Student Visas

Gerry Sutcliffe Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate. It is a subject that is important to us all, and contributions to the debate from all sides reflected the need to consider the matter seriously. We heard from Back Benchers, members and Chairs of Select Committees, and a former Home Secretary, which shows the importance of the issues that we face.

It is my job to reflect on the issues that have been raised in this debate. There have been a number of recurring themes to which the Minister will want to respond. If he is not able to do so today, I am sure that he will write to hon. Members with detailed answers. Some of the concerns may fall under the responsibility of other Departments.

I was struck by the contributions from the hon. Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller) because they reminded the Minister of his obligation to deliver the Conservative manifesto commitment to reduce net immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. That commitment may have been watered down slightly in the coalition agreement, but it is, none the less, a millstone around the Government’s neck because it is so difficult to achieve. I understand the debates and discussions around immigration, but I reflect also on the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). He said that when he was Home Secretary, there were issues that needed to be faced, but the goalposts kept moving. As he said, we tried to do all sorts of things to try to improve the situation.

The recurring themes in this debate on student visas have come from both sides of the House. I hope that we can get away from the partisan approach to immigration and the feeling that anything the previous Government did was completely bad and that the present Government will deliver their target. If we continue in that vein, we will not achieve our joint aim of balanced migration. We all want to ensure that we have in our country the people whom we want, require and need. We must reflect on the fact that the previous Government introduced the UK Border Agency and a whole series of initiatives to try to deal with migration.

I was struck by a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. He said that part of the problem with migration and immigration issues is the counting in and the counting out of people; it is hard to understand what the facts and figures really are. We have accepted that the previous Government failed to deliver in that regard and we look to support the present Government in their attempts to try to reach a solution to that difficult problem.

Let us put to one side the issue of net migration and how we achieve that and reflect on the issues that we have here today. Student visas and the whole issue around students became a problem when the Home Secretary made a statement on 21 March, saying that we were going to reduce the number of students by 400,000 by 2015. The reality is that that will not be achieved. We have already heard that that figure will be reduced by 50%. That is part of the reason for this millstone around the Government’s neck.

We then move on to the issue, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central put so passionately, of the impact that we are having on our higher education sector. The message has gone out to the wider world that Britain is not open for business. We heard about the concerns that the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee had to deal with on its visit to China and the 40% reduction in applications to the UK from India. On a recent all-party visit to Azerbaijan, I was told that the Azerbaijanis wanted to work and be involved with the UK, but thought that there problems in relation to how we saw the situation in further and higher education.

I hope that the Minister will reflect on the points that have been raised today about the transitional arrangements, the time that the institutions will need to put in place the scheme and the problems relating to the offers that have been made to individual students. He should reflect, too, on the cost to the country. The hon. Member for Peterborough said that there was no empirical evidence on the financial impact of such a change, and yet the Home Office’s own impact assessment says that the cost to the country will be £2.6 billion or even £3.6 billion.

Foreign students benefit our university and college system in the UK. Hon. Members have talked about how they develop people intellectually, socially and culturally. We are also seeing a higher number of UK students going to universities in America. Our competitors, such as the US and Australia, are taking advantage of our current situation.

In conclusion, the problem of student visas needs to be addressed. We do not view it in a partisan way. We do not want to attack the Government’s immigration policy. We recognise that there must be managed migration and we want to work with the Government in a consensual way to achieve those things. The student visa issue is impacting in a negative way on the private sector and on public colleges and universities and we need to do something about that pretty speedily. If we do not, we throw away something that is a boost to our economy. I am talking about the benefits that foreign students bring to our universities and to our many cities and towns.

I hope that the Minister will reflect on this excellent debate, recognise that there are serious problems that need to be faced and come up with some solutions in the short term that will prevent any further damage to this sector. We need to have more debates on migration and immigration to decide what we can do collectively to resolve the issues.

I have some sympathy with what the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said. He asked whether we should go down the route that the US has determined. I hope that the Minister will reflect on an important debate that has had no partisan input, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say.