Student Visas

Julian Smith Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

In the media, international students at our universities are generally seen though one of two lenses: the positive one is that they are a cash-cow, premium product that historically has cross-subsidised domestic students in our universities; the negative one is that, because of this, they might end up getting too many places at our universities, thus keeping out some of our home-grown talent. Both are completely the wrong way of thinking about international students. This is a huge growth market in the world and vital to our economic growth.

Education ought to be for us a focus sector, alongside life sciences, advanced manufacturing, the digital and creative industries, professional services and tourism. It is also a market in which, thankfully, we have strong competitive advantages. We have some of the best brand names in the business: Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Birmingham, Manchester, Queen’s Belfast, the London School of Economics—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I can name check others, if anyone wants me to.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Leeds.

[Damian Hinds]

Thank you.

All in all, about one fifth of the top 100 universities and about one fifth of the top 50 business schools in the world are ours, and of course we have that great asset, the English language.

The sector has other advantages. The first and most obvious is export earnings and the jobs it supports in this country, but it is also important in the battle for talent, in bringing into the country the people we need to help our economy succeed. It also helps with what people have called soft power—or, as I would prefer to describe it, the promotion of Britain abroad and the fostering of business and cultural links throughout the world.

The sector has several secondary advantages. For one, unusually among the key growth sectors, its employment and economic growth prospects are well distributed throughout the UK, not concentrated in one place, such as London. Secondly, university rankings depend on having a certain proportion of foreign students at a university, because international rankings consider that if a university is not good enough to attract foreign students, it is probably not very good. Thirdly, having a vibrant, cosmopolitan HE sector helps to reinforce several other growth strategy objectives, particularly to bring forward research and development in key sectors and to make this country the headquarters location of choice for multinationals.

As many hon. Members have said, this is a growing world market. In 1980, about 1 million students were enrolled in institutions outside their country of origin, but by 2010 that figure was 3.3 million. We know that more recently the compound annual growth rate trend—obviously it has moved a bit in the last couple of years—has been about 7%, which is a strong growth rate for an attractive industry. According to the McKinsey report on the seven long-term priorities for the UK, if we can hold our share—grow it as the market grows—and harvest just half of the benefit, it would be worth an additional 80,000 jobs in the country by 2030.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

We all want a strong and effective A-rated human rights institution, and that is what our reforms are intended to achieve. We engage in positive, ongoing dialogue with the international co-ordinating committee, and we will ensure that it continues.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

7. What steps she is taking to increase female representation on company boards. [R]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Jo Swinson)]

In 2010 we asked Lord Davies to review the obstacles preventing women from making it on to corporate boards. Following his report, a range of steps have been taken. They include a voluntary code of conduct for executive search firms, amendments to the UK corporate governance code, changes to narrative reporting, and the establishment of the Women’s Business Council. Over the past year, 38% of those appointed to the boards of FTSE 100 companies have been women.

May I congratulate my hon. Friend on the arrival of his new baby daughter, who, for all we know, may be a board director of the future herself?

[Julian Smith]

I thank the Minister for her answer, and I congratulate the Government on the excellent work that they have done to increase the number of women on boards. May I urge them, however, to focus particularly on the pipeline in companies this year, and to encourage our UK corporate boards to engage in a robust discussion about child care, “keep in touch” days, and the big cliff that appears when women reach childbearing age?

[Jo Swinson]

My hon. Friend is right. That is the point at which, for many women, it becomes very difficult to participate in the workplace at the same level as before. However, there is a great deal that employers can do to help both mums and dads to play a stronger role in the workplace. The Government’s “think, act, report” initiative is encouraging companies to think about what they can do not only to recruit the best women, but to retain and promote those women and ensure that their talent is nurtured all the way to the boardroom.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

8. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the College of Policing since its establishment.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

The Government have established the College of Policing to protect the public and support the fight against crime by ensuring professionalism in policing. The college is a core element of the police reform agenda. It began providing services on 1 December 2012 and has already begun training the next generation of police leaders.

