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1725 Student Visas 6 JUNE 2013 Student Visas 1726 [Nicola Blackwood] been about the frequent changes to student visas, which are much more of a difficulty for both students and the university. Perhaps he might like to comment on those issues, as they are the main challenges that are actually faced by the university’s students. Mr Smith: I will take those comments as warm and strong support for the points I have made about the damage the changes to the visa regime have done. The Government are denying independent colleges a level playing field and disadvantaging them in a number of respects. These include: the 2011 two-year cap on international student numbers; all the uncertainties of the twice-yearly Highly Trusted Sponsor renewal application; the denial of part-time work for students either in term time or holidays; student exclusion from the new post-study work schemes for PhD and MBA graduates; and the fact that unlike university students, PhD students at independent colleges are not exempt from Tier 4’s five-year time limit, so they cannot do a first degree in the UK before their PhD. It is little surprising that international student enrolments on higher education courses at independent colleges fell by over 70% between 2011 and 2012, with a fall of 46% in college sector visas for the year ending March 2013. This has destroyed tens—possibly hundreds—of college businesses, cost thousands of jobs and resulted in a loss of income to the families accommodating students and to the local businesses and communities within which they spend their money. I strongly support the motion. I hope that the Government will listen to the Select Committees that have come to the same view and take international students out of the migrations statistics used to steer UK immigration policy. I hope that Ministers will remove the unfair penalties imposed on independent colleges, work in partnership with them to develop longer-term, highly trusted accreditation and promote the contribution these colleges make. I also urge them more generally to think further and positively about how to encourage, not discourage, overseas students at all levels who want to come here, as those students invigorate universities and other education institutions and generate lots of overseas earnings, jobs and economic demand, which people here desperately need. Doing so would rebuild Britain’s reputation in the world as somewhere that welcomes international students and researchers and recognises their enormous potential contribution to our culture and economy—which, let us remember, is to the benefit of us all. 2.1 pm Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con): In the media, international students at our universities are generally seen though one of two lenses: the positive one is that they are a cash-cow, premium product that historically has cross-subsidised domestic students in our universities; the negative one is that, because of this, they might end up getting too many places at our universities, thus keeping out some of our home-grown talent. Both are completely the wrong way of thinking about international students. This is a huge growth market in the world and vital to our economic growth. Education ought to be for us a focus sector, alongside life sciences, advanced manufacturing, the digital and creative industries, professional services and tourism. It is also a market in which, thankfully, we have strong competitive advantages. We have some of the best brand names in the business: Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Birmingham, Manchester, Queen’s Belfast, the London School of Economics—[HON. MEMBERS: “Hear, hear!”] I can name check others, if anyone wants me to. Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con): Leeds. Damian Hinds: Thank you. All in all, about one fifth of the top 100 universities and about one fifth of the top 50 business schools in the world are ours, and of course we have that great asset, the English language. The sector has other advantages. The first and most obvious is export earnings and the jobs it supports in this country, but it is also important in the battle for talent, in bringing into the country the people we need to help our economy succeed. It also helps with what people have called soft power—or, as I would prefer to describe it, the promotion of Britain abroad and the fostering of business and cultural links throughout the world. The sector has several secondary advantages. For one, unusually among the key growth sectors, its employment and economic growth prospects are well distributed throughout the UK, not concentrated in one place, such as London. Secondly, university rankings depend on having a certain proportion of foreign students at a university, because international rankings consider that if a university is not good enough to attract foreign students, it is probably not very good. Thirdly, having a vibrant, cosmopolitan HE sector helps to reinforce several other growth strategy objectives, particularly to bring forward research and development in key sectors and to make this country the headquarters location of choice for multinationals. As many hon. Members have said, this is a growing world market. In 1980, about 1 million students were enrolled in institutions outside their country of origin, but by 2010 that figure was 3.3 million. We know that more recently the compound annual growth rate trend— obviously it has moved a bit in the last couple of years—has been about 7%, which is a strong growth rate for an attractive industry. According to the McKinsey report on the seven long-term priorities for the UK, if we can hold our share—grow it as the market grows—and harvest just half of the benefit, it would be worth an additional 80,000 jobs in the country by 2030. Roberta Blackman-Woods: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that holding that share is becoming more difficult, because of the challenge from countries such as Australia and Canada, and that the Government should be strengthening our universities’ ability to attract overseas students, not making it more difficult, as they are doing at present? Damian Hinds: The hon. Lady brilliantly anticipates my next point. Of course, she is absolutely correct. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) said, we are, to coin a phrase, in a global race,
