Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-13
Topic: Education
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, for the second time I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and to my noble friend Lord Lucas for providing your Lordships with an opportunity to discuss the issue of international students. I also send my best wishes to my noble friend Lord Patten, who cannot be with us today. I say at the outset I am left in no doubt about the passions expressed in this debate by noble Lords around the Chamber. As I have previously indicated—and as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, indicated—we have indeed said this before. But I will say it again so that the House is in no doubt. The Government very much welcome the contribution that international students and academics make to the United Kingdom’s higher education and research sectors and we have sought to nurture and encourage that I will deal first with the amendment from my noble friend Lord Lucas. I entirely share its goal of ensuring maximum transparency. I am pleased to say that there is already a wealth of information in the public domain about the contribution of international students. Provisions in the Bill will add to this. As I have previously indicated, the Bill already includes provisions requiring the Office for Students to monitor and report on the financial health of higher education providers. This can be done only if the OfS understands the types of students and the income they bring to the sector. Clause 9(1)(b) requires all registered providers to give the OfS such information as it needs to perform its functions. This will ensure that the OfS has the power to gather the information it considers it requires on international student numbers Furthermore, the Higher Education Statistics Agency already publishes detailed information about international student numbers, along with a breakdown of the countries they are travelling from. We envisage that these arrangements will continue. This amendment would also require information about the proportions of visas granted when set against the total number of applications submitted by each institution. The Home Office already publishes a breakdown of tier 4 visa applications, including the number granted and the number refused. As I explained in Committee, I do not support providing this information broken down by institution. If there is an institution which, for any reason, has seen its visa refusal rate rise, that does not necessarily make it a failing institution. Provided that it passes the Home Office’s basic compliance assessment, and there are no other compliance issues, no action will be taken against it by the Home Office. But I am sure that the institution concerned would want to make any changes to its system that it deemed appropriate out of the public spotlight. I dare say that any institution that finds itself in that position would support the Government’s position on this My noble friend and I both support transparency and the publication of as much information as possible. Much of the information that he seeks is already available and published, and the Bill will strengthen those arrangements. There are small elements of his amendment where, for the reasons of practicality or commercial confidentiality that I have given, I would not favour publication of the data in question. However, those cases are very much the exception, and I can assure my noble friend that the information in which he is interested will be collected and published for all to see I turn now to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. These topics, as the House will know, were covered at some length in Committee and I do not propose to repeat all that I said then. However, it is important that I put on record again that there is no limit on the number of genuine international students whom educational institutions in the UK can recruit. I make no apology for repeating that. Equally importantly, the Government have no plans to limit any institution’s ability to recruit international students. Likewise, as recently emphasised by the Prime Minister, the Government are committed to ensuring that the UK continues to be one of the best places in the world for science and innovation I previously pointed out that the United Kingdom has a very competitive offer when compared to other major recruiters of international students, whether you look at speed of visa processing, proportion of successful applications, work rights during study or post study opportunities. While, of course, there is no room for complacency, the United Kingdom continues to be the world’s second most popular destination for international students and we have welcomed more than 170,000 international students to the UK for the sixth year running The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, spoke eloquently, backed up by statistics, about the importance of overseas students to the UK. We continue to look for ways to promote the UK as an attractive place to come to study and we have a very generous offer for international academics who want to come to work in UK universities. The Chancellor’s recent Budget acknowledged that the continued strength of UK research and innovation depends on access to world-class skills, ideas and talent. It set out how the UK is investing in our industries of the future and that the Government have committed to invest more than £100 million over the next four years to attract the brightest minds to the UK. This will help maintain the UK’s position as a world leader in science and research. It includes £50 million ring-fenced for fellowship programmes to attract global talent and more than £50 million from existing international funds to support fellowships that attract researchers to the UK from emerging research powerhouses such as India, China, Brazil and Mexico In the tier 4 visa pilot, four universities are involved in a trial which involves less paperwork surrounding applications and a longer period of post-study leave. The noble Lord, Lord Bradley, mentioned a similar issue. This is an excellent example of taking sensible steps to try to ensure that the UK is as welcoming as possible for international students. It covers exactly the ground in the first limb of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I do not believe that a general statutory duty, which would be impossible to measure and bound to give rise to litigation, is the way forward here. The noble Lord, Lord Green, stated that these were not matters appropriate for legislation I turn now to the second part of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, which seeks to stop students being treated as long-term migrants. Incidentally, I have noticed that the noble Lord has moved from the description of "economic migrant" in his amendment in Committee to "long term migrant" now. However, I fear that, whatever the terminology, the difficulties with what he proposes remain the same.