[Julian Smith]

With the new college now in place, surely the Association of Chief Police Officers is now well past its sell-by date. It seems to spend more time protecting its members than helping the Government with their reform programme. Should taxpayers still be funding this organisation?

[Damian Green]

Most of the ACPO business area work has been integrated into the College of Policing. I pay tribute to ACPO’s work in ensuring a smooth transition towards the establishment of the college, which is very important. ACPO is a private limited company; it is not owned or controlled by the Home Office. It is therefore for ACPO itself to determine its future as a company. Home Office grant-in-aid funding to ACPO headquarters ceased at the end of 2012 when the College of Policing was established.

Home Affairs and Justice

Julian Smith Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman can tell the policemen he will meet later today that this Government are ensuring, through their changes, that the police will continue to be well remunerated and have access to a very good pension, and that police forces up and down this country will be able to continue to keep people safe and fight crime as they always have done. He can also assure them that, through the measures we are taking to introduce a new police professional body and to enhance the status and professionalism of policing, we are ensuring individual police officers will have access to the training and development they will need in order to acquire the skills that we want them to have. I see an exciting future for policing as a result of the reforms this Government are putting through, and that is the message I hope everybody will be taking out to police officers on the streets.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that leadership from the top is vital, and that the recent allegations of poor procurement practices and the payment of large consulting fees to ex-coppers at the Association of Chief Police Officers have to be investigated fully before we look at the best structure for police leadership going forward?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. I understand that he has written about it to the Policing Minister, who is happy to meet him to talk about it.

Association of Chief Police Officers

Julian Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I am pleased to have secured this debate. Police officers do fantastic work on the streets of our constituencies, but of late there have been many instances of the police themselves being under investigation. For example, there are allegations that the police have been too cosy in their relationship with journalists, and in my part of the country, North Yorkshire, the outgoing chief constable has been found guilty of gross misconduct after an investigation that cost taxpayers £300,000. There are also investigations into Cleveland police.

Our police leaders should be beyond reproach, but the example set by the leadership, the Association of Chief Police Officers, leaves much to be desired. We all agree on the need for a co-ordinated approach to policing in this country, and that cannot be run county by county. However, the organisation that provides such leadership needs to be professional and clean, but ACPO is riddled with conflicts of interest and poor governance. I want to examine the way that ACPO operates and what it has been up to in recent years, and shine a spotlight on the organisation as the Government consider its future.

ACPO was incorporated as a private limited company in 1997, and it is that status that causes such tension and concern. The organisation is primarily funded by the taxpayer, and it receives hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Home Office and police authority budgets around the country. Millions more come via special projects that ACPO undertakes on national policing issues, and its staff are entitled to generous civil service pensions. Despite receiving large amounts of taxpayers’ money as a private company, ACPO was initially not open to the scrutiny of freedom of information legislation. Last year, ACPO was subjected to FOI legislation for the first time, although that does not appear to have opened up the organisation as the Government hoped. ACPO is being dragged, kicking and screaming, towards transparency.

Last month, via a freedom of information request, Rob Waugh of the Yorkshire Post found that hundreds of thousands of pounds were being paid in contracts to consultants who were often former senior police officers. More worryingly, he discovered that in many cases those consultants were employed without any of the procurement processes and controls that ACPO tells individual police forces to follow. Most of the payments were made through personal service companies.

According to the Yorkshire Post, more than £800,000 was paid to 10 consultants, largely over the past three years, from ACPO’s central office. The payments include over £190,000 for the services of a former chief constable of Essex at a rate of around £1,000 a day, with payments made through a consultancy company. One former detective superintendent received over £200,000 through his company, and a former assistant chief constable in Cumbria was paid £180,000. ACPO has its own guidelines that require three quotes for expenses over £1,000, and tendering for amounts of £50,000. Alarmingly however, the Yorkshire Post was unable to find any evidence that those rules were followed in any of those cases. In the case of Linda van den Hende, paperwork was present for a 12-month period, although she worked for four years.

