Immigration Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, the hour is late and there is much to say, but I will be brief in my remarks. Let me begin by declaring an interest as a member of the court of the University of Hertfordshire, which is very like what the right reverend Prelate had to say about the University of Bedfordshire—a very young, growing but exciting and expanding university in a part of the world which, rather surprisingly, has not got as many universities as exist around Oxford and Cambridge and London.

Let me be quick and say the following. I would like first to add one other distinguished name to the list given by my noble friend Lord Maclennan. It is a name worth thinking about for a moment, and it is of course that of the new President of Iran. He holds a postgraduate degree from Glasgow Caledonian University, and one has to ask oneself whether his much more enlightened view of global relationships has nothing whatever to do with the fact that he is one of the very few senior figures in Iranian society who has spent substantial time outside his own country, speaks good English and is interested in what is happening elsewhere. That is the kind of benefit, one which cannot be listed economically, that a country like ours gets from the very wide spread of its students from all over the world who, over the last generation, have attended universities in this country. Out of that has grown an abiding affection both for their university and for the country in which it happens to be located.

Let us be honest: there is a profound division of opinion within the Government on this issue. We all know that the department for business enthusiastically supports the idea of a substantially greater expansion of British universities. That department includes some able Ministers with considerable knowledge of higher education, and it knows one important thing. The important thing that it knows is that you can grow out of a university relationship a whole range of relationships with other businesses, public services and so forth across the front. The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, pointed to the effect of this kind of relationship on global attitudes. It allows us to extend our acquaintances and friendships all over the world.

I shall put this very particularly because the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said something less dramatic than I am about to say. He pointed out quite rightly that the National Union of Students study, based on a careful poll conducted at the end of last year of more than 3,000 students in this country, is the best figure that he could get; it is a figure showing what undergraduates think. Some 51% of undergraduates have said that they think that this country is not welcoming to overseas students. The more drastic figure—more drastic for the reasons given by my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lady Benjamin—shows that 66% of postgraduate students, people who have spent some time studying here, take the view that this country is unwelcoming to overseas students. These are the very men and women to whom the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, was referring when he talked about relationships with scientific, medical and cultural groups in this country. They have a valuable contribution to make, but increasingly they are being somewhat frozen out.

One of the worst examples of this is the playing around with visas, which means that students suddenly find themselves without a visa a matter of months before they are due to start their course, and no one repays them for the work they have done to get that visa in the first place. British visas are among the most expensive to be found in any country offering higher education in the whole of Europe. Our visa expenses are something like three or four times higher than those of our major competitors. Now we are going to add to that cost health surcharges, decisions about tenancies and a whole range of things, all of which are off-putting and not welcoming. I agree with my noble friend Lady Hamwee that this country has to make a great effort to retain this huge asset value in one of the few areas in which we still lead the world. It is to my mind almost totally irrational to make it harder and harder for our most effective industry, that of higher education, to expand, grow, root itself and be there for the distant future.

The reason for all this is that we have become so obsessed with immigration numbers that we can no longer see the larger picture. The great bulk of students, over 95%, who come here to study go back to their own countries, having fostered friendships and relationships with us. I shall give only one example before I stop. In this country we suffer considerably from a long increase in waiting times for people getting into, for example, A&E to look after accidents and injuries that they have. We used to have a substantial number of junior doctors serving in A&E, particularly those who came from countries like India, but elsewhere as well, who gained great knowledge of medicine and of our hospitals and made a huge contribution to a National Health Service that ran smoothly. Increasingly, those numbers are no longer there. In two years’ time we shall see A&E waits rise, and we shall ask, “How did this come to happen?”. The answer is right here and now. It comes to happen if we turn off the young medics who would like to come here, who would like to learn about how we work and about how our health service works and then go back to their own countries and spread that knowledge more widely.

