not compliant in one area usually are not compliant in others. We are therefore working ever more with organisations such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the NHS and credit reference agencies to track people down and encourage them to go home of their own accord. We tell credit reference agencies about illegal immigrants so that they cannot easily access credit.

We are also focusing on criminals who facilitate people staying here illegally, such as sham marriage facilitators and passport factories. The UKBA and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are working together to come down hard on rogue businesses that use illegal labour to evade tax and minimum wage laws. The first year of that joint work resulted in more than 130 arrests and potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds of tax liabilities for HMRC. A targeted campaign this summer saw more than 550 arrests. We are seeing the results. On 25 November, a Moroccan serial fraudster who used a fake identity to get British citizenship and claim an estimated £400,000 in benefits was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison. Last month, a Vietnamese woman was found guilty of conspiracy to facilitate and smuggle immigrants from Vietnam to Europe and was sentenced to five years in prison at Maidstone Crown court.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm whether there are any plans to extend nationally the pilot scheme that is being undertaken in Peterborough to remove people who are not exercising their rights under the former worker registration scheme and the free movement directive? It has been very successful, with the UKBA working with both the local police and the local authority to remove those individuals, who at the moment are a burden on the public purse.

[Damian Green]

I am pleased to hear from my hon. Friend, who has a long history of campaigning on the issue on behalf of his constituency, that he has seen signs of the success of that activity in Peterborough. As he knows, the problem to which he refers is concentrated in particular areas, so we are not planning to roll the scheme out nationally. That would not be the best use of resources. We want to concentrate on the two or three areas in which that problem is most acute.

Apart from the successful arrests and prosecutions that I have talked about, we are also working to remove people more quickly to more countries. Between May 2010 and October this year, we completed a total of 68 special charter flights of people being removed who had no right to be here, which resulted in 2,542 removals. We are also tackling the problems of the past as they relate to foreign national prisoners. We are starting the deportation process earlier and removing foreign criminals quicker than ever.

Finally, being selective is also about protecting the most vulnerable. Britain should always be open to those genuinely seeking asylum from persecution. As I have said, the asylum system is demonstrably better than it was a few years ago. Over the past 15 months, we have reduced by a quarter the number of asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their application.

Student Visas

Debate between Damian Green and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 16th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

I echo the remarks of the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) about the thoughtful and passionate nature of the debate. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) introduced this important debate in a thoughtful way.

I will follow the good examples of my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), the former Home Secretary, in saying that there are clearly macro and micro aspects to this and it is important that we conduct the debate about student visas and tier 4 within the overall context of the Government’s immigration policy.

I should say at the outset that Britain is quite rightly internationally renowned for its top-quality education institutions. Many hon. Members have rightly made that point. The students who choose to study here from across the globe bring numerous cultural, social and economic benefits to the UK and to their own countries when they return. We all acknowledge that and it is certainly acknowledged across Government.

We must recognise that the student visa system had become a broken instrument. It has failed to control immigration and, in many cases, to protect legitimate students—a point that the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made. He said that severe damage has been caused. He said that people come here honestly hoping to study and then find that they have been scammed. Bogus colleges are scamming not just the British immigration system but the students who come here.

Student immigration has more than trebled in the past 10 years and is now far larger than the other two main routes of immigration—the work route and the family route. Too many of the people who come here calling themselves students have a primary motivation of working here, and not of receiving a high-quality education. Too many institutions are providing a service that is not about education but immigration. Addressing that issue is at the heart of what we are seeking to do. Many Members from all parties have agreed that it is worth driving out that abuse.

There are endless examples of institutions and “students” working the system to get round language requirements and rights to work, and to bring in dependants. That is not just a small problem; too many colleges provide minimal or no tuition or classroom study. We have students barely able to hold a conversation in English turning up to “study” degree-level courses.

Last year, both Governments—the Labour Government and the coalition Government—were in power. So I hope that I will respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Bradford South about being non-partisan by saying that in 2010 tier 4 visas represented 14% of visas that were issued, but tier 4 visa-holders were responsible for 41% of refusals at ports, in other words actually being turned down by immigration officers. The equivalent figures for tiers 1, 2 and 5 visa-holders were all less than 1%.

We want genuine students coming to Britain to attend courses of high educational value at legitimate and responsible institutions. We need to maintain our international reputation for providing top-quality education, and we want the very best students to stay on in the UK to complete their studies. That is exactly what our proposals are designed to deliver and that is why the Home Secretary announced a comprehensive programme of reform on 22 March. I want to set out what those changes mean in practice and how they will contribute to meeting our wider objective of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands. I also want to address the many specific points made by individual Members during the debate. I will try to deal with them all in the next few minutes.

