here - United Kingdom Parliament

1721 Student Visas
6 JUNE 2013
Student Visas
1722
Gavin Barwell: I will take one more intervention
because I am conscious that other hon. Members wish
to speak.
Mr Cunningham: No one would disagree with a number
of the hon. Gentleman’s points. For the record, I have
always had straight dealings with the Minister in relation
to cases I have pursued. Would it not be better if
students from abroad were excluded from the immigration
numbers? On restoring the manufacturing base, companies
in the west midlands such as Jaguar Land Rover will
need more and more highly skilled people, whether
from abroad or from within. German companies such
as Bosch and a large number of universities are in
Coventry and the west midlands. Does the hon. Gentleman
believe that a better approach would be to exclude
students from abroad from our figures to help our
exports?
Gavin Barwell: The hon. Gentleman finished his
intervention just before the bell, I believe, Mr Deputy
Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): It was just
after the bell.
Gavin Barwell: I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s
substantive point at the end of my speech, but on his
point on skills, when there are skill needs in our economy,
our starting point should be to ask, “Can we train
people in this country who have not got work to do
those jobs?” However, if there are high-skill gaps, we
should of course bring people in if we need them.
The fourth benefit of such migration, which has not
been mentioned much, is the contribution to UK science
and technology. I studied natural science at Cambridge
and was on the Select Committee on Science and
Technology for a period, so I feel passionately about
this. Some 49% of people on taught postgraduate course
in maths, engineering or computer science are international
students—that figure has been mentioned. Cutting down
on those numbers would have a massive effect on UK
leadership in science. Sir Andre Geim, the Russian-born
Nobel prize winner from the university of Manchester,
has said that the identification of graphene would
“probably not have happened if”
he
“had been unable to employ great non-EU PhD postdoctoral
students”.
Those are the four clear benefits, but there are problems.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency provides figures
for enrolments, not for visa applications—enrolments
are the best measure. In 2011, there was a slight decline
in applications for first-year places at university from
non-EU applicants. Admittedly, the position is complex,
with significant country variations—there was a big
increase in applications from China, but a big decrease
in applications from India. I should be grateful if the
Minister would offer an explanation for those significant
variations if he has time. Students from different parts
of the world tend to apply for different courses. Indian
students are more likely to apply for STEM courses, so
those variations have an impact on universities. In 2012,
for the first time in 10 years, the total number of
non-EU postgraduate students fell.
The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) correctly
identified the three issues we need to address, the first of
which is bureaucracy and the process people must go
through when they want to come here. I pay tribute to
the Minister and the Home Secretary, because the decision
to split the UKBA up into two organisations—one
focuses on customer satisfaction and processing applications
for people who want to come here, and the other
focuses on the entirely different job of enforcement and
removing people who should not be here—was the right
decision, and a welcome one. However, there is more to
do to improve the process and the experience people
have when they apply.
The second issue is the tone and the message we send
out in debates on migration—that is not totally within
the Government’s control, because we must also consider
the tone of the migration debate in our media. The
Government have recognised the importance of sending
the message that the UK is open for business, as we saw
during the Prime Minister’s recent visit to India.
The third issue is policy. We have a target for reducing
net migration and should ask who is included in it. One
hon. Member has mentioned the Migration Advisory
Committee, which has said that an equivalent reduction
in all different forms of migration could reduce student
migration by 87,000. I put it to the Minister that, in
2009-10, the National Audit Office identified that about
50,000 students looked as if their principal reason for
coming here was work rather than study. All hon.
Members would accept that there was significant abuse
of the process. That happened through institutions—
bogus colleges—but we all see what we might regard as
serial students, meaning people who have come here
and done a number of courses but still not reached
undergraduate level. Clearly, their primary motivation
for coming to this country is to work in the UK,
whatever their visa application says. All hon. Members
accept that there was potential to reduce the numbers
without having an impact on the positive aspects we
have discussed.
On the long-term situation, the House has made its
view clear on the policy, but I am interested in what the
Conservative party will say in its next manifesto. As
hon. Members have said, the sector has the potential to
nearly double by 2020. At the moment, about 4.1 million
around the world study in tertiary education abroad.
The projection is that that will go up to 7 million by
2020. We should at least set ourselves the objective of
maintaining our market share, which is currently about
13%. We have done the job of squeezing down on
student migration abuse, but if our objective is to
maintain or grow our market share and continue to
recruit the people we want in this country, it will creep
up over time.
I support what my party had to say at the previous
election. It was absolutely right to focus on this, and I
think many Opposition Members recognise that. In the
longer term, we need to think more clearly about how
we differentiate to the public the kinds of immigration
that we are looking to control—the bits that we do not
think are good for the country and want to squeeze
down on, both illegal immigration and immigration
through the existing system. We should not get ourselves
into a position where we are trying to control things
that we all recognise are positive and good for the
country. I wish the Minister, for whom I have a very
high regard, the best of luck as he grapples with the