So I end simply by saying that we have a profound schizophrenia in this country on this issue. I do not understand why it is not clearly seen to be of such advantage to us, to our own people and to those who come. We do not recognise that we should have the strength to face up to looking again at this extraordinary conflict that we look at all the time between different departments, different people and different individual political attitudes. We should look at it and say to ourselves that this is something that we do very well, something for which we have been admired, something which benefits the world and benefits us, and decide to get on with it and make our universities the core of one of our most rapidly rising and highest reputation industries.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I shall briefly add my support to both Amendment 26 and my noble friend’s Amendment 80. The fact is that overseas students are temporary migrants. They should be both treated and reported differently. These two amendments reflect that approach.

This debate is very timely. Last week, the net migration figures were published and none of the media coverage disaggregated the figures. I do not know what the Government’s original press release stated, but it seems that by publishing in that form they are simply creating a rod for their own back. Amendment 80 at least is an attempt to make sure that for some purposes, the student visa figures are clearly and publicly disaggregated.

The obsession with the original pledge to reduce net migration to tens of thousands seems to me and to many others in the university sector to be totally counterproductive in terms of its impact on our ability to attract foreign students. I and many others made clear on Second Reading that we are in danger of an adverse impact both in economic terms and in terms of the soft power to which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and my noble friend Lord Maclennan referred. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, the total number of international students coming to the UK fell for the first time last year.

The number of voices that we have heard over the past two years, not just in this House, has been legion in that respect. In 2012, 68 representatives of universities wrote to the Government urging that these figures should be disaggregated for public policy purposes. The Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee did likewise. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to the five chairmen of Select Committees. All the aforementioned are powerful voices recommending that for domestic policy purposes, overseas students should not be counted against the overall limit on net migration.

Contrary to that, the Government’s response to the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee’s report stated that they were following the same practice as the US, Canada and Australia, our main higher education competitors. That is simply not the case. Those countries do exclude students, treating them as temporary migrants for domestic policy development. It is high time that we did likewise—failing which we are going to find that we are in grave difficulties over our ability to attract these students in future.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, this has been an important and interesting debate. It is really about appeals, but I understand why many noble Lords have also used the opportunity to talk about student issues. It is an issue which was well canvassed during your Lordships’ debate at Second Reading. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has amendments—or at least an amendment—down later in the Bill, where I am sure there will be an opportunity again to debate these matters.

I will of course try to respond to a number of the points that were made but it might be useful to put this into context—the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, spoke to the clause stand part debate and to other amendments with proposed new clauses—and to look at some of the issues regarding students in that context. The key point is that we believe that the present appeals system is complex and costly. The purpose of Clause 11 is to reform and streamline the appeals system so that appeals can be brought only where decisions engaging the fundamental rights of asylum, human rights or EU free movement are made. The clause will also set up an administrative review system to provide a proportionate and less costly mechanism for resolving casework errors.

Clause 11 changes the decisions that give rise to an appeal, the grounds on which that appeal can be brought and the jurisdiction of the tribunal to consider them. As I said, it is intended to simplify an overly complex appeals system. That complexity provides the opportunity for multiple appeals and allows removal to be delayed by the lodging of an appeal as of right where there is no arguable error or where there is a simple casework error that can be corrected more quickly and effectively by administrative review. I will come on to the wider points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, which I am sure we will debate fully. The Joint Committee on Human Rights accepted that there was a legitimate objective to reduce unmeritorious claims, although I accept that other issues arise with that.

Clause 11(2) reduces to four the number of decisions that can be appealed. We recognise the importance of an appeal to an independent tribunal where a case involves fundamental rights such as asylum and human rights, and the provision preserves an appeal right in these cases. A right of appeal is also preserved where the decision was to refuse a claim based on European Union rights. That appeal right is established by secondary legislation under Section 109 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and therefore does not form part of the Bill.

A right of appeal is not the most appropriate remedy for cases that do not involve fundamental rights. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, mentioned that our internal sampling showed that 60% of allowed appeals against decisions under the points-based system are allowed because of casework error, and asked when that sampling was done. It was a 2% sample between April and June 2013. An appeal is a costly and time-consuming way to correct a casework error but it is not the case, as I think the noble Baroness said, that we are trying to stop a challenge where there is a casework error. There will be an administrative review system, which is what we have been debating and what we believe is the most appropriate remedy in these cases.

