Immigration: International Students

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is right to bring up exit checks. The Home Office continues to analyse and assess the element of the exit check data which has been in place since April last year in relation to specific cohorts, in order to understand the extent to which the estimates provided are statistically robust. That level of detail is not yet available but the noble Lord is right to raise this issue.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

We do not believe that international students should be included in the Government’s target to reduce migration to tens of thousands. Given that many people may think that over, say, a five-year period the number of international students coming to study in the UK would roughly match the number of such students departing the country in accordance with the terms of their visa, thus having little impact on the net migration figure over that period, can the Government tell us—I fear the answer will be no—the number of international students who came to study in the UK last year? Based on previous experience, how many of those students are likely to overstay their visa, or any authorised extension to stay, and remain in this country after the date by which they should have left? One would assume that the Government know the answer to that question.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I think that that was several questions. However, the National Audit Office reported that in 2009-10, up to 50,000 international students may have come to work, not study, and, before our changes, international student visa extensions were running at more than 100,000 a year, with some serial students renewing their leave repeatedly for many years.