Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

The sector was very vocal in its concerns about the financial impact of the changes and wider arguments than those referred to in the impact assessment were shared with your Lordships. I recall my noble friend Lady Benjamin, who is Chancellor of Exeter University, talking about the value that students bring to the local area, and bluntly, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The sector is such a good earner, such a good revenue generator well beyond its immediate operation, that restricting access as a proposition frankly defeats me.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I join my noble friend in welcoming the Motion that has been tabled by the noble Lord, Lord, Hunt, and I find myself in substantial and almost entire agreement with every single word that he spoke in support of it. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hamwee on the sterling work that she does on the Merits Committee which has resulted in bringing this matter before the House, and not for the first time. I remind your Lordships that this is the second occasion in a row when the Merits Committee has commented on a statement of changes in the Immigration Rules. That indicates to me that all is not well in the direction of the UKBA. I often thought that the separate management of the UKBA was a mistake. At a time when the Government are looking for economies, they could perhaps do worse than to consider bringing it back under the umbrella of the Home Office.

The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, uses the wording of the Merits Committee report and is none the worse for that. It regrets that it is not clear from the IA or the Explanatory Memorandum how the findings from the consultation have fed into the development of the policy or the estimate of the costs and benefits of the changes. As far as I can see, that is not an opinion, but a fact.

In the most glaring case of a discrepancy between the responses to the consultation questionnaire and the statement, 85 per cent of the respondents disagreed with the proposal further to restrict students’ paid work when there is no evidence that it has impaired their academic performance and when fee increases have made it much harder for students to pay their way. There are many other instances where significant minority responses have been overridden. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about the considerable uncertainties affecting student numbers and the costs and benefits laid out in the impact assessment, which I shall come to discuss in a few minutes.

As one would expect, more than three-quarters of English language school respondents disagreed with the proposal to require all tier 4 students to demonstrate level B2 English proficiency, a requirement which will be a major problem for many schools and private colleges of further education. The IA states that unless English language schools can attract either EU students or student visitor route applicants, they face going out of business. The replacement estimate of 80 per cent, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred, is not only difficult to believe but pure guesswork. Schools say that a £1 billion industry is being put in jeopardy.

The Government have recognised the particular difficulties of the English language sector, however, by creating the extended student visa route, allowing applicants to come here for 11 months, which is non-renewable. They are not allowed to work or bring in dependants, or to switch into other routes including tier 4. When this was announced in December 2010, the Minister said that he would monitor it closely to ensure that it did not become a loophole and take a decision on whether to make it permanent in due course. I understand that it is working well so far. I should like the Minister to tell us when a decision will be taken on incorporating this route into the rules.

In the past, some English language and FE colleges have been used as a way of gaining entry to the UK with the intention of working illegally. It would be useful to know whether the Minister has details of the attendance records of those admitted under the extended student visa route since it came into force on January 10, and if not, how else he is monitoring the new route. I hope that the bogus colleges have been eliminated since it was provided that overseas students could apply only to those schools which are accredited and the list of schools was reduced by some 90 per cent to 1,500, all of which are registered with the UKBA. But there may still be a residual problem with individuals who apply to a genuine college simply to gain entry. If so, what obligations do the colleges have to report unexplained absences to the UKBA, and are any statistics available on those absences as an indication of the use of education as a continuing route to illegal entry? I ask this question believing that the loophole has been finally closed, but it would be useful to have that reassurance from the Minister.

An additional problem has been created for the English language sector in that the Government suddenly decided at the end of July, without any consultation, that it was going to be subject to a new inspection regime in substitution for the one that has been operated—as far as I am concerned, perfectly satisfactorily —by the British Council for many years. This will be a monopoly handed to the Independent Schools Inspectorate, which has no experience or knowledge of the sector and intends to charge four times as much as the British Council has in the past. Since the BC/Accreditation UK inspection scheme is fit for purpose, which I ask the Minister to acknowledge, the right answer as proposed by the schools is that BIS and DfE should jointly designate the private further education sector as subject to regulation and approve BC/Accreditation UK as an inspection body under the powers of the Education Act 2002. Would my noble friend the Minister be kind enough to comment on that proposal? I shall ask him to address the overall problems of the sector that English UK has drawn to my attention, which are too numerous, complex and potentially disastrous to be covered adequately in this debate.

