Global Migration and Mobility (EUC Report)

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am not sure how I have offended the powers that be but I speak today as the 17th of 19 speakers, and on Monday night I was the 90th of 91. It does not leave a superabundance of points to make, but I can make one without any fear—which is to thank the committee for the work that it has done. This is an unyielding subject and the report of the committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is extremely useful.

I must declare an interest as having for the past 10 years been chancellor of the University of Essex, and I will say a word or two about that later. My noble friend Lady Gibson of Market Rasen is a distinguished graduate of the university and referred to it. The other interest that I need to declare is that my firm, Bates Wells Braithwaite, is heavily involved in the immigration and asylum field; it has a team of lawyers who do nothing but. Long past are the days when I could—as I did over 30 years ago—dabble in immigration. It has now become an absolute forest, a jungle of regulation, law, precedents and guidance. Indeed, one of the things that I would like the Minister to contemplate is whether there is any prospect of clarifying the bureaucracy surrounding immigration. I do not for a minute underestimate the difficulties. The myriad circumstances with which the immigration and asylum laws have to contend make certain that the matter will be complicated, but, believe me, it is now extraordinarily complex. Of course, it is also extraordinarily expensive for an ordinary citizen to find out where they or incoming relatives may stand with regard to it.

I shall say a word about my noble friend Lord Hodgson’s speech. He said that he was brave. I think that he was in a way, because it is very easy to be misunderstood in talking the way that he did. I thought that some of the statistics he produced were totally germane to this subject and reminded us, if we needed reminding, that there is no more politically hypersensitive subject than immigration in the country at large. The sensitivity is to some extent built on misunderstanding, but sensitivity there is. For my own part, I tend to underestimate the consequences to some peoples and communities of the downside of immigration. We have heard of the upsides, which are great and considerable—the noble Lord, Lord Judd, with whom I always agree, made that point very forcefully—but there is a downside. When people are competing for scarce, cheap housing and for jobs, we must not underestimate the potential there for difficulty and worse. So again, I sympathise with my noble friend the Minister and his colleagues in all of this.

Education has been this afternoon’s principal theme, which is a measure of how strongly represented this Chamber is in the higher education and university world. I will make a few remarks in that regard, although I will steer well clear of the economic benefits of our universities, which have been well discussed. I hope not to repeat any statistics, but I will give a couple that have not been given. One is the striking statistic that in the Times Educational Supplement world table of universities we have three of the top 10 and seven of the top 50. That is an astonishing record when you consider that France has not even one in the top 50. Similarly, in terms of world university education, of those who study abroad, the United States has 30%, while we have 18%—although, as a proportion of the size of those two countries, we should be top of the pile. Then you have Germany with 13% and France with 11%.

I will just say a word about the cultural, or invisible, benefits of the university sector, to which virtually everybody has referred. I am proud to say that at the University of Essex we have a higher proportion of overseas students than any other university in the United Kingdom except the London School of Economics, which has the advantage of being in the middle of this great capital city. More than 130 nationalities are represented on our campus. That has been a permanent feature of the university and I am happy to say that our numbers have not fallen in the recent two years that we have been talking about particularly, although there is no complacency about that—I will say a word about that in a moment. I emphasise to the Minister—if it needs emphasising—that it really is an astonishing own goal for us to do anything that impedes incoming students.

The economic advantages are patently abundant, but I think that we underestimate the invisible advantages. The fact that we have on our campuses a disproportionate number of brilliant academics from abroad is hugely advantageous to our students and to overseas students. The fact that we have a massive enrichment of both educative and social life by having a large number of foreign students cannot be underestimated. It adds considerably to the enjoyment—the fun factor. We must never forget that fun is important in higher education. If people enjoy their universities, they go away and say, “I had a hell of a time” at wherever it was. They go back to Greece, Hong Kong or wherever they are from and say, “I had a wonderful time at the University of Essex”. That is far more important than saying that the professor of gynaecology—no, I must not say that with my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, sitting there. We all know what I am trying to say. The impression of the life that they led, the fun that they had and the friendships that they made, is, I suggest, as important as the purely academic side of university life. So let us hang on to that and, as far as we can, enhance it.

I shall say a word, if I may, about the brain drain. There is an important section of the report on that issue. It is an extremely difficult tension to negotiate in attracting more and more students to our own shores while not damaging the countries from which they come. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister might take away the thought that he should consult universities to think through whether we can do both things at once—that is, to have the advantage ourselves of having incoming bright, if not brilliant, students, often from extremely disadvantaged countries, and at the same time to give something back. There may be programmes as yet unformed that could do that.

Lastly, I utter a word of caution. Whatever difficulties we have faced over the past couple of years, the challenges have scarcely begun. The prospect for recruiting overseas students to our wonderful universities will get relentlessly more challenging and difficult, because the number of universities being formed in every country is growing, in some of them exponentially. In the University of Essex 20 years ago, we had a huge number of students from Greece. The primary reason was that there were few Greek universities and there are now many more, and we have many fewer students coming. That pattern will be reproduced throughout Africa, South America and the whole wide world. The universities that exist will get keener themselves on attracting more foreign students to their shores, for all the reasons we want—economic, cultural, and so on.

Then we need to face the fact, mentioned by some noble Lords, that English is being deployed even in some French universities. Can noble Lords imagine what a crisis that must be for France? Teaching in English offends every French scruple—but they are doing it, and they know why they are doing it. Every other university in the world will start to teach in English, if they are not already doing so, for the same reason. I was in Tunisia in the spring and went to the biggest business school there, which is going to open elsewhere in Africa. They are deciding to teach their African courses in English. All those things make life more difficult.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be sure to persuade those who need persuading that he must and we must disaggregate students from net immigration figures. It is a farce that they are a part of that figure, and everybody has said so.

If it has not already been made plain to our embassies abroad, they should have someone who really blows the trumpet for our universities. There may be a well developed programme of promotion of our universities in our embassies and consulates—but, if not, that must be done.

Lastly, more and more of our universities are going to want to open overseas campuses, partly to counteract some of the challenges to which I have just referred. If the Government are not already doing that, they should look at that, talk to the universities and, potentially, give some financial support for opening overseas campuses, which is going on fairly steadily. That would be a useful step.