Student Visas

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), just as it was to speak alongside him last September at the Conservative party conference, where we made the same points and received a good reception.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Gentleman is always welcome.

[Paul Blomfield]

I am not sure that I will make a habit of it. We made the point then and we make it again today that there is much cross-party unity on this issue. The fact that the motion has been sponsored by Members from all three main parties is a sign of that. From my discussions with Government Members, I am sure that, were they not tied by the responsibilities of office, many more of them would be joining us in support of the motion.

The case that we are making today was perhaps most powerfully put in an article in the Financial Times in May 2012 under the headline, “Foreign students are key to UK prosperity”. The author wrote:

“Britain’s universities are a globally competitive export sector and well-placed to make a greater contribution to growth. With economic growth at a premium, the UK should be wary of artificially hobbling it.”

The article continued:

“Now that the government has clamped down on the problem of bogus colleges”—

from my perspective, the last Government did that too—

“there is scope to take legitimate students out of the annual migration targets… Indeed, that is what our main competitors in the global student market already do.”

I do not disagree with a word in the entire article and I do not think that any of my hon. Friends would. Who was the author? It was the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who is now head of the No. 10 policy unit. I quote from that article not to score a debating point, but to demonstrate the breadth of support for the motion.

At the outset of the debate, it is worth emphasising that international students are important not just because of their financial contribution, but because they add to the intellectual vitality of our campuses; they are vital to the viability of many courses, particularly in the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths; they contribute to the cutting-edge research that gives the UK a unique edge in international markets; and they give UK students the chance to learn alongside people from every other major country, which is extraordinarily good preparation for the transnational environment in which our graduates will work. As has been pointed out, international students form relationships and a fondness for this country that will win us contracts and influence as they become leaders back home.

Those are huge advantages for Britain, but let us put them to one side and look at the hard-nosed economic case. International students bring £8 billion into the UK economy each year. Higher education is a major industry and a major export earner. Some people ask, “What about the costs?” Indeed, the Minister made that point on the all-party parliamentary university group at one point. I discussed it with the university of Sheffield, which said, “Fair point. We ought to look at that”, and it commissioned Oxford Economics to undertake the first ever independent cost-benefit analysis of the contribution of international students. As an independent study I expected it to be quite rigorous, although I did not realise how rigorous. Oxford Economics did not just look at health, education and use of public services; it went to the nth degree and looked at traffic congestion and every conceivable indirect cost. It concluded that the annual net benefit to our city’s economy is £120 million. That is worth about 6,000 much-needed jobs in the city, not just in universities but in restaurants, shops, transport, construction and more besides.

The Government have damaged our ability to recruit by including international students in net migration targets. That is not a statistical argument but a fundamental point because in doing so, they have put international students at the heart of the immigration debate. It is no good saying, as the Minister might later and the Home Office did this week in its response to the report by the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, that there is no cap on student numbers—[Interruption.] The Minister says from a sedentary position that there is not, but if the Government have a target for reducing immigration and they include international students in that, such a policy leads them to celebrate cutting the number of international students coming to the UK. Indeed, the Minister did just that a couple of weeks ago when the fall in net migration was announced by celebrating the drop in numbers of 56,000 international students year on year.

The Minister will point out that within those figures the number of university visas rose slightly while the real fall was in private college and further education student numbers, but that in itself should be a cause for worry not celebration. Not only are those students valuable in themselves, those courses are pathways into higher education and a fall in numbers is an indication of the problems we are storing up for the future. Conservative estimates suggest that some 40% of students going to universities in the UK go through those routes, and we should worry about that future impact.

On other occasions, the Government have argued that numbers are holding up, but as my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) clearly pointed out, holding up is not good enough. We do not want to stand still in a growing market, which the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills recognised will double by 2025. That is another £8 billion in export earnings for the UK and another 6,000 jobs in Sheffield, yet the Home Office is frustrating that ambition.

The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) mentioned Brazil—one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Under their Science Without Borders programme, the Brazilian Government are spending $2 billion over four years on sending 100,000 of their brightest young people to study abroad at undergraduate and postgraduate level. They want them to go to the best universities in the world, and those are in the UK.

A group of 2,143 Brazilian students who wanted to come to the UK have been prevented by inflexible visa rules. They are high-achieving students who wanted to study undergraduate STEM courses, but they needed to improve their English before starting. Current rules prevent them from staying in the UK after completing an English language course, and they would have had to return to Brazil and reapply for a new visa before starting their courses. As a result of those rules and the Home Office’s refusal to change them, 1,100 of those students are now going to the US and 600 to Australia, where they are welcome to study English and stay on for their degree course. Of the original 2,143 students, only 43 are applying to come to the UK this September. The value to the country of that cohort was £66 million. That has been lost because of Home Office inflexibility, and with it, considerable good will.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I am listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman and I commend him for his work with my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). He reminds me of a story in the Financial Times which, when describing the stupidity of the Home Office stated:

“If the Home Office were a horse it would have been shot by now.”

Despite the fact that the Home Office has been split up into an interior ministry and the Ministry of Justice, it still evinces extraordinary stupidity. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most extraordinary aspects of that stupidity is that the STEM subjects, which this country needs so badly, in many universities across the country can be sustained in sufficient numbers only if we include foreign students?

