Brexit: Customs and Border Staff

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, of course there will be a range of options, none of which am I in a position to cost or comment on today, but they will become clearer. I am sure that the noble Lord has read the White Paper on the broad principles as we go forward.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that removing exit checks from our borders in 1998 was a huge mistake? Does she also agree that, Brexit or no Brexit, we now need to bring back immediately exit checks to our borders so that we are on top of things from a security point of view and from the point of view of being in control of immigration, with EU and non-EU citizens being scanned in and scanned out? In fact, I could recommend a whole list of Indian IT companies that could do the job.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Lord. He is right about exit checks. They were reintroduced last year and will provide some very useful information, not least on immigration.

Immigration: Overseas Students

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I came to the UK as a student from India as a 19 year-old in the early 1980s. Our universities here are the best in the world, along with those of the United States. The university that has won more Nobel Prizes than any other is the University of Cambridge, with nearly 100. I am the third generation of my family to be educated here and now our elder son is at a British university—Cambridge—so that is the fourth generation. I am proud to be chancellor of the University of Birmingham and chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School. I am also president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, UKCISA, representing the 450,000 international students in this country, along with 160,000 from the EU.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for initiating this debate at this crucial time. Our higher education is, of course, vital to our economy. It is one of our biggest exports. International students contribute directly and indirectly £14 billion to our economy and support 137,000 full-time equivalent jobs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said in her excellent maiden speech, they also enrich the experience of our domestic students. Our international students go on to become world leaders. At any time there are 30 world leaders from British universities, including former US presidents. Dr Manmohan Singh, a former Prime Minister of India, went to both Oxford and Cambridge.

What is more, a study carried out in the United States found that of all patents registered at the country’s top 10 patent-generating universities, 76% had a foreign-born inventor. Google, after all, was created by an immigrant. Silicon Valley is littered with foreign student success stories. What chance do we have of emulating that here? Higher education has always been a thoroughly international affair. As we have heard, research has never recognised international boundaries and diversity is recognised for contributing to new ideas and a divergent way of thinking. Thirty per cent of academics at our top universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and Birmingham, are foreign. Professor Alice Gast of Imperial College said:

“Foreigners improve the creativity and productivity of home-grown talent, too”.

The number of university students looking to study abroad is growing vastly. It is expected to grow from 4.1 million to 8 million by 2025. The UK has the second-highest number of them after the United States: 10% as against 19%. But the Government’s attitude to international students has seen our rivals steal a march on us. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said, I was in India when Prime Minister Theresa May was there. She did not mention higher education once in her speech. As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the other hand, spoke of the importance of education to Indian students. By the way, our Prime Minister did not once meet the 35 university leaders who were on the delegation to India. On the other hand, our Universities Minister Jo Johnson is a true champion of our British universities.

Australia, Canada and the United States all have strategies to increase the number of international students. Canada aims to double their number by 2020, while Australia wants to increase international students to 720,000 by 2025. In fact, the former Australian Education Minister Christopher Pyne went so far as to thank Britain for its immigration policies because they are driving so many students to Australia’s universities.

That applies not only to English-speaking universities. Indian students are now going to Holland, Sweden, Germany and France. France has a target of doubling the number of Indian students by 2020. The UK Government say that they want to increase the number of international students but there is no specific target. The Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, said that she wanted international students to leave the day they graduated. The headline in Indian newspapers was:

“Come to the UK: Graduate, and then get the hell out!”.

The Government have spoken of increasing education exports from £18 billion to £30 billion but there is no specific target and no plan to change the visa rules. The post-study work visa route, which I personally championed in this House in 2007 when the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was Education Minister, was implemented and the numbers went up significantly. It was taken away in 2012 and we have seen the effect on the number of foreign students. At the moment you can stay on and work but, with so much bureaucracy, it is very difficult to get a job after graduating. Can the Minister tell us how many foreign students are now staying on under the postgraduate work visa scheme that currently exists?

