Global Migration and Mobility (EUC Report)

Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on his speech and on the comprehensive nature of his report. I will refer to only one subject, which he almost finished on: international students and net migration targets, which is covered in the last section of the report, particularly the recommendations and the government response.

In doing so, I will follow up on the debate we had in this House on 31 January this year, when the subject was well covered. We had 26 speakers, nearly all with very impressive backgrounds, in one way or another, in the university world. All were unanimously critical of the impact of the Government’s immigration and visa policies on non-EU students. As the noble Lord has just said, there have been five Select Committees of both Houses which have published their criticisms, along the same lines, and proposed changes. There is a debate in the other place this afternoon, of which I was able to watch a bit: all the messages seemed to be the same.

My starting point is the widespread understanding, fully recognised in government, of the huge benefits that international students bring to this country. I will touch on them very briefly, because they were well covered in our earlier debate. The economic benefits are not only the contribution to the wider economy, but to local economies; I understand that the Mayor of London has estimated that the economic benefit is £2.5 billion in London alone. There are various local estimates in other university towns. In particular, there are benefits to universities from the fees and other income brought in at a time when university finances are under considerable pressure. There is the major export contribution that this sector brings to this country. It gives our own campuses an international dimension for our own students. The soft power aspect was well delineated in the previous debate. Particularly important is the aspect that non-EU students bring to the postgraduate sector, to which the noble Lord has just referred.

While, overall, 12% of students enrolled in UK universities in 2011-12 came from outside the EU, in that year the figure rises to an astonishing 49% for postgraduate courses in engineering, mathematics and computer science, and 31% in postgraduate courses in technology. Indeed, in that year, 27% of postgraduate students in these subjects were non-EU students. A diminution in the flow of students to these courses would have a serious effect on many of them.

I briefly stress all these points because the public concern about immigration has nothing to do with postgraduate students coming to this country, contributing to our economy and spreading the good word about the United Kingdom when they leave. I do not believe that the public are concerned about that at all. In so far as they were concerned about some abuses in the university and further education sector, that has rightly been well tackled by the Government.

Our debates reflected two particular concerns: the impact of some of the actions and procedures of the United Kingdom Border Agency and the increased impact of the Government’s net migration target on international student enrolments—the particular point that this report refers to. I make the point about enrolment, rather than applications, because the signs are particularly worrying concerning enrolments.

From this flow the two points I ask my noble friend to respond to this afternoon. He very kindly arranged for a small delegation of those who spoke in the debate to meet him and Mark Harper, the Minister of State for Immigration, in mid-April. It was a most helpful and constructive meeting. The Minister outlined to us the initiatives he was taking with David Willetts on the many complaints about UKBA—complaints which were well indicated in the debate we had in January—and we discussed in particular the resources of UKBA, the feedback it gives to universities and training.

First, will my noble friend give us an update this afternoon on progress on these issues? Undoubtedly the Government are now trying to be in the right place on these issues, and are making quite an impact on the perceptions of those from overseas in relation to applications to UK universities. Secondly, and much less satisfactorily, we stress that the step that would make the greatest difference to overseas perceptions would be to remove non-EU students from the net migration targets in exactly the way recommended by the report we are discussing this afternoon. This is where the Government’s response to the Select Committee’s report is so disappointing. Effectively, their response is that,

“we welcome all genuine students, coming to attend any university or college that meets our requirements”.

In December, the Home Secretary affirmed that,

“we will place no cap on the number of genuine students coming from across the world to study in this country”.

That is a very clear quote, but the Government’s response sidesteps the recommendation and simply makes a bland statement instead.

That pledge that there will not be a cap is not the perception in many countries. There are clear signs from many of them that, as the noble Lord has said, at a time when other countries, such as the United States, Germany, Australia, Canada and many others, are very actively promoting and expanding their intake of such students, we risk having a diminishing share of that growing market because of the overall net migration target. The total number of non-EU students has dropped for the first time in 10 years. Overall, demand is sustained by rapid growth in the number of Chinese students, but numbers from elsewhere are declining. One small indication has just come to my attention of the sort of way in which actions by the Government, or by UKBA, affect very considerably the perceptions of individual countries. This relates to Brazil.

The Brazilian Government’s student exchange scheme, Science Without Borders, fully funds high-achieving Brazilian undergraduate and postgraduate students to study at the best universities around the world, including in the UK. A group of 2,143 Brazilian students who wanted to come to the UK to study as part of this scheme have been prevented from doing so by inflexible visa rules. These are high-achieving students who want to study undergraduate STEM courses, but they needed to improve their English before starting their degrees. The current rules prevent their staying in the UK after completing an English language course. These students would have been required to return to Brazil and reapply for a new visa before starting their degree courses. As a result of these rules, and the refusal of the Home Office to change them, 1,100 of those students are now going to the United States and 600 to Australia, which are happy to let them come to study English and then stay for their degree course. Of the original 2,143 students, approximately 43 have applied to come to the UK for September, and approximately 400 to come to the UK in March 2014. The value to the UK of the entire cohort was about £66 million, but as well as lost earnings there is probably a perception that the UK is not worth applying to among many who otherwise could have been very successfully received here. I do not expect a response this afternoon from my noble friend, but I urge him to look into this case.

Why, therefore, despite the Government’s pledges, is a different perception growing in so many non-EU countries? Is it perhaps because the Government have not tackled head-on, or responded to, the well argued and well publicised case that in order to meet their target of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands by 2015, somehow a reduction in non-EU student numbers of 87,600 between 2012 and 2015 will be required? My noble friend did not respond to that point in the debate in January. The Government did not respond to it in their response to this Select Committee report. They bypassed it and somewhat dodged it.

I hope that we can have at least a more direct and well argued response to this charge. I suspect that there is no such response, in which case it is clear that we have a self-inflicted wound that is harming our universities, despite our good intentions of “no annual limit on numbers” and so on. It would be much better to make it clear that there is no annual limit by accepting the Select Committee’s recommendation. The Government’s statement that there is no cap on the number of students coming from across the world to study in this country will be widely believed and totally credible if the Select Committee’s recommendation is accepted.