My Lords, this group of amendments proposes the means to make transparent one of the constituent parts of the high immigration levels that the Government aim to reduce. The amendments propose making transparent the data on the numbers granted student visas and the numbers of dependents, capping the numbers—in the case of the amendments that will follow, Amendments 198 and 199—and dealing with those who offend and the home countries of offenders.

I shall focus on my Amendment 141A, which proposes an annual statement on the number of visas given to overseas students and their dependents, because they contribute significantly to the overall immigration numbers, on which this Government and the previous one have concentrated in order to get them down. The evidence that we have is piecemeal. It covers a range of periods and categories and comes from the Home Office, the ONS and the Higher Education Statistics Authority, but all of the evidence indicates that overseas students’ visas and those issued for dependents constitute a large cohort of the immigration numbers.

In the previous academic year ending September 2024, there were 732,285 overseas students at higher education institutions in the UK. That is almost 25% of the total student population. Around one in 10 came from the EU, while 90% of them came from further across the world. Although the total was down from the very high period of 2022-23—a record high, as it happens—these figures from 2023-24 are still the second-highest ever for overseas students and their dependents.

We want to find out what the top countries are. India was top of the list, sending 107,500—almost nine times the number from India in 2017-18. China, which sent the most students for 10 years, is now in second place; it sent 98,400. There have been rapid increases from Nigeria, which is in third place. The figures for Nigeria will come up in my notes in a moment, so I will come back to them, but it is in third place.

Now we have another set of figures, though, from the Home Office. I want to talk about them. They give an indication of the numbers for the year ending in June this year—the year in which the Labour Government have been in power. From them, we discovered that the number of student visas granted for the year ending June 2025 was 436,000; that was higher than the average from 2012-21, which was an average of 305,000, although it was much smaller than in the peak year of 2023, which was the year when 650,000 student visas were granted. During that time, there were 18,000 dependents—a far lower figure than the 154,000 who came in before that. That is, I think, due to the previous Government’s attempts to curb the figures.

What we see from this is that student visas for overseas students still run at a very high rate. If we take the figures for the year ending June and multiply them, say, by three, we are looking at well over a million people in the country on overseas student visas. For these reasons, it would be very helpful for Parliament, and indeed the public, to know on an annual basis the number of overseas student visas granted, and the numbers granted to dependents, and whether that is increasing or falling. That kind of information in an accessible and consistent form will help identify the nature and scale of the question, whether it is indeed a serious problem and, if so, how we can deal with it.

Looking at some of the reports on this, I thought it might be interesting to look into how easy it is to get a student visa and how many overseas applicants for student visas succeed. The first part of the question is answered by the government website. It says that anyone over 16 can apply for a student visa if they have been offered a place and have the means to support themselves and pay for their course—though the amount will vary—and that they must be able to speak, read, understand and write English; 16 and 17 year-olds who come must have their parents’ permission.

How long they can stay will depend. They can stay for up to five years if studying for degree-level courses and up to two years for courses underneath degree level. For longer stays, GOV.UK/student-visa helpfully tells us that you can switch from a student visa to another sort of visa if you are already here. The website also explains the charge for the visa application, the health charge, and so on. I want to know—and it is something I would like the Minister to give me a hand with—what happens at the Home Office in respect of student visas and any extension of stay, if it is an extended stay, and the figures for those who change to a work permit. This is not in my amendment, but it would be very interesting to know these figures. I understand they are tracked, but if there could be a statement releasing that data, it would be very helpful. Another question is whether students who come on a student visa remain in their courses and finish them.

One illuminating report I saw came from Sky News on Thursday 4 September by a data journalist called Joely Santa Cruz. She considered not merely the numbers but the sort of problems which the system is dealing with. The message I took from that report was that there is a certain laxity by the Home Office in checking applicants and dealing with fraudulent claims. The report told of an Indian national who used fraudulent papers to secure a visa for herself, her husband and her children, and who seems to have abandoned her course or did not take it up. The family is now making an asylum claim to stay here. The visas were awarded on the basis of fraudulent claims about the bank statement. This is another aspect of the gangs: it is sometimes the case that people set up in other countries and help applicants through the student visa process. These visas were awarded on the basis of fraudulent claims. The family has no money and are now being supported by the local authority while making their asylum claim.

Although it is not in my amendment, I would like the Minister and the Home Office to look into this. When the visa expires, the student goes home or is deported for breaking the law, but what happens to them as they try to extend their visa? I know that, in the case of this family, they are making asylum claims. I understand that, in the latest year, 14,000 people who originally came on a student visa claimed asylum—they account for 14,000 of the 111,000 claims, though it was higher in 2023. If we could know how the Home Office deals with these numbers, it would be excellent, and also how the costs stack up against the benefits of having overseas students.

I began my life as a historian at Cambridge. I know the contribution that overseas students make, but, ultimately, we need to look for other solutions for the cash-strapped universities. Many of them have already started to build overseas campuses, where students can be educated locally at far less cost to themselves and at far greater benefit to their own countries. It is for these reasons we need to start addressing the numbers here.