On the other hand, in the United States students can stay on for 12 months without a job offer; Canada allows them to remain in the country for the same duration as the length of their study; and Australia allows graduates to remain in the country for between two and four years. In surveys, the British public overwhelmingly say that they do not mind at all if foreign students stay on and work. There is no downside to it. It helps them to pay for their education; it gives them work experience; they contribute taxes; and they build generation-long bridges with this country. With this in mind, it is no wonder that the number of non-EU students has dropped by 2% and that the number from India has halved in the last four years, while in America it has increased by 9%—and the fastest-growing group of foreign students in America is the group from India, whose number is up by almost 25%.

As we have heard, the Government refuse to remove international students from the net migration figures. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will look into this? It would send a signal that they do not treat international students as immigrants. We desperately need the 160,000 EU students to come and study here in the UK. Can the Government tell us the plans for these students if we leave the European Union?

I think that the Government are being led by a mistaken belief that the British people want to reduce all immigration. There is good immigration and bad immigration, and international students should be encouraged. Almost 80% of the British population want international students to stay on and work in the UK after they finish their studies. The rhetoric surrounding Brexit is just awful. On the other hand, I hear from my colleagues at American universities that Indian graduates go on to earn salaries of $80,000 in Texas and $100,000 in California. Here, it is claimed that 90,000 students overstay. This is based on International Passenger Survey data and it is bogus. We should have visible exit checks at our borders. Can the Minister tell us when we are going to introduce them? The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, mentioned an unpublished report referred to in the Times which shows that only 1.5% of international students stay on.

In conclusion, India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. Today, British universities are the jewel in the crown of this country. The Government need to change their attitude towards international students, because the impact of Brexit and the uncertainty it has caused are damaging the higher education sector, and the Government’s attitude is harmful and undermining. I think that the attitude to immigration is economically illiterate and that the Government’s attitude to international students is economically super-illiterate. If the Government change their attitude, we will remain an educational superpower for the foreseeable future, with international students being our strongest element of soft power in the world.

Brexit: Role of Parliament

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

That is of course the case.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister, in her wisdom, has appointed three Brexiteers to take us out of the European Union. Their motto must be, “All for one and none for all”. One of the main roles of this House is as a check and balance on the other place. Surely it is imperative that both Houses must have a say at every stage, whether it is Article 50 or beyond.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect, the Government’s position is that there is no legal obligation to consult Parliament on the triggering of Article 50. That is, of course, the subject of challenge in the courts. Indeed, there will be a directions hearing in the Administrative Court tomorrow in respect of one of those claims.

Hate Crime

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, the Government have implemented a series of educational programmes, including by the Anne Frank Trust and the Crown Prosecution Service, which have received the support of the National Union of Teachers. It is close by this afternoon, I believe. In the circumstances, we have taken steps to address this issue. In addition, a cross-government hate crime action plan is to be published imminently. This will drive forward our proposals to deal with all forms of hate crime.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I came to this country from India as a 19 year-old in the 1980s. At the time of the referendum, I received this tweet: “You are not British-born, so your input into the vote of the true Brits is not required and of no interest to true workers”. Last weekend, a member of our team for 16 years who is from abroad, with an English husband, went to hospital with a broken, bloodied finger and was told by somebody waiting next to her, “You are a burden on this country”. What is going on? Will the Minister and the Government acknowledge that this wretched referendum has caused this? Are the Government really doing enough to address something which I have not witnessed in any way for 30 years, but am now witnessing?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

No matter what may divide us, we are united in this country by shared values of democracy, free speech, mutual respect and opportunity. If we maintain these standards, we can drive out the criminals who would perpetrate the sort of crimes that the noble Lord has referred to.

