Indefinite Leave to Remain

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

We have heard some brilliant points. I want to concentrate on our universities. Imperial College’s White City campus and the University of West London in my seat in Ealing are genuinely world-beating UK universities that generate billions of exports. They are central to UK soft power and global relationships, but almost everyone faces financial challenges, so they have had to diversify income streams to cross-subsidise their work. Attracting globally excellent researchers and international student fee income has helped them to just about manage. Ex-colleagues of mine are closing down degrees reluctantly. Whole institutions face going bust. With competitiveness and growth at the heart of the Government’s missions, if the UK makes it too onerous, our universities will lose talent and market share to Canada, Australia and the US. Settled status is five years in most of the rest of Europe, so unwittingly we are advantaging our rivals.

At Imperial College’s White City innovation incubator, I saw many international postgrads pioneering scientific and technological advances, some on the two-year post-study work visa, which is also being cut. The UK higher education sector’s teaching, research and innovation activities benefit our economy to the tune of £265 billion, but after 14 years of chronic underfunding there is now potentially another blow impacting our constituents, students, staff and those from lower-income backgrounds, who are typically more debt averse and will be put off entering HE at all. PwC found that UK universities expect to increasingly rely on international student fees, and they are vulnerable to reductions in numbers. That is pre White Paper. In fact, this is not just hypothetical; in many cases we are already seeing the UK’s declining attractiveness.

In 2024, Home Office figures showed a 19% decline in student visas from the year before, because of the rules to stop students bringing family. Universities have a vital part to play in growth and productivity across the UK, but we could be sleepwalking into a perfect storm, with straitened circumstances, decreasing international competitiveness and increasing expenditure putting universities under more and more pressure. We need to be honest about the trade-offs involved in reducing immigration, and about culture wars. What I am talking about is a million miles away from illegal boat migrants living it up in hotels and sapping resources from locals.

A skilled talent pathway Hong Kong BNO person from Ealing who contacted me says of her circle:

“We have paid Visa application…fees…Health Surcharge…Income Tax”—

and national insurance roughly amounting to—

“£60,000 per person over five years. Additional spending in the UK economy…rent, council tax, consumer purchases, education and childcare…payments…made in good faith—under a policy we trusted would remain consistent for those already on the pathway.”

Much of what is proposed in the White Paper is welcome and sensible, but we should not move the goalposts for those already in the system and trash solemn promises that we made to them. Along with considerations of immigration and universities, we must consider work, vocational education, further education provision, what universities are for and their role in levelling up, and all those sorts of things. We need a realistic strategy for their long-term financial sustainability, and their role in regeneration and growth. It is a graphic equaliser.

This was only a White Paper, so I hope that Ministers can take our points into account. Let us keep to our word, and let us keep the British higher education sector the envy of the world.