Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Mark Field

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

The hon. Gentleman will know that I entirely accept his last point about a number of these postgraduate courses. In an ideal world, as he knows, I would not have students in the immigration figures, but we are where we are and they will remain in those figures. Surely one of the lessons of Brexit is that this issue is of massive concern to many of our fellow countrymen. Therefore, it is incumbent on universities to ensure that we get high-quality students from abroad, and that is really the focus of what the Government are trying to achieve here. We need to ensure that those students who come here are the crème de la crème and will add the sort of experience to which he referred earlier in his contribution. By having a group of high-quality students, we will command the confidence of the public that we are getting only the brightest and the best, rather than a volume operation in our universities.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He and I have worked closely on a number of these issues, and we do agree that international students should be taken out of net migration targets. On the point that he raises, I disagree with him. I know that we would come together in saying that our universities are a great British export industry, but I am genuinely puzzled why the Government do not see them as an industry in other terms. We do not put in measures to seek to discourage the automobile industry from selling cars; we try to encourage it to sell more cars. Similarly, on the point that he raises, we do not say, “Well, we just want you to sell Rolls-Royce cars. We don’t want you to sell Minis.” It is nonsense economically for our country and for the local economies that we all represent. That is the nub of the problem.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the way in which these issues are viewed by the public. International students are not viewed as a threat or as an issue on which the Government should be taking action. A recent poll showed that 75% of people wanted to see the numbers of international students either stay the same or go up, but the Government strategy, as he knows, is moving us in the other direction.

The Home Secretary, albeit against her will, made a speech to the Conservative party conference in which she put international students at the centre of her plans to cut migration—I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that she was wrong to do that. She introduced a new tool, to which he has alluded, with which she planned to do it. It is by linking visa approval to the quality of courses. We need to reflect on that, because it is a very significant development, as we now have a policy objective of reducing international students—the Government did it by default in the previous Parliament.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Mark Field

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend has clearly done so much work on the issue that he anticipates one of the points that I was going to make. He is absolutely right.

I want first to illustrate the mismatch by comparing my constituency, Sheffield Central, with the neighbouring constituency, Sheffield, Hallam. I am glad that I shall be walking through the same Lobby later as my political neighbour, but the two constituencies are of a very different nature and they illustrate my argument.

Sheffield Central is inner city and multicultural; we have large council estates, houses in multiple occupation, two universities and very high levels of voter turnover. Already, 17% of households have nobody on the register. Sheffield, Hallam consists of our city’s leafy suburbs; it is largely monocultural with large areas of comfortable owner-occupation, and a very stable population. Only 4% of its households have nobody on the register. There is a huge disparity between the number of people represented by the MPs for those two constituencies.

I have made that point before, but I now have the advantage of supporting it with the latest information available, which is from the 2011 census. If the argument was reduced to a simple question of constituency size based on the number of registered voters, our two constituencies would appear to be pretty similar in size. However, if we compare the population according to the 2011 census with the number of voters registered on 2 January 2013 according to the council’s electoral registration officer, we can see that the picture is completely different. Sheffield Central has 76,596 registered voters whereas Sheffield, Hallam has 71,559—the difference is just 5,037, or 7%. According to the census, Sheffield Central has a population of 115,284 whereas Sheffield, Hallam has a population of 89,356, and so the difference is 25,928, or 20%.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I, too, am a representative of an inner-city seat. Surely the hon. Gentleman recognises, as I do, that one of the main reasons behind such differences is the number of non-UK nationals in a particular constituency who often live in households containing no UK nationals and therefore no UK voters. I know that puts a huge additional burden on him as a Member of Parliament, as it does on me—all these people require representation—but they are not UK nationals and therefore should not be voting in UK general elections.

[Paul Blomfield]

There is a bit of a difference between the two inner-city seats that the hon. Gentleman and I represent. Although there is some evidence to endorse his point, it does not explain the enormous disparity between the two seats in Sheffield.

Many of those who are excluded from the electoral register are precisely the people who form a huge proportion of my casework and I know that the situation will be the same for many Members who represent inner-city seats. More importantly, the combination of legislation means that their voice in Parliament will be reduced. If the Electoral Commission’s original concerns about the impact of the Bill came into being and were compounded by a process of redrawing boundaries based on the register as at December 2015, the gap would widen even more. If boundaries were redrawn based on an average electorate of 76,641, which was the basis for the Electoral Commission’s calculations, the actual population of Sheffield Central would be approaching 50% more than that of Sheffield, Hallam.

Some might argue that the Electoral Commission’s worst fears might no longer come true, particularly in the light of some of the concessions the Government have been forced to make. In the longer term that might be true, but crucially the next boundary review would be conducted at the low point of the registration cycle in December 2015. Let me make it clear that like those on my Front Bench I support the principle of equalisation. In so far as there is public interest in constitutional reform, that argument has enormous resonance with the public, but the people to whom I have spoken were shocked to learn that equalisation is based not on population but on the number of registered electors. The effect of the combined legislation will be not to reduce but to enhance inequity.