Global Migration and Mobility (EUC Report)

Lord Bew Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hannay for securing this important debate. If he will forgive me, I, like other noble Lords, will concentrate on one facet of the GAMM report: the section that deals with international students and net migration targets, covered by paragraphs 181 to 188 of the report. I am absolutely in agreement with the broad spirit of these paragraphs. It is vital that our universities should retain their open stance and international aspect, and that they remain competitive and attractive on a world scale.

When I was a student in Cambridge in 1968, the most influential essay among left-wing students was an article in the New Left Review by Perry Anderson called Components of the National Culture. The article demonstrated magnificently that a high percentage of the leading figures responsible for the crucial high-water marks and components of our culture, to whom we owe an enormous debt, were penniless migrants from Europe during a very troubled century. That essay was recently reprinted in a book called English Questions. It is a reminder that what we often think of as an English question is constructed from much more complex and heterogeneous roots.

I absolutely stand by the broad spirit of the GAAM report. It is not just a matter of soft power. Higher education contributed £8 billion to the UK economy in 2009. Paragraph 231 of the report suggests, in effect, that students should be excluded from the Government’s net migration targets. To no one’s great surprise, the reply of the Minister, Mark Harper, to my noble friend Lord Boswell, chair of the EU Committee, was less than enthusiastic. He concluded:

“The net migration statistics are produced by the Independent Office for National Statistics, and they have historically included students. The UK will continue to comply with the international definition of net migration, which covers all those coming for more than 12 months”—

including students—

“regardless of any intention to leave”.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, used the word “dodgy” to describe the Government’s reply. Indeed, there is a certain evasiveness about it. Technically, it is a perfectly logical reply, which faces up to one of the great objections of the university sector—that we do know that the vast majority of people who come to this country to study courses leave once they have completed those courses. As I say, technically, there is nothing wrong with the reply, but I fully accept that it is slightly evasive. It is abstracted from what we all know to be the tensions in British politics around these questions of immigration, particularly this year.

There is another aspect of this issue that we in the university sector have to take into account. The media exposure to bogus colleges has been a crucial development in the past couple of years, whereby one saw basically a vast network of Potemkin villages revealed to the dismay, I think, of the British public. Even the university sector itself has not been immune to practices which appear to be not particularly impressive. I remind your Lordships of the Daily Telegraph sting in Peking about a year ago, which seemed to show that one of our most respected business schools was offering in China diluted qualifications for entry. All these things have an impact. Within the university sector people will say, “Actually, if you look at the qualifications of people coming in, they are on average higher than those of more locally based candidates”. One could say that the Chinese sting is unrepresentative, but I speak in your Lordships’ House on a day when we await the “Panorama” coverage of a sting of Members of this House. Once these things come out in this way, it is not enough to say, “We all know that this is unrepresentative and not typical”. The truth of the matter is that a public interest is established to which we have to respond more decisively than by saying that these stings are unrepresentative and give an unfair picture of the overall pattern in this area.

Although I think that the Government’s response is evasive in a sense, there are reasons why any Government would have concerns in this area. Those of us who like to speak in this House and argue on behalf of the university sector have to take those reasons into account. However, in paragraph 188, the GAMM report goes on to say something else of considerable importance. It says:

“If the Government genuinely favour an increase in bona fide students from outside the EU they should make this clearer”.

I could not agree more. In this respect, I am slightly more confident than the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, was about the Prime Minister’s remarks in India when he addressed this question very directly. A lot of the statistics in this area are a little unclear. The exact extent to which students are discouraged by the fact that they are included in net migration figures is not clear. There seems to be a slight falling off of enthusiasm to come to the United Kingdom, but it is pretty small. What is not in doubt is the very significant drop of 24% in the number of those coming from India. This was pointed out by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. That is the one figure which is not in dispute. There are reasons for it but it is a serious drop and something which has to be addressed. It is a very regrettable phenomenon. That is why it was important that the Prime Minister made it clear in India that genuine prospective international students are welcome and that there is no cap on numbers. He also made the very important point that there are opportunities to work for a period during and after study and that the UK wants and values international students. It was very important that he spoke in that way in India.

The truth is that the vast majority of students from outside this country will make their decisions not on the basis of whether students are included in the government target but on the quality of the course. All the evidence shows that. This country is second in the world in terms of its attractiveness to international students. There is no reason to believe that that will be challenged but we have to be vigilant. That is why I was particularly disturbed by the example of the Brazilian students mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, towards the end of his speech. That was a disturbing case that did not indicate the open attitude that we should have to able and well qualified students.

I return to GAMM report, which states:

“If the Government genuinely favour an increase in bona fide students from outside the EU they should make this clearer and ensure that all policy instruments support this objective”.

I ask the Minister to give the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and myself a little comfort on this matter.