ACPO is an organisation charged with ensuring best practice for the police service of our country, and it is funded largely by taxpayers’ money. There is, however, form in this area. Last year, the Independent Police Complaints Commission found that £30,000 had been paid to the deputy chief constable of North Yorkshire police, without any auditing to find out how it had been spent. Graham Maxwell leads North Yorkshire police and he has been found guilty of gross misconduct. He is also the finance lead on ACPO.

ACPO seems to feel that the Freedom of Information Act should be only partially applied, and it has published details only of those consultants employed at its head office. I took up the case in a letter to Sir Hugh Orde who chairs ACPO, and I asked for copies of contracts and details of the procurement processes for every consultant engaged by the organisation over the past three years. He responded by saying that he would set up a review that will be led by ACPO’s head of professional standards, overseen by ACPO’s council, and monitored by Transparency International UK. So Sir Hugh will not respond directly to a request by an elected Member of Parliament. He has tasked the person and board who should surely have been looking at the matters in question on an ongoing basis, and they will be checked and supervised by an organisation the bulk of whose work is advising corrupt Governments.

I urge the Minister to support my call for ACPO to release details of every consultant engaged over the past three years in each of its business areas, with details of how those payments were calculated and what procurement processes were used. I also ask for his support in referring the matters to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which has thus far been vague with me about whether it will check the tax situation pertaining to the arrangements in question. Will the Minister confirm how much the civil service pensions of ACPO staff currently cost the taxpayer?

As ACPO is a private company, it has also been able to engage in commercial activities. It is impossible to get a picture of what it gets up to commercially, because the set-up has no central source of information. For the most part, the publication of limited accounts has been permitted, as the concerns in question are small businesses. Two companies that have spun off from ACPO are ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives Ltd and Road Safety Support Ltd. Those are both not-for-profit companies, which are limited by guarantee. Both appear not to use confidential data held by police forces, but much of their business is obtained because of their close links with ACPO and their links to former senior police officers.

For example, ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives Ltd is entirely owned by ACPO and its registered office for the last company accounts was the same as ACPO’s. Its directors, as listed in the last available return from Companies House, include an assistant chief constable from Northamptonshire, the former chief constable of Lincolnshire police, the current ACPO chief executive, a former Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner, a former Sussex police officer and a former assistant chief constable of Strathclyde police. Just like the consultancies that have been dished out by ACPO, using public money, to former senior police chiefs, those companies seem to provide tasty directorships for senior police officers. In one case it appears that a chief constable was a director on a company while still in his role as chief of police.

ACPO Crime Prevention Initiatives Ltd is funded through partnership with companies whose products meet technical standards identified by the company. In return, the licensed company is able to utilise the Secured by Design logo and, on those products which meet the technical standard, the title “Police Preferred Specification” can be used. By offering “Police Preferred Specification” as a slogan, the line is blurred, with many people who buy products with that slogan expecting approval to come from taxpayer-funded police services, rather than from a private company that is given permission by ACPO to use the name.

Road Safety Support Ltd was formed in 2007. It provides training to speed camera operators and advice and information on camera placement. In the last set of accounts from Companies House it had three directors, one of whom is the recently retired former chief constable of South Yorkshire police. He, for some time, was also the representative for ACPO on road policing. Curiously, the same three directors are also directors of another company, NDORS Ltd, which is registered at the same address as Road Safety Support Ltd. That company runs speed awareness courses—presumably for those who have been caught by cameras, which may have been placed on advice from Road Safety Support Ltd.

In those companies, which all make use of their close links to the police, directorships and jobs are provided for former senior police officers who have left forces across the country, and the crossovers in what are, supposedly, separate limited companies, are clear to see. As police chiefs collected gold plated pensions, they were able to top up those already huge pensions with either a consultancy with ACPO or a directorship with one of its spin-off companies. I am today writing to Sir Hugh Orde to ask for a list of every individual who has been a director at an ACPO-related company over the past three years and whether they were also working in any capacity with ACPO or with a police force at the time. I want to know what projects they were working on and how much they were paid. I have also asked Sir Hugh for copies of the full accounts of every ACPO-related company and not just the redacted small company version that appears at Companies House.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the vagueness and the secrecy that he identifies only lead to suspicion? Therefore, it is vital that our police service is beyond reproach.

