International Education Strategy

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), the former Chair of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, on giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue.

As hon. Members have said, our world-class universities have been a great asset for our country for generations. They have attracted young, bright people from all over the world, giving them an opportunity to receive a first-class higher education and giving us an opportunity to inculcate an understanding of our culture and worldview. That has ensured that we do not recede as a cultural reference point, which is more important than ever now that we are doing Brexit.

It is a huge asset for us that more world leaders have been educated in the UK than in any other country but the US. Frankly, I am concerned that the next generation of world leaders—the next Bill Clintons, the next Benazir Bhuttos—may not choose to study in the UK. All of us in Parliament have a duty to ensure that they put the UK at the very top of the list of countries around the world where they want to study.

Frankly, one would think that a Government committed to global Britain and to extolling the projection of our values around the world would do more to cultivate the important opportunity that international students offer us. As hon. Members have made clear, however, part of the problem is that since 2010 we have included students in our net migration target, so we are doing precisely the opposite: through a welter of restrictive Home Office policies, we are deterring people from choosing the UK over other countries. That explains our substantial underperformance in comparison with core competitors around the world.

Of course market share is not the be-all and end-all of any activity, but it is an important indicator of competitiveness and we are losing it very rapidly: our market share has fallen from approximately 12% in 2010 to just 8% in 2016. We must look seriously at why that significant rate of decline is happening. As hon. Members have said, we are seeing some growth in absolute terms, but there has been a dramatic fall in the proportion of students from some of the most important countries in the market for international higher education, including India, which the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) rightly mentioned.

Like other hon. Members, I welcome the publication of the international education strategy: it is good that we have an ambitious goal for higher education and other education exports. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) was right to say that exports can come in many forms—not just students coming here, but transnational education, for example.

We should not be phobic about international students coming to study in this country, but I am afraid that is the impression that we have all too often given because of the Home Office’s restrictive approach. That is why I and the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) have tabled a new clause to the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill that would acknowledge the important contribution of international students in two key ways. First, it would insure universities against the risk that a Government will decide to reduce net migration swiftly by slashing international student numbers. Any future Government who intend to cap numbers will first have to secure parliamentary approval.

Secondly, the new clause will ensure that we take a much smarter approach to post-study work. As hon. Members have already said, it has been severely restricted in recent years on the back of shoddy evidence produced by the Home Office back in 2012-13. Students will invest their time, money and human capital elsewhere if a competitive post-study work regime is not available in a particular country. Our core competitors—the US, Canada and New Zealand—offer international students the chance to work for up to three years after graduation, and Australia offers up to four years. Hacked back to just four months in 2012, our offer is simply not competitive. Although the international education strategy promises to increase that to six months, it is still not enough. Twelve months for some more advanced courses is also not enough.

While we wait for the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill to come back to the House on Report, I urge the Minister to look at the strong support the new clause has from MPs of all parties, and to assure me that the Government will take steps to welcome the clause and implement its recommendations.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

I had never rebelled against the Government before this month. I wish to use the brief time I have to set out four reasons why I shall vote against the deal tomorrow.

First, I believe that the Government are selling this package to the House on the false premise that we are somehow going to have a trade deal in place by the end of 2020. As Sir Nick Macpherson, the former permanent secretary to the Treasury, made clear last week in a tweet, that is a highly unlikely scenario. A deal even by the end of 2022—the possible period by the end of which we will have finished the transition period—is exceptionally unlikely. In his view, it is conceivable that we will have a deal in place by the mid-2020s. It really is, as the former permanent secretary to the Treasury said, “time for some honesty” from the Government. Forget all the flowery letters that have been exchanged today. Were the Government really being straight with the House and with the country, they would come clean and admit that we will have many years of the purgatory of the backstop ahead of us.

