Immigration: Overseas Students

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I chair Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, which is one of the four great conservatoires in London. Perhaps the proudest moment in my time as chair was in June when Radio 3 broadcast live three of our finest pianists from St John’s Smith Square—three of a very fine crop. Noble Lords should note the names because they will hear them again: Giulio Potenza, Gen Li and Jenna Sung. They should also note that those are not English names. Indeed, they are not English: Giulio is from Italy. Gen is from China and Jenna from South Korea.

Of our students, 111 are international, which is 10% of our student body. Each brings us £15,000 to £20,000 a year, and it is not possible financially simply to replace them with British students because an extra British student would yield only £9,000 to us under the current fee regulations. But they bring something more important than money. They bring talent, which raises standards all round. They bring cultural diversity: music is an international language, but it has many accents. They bring determination: it is not nothing to move halfway around the world in the pursuit of your chosen vocation. They also bring reach to Britain abroad, which may last for many years. Why is the House debating this issue this afternoon? Why is it not a no-brainer? Let us face it and be honest: we are debating it because the Government seem half inclined to chop this flourishing tree off at its roots.

I will concentrate on students from outside Europe if only because I spoke on Brexit and students last week. Three out of every four students come from outside the European Union. The threat to them is real, too. The Government have them in their sights. The Prime Minister has long opposed taking them out of the immigration numbers, as we have heard in this debate, although only a quarter of the public think that they should be regarded as immigrants. Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, singled them out for some remarks in her conference speech although to be fair she has also said a few positive things about international students.

It is not only about what the Government think or even what they say: it is a question of what the world and its most talented individuals hear. The world sees a country that has voted for Brexit, where there have been troubling instances of immigrants being hassled in the streets and now sees a country that is adding a thickening bureaucracy, which makes applying for student visas more problematical and which is toying with adding new barriers. Is this really, as they say, to improve quality or is it just a cheap and easy way to cut the number of immigrants?

There is another obstacle. What happens to students when they finish their courses? Many of the students at Trinity Laban would like to continue their music and dance careers in Britain. Already they face an obstacle in that their earnings are not high, but to stay in a job here beyond a year, a student has to show that he or she will earn £20,800 a year or more, which is not easy for a young jobbing musician. The Government seem to be contemplating making things even harder in terms of getting a job. Ministers have gone around brandishing ludicrous overestimates of overstaying—the Times leak put the true figure at less than 1%. I cannot help noticing that I get pleas from time to time from young ensembles that find their lead violinist or cellist is being denied a visa and so their career and planned engagements are being cut short.

To sum up, if we put off overseas students, my establishment, Trinity Laban, will suffer. If we lost all our international students our revenues would fall by more than £2 million, which is probably by around 10%, and that would be very bad. South-east London, where we are situated, would suffer. Our international students alone bring some £5 million to the local economy, which is not a strong one in a very diverse area, and of course Britain will suffer. In financial terms, according to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, international students contribute some £7 billion to Britain’s economy and they are the second largest net contributor to Britain’s balance of payments. But it is not the financial benefits, important though they are, that make me so nervous about this threat to the future. It is the threat that cultural chauvinism will replace international diversity. Globalisation no doubt has its pros and cons, but one incontestable pro is the vitality it brings to intellectual and cultural endeavour. We put that at risk at our peril.