Immigration: International Students

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I do not know who is misrepresenting who but I do not feel that I can speak for the Foreign Secretary. In fact, sometimes I do not know if the Foreign Secretary speaks for others. It is indeed true that Indian student numbers have gone down, but Chinese student numbers have gone up. Indeed, figures for the Russell Group have gone up.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, is not the figure of tens of thousands as a cap on immigration entirely arbitrary? If we accept the importance of international students, they should be taken out of that target. That does not mean taking them out of the OECD numbers, but it does mean that we could look again at the international numbers. I declare my interests as listed in the register.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, there is no cap on the number of students who come here. As long as students are compliant with immigration rules, they should make only a very limited contribution to the migration numbers. The Government’s ultimate goal is to get migration numbers down to the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, but that will take time.