Visas: Student Visa Policy

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, said it all. I would like to add a couple of minutes-worth from the perspective of my role as chair of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance. I understand the dilemmas of trying to curb immigration, but extending control to students has gone too far. It is undermining a highly profitable British export while diminishing the intellectual and cultural vitality of our nation. Nowhere is this truer than in music and dance, which by their nature are international. They are for all human beings.

Just as talented students from India and China want to come here to study music, we are slamming the door in their faces. To add a music point, one of the great attractions of our music conservatoires was the two-year rule whereby students could work in music two years after they graduated. Some 29% of our masters students took advantage of that route to the great benefit of our culture and their careers. That is now vastly more difficult. First, you have to show that you can earn £21,000 a year, and that is not easy for a student. Secondly, you have to be able to cite an employer. If you are a musician, you usually have a portfolio career as a freelancer and you do not have an employer. This route is therefore barred to them. Many of them, as a result, are not going to come.

Even the exception for exceptional talent is a not a very good one. You have to go back to your country of origin to apply. You then have to have the application endorsed by a competent body such as the UK Arts Council. There is, in any case, a limit of 1,000 on places. When you take that into account, the attractions for music students are being reduced so that we will become a second-class power where, in many ways, we have led the world. The sooner we exempt students from these rules, the better.