Student Visas

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

For the avoidance of doubt, I had better declare an interest. From time to time, I receive remuneration from the higher education sector for work I do with it.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate. After being a council leader for Sheffield and an MP for the city for 24 years, I thank him for drawing my attention to the international college’s work. I was unaware of the extent of that work—every day, I am on a learning curve.

There seem to be two aspects to what we are debating. The first is the macro. That relates to the overall issue of migration and its impact on our country and the politics in which we are all engaged. The second is the unauthorised, the unauthenticated and the unacceptable. That relates to those colleges and institutions that either do not exist or, if they do, do not provide what they say on the can they offer. In addition, such institutions do not offer courses of sufficient quality to students of sufficient quality.

Those two aspects are getting slightly mixed up, although that is not because the first matter is not important. To coin a phrase from the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, I certainly have scars on my back from the near four years I was Home Secretary in terms of the two major pieces of legislation that we introduced and the changes we made. That included the two-thirds reduction in asylum, the security and immigration provisions on French soil, the measures regarding liaison officers at airports across the world and a substantial tightening up of how we operated visas. Such policies provided a foundation on which my Government subsequently built and this Government have been building. The issue is incremental. If we take a step in one direction, we find that the plastic bottle has bulged out in another. I suggest to the Minister, who is deeply committed to this matter, that immigration will affect this Government, as it did previous ones.

As the issue has been mentioned, I would like to say how much I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) about embarkation and e-Borders. I was responsible for kick-starting e-Borders, but I claim no credit or discredit whatsoever for the contract that was let. In fact, when the 20-year rule comes in, there will be letters on file from me as a Back Bencher advising against what was done. The speed of operation to get this right is critical because, if we do not know who is leaving, we really cannot make a judgment about whether the system is working. That applies directly to students who have fulfilled their courses and/or their term afterwards for permission to work. If the system is working properly, much of what we are debating would be seen in that broader context, and we would not be so obsessed with artificial targets for future migrants. We would be able to deal with the issue of what a migrant actually is and provide a proper definition in a way that removes the harder edge of politics.

It is inevitable that there will be politics involved in discussions on immigration. We might then debate issues and not end up with policies that damage the country, rather than enhance its well-being. I do not intend to repeat what has already been expressed, because time is pushing on and extremely good points have been made. Even those points that I have doubts about have been enlightening. I would, however, like to reinforce some of the key points that have emerged.

First, the economic value to this country is not just the money that comes into the universities or the local community, but the way in which those who have benefited from both the study in, and the experience of, our country add to our potential economic value in years to come, as they become the advocates for Britain and part of global institutions and enterprises, whose connection with and alumni from our institutions make an enormous difference to Britain in this global economy and international trading world.

Secondly, to take up the point made by the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), our universities are able to offer that social responsibility much better if they have a higher level of agreed income. The income that is coming in from overseas, free as it is from issues of debt repayment and the difficulties that we have debated over recent months, adds to a university’s ability to contribute to the wider community and the social well-being of our country. The issue is much broader than whether the university itself has an enhanced income, important as that is.

Thirdly, there is an issue about whether we really want numbers of legitimate, verified students, with the right qualifications in the right quality of institution, in this country. If we listen carefully to the debate, we will hear that everyone pays lip service to the importance of legitimate students coming here, but we then hear a different nuance, namely, “But they are foreigners and that is dangerous, because our electorate do not really like foreigners.” We need to get off that and on to where migration policy has not worked properly—even the measures for which I was responsible did not always work—and the importance of enforcement. We need proper inspection and enforcement, including clamping down on those colleges that do not really exist or are just an excuse for people to get into the country. Moreover, if our legitimate university and higher education institutions, both in the public and the embryo private sector, are not checking whether students are taking up their courses, enforcement is the crucial element. That is the end at which we need to ensure that we get this right, rather than trying to reduce, per se, the number of legitimate students coming into the country. That is critical.

In 2000, I led a delegation, which included the Higher Education Funding Council and this country’s leading universities, to China. The Chinese welcomed us and were very pleased to have a two-way arrangement with us that includes students coming on a temporary basis to learn our language and about our systems. That was a good thing to do, and anything that damages it would be a major mistake.

That brings me to my central point. It is the message we send that is absolutely critical, and the message that has been received outside this country is the wrong one. It is not that we want to avoid the illegitimate, the unacceptable and the fraudulent, either in terms of the provision in our country or of those coming in for reasons other than to study properly. The message that is being received outside this country, as has already been said, is, “You will not be welcome.” Will the Minister do everything possible, along with our embassies and high commissions, to change the message, so that it is received properly and understood by students and industry? Sponsored students are very important, and major enterprises across the world need to know that their potential employees, or those who are sponsored by them, are welcome in this country.

I want to touch briefly on the complications that we face. Many of them could be overcome if there was greater flexibility in the transition period—there is no question about that. It is no good for the Minister, who intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central, to say that, if firm offers were made before 21 April, certificates would be honoured. As was pointed out almost immediately, many of those offers are conditional and do not therefore apply. In some sectors, including professional bodies and professional courses, the number of certificates has been capped arbitrarily, sometimes at levels including those that have been taken on from institutions that no longer exist or have been deregulated. They have, therefore, been punished for picking up students who were badly treated by those that did not come up to standard.

I would like us to address why we do not use highly trusted sponsor status and the oversight mechanisms of professional and private sector operators, which will now be operated by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education—I congratulate it on the speed with which it has moved—rather than a complicated system that does not rely on enforcement and inspection, but on the front end rather than the back end. To complicate matters, it is crucial—this has been said by the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller)—that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills gets its act together with the Home Office, so that they speak the same language and that those with expertise share it. For instance, on professional qualifications for accountancy, why suddenly drop in, as the statement and assessment did on Monday, that there has to be approval at gold or platinum level by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, when it has preferred providers of its own? These professional qualifications are a bit like the guild system in mediaeval England.

I counsel the Minister to be very careful not to get involved in what is corporatism. For somebody who is a declared libertarian, that is a dangerous position to be in. We should not put into the hands of those who have a specific interest in particular providers the ability to exclude other providers. That is a dangerous game in terms of the kind of oversight that we would expect.

In brief, I do not think that any Member present does not think that it is a good idea to progress on the road of tightening up in relation to those who have been fraudulently operating the system or those who come here and are not legitimate students. Let us all agree on that. We might even agree that those of us who tried in the past did not come up to scratch in achieving the goals that we set ourselves. A little humility from all of us on that might not be amiss. It is important that the lessons of history are learnt: sometimes, speed leads to the obverse of the objective that is sought, and a little give and take—sensibly, openly and without criticism when people are flexible, so that we give the Minister a bit of leeway—might achieve the overall goal that he and, I believe, BIS seek, namely a system that works and welcomes people into this country, because it is good for our economy, good for our social life and good for the future of Britain.