Higher Education: Overseas Students

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My right honourable friend the Home Secretary is absolutely committed to opening the doors to genuine students, but not to the bogus students that we were talking about before. When she spoke, it was about a policy that was in the Conservative Party manifesto on page 21, which is that the best way to ensure that we keep a grip on the fact that people are here on the appropriate visas is through them returning to their country once they have completed their study visa and then reapplying for a work visa. That is not the position now. The position now is that they can do that in country. We encourage people to do so where they have high-skill jobs or they want to stay here to set up a business.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister explain how he can be so sure how many students return when we have no proper border controls on people leaving this country? Does he not agree that forcing students who have completed their studies to go back to their home—at very considerable expense to themselves—before reapplying to come here is an astonishing way to try to fill that lacuna?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is sharp, as ever, in spotting the issue. We will have exit checks in place by the end of this Parliament, as was promised. Of the figure which I gave—about 70,000 people going missing—some of those will have reapplied to go onto the tier 4 system. Some of them will be here and working illegally. The point is that at the moment we do not know. If we counted them in and counted them out and made sure they were on the appropriate visa, we would be able to know.