I want to see more evidence of precisely what the hon. Gentleman mentions. I believe he has been in his Committee all afternoon, so I understand why he has not been able to take part in the whole of this debate, which is a shame. I merely wish to cite the Government’s own Home Office paper from this year, “The Migrant Journey”, which showed that just 1% of students who came here in 2006 were permanently residing here five years later. So those myths that have sometimes grown up of—[Interruption.] There are others who are still studying and who have gone on to study other courses, but according to the Home Office’s own report only 1% are permanently residing. Some of the myths that have been mentioned in previous debates about 20% or 30% of students staying on afterwards are misguided.
I wish briefly to discuss the Government’s record. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) referred to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Its figures showed, contrary to the figures often provided by the Government, that the number of first-year, non-EU, new-entrant students at universities was down by 0.4% in 2011-12. In particular, the number of postgraduate new entrants has gone down from 105,195 to 103,150, which is potentially a worrying trend that we need to examine for the future because it is the first time there has been a fall in those figures for a decade—in effect, for all the time that similar statistics have been available.
As several hon. Members said, the number of students coming from India has fallen by some 8,000. That number may have been made up for by the number coming from China, but, as my right hon. Friend the
Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) said, it was a sign of the Government’s “forked-tonguedness” or two-facedness that the Prime Minister actually had to go to India to say that there is no cap on international students coming to the United Kingdom. There may not be a legal cap, but it certainly feels as if there is a cap, and the Government have to address that. As the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon said, if this is a growing market, we need to be holding our market share, and that means advancing and not stepping backwards. I would like us to increase our market share, because we have a unique and very valuable offer, and this would be good for the British economy. I worry that the way the Government’s immigration target is crafted has made that more difficult for us to achieve.
All the estimates show a significant fall in Britain’s attractiveness as a place for study, while Australia and Canada have seen dramatic improvements in their attractiveness. One Australian who works in this business told me recently, “I am delighted at what your Government are doing, because you are giving us lots of business.” That should really worry the Government.
I wish to raise one other minor point, which a number of hon. Members have mentioned and which relates to the number of overseas students who come to study degrees in science, technology, engineering and maths. That is the area in which we saw the most significant drop—8%—in 2011-12 in the number of non-EU new-entrant students coming to the UK. That must worry us, because it will affect our future competitiveness and productivity.
I now want to ask the Minister about London Metropolitan university. On 3 September 2012, while responding to an urgent question from my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green)— the Minister’s predecessor—said that more than 60% of students at London Met were involved in the “problems” of dubious education and were not proper students. He added:
“It was not a small, isolated number of students; the sampling showed significant systemic problems throughout.”—[Official Report, 3 September 2012; Vol. 549, c. 26.]
I should have thought that if that had been the case, a significant number of people would have been removed from the country.
That one bovver-booted intervention, made at a time of the year—the autumn—when many people were coming to study in the United Kingdom, sent a message around the world that Britain was not open for business. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us precisely how many students from London Metropolitan university were deemed to be “not proper students” and have been removed from the country. If he cannot do so now, perhaps he will write to me.
In his report on tier 4 visas, John Vine said:
“We found a potential risk of non-genuine students opting to apply for Student (Visitor) visas”,
which, he said,
“are not subject to the same stringent rules that are applied to Tier 4… The Agency needs to be alert to this to ensure that this route is not exploited in the future.”
The dramatic increase in the number of people applying to study shorter courses is almost in direct proportion to the fall in the number applying for tier 4 visas. I fear
that a displacement activity may be taking place, and I think there is a danger that unless we impose far more significant controls on shorter-term visas, they will be open to abuse.
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