Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough]

35: After Clause 41, insert the following new Clause—
“Collection of data on overseas students subject to visa conditions and immigration rules(1) The Secretary of State must collate and publish—(a) the number of overseas students who have had their student visas revoked as a result of the commission of criminal offences,(b) the number of overseas students who have been deported following the revocation of their student visas, and(c) the number of overseas students detained pending deportation following the revocation of their student visas.(2) Data published under subsection (1) must be broken down by nationality.(3) For the purposes of this section—“overseas students” means any person who is not a British citizen who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for the purposes of partaking in an educational course;“student visa” has the same meaning as in the Immigration Rules.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I believe this amendment supports the main thrust of the Bill, which seeks to help make our country safer and more secure, a goal that I share. It seeks to have a robust immigration system, and I commend the Government on that. The first step in that process is having the information that you require to give effect to efficacious public policy. An effective immigration system that protects the UK and allows it to flourish needs to understand the people coming into our country and whether they are acting like the good, law-abiding citizens they ought.

It is as well to remember that at the heart of this amendment is the central fact that the Immigration Act 1971 was and always has been a permissive legislative instrument, in that student visas are issued with conditions, impose obligations and are in no sense an absolute civil or human right. Some 431,725 sponsored study visas were granted in the year ending June 2025. I want to make it clear that the vast majority of those individuals come, study hard and contribute to our society and economy, but there is a minority who abuse that privilege —and it is a privilege. We have some of the world’s top universities in our country, and it is not an automatic right to be here.

In the 2022-23 academic year, less than a quarter of recent foreign students were on courses that the Department for Education deemed “strategically important” for the UK, such as in engineering, science, technology or healthcare, contrary to the hopes of Ministers in the previous Government when they launched the graduate visa route in 2019 and enacted it in 2021. Indeed, 69% had been on a course of only one year’s duration. The proportion of international students remaining in the UK after graduation climbed from 20% to 56% between 2021 and 2024, with only a minority of 23% studying a strategically important postgraduate course. Others studied, for instance, anarchism, television studies, recreation and leisure studies, hair and make-up, computer games, beauty therapy and alternative medicines and therapy.

This may be linked to the fact that 1.9 million foreign nationals are now claiming benefits in the UK; 30% of those benefits were paid to non-working dependants and family members, which adds up to £10.1 billion in universal credit payments in 2024. If you come to this country as a student, if you get a visa and the opportunity to come to the UK, you have responsibilities in our society and under the law. If you abuse the freedoms we allow here and break the law, you will be punished, and the legitimacy of your stay in the country should be questioned.

I tabled this amendment in the context of the serious public disorder linked to the Israel-Gaza conflict, and the not unreasonable accusations of two-tier policing by the Metropolitan Police and others in the way that public disorder and rampant antisemitism were treated and policed. I made the point that other jurisdictions defend the integrity of their student visa regime and take a robust stance on individuals who flout or disregard their obligations to be good, law-abiding citizens while guests in the country. The relevance of this amendment has been recently brought to further attention with the jailing of two Chinese students who fraudulently claimed more than £140,000 in train refunds. Once again, most students come here and work hard, and I have nothing but respect for them, but the information should be collected so that those who commit offences here face the consequences.

Your Lordships’ House will want to know the context of why I brought this specific amendment. Regrettably, it is not a good story. For the last six months, I have been met in my Questions to Ministers with obfuscation, ignorance, stonewalling and answers to questions that I did not ask. I first asked the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, a Written Question in March as to whether the Home Office collects this information. He responded that it did not—fair enough.

On 26 March, I asked His Majesty’s Government,

“further to the Written Answer … why information about the removal of foreign nationals following the revocation of student visas is not collected and published”.

He said:

“Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics”,


et cetera—but he did not answer the Question.

On 30 April, I asked him

“what specific factors they have taken into account in deciding not to collect and publish data on the revocation of foreign student visas”.

He said, rather unhelpfully:

“I refer the Rt. Hon. Lord to the Answer he received on 26 March”.


Then on 8 May, trying a different tack, I asked,

“further to the Written Answers by Lord Hanson of Flint on 30 April … and 25 March … what plans they have, if any, to collect data on the revocation of student visas”.

