Student Visas

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of (1) the adequacy of training and quality-assurance processes for student visa caseworkers, and (2) decision-making in the student visa route.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

The UK Visas and Immigration service has a comprehensive training programme kept under regular review to support consistently high standards of decisions. This is supported by a quality assurance framework that draws on feedback from the study sector and incorporates evidence from the independent administrative review process, ensuring that lessons are learned and systematically embedded into operational practice.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that reply. The universities agree that the changes to thresholds in the compliance assessment metrics should help to further reduce the scope for abuse and non-compliance, but I understand that some real problems have arisen. These relate to the red/amber/green methodology, the lack of real-time data sharing with UKVI, visa processing delays and the lack of clarity about the reasons for a sudden upsurge in visa refusals. Given the massive impact of decisions on international student recruitment on the finances of universities, will the Minister agree to meet me and Universities UK to try to help to resolve some of these concerns?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am very happy to meet my noble friend and representatives from the university sector. It is extremely important that we make this work properly for both sectors as a whole, and I know that officials in the department are in constant touch with the sector to look at how we can improve performance. In 2025, 448,241 entry clearance applications were received and only 18,434 were refused, which is about 4%.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, the Government are about to introduce a new independent appeals body for asylum cases. Would it not be better to focus on raising the quality of initial decisions, improving efficiency in the current tribunal system and funding legal aid adequately?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness will know, it is important that we get the first decision right, because it is important for the person who is applying and for the process and the cost, as she mentioned. Student visa decisions are made by trained caseworkers, who apply the Immigration Rules and are supported by clear guidance, quality assurance and oversight. Original performance decisions are kept under continual review. I hope that we can, over time, improve the decision-making process.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, 90% of Pakistanis who claim asylum enter the United Kingdom on a student, work or visit visa, as well as 87% of Bangladeshi nationals and 71% of Indian nationals. This is clearly a major abuse of the system. How will the Government get a grip on this problem and clamp down on the abuse of the visa system?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As the noble Lord will know, we have already put a brake on Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan for the very reason that there were high levels of asylum claims from them—470% of their 2021 levels. That is a temporary halt. We keep all options under review and it is important that the student route is not seen as a precursor to an asylum claim.

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a real case where artificial intelligence would enormously improve the speed and quality of decision-making. When my noble friend the Minister meets the universities, will he point out to them, as the Home Office has had to do for many years—as well as to the Department for Education—that there is still considerable fraud in entry to colleges and universities being used as a basis for working in the regular or the black economy in the UK, irrespective of any claims for asylum? That is to the disadvantage of many existing workforces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend has been a constant advocate of tackling fraud in the system, and I pay tribute to his work on that. We keep this under review at all times. It is in nobody’s interest to have fraudulent applications or for individuals to use a different route and subsequently to apply on a fraudulent basis. That is why we have taken the steps we have with the asylum student brake on the four countries I mentioned and why we have a rigorous process for assessing claims.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that a further problem is that only one in six failed asylum seekers is then returned to their country of origin. What are the Government doing to address this serious problem?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. He will know that the Government are taking extremely serious action on the removal of people who do not have the right to be here. That involves several mechanisms. First, we have to speed up the results of asylum claims in the first place. Then, when individuals have failed, we need to ensure that there is an appeal process, if required, that is speedy and efficient. Then, if people’s claims have not been accepted, we need speedy removals. I do not have the figures to date in my head, but there has certainly been an improvement. If the noble Lord will allow, I will write to him with the figures on removals that we have made in the past two years.

[Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that one of the real problems in these areas is criminal gangs that operate by setting out false promises to very vulnerable people, especially in areas such as Bangladesh? Is there more we can do at the international level to tackle these criminal gangs through the use of intelligence and cross-border working?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that there is a criminal network involved in trying to secure entry to the United Kingdom through a range of illegal ways—small boats, the illegal use of asylum claims or illegal applications for student visas. We are cognisant of that and the Government are trying to ensure, through intelligence-led policing, the use of Border Force and work that we are undertaking, that we deter those gangs, hold them to justice and, where possible, take assets from them. There is a strong level of government activity in this area; we have debated it on a number of occasions and I will continue to make sure that we press against those areas of abuse.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, some time ago when I was Immigration Minister, we had problems, which I think exist today, in getting countries—many of which we have strong, close relationships with, both fiscal and otherwise—to take back people who had no reason to remain in this country because they had failed to meet the criteria for refugee status. Will the Minister update us on this? Is there nothing more that the Foreign Office and others can do to deal with this matter in relation to countries that appear reluctant to take back these people, for no good reason whatever, bearing in mind the relationships between them and us?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is important that the Government take a whole-government approach to this issue. I know that my colleagues in both the Foreign Office and the Home Office, and in some cases in the Ministry of Justice, are very focused on ensuring that we have a whole-government approach on the removal of individuals who have no right to be here. I will supply the noble Lord with figures on the removals, which have increased. It is important that we focus on continuing to remove people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, is it really not possible for the Government to have a more targeted approach—similar to what my noble friend Lady Hamwee suggested—by increasing the workforce to assist asylum applications? Rather than the blunderbuss of removing the right of nationals from certain countries to apply for visas, can the Government not home in on the individual abuse of the system? The blanket approach risks being unfair.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The brake on the four countries is a temporary brake while we assess the reasons for the rise in numbers that took place. The Government are trying to speed up the asylum processes along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned. We have put additional staff in to approve the processing, because we want to get to a stage where individuals know quickly whether they have a genuine asylum claim, whether they have been accepted—and, if they have been rejected, that they have the right to appeal—and whether we have to remove them. That is self-evidently part of the Government’s approach to this issue.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, when the ISC did its study on China last year, we were very concerned to find a large number of Chinese students blocking or filling up courses on quantum, AI and the like. When we analysed further, we found that quite a large number of those students were members of the People’s Liberation Army. What has been done to put a check on this or to spot exactly what is happening?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We have to make sure that individuals have a proper and right method of applying for student entry into the United Kingdom. That is why we have accepted over 448,000 people, but it also why we have rejected 18,000 applications to date. There is a very strict check on what the reasons are, how people are coming and whether they have a right to enter the United Kingdom. I do not want to comment on individual cases or countries, apart from the four we have put the brake on, but we keep this under review at all times. The 18,000 rejections are for reasons linked to the country they are from, the application or the motivation behind the application.