Post-study Work Schemes

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely spot on. The Committee took issue with the idea that £20,800 is somehow applicable to the Scottish situation. I will come back to that point, but first I will make a few other remarks about how we could resolve this general situation.

In the past, we had a dedicated post-study work scheme in Scotland—the famous Fresh Talent initiative, which ran so successfully between 2005 and 2008. It was initiated by the former Labour First Minister Jack McConnell and had the overwhelming support of the Home Office down here. I still meet students in Perth who studied at the University of the Highlands and Islands who are products of Fresh Talent and are now making an incredible contribution to my community and constituency. Fresh Talent was subsumed into the general tier 1 post-study work visa scheme that ran from 2008 to 2012. Although that was still a post-study work scheme, it ended Scotland’s advantage in being able to secure and keep international students. We did not mind that as long as we still had some means to secure international students who wanted to remain in Scotland. It was only with the election of a Conservative-led Government in 2010 that we saw the beginnings of the end of any dedicated post-study work scheme.

I will try to understand the Government’s motives for all that. In the response to us, they said that the scheme was apparently “too generous”. I would hazard a guess—perhaps I am out of place here—that that is something to do with the Government having almost an obsession with immigration numbers, and that their general desire to get immigration down from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands was behind the idea of closing any notion of a post-study work scheme. International students were an easy target—of course they were—and we could see where they were coming from. Everything has to be done through the book—in order to secure international students, universities and higher education institutions have to go through a complicated process. It was so easy to close those routes and, instead of doing the hard work about illegal immigration, target the students. However, targeting students was a singularly self-defeating initiative. The people we want to stop coming into the country and staying here are the most educated—those we spent a fortune on—who want to stay in our country.

Of course, a lot of things were said about what the Government did. The Scottish Affairs Committee, before I assumed the Chair, did a report about that and warned of the consequences, as did the Select Committee on Home Affairs, of which I believe you were a member in those days, Mr Rosindell. Those reports said that there would be consequences and an impact, and an impact there has been. One thing the Committee was keen to discover and determine was what sort of impacts the closure of that route had had on Scotland, and the clear message we got from practically everyone was that the impact has been significant, negative and stark.

We cannot get a proper picture because the evidence is patchy, so the only thing we could look at was migration from tier 4 to tier 2, but we were able to estimate that there has been a fall-away of 80% in international students continuing to work in Scotland after their studies. That has had an immense adverse impact on our access to talent, and it has resulted in increased skills shortages in all key sectors the length and breadth of the Scottish economy.

More than that, there is the disincentive value of not having a particular route. We heard again and again from representatives of the education sector that Scottish universities are now losing out in the race to secure international talent from across the world. We are moving into a different type of working environment in the ability to share and transfer knowledge. The knowledge economy will be so important to economic growth as we go forward, and Scotland is in a great position because of the quality of our universities and the research done in Scotland, but we are now told that there is a massive disincentive to coming to Scotland.

Students sitting in, say, India, Australia or Kenya, and looking at the UK will be hearing all this stuff about Brexit and the splendid isolationism that the UK seems to want to be part of. If they are hearing that all the debate about leaving the European Union was about immigration and people not being welcome, they are not going to be particularly inclined to seek out a university in Scotland, as part of the United Kingdom, to come to and study. They will be thinking, “What on earth would I go there for, when I would be made most unwelcome and probably get booted out the minute I finish my course?”

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a real risk that we will lose competitive advantage to other Commonwealth and English-speaking nations such as Canada and Australia because of these restrictive rules? The University of Glasgow has expressed exactly the concerns he highlights and we all have constituency examples of those. I had a constituent who was literally a rocket scientist who was determined to work here and the UK Government’s visa restrictions meant that she could not.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. We all have examples of that, and it is utterly depressing that we are booting out young people of supreme ability and talent whom we have spent a fortune educating and who have such potential to add to our community. I come to his important point about the options that are available. We are obviously an Anglophone country—we have had the English language since Gaelic, and I know that he is keen on that particular issue—but there are now options in Canada, Australia and the United States. I know the Minister, when he addresses us, will tell us that there is still growth in international students. Yes, I concede that there is still growth in the number of international students coming to Scottish universities, but it is just 1%. Growth in Canada, Australia and the US is 8% to 11%, so we are obviously falling behind.