[Paul Blomfield]

I absolutely agree with that point, which I raised earlier in passing. I commend the hon. Gentleman on initiating an Adjournment debate some time ago. I know he feels passionately about this subject, as many of us do.

To allow other hon. Members to contribute, I will draw my remarks to a close by making a couple of points. Including students in net migration targets distorts the policy debate on immigration and focuses on the migration that concerns nobody. More importantly, as has been said, it damages the opportunity for growth in one of our most important and successful industries. Five Select Committees of both Houses are agreed on the issue, and as we debate the matter, those in the other place are also considering it when discussing a report by one of its Select Committees. This is too important for the Home Office to dig its heels in, and I suspect that in his heart the Minister knows that. I urge him to go away from today’s debate, look again at the inclusion of students in our net migration targets, and send a clear message to the world that it is not just about what we say but about what we do, and that we are open for business.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and others who signed the motion asking for the debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for deciding that it was an appropriate use of time in the Chamber. It has been a very good debate.

Let me start, in an unashamedly positive way, by quoting from the letter that the hon. Member for West Bromwich West received from the Prime Minister earlier this year in response to his own letter.

“The UK has a fantastic offer for international students. Those with the right qualifications, enough money”

—obviously they would need enough to pay for their courses—

“and a good level of English can study here, with no annual limit on numbers. University students can work part-time and do work placements during their studies. When they finish they can stay, providing they get a job paying £20,000”

—now £20,300—

“a year or more, or as a Graduate Entrepreneur, under the first scheme of its kind in the world.”

The Prime Minister confirmed:

“The number coming to our universities is up.”

He also confirmed, importantly—and, to be fair, a number of Members on both sides of the House have acknowledged this—that there was no cap, and that there would be no cap, on the number of students coming to the UK.

[Paul Blomfield]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I finish this point before I give way to him. I think I know what he is going to say, because I took careful note of what he and others said earlier. Let me deal with what I think he is going to say, and if I am wrong I will give way to him later.

I believe that we have a very positive story to tell. I know that newspapers do not always report a positive story, but Ministers try to convey a positive message and, indeed, Members on both sides of the House have tried to do that today.

[Mr Harper]

Let me make some progress first.

The Government have been clear about the need to bring control to the immigration system, but we have also been clear about our wish to welcome those whom we want in the country. A common view, which many Members will share, was expressed particularly well by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), who said that his constituents had voiced no concern either about those who come here to study at our excellent universities, or about those who come here to do highly skilled jobs in business. I agree with my hon. Friend. That is why we have deliberately designed our system to attract people like that, and to deter those who are not coming to work in skilled occupations, or who are coming for other reasons.

The statistics show that we have achieved that selective balance. The number of university students and the number of people working in skilled jobs have risen. However, as my hon. Friend said, it should also be borne in mind that our constituents are anxious for us to have some control over the system. We must design a system that attracts the best and the brightest—to use the buzz words—from around the world to study, and appeals to global companies based in Britain that want to import some of their engineers and senior managers for a certain period to run their businesses, while also deterring those who will bring no benefit to the United Kingdom.

As Lord Mandelson has said, the previous Government did not have a controlled system. Indeed, they had a completely uncontrolled system: they just went out grabbing people from around the world. We have been determined not to overreact to that, but also to ensure that we have a system that focuses on the right people coming to Britain.

[Paul Blomfield]

I was expecting the Minister to anticipate my question and respond to it, but as he has not, let me ask it. It is about the cap. Is it not disingenuous, and the sort of misuse of language that brings no credit to this House, when we say on the one hand that there is no cap on the number of students coming, and on the other that we have a target to reduce the number of people coming and students are included in that?

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree, for the following reason. The point was best made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). There are two aspects to this. First, over a period, international students who come here to study and then go back to their home country make no contribution to net migration at all, because they come to Britain and then leave. In a steady state, therefore, they make no contribution to net migration at all. My hon. Friend is right, however, that in a growing market, as a consequence of the difference between those coming in a year and those leaving in that year, there will be a gap, but it is only the gap that contributes to net migration, not the total number.

One of the complexities here is that the data on those leaving are not brilliant. The Office for National Statistics, which is independent and which measures the numbers of people coming to and leaving Britain, measures those coming to study, but does not currently measure those who were studying and left. One of the improvements it has made to its system is that it is now starting to do that, and we will get the first of those statistics in August, I think. Coming back to a point that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made, that will give us a much clearer picture of how many students do leave each year, and we will then get a much clearer idea of the impact of student numbers on net migration. It is worth remembering that a lot of genuine students are still in the UK quite a considerable time after their arrival. According to one study quoted by Opposition Members, about 20% of former international students are still in the UK although they might not have decided to settle here permanently.

The other important point shows why we need a robust system. The NAO study has been quoted several times. In the past there were significant numbers of purported students who were not here to study, but who were working in low-skilled jobs, and significant numbers of students were renewing their visas over a period of time without any academic progression at all. It does no credit to our immigration system or our genuine academic institutions that such abuse is possible. We must deal with that, as well as welcome those we want to welcome to Britain.