Immigration: Public Services

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Afshar (CB)]

My Lords—

Immigration: Students

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, on her excellent maiden speech. I have known her for almost a decade, since I was the founder of the UK-India Business Council. Now she is the vice-chancellor of Aston University in Birmingham and I am the Chancellor of the University of Birmingham; we are neighbours. She has taken her title as Cambridge because she is a staunch alumna of Murray Edwards College, known in our day as New Hall, which is one of only three women-only colleges remaining in Cambridge. Her career in the field of engineering is outstanding—from working at Rolls-Royce to heading the engineering faculty at Imperial College in London, to her famous King review in 2008 on carbon emissions from road transport. Not content with being a world-renowned expert in the field of engineering and science, with awards too numerous for me to list, she is also married to Dr Colin Brown, the engineering director at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. We look forward very much to her contributions in the years to come.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu and Mahatma Gandhi all studied at UK universities. They are the finest universities on this planet along with those of the United States of America, and yet the Government continue to classify international students as immigrants when calculating the net immigration figures, as well as having a target to reduce net immigration to fewer than 100,000. Then, hypocritically, the Government say that there are no limits to international students. Logically, there is no way the Government will meet their targets unless they reduce international student numbers. They have done the right thing in closing down bogus colleges and we all agree with that, but now their policies are damaging genuine international students at our world-class universities. I see this every day in my role as president of UKCISA.

At the University of Birmingham, 20% of our student body is made up of international students and 33% of our academic staff are from overseas. BIS itself states that international students bring in more than £13 billion a year in overseas earnings, and yet, in the words of Professor Leszek Borysiewicz, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge,

“the potential economic gains for the UK for recruiting more overseas students are being sacrificed at the altar of political expediency”.

He went on to say that it is “ludicrous” to include overseas students in UK immigration targets. Our competitor countries do not categorise international students as immigrants. In the US they are included as non-immigration admissions, while in Australia they are reported as net temporary arrivals. In Canada they are placed in the temporary resident category. I ask the Minister this: why can we not do the same? In fact, the Prime Minister himself has said to me that he would be open to this idea.

The Government are unnecessarily creating a rod for their own back. Furthermore, our competitor countries have ambitious targets to grow international student numbers, accompanied by government action to help them do so. For example, Canada wants to double its number of international students to 450,000 by 2020. In 2014-15 the number of Indian students increased by 32% in the United States, while the number of Indian students coming to the UK has fallen drastically. Does the Minister agree that we should have specific targets to increase the number of international students?

As we have heard, removing our post-study work visa route has also been hugely damaging. An NUS survey found that 51% of students think that the Government are not welcoming towards international students. Universities UK research shows that 22% of the British public considers overseas students not to be immigrants, yet the Government keep relying on International Passenger Survey data, which are completely unreliable. I have repeatedly said that the Government need to reintroduce exit checks at our borders and that all passports, EU and non-EU, need to be scanned in and out of the country. Then, we would have proper control of our borders and we would know the international students coming in and going out.

This year I was appointed chair of the advisory board at Cambridge Judge Business School. Christoph Loch, our director, said that the Government’s current policies,

“not only are ineffective … but outright hostile and unfair toward a population of highly talented people who collectively do have an influence on the reputation of the UK in the world”.

The Government keep talking about the United Nations’ definition of migrants but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said—I thank her for the debate—no one is suggesting that the UK should stop reporting to the UN or recording student migrant numbers. There is no reason why the UN definition should be used for the particular domestic policy objective of the net migration target. UUK, the Russell group, London First and the NUS all independently agree with what I have said. International students are not only one of our biggest export earners, but one of the strongest elements of our soft power.

The Government have sent a strong message about their intention to keep out migrants who will bring no value to the UK, but they must be equally clear that the UK still wants to attract economically valuable groups, such as genuine international students. Removing this group from the net migration target would send a clear international message that the UK is open to all the amazing benefits that international students provide to our country and to British universities, which are the jewel in our crown.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

