Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Blunkett and Lord Green of Deddington

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to oppose Amendment 150. I am sure that noble Lords will listen very carefully to the arguments that have not yet been made. I should make it clear that I speak as someone who is firmly in favour of foreign students. I agree with much of what my noble friend Lord Hannay had to say, and it is hard to disagree with most of the contributions that we have heard this afternoon from people who run universities and colleges, who know students and who are absolutely clear about the benefits of foreign students. I agree with that.

However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether there is a problem here in relation to immigration—a massive issue for the public—and, if so, what should be done about it? Is it sensible, viable or feasible to make immigration policy by legislation? I rather doubt that, and if your Lordships look a little more carefully at this amendment, you will see that there are matters in it that do not square up with the reality of how the immigration system works and really go beyond legal matters in terms of trying to suggest what policies should be.

The first, most incredibly obvious, point to make—and it has not been made yet—is that any student who comes here, does his course, maybe works for a while and then goes home, does not contribute to net migration. They are counted in and they are counted out: they do not make any difference to net migration. What is more, all of our competitor countries mentioned today—Canada, the United States, and Australia—include, by the way in which they calculate their immigration figures, their students who stay on. There is no question about that. Therefore, the issue for public policy is, surely, how many do stay on illegally, not how many stay on legally. As my noble friend Lord Bilimoria mentioned, that is a matter, at the moment, of intense scrutiny by the ONS and the Home Office, and rightly so. That issue needs to be resolved. If there is a serious degree of overstaying, that has to be dealt with. If the statistics are weak, then we need to change our tune and perhaps change our policy.

It is not clear to me what, in practice, this amendment is intended to achieve; in the real world, the ONS will continue to use the international passenger survey in order to assess the flow of students in both directions—exactly the same definitions used by all of our competitors. If the amendment is intended to mean that students should be ignored, both on their arrival and on their departure, there is simply no measure whatever of whether they contribute to net migration or not. As international students from outside the EU now contribute 46,000 a year to net migration, it is a significant number. We do not know whether that is accurate, but it is a significant part of the case and needs to be considered.

Therefore, this proposed new clause will not clarify matters: it will only add to confusion over the numbers. If its only purpose is, as some noble Lords have suggested, to require the Government, when all the numbers are put together, to put into a separate paragraph those who are students, that is fine, but that is a political decision, not a matter for legislation. Whoever takes that decision is going to have to say, “Now wait a minute: what happens if we actually do that?”. I can think of one or two newspapers that might add them straight back in and then accuse the Government of fiddling the figures. That needs to be borne in mind.

Lastly, subsection (3) of the proposed new clause seeks to legislate to prevent any tightening of conditions for foreign students. Surely that is a matter for policy and not law. The House will be aware, I hope, that there are very strong pressures on our immigration system and, in particular, that there has been widespread abuse at the college level. The National Audit Office estimated that in one year, to 2010, about 50,000 students from the Indian subcontinent came here to work rather than to study. That largely explains the drop in students from India, which has been referred to once or twice. The House certainly knows that 900 bogus colleges have lost their licence to bring in foreign students. That is a massive number. This has been a scandal that has gone on for years and I very much regret that from the academic lobby, which should be powerful, accurate and on the case, hardly a word have we heard. I sometimes wonder whether some of the stuff put out by Universities UK gives a negative impression of our universities. These are the people who have been complaining and complaining for six years—of course foreign students are going to think that something is up and they are not terribly welcome.

I turn now to the university level, which I think is what most noble Lords have been talking about. We cannot preclude the possibility that there will, in future, be scams that apply to universities. Noble Lords will remember, I hope, that in 2011-12 the highly trusted sponsor licences were suspended from Glasgow Caledonian University, Teesside University and London Metropolitan University. Why? Because they had been on the fiddle. What will happen in the future if this amendment is passed and a raft of smaller, less distinguished universities than those mentioned by my noble friends start fiddling the system, one way or another? The Government’s hands will be bound by law. That cannot possibly make any sense.

In my view, these amendments do not amount to scrutiny nor to holding the Government to account. Rather, they are an attempt to make policy by legislation. I suggest to the House—and I am not in a majority tonight—that that is wrong both in practice and in principle.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. I did not intend to speak but when I hear the noble Lord, Lord Green, I understand that what he believes to be fact, others perceive to be opinion. It seems to me that we need to get this straight. We are not talking about bogus colleges in this amendment at all. The noble Lord has drawn attention to the example of 2012. I do not normally go out of my way to defend a Conservative-led Government, but that example actually demonstrated that the toughening-up of the system in higher education was working, albeit there were questions at the edges in relation to the 10% threshold. However, it also demonstrated that the system of inquiry and review was secure.

What we are talking about tonight has to be good for Britain, by common sense, morality and economy. It has to be good for Britain for a psychological reason, which I probably need to try to explain to the noble Lord, Lord Green. It is true that students who come in and go out eventually contribute to the net migration calculation. But if we have a drive to bring people to the United Kingdom, which I think virtually everyone in this House wants, then when those increased numbers come in they show up in the immigration figures as a net increase, but it is down the line that they show up as a net decrease. By driving to bring people here, you negatively affect the psychology of the way in which people perceive net migration. If higher education students are taken out of the figures, it would immediately reduce the perceived totals—the headlines to which the noble Lord referred in the tabloid newspapers for which he has written and for which, from time to time, I have written myself.

It is all about the way people perceive that the Government are failing in their net migration targets because things are included that should not be, specifically higher education students. People see the headline figure and they react to it—understandably so, because they do not have the arguments put in the way that we are debating them tonight. I am sorry to delay your Lordships’ House but when the noble Lord, Lord Green, speaks, my hackles rise and my intellect demands that I at least try to counteract his lifelong drive to reduce the number of people coming to the United Kingdom.