1727 Student Visas 6 JUNE 2013 Student Visas 1728 and we are not the only ones who have spotted that this is an attractive sector and who are doing things differently, as we will continue do in order to protect and growth our own share. The most obvious competitive set are the Anglophone countries, led by the United States, but also including Canada and Australia. Increasingly, however, non-English speaking countries are offering Englishspeaking courses. The third competitor is potentially the biggest, and that is the choice of staying at home. In China, India, Nigeria and elsewhere in the world, there is a big business opportunity in attracting students from those countries to stay in institutions there. So, yes, we have to redouble our efforts all the time in order not only to forge ahead, but just to hold our own. We should be talking always about quality higher education, pre-higher education preparation and certified colleges. These institutions should not be selling visas; they must be selling education, and we know that there have been recent substantial abuses. The National Audit Office says that in 2009 up to 50,000 alleged students were here primarily to work, rather than study. We had this cadre of serial students who were forever renewing their visas without showing any substantial progress in their studies. Clearly, if we are serious about curbing immigration in what has become a chaotic situation and about reducing the numbers and getting rid of abuse, we have to tackle the student visa route. Jackie Doyle-Price: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the abuses under the old system, but there are two sides to tackling the problem—tightening up the rules for people coming in, and removing those abusing the system—but the NAO concluded that not enough was being done in the latter department. Does he agree that the Government need to make that more of a priority? Damian Hinds: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It must indeed be a clear priority. I welcome the action that the Government have taken. I do not think that everyone would agree, but I welcome the removal of the blanket two-year right to work for all graduates, because it looked a bit too much like a bribe to sweeten the degree. There is a role for it, however, in certain circumstances and categories, such as in subjects where there is a shortage—we talked about STEM subjects earlier—and for MBA students, who, by definition, will already have worked for several years and have done their first degree and who are valuable and mobile students. I welcome the removal of the right to work for private college students, the requirement to show real academic progress and, of course, the closure of bogus colleges. I also acknowledge that the Government have put in place a sensible and proportionate regime for student visitors. A lot of people have thrown statistics around, but overall it appears that the falls in the numbers have been concentrated primarily in those sectors and parts of the market where abuse was most prevalent. I also welcome the fact that there is no cap on the numbers of people coming to university. It is right that the Prime Minister goes out and gives that message, as we saw him doing recently at the KPMG offices—I think—in India, but it is a constant battle against possible perceptions. For example, the message on MBA student blogs in India is that Britain is not as welcoming a place—or not welcoming at all—as it once was. Nicola Blackwood: Does my hon. Friend agree that one reason for that ongoing perception might be the efficiency, or lack thereof, of in-country UK Border Agency officials? With the expansion of credibility interviews, that will only increase. Some of the reports that I have heard about the reasons for people being turned down at interview—those where the decision was later overturned at appeal—are concerning. Does he agree that if we are to increase the caution with which we agree to visa applications, we should also increase the efficiency of UKBA in-country? Damian Hinds: As always, my hon. Friend makes her point clearly and well. I do not have enough knowledge about the interview to comment, but overall, with or without a cap, and whatever happened last year or this year—we know that there is no cap, and we know that the figures look broadly okay—it nevertheless remains the case that, given the intense scrutiny to which immigration numbers will rightly be subjected, how students are treated in those statistics must inevitably affect the extent to which we as a country seize this market opportunity in the years ahead. In one way it is blindingly obvious, but it is worth saying that not every student adds to immigration. In the steady state, so long as we are reasonably good at counting people leaving as well as those coming— Chris Bryant: That is a big “if”. Damian Hinds: We took over from Labour. So long as we are reasonably good at that, it is only growth in the numbers that will add to immigration. However, I would ask the Minister to look again and consider counting people towards net immigration only at the point at which they settle. The key counterargument—in some ways it is quite strong—is that a student is a human being like any other, and if there is a net increase in their numbers, that is an increase in net immigration, which will lead to the same strain on housing, public services and so on as with any other type of immigration. I would argue that that is not quite true. I do not want to sound trivial about it, but one could argue, with some sense, that students do not take up quite as much residential living space as others and, being younger on average, they are—[Interruption.] I do not mean that students are smaller. I myself was thinner as an undergraduate—that is history—but I was thinking more about housing. As younger people, typically, students are probably less likely than the average person to make demands on the national health service, places at primary schools and so on. Chris Bryant: It is an absolute pre-condition of any student visa that that person is unable to make any claims on the taxpayer or, therefore, the NHS. Damian Hinds: I am conscious of the time and I do not want to get into a long debate about this, but any person in this country will be consuming public services to some extent—for example, roads—and is financed by the rest of us. In any case, broadly speaking we are making the same points.
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