That may be so. I would have to look into that point in relation to the north of England, and I am happy to do so. However, the point is that there is no limit on the number of graduate opportunities available. We have special programmes for PhD students and for post-doctoral study. Therefore, we need to get that message out into the wider world much more effectively that Britain welcomes these students and that a range of opportunities exists for students, post-study, to continue to work and gain experience. They can continue on tier 5 with approved internships and training programmes. Twenty-eight thousand organisations have approval to sponsor tier 2 graduate employment opportunities. There is also the PhD entrepreneur route on tier 1. There is a wealth of opportunities for these students.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, asked five very pertinent questions and then answered them, albeit not entirely to the Government’s satisfaction. We recognise that our country is experiencing growing pressures from inward migration and its effect on the fabric of society. As a result, we need to take steps to bring net migration down. Of course, you cannot do that simply by changing the figures. It would be very easy to change the figures and, by waving a magic wand, halve net migration. That would be very comfortable but it would not be true. Often people come to this country to study and then stay on. That is why there is a discrepancy between the figure of 117,000 coming in and 40,000 leaving. We need to understand better why we have the 77,000 discrepancy and we need to better understand the data.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, asked for an update on e-borders. Exit checks, which were introduced last year, will give us a better picture of where those people are going. We will publish an update report in May on the progress of e-borders and the exit checks. That will give us greater confidence in this regard.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, we know that e-borders are not reliable. We have a migration problem with the EU as well. Why do we not institute scanning of all passports—EU and non-EU—at our borders? Then we will have total control. It is easy technology and is available right now.

[Lord Bates]

We will continue to look at these things. The exit checks are the first step to something we hope will help us get a better handle on flows in and out of the country.

I am aware that there is a great deal of expertise in the House, particularly in the higher education sector. We keep debating the numbers, but I urge noble Lords to think that our message should be to sell the incredible opportunities people have when they come to study in some of the greatest universities in the world. As graduates, they will then have the opportunity to work in some of the greatest companies in world. That is a fantastic offer that we can all come together to sell.

[Lord Bates]

I am very happy to look into those two cases for the noble Lord to ensure we get this right. The message has to be clear, and we have to recognise that we have a duty to welcome people coming in to contribute to our economy and to show them the appropriate respect.

I am happy, should the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, think it an offer worth accepting, to convene a meeting of interested peers and colleagues with our people from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who have ownership of the universities sector and the tier 2 and tier 4 issues, along with people from the Home Office and immigration enforcement, to discuss how we can tackle these problems and the reasons we are not getting the right message out. We can work together to ensure that our fantastic offer on the world stage is communicated loud and clear: that people from around the world with genuine qualifications and places at great British universities are very welcome and that we are very grateful to them; that, post-study, they will have immense opportunities in this country; and that we would like them to stay and contribute, if they are qualified to do so.

[Lord Bilimoria]

We have all asked for one thing. We are all great ambassadors for British universities—we are their greatest fans—and we will continue to be, but we are asking for one thing. The Prime Minister has said he is open to the idea, and I am sure the Chancellor would be. We are asking the Government to categorise international students separately, in the way that, as we have shown, the USA, Canada and Australia do. That one move would send out a message. The Minister talked about perception. It would remove that perception once and for all. Why can the Government not do it?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord, who knows this area inside out, knows that we looked at that very carefully. It is true that the United States separates that category out, but when it calculates net migration, it adds it back in. The United States behaves differently because it does not have a net migration target. We do, and therefore we have chosen to include students in the numbers.

Airports Commission

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The Government believe very strongly in the regional airport network. As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, Manchester announced earlier this year—at the beginning of the summer in June—a £1 billion investment over the next 10 years. Indeed, we have seen further investment in, for example, road surface improvements around Birmingham, Bristol and Doncaster Airports, so various investments are being made which will reinforce the northern powerhouse.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, Sir Howard Davies and his commission have put a lot of work into coming up with their recommendation, which has been decided as the one to go forward with. Why do the Government now have to appoint another sub-committee and take even more time? There is probably need for expansion of both Heathrow and Gatwick, but let us get on with Heathrow because it is affecting our competitiveness as a nation. Could the Minister assure us that this is going to be taken quickly and it will be established and put in place really fast?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord is quite right. I agree with him that this has been a detailed report, which the previous Government, under the current Prime Minister, commissioned in 2012. The report has been received, and I am sure the noble Lord would agree with me that it is time now to give the detailed report considered opinion. It is quite right that there should be a sub-committee of the Cabinet to take this decision forward. I reiterate the point that the Prime Minister has made quite clear: a decision will be made by the end of the year.