[Julian Smith]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. My experience in my constituency is of excellent policing. What I am trying to get at in this debate is that some of the things at the top appear to be not beyond reproach.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate and the Yorkshire Post on its investigative work. It is clearly important that transparency is brought to bear on all of the matters that he has raised. What implications does he think that all of this has for the future status of ACPO, bearing in mind the importance of combining independence, accountability and freedom from political interference?

[Julian Smith]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am just about to get there. I would like the Minister’s support in getting all of the information on these ACPO companies.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I too congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. It is clear that some significant concerns about transparency have been raised here. Is my hon. Friend able to say something about ACPO perhaps giving some reassurance to the victims of crime whom it has failed through its conduct? My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. She has done some fantastic work with victims in this area. The lack of consideration of both victims and the people whom the police chiefs serve has been the cause of many of the issues I have raised today.

I would like some additional thoughts from the Minister on these companies. For example, what will happen to them when, inevitably, ACPO changes or is wound up? These companies have traded on the taxpayer’s name. Going back to my hon. Friend’s remarks about victims, if there is some benefit from selling these companies, perhaps it could go to the victims. I would be grateful to the Minister if he could tell us how we ensure that the taxpayer fully benefits from the wind-up of these companies.

Towards the end of last year, the Home Secretary told the House in a written statement that a new police professional body was to be created to develop policing as a single profession, representing the entire service and acting only in the public interest. It also envisaged the setting up of a chief constable’s council to enable senior officers to assess and discuss critical operational issues. I understand that ACPO is resisting that development and the idea of becoming part of a broader professional body because it wants to maintain some form of chiefs’ club. As the Home Affairs Committee recently stated, all levels of the police family should be represented in the new professional organisation. Many of the problems at ACPO seem to have come from an arrogance, a lack of challenge from the lower ranks and a belief that command and control means that the chiefs are accountable to no one.

My message to ACPO is that I and a number of colleagues will relentlessly pursue what it has been doing. It will all come out in the end, so get it out now and respond quickly to our questions. What does the Minister see as the timetable for the future of the organisation and what discussions have the Government had with the president of ACPO to ensure a smooth transition to the new body? Can he confirm that the Government are pushing ahead with a new all-level professional body for the police? What measures are the Government taking to ensure that the new body is fully transparent and accountable? The role of this country’s most senior police officers is vital in protecting our country and our constituents, but I urge the Minister and the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice to reject point blank any idea that ACPO should be retained or revived. Of course there should be a strong professional body for the whole of the police service, and of course there should not be a special cosy club for police chiefs.

Many people involved in ACPO have, at best, been negligent or, at worst, corrupt in how they have managed the resources and opportunities they were granted. I have seen that locally in North Yorkshire, and we have seen it nationally. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) found similar issues with the National Police Improvement Agency. The Government’s policing reforms are right, but they should be even bolder. ACPO should be wound up as quickly as possible, and such gold-plated, dodgy clubs for any leaders of public organisations should be consigned to the past.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. On the issue of timing, the formal position is that anybody to whom recommendations are made is given 56 days to respond to the coroner’s report and recommendations. We will be responding within that timescale but, as I indicated in my previous answer, I intend to do so within a timescale that will enable me to make a statement to the House about that response. I am sure she will understand that as the recommendations were made to a number of bodies across government, as well as Transport for London, it is necessary to co-ordinate that response and make sure that all considerations have properly been taken into account.

On the right hon. Lady’s final point, significant improvements have already been made since 7 July 2005, but the Government are always looking to learn lessons from that incident and any other incidents that take place—should they do so. In doing that, of course we always put at the forefront of our thoughts the intention of ensuring that we can provide the highest level of public security and safety possible, but sadly we can never guarantee that no further terrorist incident will take place.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

T2. What is the Home Secretary doing to ensure that all four Yorkshire police forces work much more closely together to reduce costs?