He said:

“Obtaining the specific information requested would involve collating and verifying information from multiple systems owned by multiple teams across the Home Office and, therefore, could only be obtained at disproportionate cost”.


On 9 June, I tried again. I asked him

“what discussions they have had with representatives of the higher education sector on the revocation of student visas for those foreign nationals convicted of serious criminal offences in the United Kingdom”.

He said, apropos of nothing:

“Any foreign national who commits serious crimes in the UK should expect to be removed from our country, regardless of the visa on which they travelled here”.


So he did not answer that Question either.

So, on 11 June, I asked another Question, which was a bit more up front:

“whether they will now answer the question put, namely, what discussions they have had with representatives of the higher education sector on the revocation of student visas for foreign nationals convicted of serious criminal offences in the United Kingdom”.

The noble Lord’s Answer was:

“The Home Office keeps all aspects of the immigration system under review, including compliance and enforcement issues within the education sector, in consultation with a wide range of experts and other stakeholders”.


So, he did not answer that Question either. We have clearly not had clear and concise Answers on this issue, and I have to say that the Minister, for whom I have inordinate respect from our time in the other place, really should understand that it is not acceptable and is a gross discourtesy to this House that he and his department will not answer straightforward Questions in a timely way.

For the avoidance of doubt, the Government cannot abdicate the responsibility of maintaining an immigration regime for students only to higher education institutions, which have a vested interest and, indeed, a conflict of interest. The Government have a proper responsibility to police our borders and protect the system from gaming criminality and abuse. You cannot design an immigration system, you cannot make effective and wise decisions and you cannot serve the British people as well as you want to without the right information. If a disproportionately high percentage of students come from certain countries and are more predisposed to criminality, that must be known and addressed.

In Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, reassured us at the Dispatch Box that Immigration Rules are in place for the cancellation of entry clearance and stays, and that he was committed to reviewing the collection of statistics in order to

“identify changing needs for new statistics to support public understanding”.—[Official Report, 8/9/25; col. 1178.]

This is the time to make real that undertaking and that commitment to transparency. The purpose of this amendment is simply to make sure that the Government can make better-informed choices in our national interests. For that reason, I commend it to the House and hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting it. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 35C aims to stop people who come to the UK on a student visa abandoning that route for an asylum claim. Today, I will explain why such an amendment is needed, and then I will respond to the objections made by the Minister, take account of them and explain why this amendment meets the most substantive one.

First, why is this amendment needed? Around 435,000 people were granted student visas in the 12 months to June 2025. In the same period, 111,000 people claimed asylum, of whom 14,800 had entered the UK on a student visa. So, 13% of claims for asylum were made by student visa switches. The consequences—as I explained, so I will not run through them again in detail—are serious. For university finances, the ability to plan courses and allocate places suffers if students accept and are allocated a place but drop out mid-course or never show up, leaving empty places, damaging the finances and creating black holes for the university. They are not, except in a few cases, innocents overtaken by dangerous political changes at home, which my Amendment 35C now covers; rather, they are people who abuse the student visa route and exploit the laxity of our rules and the by now reluctant generosity of our taxpayers.

I may have mentioned a recent report of a couple from India who candidly spoke anonymously on camera to a reporter. The wife had got her student visa but had no intention, she said, of taking up her place. An agency had been engaged to see to the paperwork and fake the financial and other eligibility documents. That couple are now living on benefits and hope they will be given asylum because one of their children has a bad medical condition.

In Committee, the Minister made three sorts of objections to my amendment, designed to include claims from student visa holders made two days after arrival. The first was also mentioned by my noble friend Lord Sandhurst. I therefore take account of this, the substantive objection in both the Minister’s and my own Front Bench’s argument. A two-day time limit does not cover unfortunate students who dutifully pursue their degree courses but discover, sometime into it, that the political circumstances have changed and they could face imprisonment, torture or even execution if they go home. Today’s amendment allows for these changed circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

This amendment aims to remove that discretion, which we think is the most effective way to achieve returns co-operation. The assessment of whether a Government are co-operating sufficiently is a discretionary judgment which Ministers must have the flexibilities to take. Visa penalties have not been used yet but, in the Government’s view, the existing provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 remain sufficient for the primary aims of the powers, and I urge the noble Lord not to press this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and all noble Lords who took part in the debate, in particular my noble friends.

