Lord Barwell
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Lord Barwell Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
I pay tribute to all three previous speakers, who have set out clearly the arguments relevant to this debate, and I particularly congratulate the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) on securing it.
Back in the autumn, in his speech to the Conservative party conference, the Prime Minister set out an overall mission for the Government, to ensure that this country can win in the global race in which we are engaged. I strongly support that message and have a lot of time for it. We as politicians are sometimes guilty of telling people what they want to hear, but this is actually quite an uncomfortable message because in reality, the world in which we live is not easy and Britain has to earn its living within it.
As well as congratulating the three Members who have spoken so far, I express sympathy for the Minister, for whom I have a high regard. It is his job to balance the Government’s overall mission with what the hon. Member for West Bromwich West acknowledged is our clear task of addressing the public’s concern about levels of migration into this country in recent years—not an easy thing to do. When my constituents communicate with me they sometimes seem to think that the challenges we face are easy to resolve, but the reality of politics is that a lot of these issues are difficult and sometimes point us in conflicting directions. There is also a fundamental conflict between the need in electoral politics for simplicity of message when trying to communicate what our party would do in government, and the complexity of the issues we need to deal with—that point was alluded to in some of the earlier speeches.
Let me say a little about what my constituents think about immigration, which I think is relevant to the debate. I represent a part of south London that is changing rapidly demographically, and it will not be long before no ethnic community is in a majority in the London borough of Croydon, nor will it ever be again. Migration is an issue of real concern to my constituents, particularly because the UK Border Agency has a significant presence in Croydon in Lunar house. Many of my constituents have recently been through the asylum or immigration processes, and I have several thousand constituents who worked for the two units into which the agency has been broken. A lot of my constituents are concerned about the pace of change, and I spend a lot of time talking to them on the doorstep about those concerns. However, I have never heard a constituent express to me a concern about bright people from around the world coming to study at our universities, or about international companies that want to invest in the UK and create businesses, bringing some of their managers and employees to the UK as part of that investment into our economy.
However, I hear a lot of concern about low-skill migration into the EU, which many of my constituents believe—rightly or wrongly—has made it more difficult for them or their children to get work and has depressed wages in sectors of our economy. There is a great deal of concern about unlimited migration from within the EU, and the effect of allowing into the EU countries from eastern Europe, which I strongly support—the concern is about the principle of free movement when the EU incorporates a series of states that are at different levels economically.
There is also huge concern about our failure to control our borders effectively. When I report to my constituents on the Government’s progress in reducing net migration, they are almost universally inclined not to believe the figures, because their perception is that the figures do not include people who are here illegally. On migration policy, therefore, I am most keen for the Government to take more action than they are taking to deal with people who are in this country who should not be here.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Lady has just walked into the Chamber. Normally Members would give it a little bit longer before they intervene. On this occasion she can do so, if Mr Barwell wants to give way.
Nicola Blackwood
I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. You are very kind, as is my hon. Friend.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the introduction of exit checks could be important? In that way, we would know not only how many people are coming into the country, but how many people are going out. One of our biggest problems in developing immigration policy is poor data.
Gavin Barwell
That is something we could consider. The key is building public confidence in the system.
Gavin Barwell
If I can make progress, I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.
I will not go into too much detail on students because the previous hon. Members who made speeches set the situation out clearly, but the UK gains four clear benefits from international students, the first of which is economic. We have heard the figures for the UK as a whole, but the Mayor of London’s office tells me that the economic benefit to London, my city, is about £2.5 billion a year.
The second benefit is to the experience of our students when they are at university. I was lucky enough to attend the university of Cambridge, and can attest to the benefit I gained from studying with pupils from around the world.
The third benefit, which my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) strongly communicated, is to what is frequently referred to as the UK’s soft power. A 2011 Select Committee on Home Affairs report identified that 27 foreign Heads of State had been educated in the UK. That is a difficult benefit to quantify, but an important one to this country.
Gavin Barwell
It does include Syria—clearly, educating Heads of State will not be a benefit universally, but the hon. Gentleman would agree that, in general, having people in leading positions in foreign countries, whether in Governments, the diplomatic service, the military or the business community, is a benefit to the UK.
Gavin Barwell
I will take one more intervention because I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak.