The rationale for the statement is clearly set out in the impact assessment: that too many migrants have been allowed to enter the UK and that the Government's aim is to reduce the level of net migration to sustainable levels. As students make up the majority of non-EU immigrants, yet we do not propose putting a limit on their numbers, we have to make it harder for student applicants to enter and harder to sustain themselves by working part-time while they are studying if they are not the brightest and best. Deterring students from coming to Britain will certainly reduce the numbers, but on the Government’s own estimate it will do so at a cost of £2.4 billion a year to the economy—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee—and possibly even more in the long term. Of course it is necessary to ensure that every student who enters the UK is studying at a bona fide education institution towards a qualification that will enhance their prospects when they return home, as the IA emphasises, but the statement does nothing directly to eliminate bogus providers, which I presume, as I have said already, have been eliminated by the inspection regimes put in place over recent years. It concentrates entirely on making life harder for all students, the legitimate as well as those who in the past have used the education route as a means of entering the country with the intention of illegal working.

It has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend that no impact assessment was published for the previous statement of changes. The one that we are looking at today, although it does not say so, covers both this and the previous statement. Will the Government give an undertaking that Parliament will never again be asked to consider changes to the Immigration Rules unless we are provided with an IA?

The IA states that we need to filter out those who contribute least and who pose the highest immigration risk. There may be good reasons for the accreditation by Ofsted and its devolved equivalents of all tier 4 sponsors and for making them all highly trusted sponsors, as suggested in the IA, but are these changes in the statement? I do not see them either in the statement or in the Explanatory Memorandum. HTS accreditation costs £14,000, and I am told that all colleges, including those offering only the extended student visitor courses of up to 11 months not covered by tier 4, need to obtain this status in order to be considered favourably by applicants and their agents overseas.

I do not see, either, the changes in the English Language requirement mentioned on page 11 of the impact assessment, demanding B2 for undergraduates and above, and B1 for lower-level courses. Perhaps the Minister could point out where this is mentioned in the statement. There is enough paperwork to be digested in assessing the statement without the inclusion of text that refers to some other provision.

The estimates given for the reduction in student numbers and the costs and benefits arising from the changes in this statement and its predecessor, taken together, are subject to huge margins of uncertainty, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out. Increases in the levels of fees are bound to put off many applicants as well and the danger is that the combined effect of these increases and the present changes, together with increased competition from overseas, will seriously damage an industry that, according to an independent study for BIS, produces something like £14 billion of annual exports, potentially increasing to £26 billion in 2025. Reductions in the fee income from overseas students may undermine the high standards that we have always maintained in both higher and further education, driving students into the arms of our competitors and producing negative feedback—a threat not taken into consideration in the IA. Nor has account been taken of the intangible loss of the tens of thousands of former students who have attended our universities and colleges of further education all over the world and the links that they have with the United Kingdom.

The Government’s commitment to reducing immigration numbers, and their inability to attack other routes such as work or asylum, have led them to concentrate on education, relying on dodgy and unverifiable statistics and ignoring inconvenient responses to the consultation to arrive at conclusions already determined. I certainly hope that I am wrong in fearing the damage that may be caused by the measures that we are taking. I hope that my noble friend will be able to offer me an assurance that the Government will closely monitor the immediate effects of the changes in this and the previous statement on the higher and further education sector, and be prepared with remedial policies if it does turn out that we have impaired the contribution that they make to our economy by even more than the £2.4 billion we are already throwing away.