My Lords, I suspect that we are rapidly moving into territory where everything has been said but not everyone has said it. Given that, I wanted to respond not only to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, but also to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who responded a week ago to Amendment 26 from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s Amendment 80 to reassure us about the impact of the Bill. The fact is, though, that the Bill exacerbates the impact of previous policies towards overseas students. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and many other noble Lords have talked about the contribution to the UK economy and to soft power, while my noble friend Lord Phillips has talked about personal ties.
However, the hard figures already show a drop in overseas student numbers. My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, today, have taken comfort from the increase in Chinese students in particular in recent years, compared to Australia and France. If the riposte of the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, and my noble friend Lady Williams was not enough, the recent British Council document Education in East Asia—by the Numbers (Making Sense of the Slowdown in Outbound Student Mobility from China) shows a global slowdown in outbound Chinese student numbers. This demonstrates that we cannot stand still and that we need to increase our share of Chinese students if the numbers are not to fall. That is the very latest document from the British Council.
We cannot take the risk of alienating aspiring students from China and other emerging markets. My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace said:
“We are still an attractive proposition for people wishing to come and study”—[Official Report, 3/3/14; col. 1192]—
but he himself admitted to us that a good story is not being told and it cannot be told with the Bill as it is. No one quarrels with measures designed to prevent abuse of the immigration system, but if we do not redress the impression—indeed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, the perception—that students are not welcome, we will see more severe reductions in student numbers. What better way to counter that impression than to totally exempt overseas students from the Bill?