Many contributors to the debate have talked about flexibility, including the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. Indeed, to minimise disruption to education providers and students, we are implementing the changes in three stages. The rules for the first stage came into effect on 21 April. Last Monday—13 June—we laid the second set of changes to the rules before Parliament. They will come into effect on 4 July. We will complete our changes by the end of 2012.

We continue to have extensive dialogue with the sector about the changes that we are making. I can assure right hon. and hon. Members who are concerned about that that there are numerous and constant contacts at official level and, where necessary, between myself and Universities UK and selected vice-chancellors about these changes, because we want to introduce them in the most practical way possible.

I want to respond to a specific point that was made about the timing of the changes. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) read out the letter from the vice-chancellor of a university in his constituency asking if all the changes could be delayed for a year. I should say that when we began to have discussions on them last autumn, we were urged by the universities themselves to get on with them, because we all know that the longer there is any uncertainty in a system, the more people are wary of that system. Various Members have said that the uncertainty that exists is deterring people from making applications and so on. If we allow the uncertainty to continue for another year, I suspect that the results would be worse. So that was the wise advice that I received from the universities last autumn.

I must repeat the basic point that there are so many abuses of the system that we need radical reform. Many colleges seem happy to accept students who do not even meet their own admissions criteria and who speak very little English. In one college, we found that there were two lecturers for 940 students. In another, we found that students were attending classes for just one day a month and working excessive hours for the rest of the time. UK Border Agency enforcement teams recently picked up students who were supposed to be studying at a college in London, but were actually living and working in west Wales; indeed, every student whom we found from that college was doing that.

We are targeting the least compliant students and institutions, and of course that is what we should do. For too long, institutions in parts of the privately funded education sector have been essentially unregulated, yet all the evidence suggests that those institutions pose the biggest risk to immigration control. In a sample of tier 4 students studying at private institutions about which the UKBA had concerns, up to 26% could not be accounted for.

The UKBA has revoked the sponsorship licences of 64 colleges. I hope that that meets the reasonable request of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, that the inspection regime should be robust. He said that the UKBA used to phone up institutions in advance to say that its inspectors were coming. As is evident from the number of licences that have been revoked, the enforcement regime is getting better.

I want to turn to the current points-based system. Again in the spirit of non-partisanship, I must say that this Government did not arrive and tear up that system. We said that we could build on it and we accepted the point of having objective ways of measuring who comes to the UK, and that is what we are seeking to do. Under that objective system, a sponsor assesses the intentions and ability of the student; UKBA staff no longer have the power to refuse a migrant entry to the UK on those grounds. We therefore need to make absolutely sure that sponsors are exercising their powers responsibly, and that is one of the things that these reforms are designed to achieve.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Damian Green]

I will give way once; I suspect that I will not get through my speech if I give way to all the Members who wish to intervene.

[Mr Jackson]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. On the points-based system, given that the overall purpose of immigration policy is to reduce net migration, can he confirm that after the introduction of the points-based system in 2007, arrivals of students, dependants and student visitors increased from 370,000 in 2007 to 489,000 by 2009?

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. Indeed, the numbers were still rising right up until last year. We now have the figures up to the summer of last year and the numbers were still rising at that point. As I was saying, we are building on the points-based system, but we are precisely introducing limits and precisely driving out abuse in the student system. That is why we will move on to other systems, so that we can get the numbers down. The points-based system is not enough on its own, but it is a platform on which we can build.

The Home Secretary announced new reforms that mean that all sponsors must now be vetted by one of the approved inspectorates and all of them must attain the status of highly trusted sponsors. In line with that commitment, we announced earlier this week that the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Independent Schools Inspectorate would extend their activities to cover privately funded providers. Sponsors must meet our immigration requirements and high standards of educational provision. Institutions that do not meet those requirements are now subject to a limit on the number of students that they can bring in. To stay on the sponsor register in the longer term, they must achieve highly trusted sponsor status no later than April 2012 and gain accreditation by the relevant agency by the end of 2012. The imposition of a limit responds to the urgent need to tackle abuse, allows sponsors time to adjust to the new system and prevents surges in applications from high-risk sectors. We are well on track to delivering a sponsorship system that the public can trust.

We are also raising the bar on entry requirements. All students coming to study degree-level courses must now be able to speak English at an upper intermediate level and others will have to speak English at an intermediate level. If students cannot answer basic questions in English about their course, UKBA officers will refuse them entry at the border. That was another point legitimately made by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. We are now bringing back the power for immigration officers at the border to recognise that someone is obviously, indeed blatantly, incapable of fulfilling the requirements of their visa.