If I can just clear up an issue for the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, this amendment is colour-blind and is not about citizenship; in that respect, I hope I can reassure him. I defer to no-one in my admiration for his success; he came here as a student from Uganda and has made such an enormous contribution to our society. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for a thoughtful and helpful contribution in putting the questions to the Minister.

This debate has shown that there is a very significant culture of secrecy and obfuscation around these figures. I have been trying to get these figures for nine months and have thus far failed. There seems to be a void at the centre of public policy on data management of these figures, particularly for student visas. Notwithstanding the calming and insouciant voice of the Minister at the Dispatch Box, on the basis of what he said rather than the way he said it, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the two amendments tabled in my name in this group, but, before doing so, I will say that I strongly support the comments made by my noble friend Lord Murray and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. My amendments are to Amendments 47 and 68, and would ensure that modern slavery claims and appeals cannot be singled out in some way and still be used as a loophole for the merry-go-round of asylum claims that we see. The Home Secretary herself highlighted the vexatious last-minute modern slavery claim that was put in, in the case of the one-in, one-out asylum seeker. We have heard other examples as well.

Last year, noble Lords might wish to know, we saw that 65% of referrals to the NRM were found to have no reasonable grounds. This was compared with only 16% four years ago. So there is evidence that this is increasingly being used for last-minute, spurious claims, and I would like to make sure that these amendments are as bulletproof as possible. We should seek to restore public confidence in the modern slavery system, to make sure that it is doing what it was designed to do and what this Parliament designed it to do: that is, to be a lifeline for victims of horrific abuse. It was not designed, as it has increasingly become, as a route for Albanian men arriving on small boats.

The British citizens who are referred into the system are overwhelmingly children. I am sure that most people would agree that that is the right thing for the state to be doing. Foreign citizens referred in tell a different story: these are mostly adult men from Vietnam, Albania, Eritrea and Sudan. Supporting them is not the right priority for the taxpayers of this country. My amendment therefore ensures that only genuine victims can make use of our generous support and that these vexatious claims can definitely be thrown out.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to speak to the amendment in my name, but only in passing, because I cannot better the excellent remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and my noble friend Lord Murray of Blidworth. They made a very strong case. I also associate myself with Amendment 68. But I really want to talk to Amendment 46, the first in this group.

We all have a vested interest in protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system, and the faith and trust that our citizens have in that system. At the present time, I fear that people are losing faith in it. They are losing faith in the capacity of the judicial system to deliver fairness and equity for the British taxpayer. I think it is perfectly possible to have a strong modicum of compassion for those people driven to seek asylum in this country by poverty, famine, war and despotic dictatorships. However, a system that is intrinsically designed to be gamed—for young men to come to this country and use legal loopholes to settle in one of the wealthiest countries in the world—is no longer a situation that we can tolerate. That is why we need to take what would appear to be immoderate and draconian action in the first instance, because we are in the middle of a crisis.

I do not often quote Labour Members of Parliament, but Mike Tapp, the Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal—I think he is the Minister’s colleague—has been criticised for quite rightly complaining about the fact that people who are criminals are coming to this country and there is effectively nothing we can do about it. We can do nothing about it because this Government set their face against the Rwanda scheme and scrapped that scheme before it had a chance to work. Yet they go scrambling around parts of eastern Europe seeking an alternative scheme to put in place.

The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is absolutely correct; it is incumbent upon this Government, after 16 months, to come up with an alternative. With all due respect to the Minister, the speech he gave to the Chamber on Monday was exactly the same speech, verbatim, that he gave on 8 September on undertakings to bring forward legislation and to the review of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is quite right that we are now in a position where a significant number of member countries of the Council of Europe are sufficiently concerned that they are putting a very great deal of pressure to change things, because the system is broken.

If the system breaks, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is absolutely right that it gives rise to people who are not moderate, who are extreme and who will scapegoat honest, decent people seeking to make a better life. It is incumbent on us to come up with solutions. Look at some of the egregious cases we have seen in recent years from the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal. “Egyptian migrant is ‘danger to the community’—but can stay in Britain”. “Cannabis dealer claimed deportation would destroy his marriage”. “Albanian who battered man with umbrella can stay because the attack was ‘one-off’”. “Asylum seeker can stay in Britain after having affair”. “Afghan drug user allowed to stay in the UK because Taliban is harsh on addicts”. “Migrant avoids deportation because he lost his phone”.

