My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said that the amendment enjoyed support from all quarters of the House. I speak as the Conservative sponsor of the amendment, and I am very happy to do so.
We have heard a number of powerful speeches and I think that I agree with every word that has been spoken. I particularly draw attention to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in his introduction when he said that he was not making a special plea for any given set of individuals. Rather, he was pleading on behalf of one of the most successful sectors of British life and of the British economy in order to enable it to continue to be one of the most successful, not only within this country but in international terms.
If I may say so, it is very important when the Minister answers that he should not treat this as being something directed towards a particular group of people who come to this country, as if we are conferring some favour on them. Rather, he should deal with the issue in the context of the impact that the Government’s proposals will have on one of the most successful sectors of British life and of the British economy. The ability to attract international students is both a means by which British universities excel and a measure by which others can see that they are excelling. To diminish in any way the free flow of talent to this country would be very damaging.
I should like to make one final point, because so much has been said that there is no point in repeating it. The Government should look at the beam in their own eye, if I may say so, on this issue. The Government understand very well that, when they make senior appointments to different institutions, they want to attract talent from all over the world. Indeed, they boast of their ability to do that and of their willingness to make appointments of non-Brits to high places in this country in a way that most other countries would not in the case of foreigners. They paid vast sums of money to attract a redoubtable Canadian to run the Bank of England—about four times what the president of the Federal Reserve gets, they were so anxious to attract his talents to this country. Another very talented Canadian—paid rather less, actually—is at the head of the Royal Mail. There are many other examples, I am happy to say, of talented people being attracted by the Government to contribute to the British economy.
The Government understand perfectly well the importance of attracting the best people to run British institutions, and they should be commended for their lack of chauvinism in that regard, but that is also true of universities. If universities cannot continue to attract the best talent from all over the world, that will seriously damage their ability to continue to contribute as much as they do to the British economy. As my noble friend Lord Cormack, said, those who stay after graduation are often the people who contribute the most to academic research, industrial start-ups or the
businesses they build up. Those are all factors which I feel that the Government have overlooked in this rather ill-conceived measure.