Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

I shall ask one question and make two observations. My question, which follows up on something that was said earlier in this Committee, is how many other countries which have a substantial higher education hinterland have a provision of a similar nature to the one brought into play in the Bill? If the answer is only a small number, then that reinforces the points that have been made about the likelihood of our having a declining share. Of course I acknowledge that my supposition may be wrong, but it will be easier if we deal on the basis of facts. My two observations are that I am conscious that all the figures we have show that the proportion of overseas students among post-graduates is much higher than among under-graduates. I understand the resentment among some British families with children of higher education age that they are being excluded from courses because of the weight of higher education applications from overseas, but I think that that is an under-graduate rather than a post-graduate issue. On post-graduate figures, it is quite clear that our institutions are massively dependent on being filled by people from abroad. This is obviously highly subjective, but I cite a single statistic from 10 or 15 years ago. My middle son did a taught MBA in Scotland in a course of 180 students, of whom 30 were British and 150 were from abroad. It was to the credit of the Scottish institution that it attracted 150 students, but it has reached the point where, if there are only 30 British students among the 180, there is a risk of diminishing the Britishness of the experiences. That was a post-graduate case. My other observation is that when I was in the private sector I always invested a day every year in going to listen to the late Herman Kahn from the Hudson Institute in the United States, who was one of the futurologists of the 1960s and 1970s. I recall him saying that the British had nothing to worry about in the post-industrial society because their reputation in government, education and medicine would give them a pre-eminent place. If our market share is slipping in one of those areas, then it is a cause for concern for the Government and for higher education institutions.