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

Collaboration by police forces is important both to improve operational effectiveness and to save money. A study by Deloitte a couple of years ago found that Yorkshire and the Humber could realise savings of some £100 million over five years by co-operating more effectively. That is the kind of thing that we want all forces to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman’s question is about fuel prices, which are not a matter for me, or taxation, or patrols. I repeat, however, that we are committed to working with police forces to maintain, and indeed to improve, the visibility and availability of police officers on patrol by making savings elsewhere in police forces.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

T8. At this difficult economic time, what steps is the Minister taking to make it as straightforward as possible for British businesses to take on highly skilled foreign workers, albeit under the auspices of the immigration cap?

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

As my hon. Friend knows, we are introducing a new system for tier 1 and tier 2 for work-based visas, and at the same time we are speeding up the visa both for businesses and for more general visitors. The biggest single complaint has been about the delays in the issuing of visas. I am happy to assure him that we are concerned about that. We are already beginning to see improvements, so that in many of the key markets where we need to operate our visa system is working better than ever before, and we are meeting our service standards.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

That is exactly why the Department for Education’s early intervention grant, worth £2.2 billion in 2011-12, is in place. Early indications of how local areas might make best use of that grant were given in December 2010. It will give them the flexibility to target funding on early interventions, which, as the right hon. Gentleman said, are absolutely vital.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

5. What assessment she has made of the challenges faced by police forces required to police large rural areas.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

Rural areas can present challenges for policing because of their geographical size and the remoteness of their communities. The Government’s reform programme to reduce bureaucracy will help policing in rural and urban areas alike.

[Julian Smith]

I thank my right hon. Friend. Will he urge police forces to work much more closely with fire services and others to share back offices and facilities in rural areas and save taxpayers’ money?

[Nick Herbert]

The short answer is yes. Police forces could make huge savings by collaborating with each other and with other authorities. An example is the proposed national police air service, which will save £15 million a year once it is fully in place. I hope that police authorities will agree to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

The hon. Lady knows that the United Kingdom is committed to working with others, including our European partners, to tackle human trafficking. She was present for the debate in which I said that later in the year we would announce a new strategy on trafficking as a whole. That strategy will enable us not only to build on the work of the last Government in relation to caring for the victims of trafficking—which I commend—but to become much more efficient at prevention, in particular by acting overseas, so that fewer and fewer people are trafficked in the first place. That is the most effective action that we can take to reduce the incidence of this dreadful crime.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

T9. How concerned is the Minister about the increase in family violence towards young women who adopt values that are contrary to the beliefs of their families?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Lynne Featherstone)]

Obviously the Government are very concerned. Any form of violence is unacceptable, and tackling violence against women and girls is a key priority for us. Work to tackle all forms of honour-based violence is included in the strategic narrative that we launched on 25 November, and further information about our approach to the issue will be provided in the supporting action plan that we will publish in the spring.

Immigration

Julian Smith Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Field]

I think it is worse than that. I think that those people had lost confidence in their role as politicians. They had lost sight of the fact that the issue was one that should be dealt with, and ideas about national identity, citizenship and protecting the country fell away from what should have been their main charge.

As you may remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, about 10 minutes ago I was talking about the progress that had been made. The fact that we can now raise points such as this in a friendly way without disputing others’ motives is a sign of the extent to which we, as a group of parliamentarians, have progressed. As for the progress being made in the public debate, let us consider some of the public statements that have been made since the Government announced a temporary cap on the number of people coming here to work. In its submission to the Government, the City of London said that the Government had every right to pursue their policy, but expressed concern about the way in which it might work in practice. The City certainly does not think that the Government should not discuss this topic, or that they should ignore what the electorate were saying during the election, but it would like to enter into detailed conversations.

We have all recently experienced what our electorates think, and none of us enters the Chamber now without being fully aware of the way in which voters in each of our constituencies view the issue of immigration.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the City of London and other global businesses feel some concern about the way in which the policy is applied? Will he say a little about that? While we agree with the moves that he has been sponsoring, we need to ensure that British business is globally competitive.

[Mr Field]

I am immensely grateful for that intervention. Although I intended to stress that point, I did not wish to labour it. I do not think that there is any disagreement between Members, who, while seeing the advantages of immigration, consider that the argument is essentially about numbers, but who do not wish to control those numbers in a way that would harm any economic recovery. If I ever manage to make progress, I shall say more about that.