What we conclude is that the current post-study work routes do not meet the needs of Scotland, and by quite a margin. To try to be helpful to the Minister—we thought we were being helpful, anyway—we suggested doing a few minor things, which would not upset anybody, to tweak and improve the current situation. We started from the minor tweaks and moved through to suggesting a stand-alone post-study work scheme for Scotland—we looked at all the options available.

There are things that the Government could do so readily and easily without destroying their reputation for immigration obsession. For example, they could extend the length of time to find a tier 4 job. Why is that four months? What reason is there for that? They could create some bridge to enable students to move from tier 4 to tier 2, because all of a sudden they are at a cliff edge where, if they have not got a job or a sponsor, they are out. They could give people help to try to find a job. Then there is the issue of a regional salary. The minimum salary is set at £20,800. That does not work for Scotland—it is almost impossible to find a graduate-level job at that. How about regional variation? We suggested to the Minister that the Migration Advisory Committee look at that. I thought that was a very reasonable suggestion. Another thing the Government could do, which is totally within their gift at the tweaking end of how they could help to address and sort this problem, is reduce the burden of tier 2 sponsorship on employers. Overwhelmingly, employers told us that it was really difficult to secure international students. Those are things that could be done.

We also recommended that there should be a return to a post-study work scheme—we even suggested that a Scotland-only scheme could be possible. We have had the experience of Fresh Talent, which worked perfectly well. I know the Government had issues with it—we will probably hear a little about that from the Minister—and there were problems associated with it, but we learned from that experience and we could bring forward another scheme.

Things have changed since 2008 when Fresh Talent ended—I accept that. The immigration system has changed and we have a much more—I will use the word “cautious” approach to immigration issues, but, because of that caution, the Government have put a number of things in place. For example, landlords are now required to carry out rent checks before entering into tenancy agreements, whereby one could check the residency of international students. For some time now, employers have been required to carry out right-to-work checks on employees, and the partial devolution of income tax means that we have a perfect register to ensure that people who come to Scotland remain in Scotland—we can check where they are.

I think the Minister will tell us that that would not work for Scotland because people would go to the south-east and to the rest of England, but there is now a range of means and mechanisms available to Scotland to ensure that people who come to study in Scotland remain in Scotland. The thing is, if they break any of the conditions—if they are checked and they are in the south—they will just get kicked out. What is the point in that? They could come to a country that would welcome them, that wants them to be there and that recognises their ability to contribute, or they could go to the south-east and into the black market and be ever fretful of being pursued by the authorities. So of course this could work; there is no good reason that a Scotland-only scheme could not work.

Lastly, there is the commitment that the Government have already given us on trying to resolve the situation. I do not think that the Minister recognises our particular issues on this or understands some of these points. I think he has heard the chorus of complaints about the issue and the desire for a post-study work scheme to return to Scotland, but let us remind him of the commitment that the Government have to work with the Scottish Government in order to pursue that. That was in the Smith commission, which said:

“The Scottish and UK Governments should work together to explore the possibility of introducing formal schemes to allow international higher education students…to remain in Scotland and contribute”.

Nothing has been done on that, and I am not surprised by that given where the Government are when it comes to this. Instead, the Government response—I do not really want to go into it—was singularly disappointing, almost frustrating. To turn around and tell us, as they did in their short response, that the current arrangements are “excellent” is almost a slap in the face to the higher education institutions of Scotland and those who depend on them. They are not excellent, Minister—they are woeful, pitiful and not working for Scotland.

We are asking the Government to have another look at the matter and to have a look at our population and demography, because they are linked and they suggest a way forward for Scotland on the issue. We in Scotland do not share the Government’s obsession with immigration. In fact, quite the opposite; we actually value people coming to our country. We are not full up in Scotland. We see the value to our economy of immigration, particularly high-value immigration. The Government must try not to put their immigration obsession upon Scotland.

We in the Committee think we have produced a rounded report. It suggests a number of things the Government could do, from minor tweaking, which would help the current situation, to wholescale reform. It is disappointing that the Minister has singularly refused to do any of those things. With my colleagues from Scotland behind me, I tell the Minister to think again, to do the right thing for Scotland and to allow us to have a post-study work scheme to grow our economy and to keep international students in Scotland.