My Lords, 20 years ago, along with my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Radice, I was invited by the late, great—I use the word advisedly—Lord Dahrendorf, one of the most remarkable international figures ever to grace your Lordships’ House, to be a visiting parliamentary fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. We were the first two. I am sure I speak for the noble Lord, Lord Radice, who is not in his place. We were immensely impressed by this postgraduate Oxford college, which attracted students from all over the world. Many of them went on to hold positions of high importance and real influence in their native countries but always had a sense of real gratitude, affection and, indeed, obligation to the institution at which they had studied here.
I am still a member of the Senior Common Room at St Antony’s and just a couple of weeks ago I was talking to our present warden, Professor Margaret MacMillan, herself an eminent Canadian historian who has just written a most remarkable book on the origins of the First World War. She said that at the moment there are students from 73 different countries at St Antony’s, and that many current Governments of the world include those who received at least part of their education there. I believe there are four or five in the Mexican Government alone.
That is truly remarkable but it is not unique to St Antony’s, eminent as that institution is. When students come to this country and study, they contribute far more than they obtain, and go back with a knowledge and affection for the United Kingdom. Of course, that does not apply just at postgraduate level. In the fair city of Lincoln, where I now live, we have two universities: the University of Lincoln, which has in a remarkably short space of time become a very significant university; and the smaller Bishop Grosseteste University, which began more than 100 years ago as an Anglican teacher training college and is now a proper university. Both those universities have students from a variety of countries.
As the head of another college said to me not long ago, we are in danger of making those who consider applying feel that they are not entirely welcome here. I cannot for the life of me believe that that is our intention. Of course it is not. I know it is not the Prime Minister’s; I know it is emphatically not the view of my noble friend the Minister. Nevertheless, as we all know, perceptions in politics are very important. There are, in India in particular, young men and women who believe that they are not as welcome as we should make them feel.
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I said in a previous exchange in this House that far better that a bogus student come to a bogus college than we shut out somebody who might in the future be
Foreign Minister of his country or win a Nobel Prize. That puts it very simplistically but I would not depart from that. We really should be treating students separately from other immigrants. They come, they pay, and the vast majority of them go back, and very often those who do not enrich our society by staying.
A few moments ago my noble friend Lady Williams talked of those who came as Jewish refugees before the war and gave a new depth and dimension to the intellectual life of this country. We have in your Lordships’ House those who were in the wave of Ugandan Asians expelled by that ghastly dictator, Idi Amin, in the early 1970s. I shall always be very proud that it was a Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who opened the doors for them, and they have enriched our society.
We have been admirably led by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in his brief, concise but extremely persuasive speech. We are dealing with students, with young men and women from around the world who still look to Britain as being a place where they can enjoy intellectual freedom, benefit academically, acquire and develop knowledge, and engage in research that will enrich all. I beg my noble friend, when he comes to reply, to acknowledge that there is a difference between the student immigrant and others.
I will concentrate my activities on this Bill on students because I believe that this is the part of the Bill that is most defective. I urge noble Lords in all parts of the House, whatever their political affiliation, to support the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and so admirably followed up by my noble friend Lady Williams and the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick. I sincerely hope it will not be necessary for the House ever to divide on this issue because I hope the Government will recognise the powerful good sense of the arguments that have been advanced and which I am trying, in a gentle and modest way, to reinforce and support.