Subsection (3) repeals Sections 83 and 83A of the 2002 Act, which provide for a right of appeal on asylum grounds where asylum was refused or revoked but leave was granted on other grounds. They are no longer necessary, as subsection (2) provides for a right of appeal directly against the refusal of, or revocation of, asylum in all cases. Subsection (4) sets out the grounds on which an appeal can be brought. Clause 11 simplifies what is currently a complex system so that the only grounds on which an appeal can be brought reflect the decision under challenge. Subsection (5) restores the Secretary of State’s position as primary decision-maker on asylum and human rights claims and prevents appellants from raising new issues for the first time on appeal. Under the current appeals system, the tribunal has jurisdiction to decide such issues even though the Secretary of State has not had the chance to consider them. For example, a student appealing against the refusal of an application to study in the UK can currently raise asylum or their Article 8 rights, disclosing for example that they now have a family in the UK, which they can do under the present system for the very first time on appeal.

Making this change restores the role of primary decision-maker to the Secretary of State by providing that the tribunal cannot consider any reason that a person has for wanting to stay in the UK that has not already been considered by the Secretary of State, unless the Secretary of State consents to the tribunal considering the new matter. This provision does not prevent a person introducing new evidence about matters that the Secretary of State has already had a chance to consider. The tribunal will continue to be able to make its decision on the basis of all facts relevant to the matters that are before it, as required by case law. Reforming appeal rights will create a better process. Immigration judges at the tribunal will no longer need to consider caseworking errors. Applicants will have those errors considered faster and more cheaply, and those types of case will be removed from the tribunal system, which will reduce overall expense.

That is the context in which we are looking at the issue of students, although I accept and acknowledge the much wider issues that have been raised in this debate. I agree with my noble friend Lady Hamwee and with others. In fairness, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said as he opened the debate and moved his amendment that there was much common ground between what he was arguing for and the Government’s position.

We agree on the importance of students to the United Kingdom. My noble friend Lord Maclennan gave illustrations of the soft-power benefit that can come from that. Overseas students contribute a great deal to our economy and to the reputation of our academic institutions internationally. There is no limit to the number of genuine overseas students who may come here to study. As the Government have repeatedly said, this country welcomes the brightest and best. It is important to stress that.

On the specifics of the amendment of my noble friend Lady Benjamin, who said that she accepts nothing but compromise, I hope that I can perhaps give her more than compromise. Most of the data sought by my noble friend’s amendment is already published. Data on visa applications, grants, and refusals of tier 4 general visas, and on other visa categories, and corresponding admissions data for those entering the UK, are published quarterly by the Home Office. These statistics also show the number of visa applications made by students sponsored by higher education institutions as distinct from other types of education provider. In addition, the Office for National Statistics publishes quarterly reports on international migration statistics that now include estimates of the number of former students emigrating from the United Kingdom. The Higher Education Statistics Agency is responsible for publishing detailed data about non-EU students in the higher education system.

It might be useful to inform the debate with some statistics. I think that it was said by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones mentioned it, too, that there had been a drop in the number of international students. To put it into some kind of perspective, in 2010-11 the number in the UK was 428,230; in 2012-13 it was 425,260, a drop of less than 3,000. Australia had a drop of 10,000 and France of 2,000. There were increases in the USA and Canada, but the drop in the UK was relatively small and much smaller than that in Australia. There was specific mention of Chinese students. Between 2010 and 2013, the number of Chinese students increased in the United Kingdom by 24.5%. Admittedly in the United States the figure was 49.5%, but the increase in Australia was only 1% and in France there was a drop of 4.4%. There is a good story to tell. We are still an attractive proposition for people wishing to come and study.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

Perhaps my noble and learned friend can tell us what the figures for Indian students are.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, disappointingly the figures for India have gone down and there may be some historical background to that. The figures have gone down from 39,000 to 22,000 over these three years. They also decreased in the United States from 103,000 to 96,000 and in Australia from 21,000 to 12,000. It is interesting that there were decreases in the UK, Australia and the United States, which suggests that there may have been other factors. As my noble friend Lord Taylor said, there had been a big increase at an earlier stage in students coming from India, but I will certainly look for more detail on that.