here - United Kingdom Parliament

1737 Student Visas
6 JUNE 2013
Student Visas
1738
[Chris Bryant]
come with completely different experiences from elsewhere
in the world, that enlivens, informs and improves the
quality of the education of British students in universities
and colleges. Also, this is about ensuring that we provide
the strongest possible opportunity for overseas students
to develop their understanding of what it is like to be in
Britain and to do business in Britain. We hope that they
will then do greater business with us further in the future.
I would also point out that, as many hon. Members
have said, this is an area of migration—if we want to
term it as such—that is warmly welcomed and accepted
by the British public. Leaving aside the matter of bogus
colleges, where foreigners were exploited and not given
a proper education, and British taxpayers were exploited
because proper controls were not in place, it is warmly
accepted in this country that international students are
important for our economy. If we are to prosper in the
future as a country that is in “a global race”, to use
the Prime Minister’s term, we have to be able to compete
for international students—for that market around the
world.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con): Does
the hon. Gentleman accept that not only have we had
bogus colleges, but quite a lot of colleges have provided
relatively low-value courses, be they in business, accounting
or IT, where the incentive of being able to work part-time,
stay on to work afterwards, bring dependants and
potentially stay on has been much of the reason why
international students have stayed, and that the Government
have been right to crack down on that?
Chris Bryant: I want to see more evidence of precisely
what the hon. Gentleman mentions. I believe he has
been in his Committee all afternoon, so I understand
why he has not been able to take part in the whole of
this debate, which is a shame. I merely wish to cite the
Government’s own Home Office paper from this year,
“The Migrant Journey”, which showed that just 1% of
students who came here in 2006 were permanently
residing here five years later. So those myths that have
sometimes grown up of—[Interruption.] There are others
who are still studying and who have gone on to study
other courses, but according to the Home Office’s own
report only 1% are permanently residing. Some of the
myths that have been mentioned in previous debates
about 20% or 30% of students staying on afterwards are
misguided.
I wish briefly to discuss the Government’s record.
The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon
(Nicola Blackwood) referred to the Higher Education
Statistics Agency. Its figures showed, contrary to the
figures often provided by the Government, that the
number of first-year, non-EU, new-entrant students at
universities was down by 0.4% in 2011-12. In particular,
the number of postgraduate new entrants has gone
down from 105,195 to 103,150, which is potentially a
worrying trend that we need to examine for the future
because it is the first time there has been a fall in those
figures for a decade—in effect, for all the time that
similar statistics have been available.
As several hon. Members said, the number of students
coming from India has fallen by some 8,000. That
number may have been made up for by the number
coming from China, but, as my right hon. Friend the
Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) said, it was a sign
of the Government’s “forked-tonguedness”or two-facedness
that the Prime Minister actually had to go to India to
say that there is no cap on international students coming
to the United Kingdom. There may not be a legal cap,
but it certainly feels as if there is a cap, and the Government
have to address that. As the hon. Member for Stratfordon-Avon
said, if this is a growing market, we need to be
holding our market share, and that means advancing
and not stepping backwards. I would like us to increase
our market share, because we have a unique and very
valuable offer, and this would be good for the British
economy. I worry that the way the Government’s
immigration target is crafted has made that more difficult
for us to achieve.
All the estimates show a significant fall in Britain’s
attractiveness as a place for study, while Australia and
Canada have seen dramatic improvements in their
attractiveness. One Australian who works in this business
told me recently, “I am delighted at what your Government
are doing, because you are giving us lots of business.”
That should really worry the Government.
I wish to raise one other minor point, which a number
of hon. Members have mentioned and which relates to
the number of overseas students who come to study
degrees in science, technology, engineering and maths.
That is the area in which we saw the most significant
drop—8%—in 2011-12 in the number of non-EU newentrant
students coming to the UK. That must worry
us, because it will affect our future competitiveness and
productivity.
I now want to ask the Minister about London
Metropolitan university. On 3 September 2012, while
responding to an urgent question from my hon. Friend
the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the
right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green)— the
Minister’s predecessor—said that more than 60% of
students at London Met were involved in the “problems”
of dubious education and were not proper students. He
added:
“It was not a small, isolated number of students; the sampling
showed significant systemic problems throughout.”—[Official Report,
3 September 2012; Vol. 549, c. 26.]
I should have thought that if that had been the case, a
significant number of people would have been removed
from the country.
That one bovver-booted intervention, made at a time
of the year—the autumn—when many people were
coming to study in the United Kingdom, sent a message
around the world that Britain was not open for business.
I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us precisely
how many students from London Metropolitan university
were deemed to be “not proper students” and have been
removed from the country. If he cannot do so now,
perhaps he will write to me.
In his report on tier 4 visas, John Vine said:
“We found a potential risk of non-genuine students opting to
apply for Student (Visitor) visas”,
which, he said,
“are not subject to the same stringent rules that are applied to
Tier 4… The Agency needs to be alert to this to ensure that this
route is not exploited in the future.”
The dramatic increase in the number of people applying
to study shorter courses is almost in direct proportion
to the fall in the number applying for tier 4 visas. I fear