Higher Education (Student Visas)

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bacon]

I will not give way. I am sorry, but I must make some progress, because I must leave time for the Minister to answer and this is only a half-hour debate.

The UK higher education sector is a major export in a market that is set to grow rapidly. Professor Steve Smith of Universities UK told the Select Committee on Home Affairs that higher education is by some estimates the seventh largest export sector in the UK—others have put it as high as the third largest—and the market is growing by 7% a year. As the Home Secretary has pointed out, the combination of international fee income and personal off-campus expenditure by international higher education students alone already approaches £5 billion. That has become a vital income stream for universities and for the wider economy.

As I have mentioned, Professor Edward Acton told the Home Affairs Committee:

“In a tricky funding period, most universities plan to expand international numbers in the immediate future. The ability to do so reflects and enhances the performance and reputation of UK HE internationally: it is a Performance Indicator in international league tables. Culturally, the international student presence is key to ensuring our Home students prepare for and excel in a global graduate market”.

The UK’s international alumni provide a healthy anglophile network among public and private decision makers in every one of our trading partners. The key question for universities is whether the Government intend to promote or restrict our recruitment of bona fide non-EU students in higher education. As Professor Acton stated in his submission to the Home Affairs Committee:

“The answer might seem obvious, so forthright are No. 10, the Foreign Office and BIS on the matter and so vast are the economic, financial and cultural benefits to universities and the country.”

The Foreign Secretary announced in January that

“as British Ministers fan out across the world in the months to come we will be promoting British education as well as our economy as a whole.”

On his recent Asian trip, the Prime Minister emphasised

“how much we want to welcome international students to Britain”

and that international students are a

“great way of forming a partnership between our countries”.

Professor Acton and Universities UK fear that the UK Border Agency is set on a course which, if it is not altered, will drastically reduce legitimate higher education recruitment with a grave threat to pre-university pathway courses, which produce an income for universities of £1 billion a year. It is very important at this point to distinguish, as Professor Acton does in his paper, between sub-degree courses and pre-university pathway courses.

The Minister will know that the international passenger survey is deeply flawed and that the Treasury Committee said three years ago that it was not fit for purpose if that purpose was to play a central role in estimating international migration. I urge him to continue engaging with the universities sector, which has offered to pay for speedy research to provide the conclusive cross-check suggested by Professor Acton in his paper. We cannot wait for several years while e-Borders gets sorted—we need action sooner than that. The Select Committee has explored these matters in depth and raised many interesting issues, such as the role of accreditation bodies and whether they should be merged, the place of post-work study and the requirement or otherwise to return to one’s home country. However, I shall not dwell on those issues because there is precious little time left.

I shall concentrate on just two issues, the first of which is pre-university pathway courses. Yesterday, I visited the highly impressive £38 million INTO building at the university of East Anglia, which provides pathway courses for 700 students each year, half of whom go on to study for degrees at UEA and about half of whom go on to university studies elsewhere. That aspect of university provision is now a critical part of the international offer. Many countries do not have the equivalent of a second-year A-level and their students simply are not ready to start a university degree course without further preparation. In providing such preparation, universities such as UEA are taking a sensible entrepreneurial step to safeguard their future growth and to help safeguard the UK’s higher education market and make sure that it prospers.

The second issue, which relates to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), is the importance of the English language in the mix. At a time when French universities have started offering university courses in the English language because of the richness of the potential English-language instruction market, I need hardly stress how important it is for the UK not to damage inadvertently that market in the UK. I can speak personally for the adage that there is no place to learn a language as good as the country concerned. I was a student in Berlin, where I attended lectures in English and German, and I acquired a new respect for any student studying overseas in a language that is not their mother tongue. That is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do without help. We are spoilt in the UK because English is the world’s language of business and academia. We are so used to hearing a high standard of English among educated northern Europeans such as Swedes, Germans and Dutch—at the B2 standard or higher—that we assume it is easily attainable, but it is not. Those countries have invested a huge amount over many years to get to where they are now. The B2 standard of English is not often achieved in southern Europe and is seldom achieved in east Asia. Any measures that include a requirement for a B2 standard of English as a condition of entry will have a significant, damaging effect on the market for overseas students coming to the UK.

This goes beyond language. UEA has developed the innovative Newton programme in which overseas students come to the UK to do A-levels in the sciences, mathematics and economics in a university environment and have the opportunity to attend lectures with university undergraduates in those disciplines. That is a great way of marketing the university overseas and attracts some of the highest calibre students. If there were ever an area that cried out for joined-up government it is this.

I really want to hear from the Minister on one issue above any other: do the Government intend to promote or reduce the UK’s recruitment of bona fide non-EU students in higher education? We have to get out of a big hole. It is simply critical, at a time when the Government are asking universities to be more entrepreneurial, to seek out new customers and to offer new courses that meet the needs of those customers; and at a time when the whole economy needs a lift, which the university sector can provide, that the right hand and the left hand of our Government each know what the other is doing and that we do not inadvertently choke off what should be a crucial part of this country’s recovery.