I think that the electorate managed to convey to us during the three or so weeks of the general election campaign that their concern extended beyond that which had previously been expressed in the House. In their view, the numbers debate was about the growth of population. We see that all around us. According to the most recent data from the Government, 25% of all babies—50% in London—are now born to women who were not themselves born here. There are regular reports of overcrowding in maternity units. In a number of areas, there is real pressure on many primary schools. At a time when our waiting list for housing is growing, 40% of new households consist of immigrants.

As the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) just said, we must not shoot ourselves in the foot, or, even worse, in the head, by calling for further controls and restrictions that would result in an impairment of the necessary recovery on which many of our constituents depend. The Mayor of London is always the most interesting of political characters in the country, but in this context he has held a position, changed his position, and then changed it again. I hope that he will shortly change it for the fourth time, and take a more rounded view of the issue.

The statement issued by the Mayor for today’s debate has three misleading comments—I will not call them longitudinal inexactitudes. First, it is not true that the figure for the number of people coming here last year would suit the Government’s cap. The 2009 figure for net migration is 196,000. If that is a cap, it may be one that the Mayor of London wishes to wear, but it is not one that I would encourage the Government to wear.

Secondly, the Mayor said that if we restrict immigration, there is a danger that our gross national product will fall. That is based on years when the economy was thriving and growing at a record rate. It is impossible to interpret past data in that way when a huge number of our constituents are unemployed—not long-term unemployed but recently unemployed, and anxious to return to work. Any restriction in the numbers might well help them rather than impeding the growth of GDP.

Thirdly, it is wrong to say that 80% of students leave within five years. It is true that 80% are lost in the system within five years, but we have absolutely no idea whether they leave or not.

The Government recently asked the Migration Advisory Committee to report both on the cap and on how, in the longer term, they could best achieve their goal of reducing the net migration figure, which currently stands at hundreds of thousands, to tens of thousands. It is with pleasure that I record my gratitude—as, I am sure, will other speakers—to David Metcalf, whom I knew long before I came to the House of Commons, for the distinguished and intelligent way in which he has chaired the committee, and for his willingness to engage in debate. I know that he has appeared before the Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, but his door is open to others who wish to talk to him about this issue.

The report published by the MAC just before we began our debate is helpful. David Metcalf says that the Government are proceeding in the right direction, and suggests that the reduction should be split—20% among those coming here to work and 80% among non-economic migrants. I think we should debate that. We might ask, for instance, whether we should increase the proportion of non-economic migrants within the cap. He did not say—because he did not have the authority to do so—how important it is to take the heat out of the debate. Perhaps we can move the debate on, by being more relaxed about people coming here to work while also being more concerned about that becoming a route which automatically leads to citizenship.

In the spirit of a constructive debate, may I suggest four ways in which the Government might seek to meet their coalition pledge to reduce net migration significantly? First, I do not see how the Government can make sense of this debate—on which they have, thank goodness, now embarked—unless they look at student numbers. To June this year, those numbers are up 26% on last year, at 362,000. When I make the plea for the Government to look at this area, I am not talking about what most of us would regard as universities. I am asking the Government to focus on what are clearly bogus colleges that have realised that they can sell courses by implying, “Entry to the UK, and from here you can disappear into the UK labour market.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

One of the crucial things that we are doing, as we indicated earlier, is cutting the administrative tasks that need to be done by cutting the extreme levels of bureaucracy that were introduced to policing by the Labour Government.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

T3. Can my right hon. Friend reassure us that the new immigration cap will reflect the need for businesses to recruit international, highly skilled migrants and to transfer international employees internally? Will she make that process as easy and unbureaucratic as possible?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the important issue of the impact of immigration on businesses. As we consider how to introduce the immigration cap, we will take on board comments made by business and its requirements in relation to the operation of the system. However, one thing that we have found recently is that nearly one third of those who arrived via the tier 1 route—the brightest and the best highly skilled migrants—did not take on highly skilled jobs. That is something to which we should pay attention.