We may have a wry smile at some of those cases, and I accept that they are a minority of cases, but they are corrosive of the faith and trust people have in the system. That is why Amendment 46 is so important. If the Government are truly of the view that nothing is off the table, they have to be able to bring forward costed alternatives and not just fall back on the fact they are reviewing, they are looking at the European Convention on Human Rights and they will bring forward legislation. They have had 16 months; they need to take firm action to deal with this immigration crisis. On that basis, I strongly support the excellent amendment from my noble friend Lord Murray and, of course, the other amendments, including Amendment 46 from the Front Bench.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, this is obviously a lawyers’ paradise of a debate, where we normally have expressions of views. I am going to be much simpler than that. I want to look at Amendment 79A first, because it is important and I think I understand what is happening. I am in the fortunate position of being a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which enables me to have access, ask questions and find out far more than perhaps this House has been informed about at this stage. I would encourage all Members to talk to their party delegates on this matter to see what they have been doing about it.

My question about Amendment 79A is: does it mean withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights? Is that being suspended? If that is the case, which I understand is Conservative Party policy, quite clearly what we are heading for is Brexit 2. Is that the position?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I mention to the noble Lord the deal with France, the deal with Iraq, the scheme we are taking upstream with the Germans to tackle various issues, the work of the Calais Group, the work of the Border Security Command being executed by this Bill, the important measures in this Bill to tackle illegal migration, the measures we are taking to speed up asylum claims and get them through quickly, the two new barracks that we announced last week would be opened to speed up asylum claims and get a deterrent in place, and the work on illegal working in migration. We have done a whole range of things. Although I never cross my fingers on these matters, the last couple of weeks have seen no small boat crossings whatever. It is a difficult challenge, but let us look at how we deal with these issues.

We know that more must be done to address the backlog in the immigration and asylum appeals system. Clauses 46 and 47 set a statutory timeframe on First-tier Tribunal decisions. We have put in place additional funding to increase sitting days in 2025-26 to speed up the processing of asylum claims. I know that more needs to be done, which is why we are introducing a new appeals body to deal with immigration and asylum appeals, fully independent of government. We are committed to setting out further details of our plans very shortly.

Although the Government share the frustrations about the inefficiencies and delays in the immigration and asylum system, there is still a need to ensure due process, which is a fundamental part of our legal system. That touches on the points that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, mentioned, because we have to have due process as part of our legal system. The amendments would remove any judicial oversight of Home Office decisions and prevent an independent review of a decision other than by a Home Office board—effectively putting the department in charge of marking its own work. That is not a good place to be; judicial oversight is an important matter. There would inevitably be legal challenges against the Government based on that lack of independence. It would also be contrary to important UK legal principles, notably the rule of law, the protection of rights and access to justice, as well as more proposals on the most vulnerable, including in modern slavery cases—the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean of Redditch, mentioned this.

Without alternative ways of independent and impartial redress, these amendments would cause serious issues with the withdrawal agreement, which—like it or lump it—is in place. It is a legal agreement with the Government of the day. This also impacts upon the Windsor Framework and the relationship with Northern Ireland. All this points me to saying that I cannot accept those amendments.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I might be wrong, and I hesitate to say this in the presence of so many eminent lawyers, but my understanding is that there is a precedent for this suggestion, in that coronial verdicts are not traditionally appealable unless there has been irrationality or the coroner has erred in law. It is not the case that every single decision made in the criminal justice system, or the justice system generally, is necessarily traditionally appealable.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I defer to those who have expertise in coronial decisions—that is an MoJ matter—but in this case, this is what we have, and I am not prepared to give it up. We can disagree on that, and there are Division Lobbies on either side if we need to sort this out, but I do not expect to support those amendments, on the basis of the arguments that I have put forward today.

Amendment 79A from the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, would require the Home Secretary to disregard the Human Rights Act. I am not going to support that either. It would further limit when the UK could comply with interim measures and how they should be treated in domestic courts. The UK is fully committed to the protection of human rights at home and abroad, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, as the Prime Minister has made clear—