Migration: University-sponsored Students

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I totally agree with the noble Lord in that I accept that students coming to universities—and I stress that the Question is purely about students coming to universities—provide very great value to this country, and we want to see their numbers increase in many areas. They have increased over the past year or so, as I understand it, but we want to get rid of some of the bogus students who come here not to study but to work—and that is what we are doing.

It is important that we stick to international UN definitions. As I said, there would be considerable criticism of me if I suggested that we should fix those figures purely for our own purposes.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, if the Government were to accept the proposal put to them by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, would they not thereby confer a great benefit on UK universities and on bona fide international university students, as well as on our international standing, and at the same time be able to hit their own immigration target figures, which they have otherwise not a hope of achieving?

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord is, yet again, another one who wants me to fix the figures. I do not want to do that. We want to do these things in a proper way, and the definition of migrants is that they are people staying for over a year. We welcome students and do what we can to get them, but we are not going to fix the figures in the manner that he suggests.