In recognition of our trust in universities, we are flexible about the methods that they use to assess a student’s level of English. That brings me on to a specific point that was made by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. Let me start by discussing what is, if you like, the biggest transitional issue. That is the English language requirement, which he raised in his introductory speech.

The appropriate level of English for those coming to study at level 6 and above is an upper intermediate level across each of the four disciplines: reading; writing; speaking; and listening. That is level B2 on the common European framework of language. A lower level—B1—is the appropriate level for lower courses, including the pathways courses that many Members have mentioned. Those are courses taken by people coming in who do not have the appropriate level of English but who want to take an English language course in the UK on their way to taking a full university course here. So we have set a lower level of English as a requirement for those students.

In order to get a visa, those outside universities will have to present a test certificate from an independent test provider proving that they have attained the required level. As another flexibility that we have introduced, universities will be able to vouch for a student’s ability if they are coming to study at degree level or above. Indeed, there might be the odd student who cannot meet the requirements for all four disciplines but is so exceptional that we will allow individual requests by university academic registrars.

A number of Members have talked about English language schools. People who want to come to the UK to study lower-level English can do so for up to 11 months through the student visitor route. We introduced that concession after discussions with the English language colleges last autumn, and the colleges have welcomed it.

On the confirmations of acceptance for studies and the visas, the requirements for an offer of a place at a university are separate from the requirements under the immigration rules. Universities could, and should, have assigned a confirmation of acceptance for studies to people who held unconditional offers before 21 April. Someone with a conditional offer has, of course, not yet satisfied the university’s own academic entry requirements. The immigration system and its requirements have always been separate from the academic entry requirements, and it is important not to confuse the two. For instance, any Government would refuse a student entry if their background indicated that a potential harm would be posed to the UK, even if a university had given an unconditional offer of a place.

It was mentioned that there are difficulties relating to the English language tests. The UKBA ran a procurement exercise and expanded the list of English test providers to ensure that there was significant capacity, and we are in regular contact with each of the approved test providers, which have demonstrated flexibility in expanding test centre capacity where there is demand. If there are blockages, we are trying hard to remove them.

There has been much inevitable discussion about the impact assessment, and various figures have been cited. I wish to put on the record that the net cost is said to be £2.4 billion. The £3.6 billion is the gross cost, but there will also be £1.1 billion of benefits. The truth about the impact assessment process is that it is in its infancy and is not yet satisfactory. I have spoken to the economists who do the assessments and they agree that the process needs to improve. I do not want to go into the economic theology of what works and what does not work because it is late on a Thursday afternoon, but I shall give one very practical example. The way in which the assessments are carried out requires us to assume that there is a zero displacement effect of students taking jobs on the local labour market. In other words, if a foreign student is doing a job and then leaves, 100% of that economic activity is assumed to be lost. In practical terms, however, it is likely that that person will be replaced by a British student or someone else. Clearly, therefore, the assessments are not satisfactory, and we have asked the Migration Advisory Committee, which is independent of Government, to look at the process over the summer.

The definition of immigration is beginning to vex us, and I am half-tempted to spend a long time discussing whether students should somehow be removed from the definition altogether. There is clearly an academic argument to be had, but I will just make the underlying point that although it would be fantastically convenient for the Minister for Immigration suddenly to discover that hundreds of thousands of people who were regarded as immigrants yesterday would not be regarded as immigrants tomorrow—I would hit my targets with no effort at all—that is not realistic, and I do not think that the public would accept it. In terms of confidence, the point is very well made that immigration statistics are imperfect, particularly regarding counting people in and out, and that is why we have re-let the e-Borders contract. Over the next few years we will develop a much greater ability to count people out as well as in, but it seems sensible to stick to the internationally agreed measurements we have always had, which are used by other countries, rather than apparently try to redefine our way out of what is a serious and difficult political issue.

The other big subject that many Members have mentioned is post-study work, and I am afraid that I will have to agree to differ with the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. The students’ primary motivation should be to study, not to work. The ability to work after finishing a course or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) said, while doing a course, should not be a significant part of the motivation of someone coming here on a student visa. If people want to come here to work, there are work routes, and I do not want them to deceive either us or themselves by saying, “I’m here as a student but what really matters to me—the motivating force—is that I can either work during the course or stay for a couple of years afterwards.” It is simply not the case that everyone who does that gets a graduate-level job. In one cohort that we looked at, of those who were hanging around for the allowed two years after finishing their degrees, about 20% were unemployed, and 50% of those who were employed were in unskilled jobs and not making use of their studies.