Clause 52
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]
12:45 pm
Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)
These are fast-moving times and later in my remarks I shall come to what the new Further Education Minister said to the Select Committee on Home Affairs this morning, as I have been apprised of that. I am delighted that the Government are thinking along the same lines as one of our amendments—as they should be, of course, with all our amendments. The issue of student visas is clearly hugely important, as the Minister has acknowledged. There have been several scandals in recent years. In a sense it is hardly surprising.
There are two amendments and a new clause in the group, and I shall divide the group in two: amendment 57 deals with one issue, and amendment 58 and new clause 10 deal with another. However, they have a common background, which is worth setting out, as it concerns numbers, and the sheer scale of potential abuse of the system.
Between 2004 and 2008 nearly 825,000 student visas were issued, and in 2007 alone 358,000 non-EEA students were admitted to the UK. That is an increase of 16 per cent. on the previous year. Student cases were the largest group of after-entry visa decisions in 2007, accounting for 37 per cent. of the total number of about 145,000 people. In that context it is interesting to see what percentage were successful, and the answer for 2006 was 66 per cent. of applicants for student visas. An estimate from Universities UK—the Minister may have better figures at his disposal—is that 25 per cent. of appeals against the initial decision are successful. That suggests that there are significant problems in the entry clearance system.
I do not think that there will be any division in the Committee about the idea that we are all supportive of foreign students; certainly UK universities are, not least because of the revenue that those students bring, but we are also supportive of them as a country. Conservative MPs often make the point that one purpose—perhaps the main one—of the immigration system should be to enable Britain to attract its fair share, or perhaps more than its fair share, of the brightest and best from around the world, to support and promote our economic growth.
Clearly, the universities play an extremely large part in that, by introducing some of the brightest students from around the world to this country, a proportion of whom will inevitably want to make their life here. Even without that longer-term advantage, the Home Office estimates that in 2007 international students contributed £8.5 billion to the UK economy each year. That is a very positive background against which the many serious problems that emerge need to be addressed.
The Minister has described the student visa system as the Achilles heel of the immigration system. [Interruption.] He says that he was talking about the old system. He is in the throes of introducing a new one, which may or may not improve it, but he and I would certainly agree that the system that he describes as the old one—which is of course the one he and his predecessors have operated for the past 12 years—is the Achilles heel of the immigration system.