Mr Cunningham
No one would disagree with a number of the hon. Gentleman’s points. For the record, I have always had straight dealings with the Minister in relation to cases I have pursued. Would it not be better if students from abroad were excluded from the immigration numbers? On restoring the manufacturing base, companies in the west midlands such as Jaguar Land Rover will need more and more highly skilled people, whether from abroad or from within. German companies such as Bosch and a large number of universities are in Coventry and the west midlands. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that a better approach would be to exclude students from abroad from our figures to help our exports?
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman finished his intervention just before the bell, I believe, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Gavin Barwell
I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s substantive point at the end of my speech, but on his point on skills, when there are skill needs in our economy, our starting point should be to ask, “Can we train people in this country who have not got work to do those jobs?” However, if there are high-skill gaps, we should of course bring people in if we need them.
The fourth benefit of such migration, which has not been mentioned much, is the contribution to UK science and technology. I studied natural science at Cambridge and was on the Select Committee on Science and Technology for a period, so I feel passionately about this. Some 49% of people on taught postgraduate course in maths, engineering or computer science are international students—that figure has been mentioned. Cutting down on those numbers would have a massive effect on UK leadership in science. Sir Andre Geim, the Russian-born Nobel prize winner from the university of Manchester, has said that the identification of graphene would
“probably not have happened if”
he
“had been unable to employ great non-EU PhD postdoctoral students”.
Those are the four clear benefits, but there are problems. The Higher Education Statistics Agency provides figures for enrolments, not for visa applications—enrolments are the best measure. In 2011, there was a slight decline in applications for first-year places at university from non-EU applicants. Admittedly, the position is complex, with significant country variations—there was a big increase in applications from China, but a big decrease in applications from India. I should be grateful if the Minister would offer an explanation for those significant variations if he has time. Students from different parts of the world tend to apply for different courses. Indian students are more likely to apply for STEM courses, so those variations have an impact on universities. In 2012, for the first time in 10 years, the total number of non-EU postgraduate students fell.
The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) correctly identified the three issues we need to address, the first of which is bureaucracy and the process people must go through when they want to come here. I pay tribute to the Minister and the Home Secretary, because the decision to split the UKBA up into two organisations—one focuses on customer satisfaction and processing applications for people who want to come here, and the other focuses on the entirely different job of enforcement and removing people who should not be here—was the right decision, and a welcome one. However, there is more to do to improve the process and the experience people have when they apply.
The second issue is the tone and the message we send out in debates on migration—that is not totally within the Government’s control, because we must also consider the tone of the migration debate in our media. The Government have recognised the importance of sending the message that the UK is open for business, as we saw during the Prime Minister’s recent visit to India.
The third issue is policy. We have a target for reducing net migration and should ask who is included in it. One hon. Member has mentioned the Migration Advisory Committee, which has said that an equivalent reduction in all different forms of migration could reduce student migration by 87,000. I put it to the Minister that, in 2009-10, the National Audit Office identified that about 50,000 students looked as if their principal reason for coming here was work rather than study. All hon. Members would accept that there was significant abuse of the process. That happened through institutions— bogus colleges—but we all see what we might regard as serial students, meaning people who have come here and done a number of courses but still not reached undergraduate level. Clearly, their primary motivation for coming to this country is to work in the UK, whatever their visa application says. All hon. Members accept that there was potential to reduce the numbers without having an impact on the positive aspects we have discussed.
On the long-term situation, the House has made its view clear on the policy, but I am interested in what the Conservative party will say in its next manifesto. As hon. Members have said, the sector has the potential nearly to double by 2020. At the moment, about 4.1 million around the world study in tertiary education abroad. The projection is that that will go up to 7 million by 2020. We should at least set ourselves the objective of maintaining our market share, which is currently about 13%. We have done the job of squeezing down on student migration abuse, but if our objective is to maintain or grow our market share and continue to recruit the people we want in this country, it will creep up over time.
I support what my party had to say at the previous election. It was absolutely right to focus on this, and I think many Opposition Members recognise that. In the longer term, we need to think more clearly about how we differentiate to the public the kinds of immigration that we are looking to control—the bits that we do not think are good for the country and want to squeeze down on, both illegal immigration and immigration through the existing system. We should not get ourselves into a position where we are trying to control things that we all recognise are positive and good for the country. I wish the Minister, for whom I have a very high regard, the best of luck as he grapples with the difficult balance that has to be struck between ensuring that we win the global race, but address the legitimate concerns many of my constituents have about the level of immigration.