Secondly, any trade deal that we eventually strike will be worse for the economy than our current arrangements. As the Bank of England has noted, Brexit is a unique experiment. There is no precedent for an advanced economy anywhere in the world withdrawing from a trade agreement as deep and complex as the EU. Although it is not legally binding, the political declaration does set a direction of travel for the negotiations, reflecting the Prime Minister’s red lines of ending freedom of movement and securing an independent UK trade policy. Those red lines necessarily mean that we have to leave the single market and any form of customs union, as foreshadowed by the Chequers White Paper. The political declaration accordingly prioritises “comprehensive arrangements” for goods, and scandalously neglects services, on which all we are aiming for is in effect bog-standard third-country market-access terms. We are fundamentally a services economy and our services sector is being thrown under a bus.

Let us take financial services—one of this country’s few globally competitive sectors and one that is very important to many families in Orpington. The Centre for European Reform reckons that a free trade agreement would reduce financial services exports by almost 60%. The consultancy Oliver Wyman reckons that will mean a hit to the Treasury’s revenues of around £10 billion. So much for the Brexit dividend.

Thirdly, this package leaves the deck heavily stacked against us in the negotiations that will come. The political declaration starts by giving the EU most of its goals on its strong point, which is goods exports, for which the EU had a surplus with us of £95 billion in 2017, but it offers very little to our crucial services sector, in which we had a surplus of around £28 billion. Given that we have necessarily already conceded the £39 billion financial settlement in the legally binding withdrawal agreement, we now have little leverage left with which to secure concessions from the EU in the months to follow. If the EU chooses to play hardball with us, it will simply let the UK enter the backstop in December 2022 then wait until our services sector pressures the Government into accepting a deal—any deal—that will remove the EU’s feet from our windpipe and restore some measure of privileged market access to a sector that is so important to our economy.

Approval of this deal will lead to many years of excruciating trade negotiations—talks that will trigger waves of fury from Brexit campaigners and leave voters throughout the country at each inevitable UK concession on issues such as fisheries, Gibraltar and eventually, of course, freedom of movement itself. The package that the Prime Minister has negotiated simply sets us up to fail as a country. It is better that we all realise that now, before it is too late.

Finally, this deal is bad for our sovereignty. During the referendum, some implied that they were prepared to let Britain suffer economic damage in return for greater sovereignty and greater control. Of course, one of the great paradoxes is that the deal is remarkable in offering a double whammy: both economic harm and a loss of British sovereignty. That is one reason why many prominent Brexit campaigners are saying that this deal is worse than staying in the EU. There is now no single Cabinet position on what to do next, let alone one backed by the Conservative party or Parliament as a whole. Such is the farce that this has become that I believe we have no choice now but to go back to our constituents and ask them, reluctantly, to provide further guidance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hammond]

The deal that the Prime Minister has presented to Parliament very clearly is a compromise between the views of people on both sides of this argument. It will not deliver 100% of what anybody wants, and the Prime Minister herself has recognised that only this afternoon.

I want to mention my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), because I think he summed up what is still a dilemma for many—that the middle is being squeezed from both sides—and I wish him well in his consideration of these important issues over the next 24 hours.

Opposition Members made many points. A group of them—the hon. Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) I think, for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones)—while clearly rejecting the Prime Minister’s deal, which I acknowledge, were all I think signalling that they would wish to be able to support a deal and to find a way forward, explicitly recognising that no one is going to get everything that they want.

I listened carefully to the contributions and the concerns that were expressed, and I believe that the architecture of the Prime Minister’s deal is capable of accommodating such concerns if that is what we as a nation want to do. It is in that spirit that the Government have accepted the amendment proposed by the hon. Members for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). However, we must distinguish between adjustments to the negotiated future relationship and seeking to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement—something that is simply not deliverable. I shall return to that theme later.

A number of hon. Members on the Opposition Benches—the hon. Members for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), for Midlothian (Danielle Rowley), for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman)—simply wished to turn back the clock and pretend that this whole thing had never happened. I urge hon. Members expressing that view to consider carefully the wider consequences for our political system if that were to happen. I would say to Scottish colleagues who expressed that view that their arguments would be more powerful if they could show an ability to consider the consequences for the UK as a whole, as well as the consequences for Scotland.

I thought the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) made a crucially important point, which is that the House needs to find a way to show what it is for, not just what it is against. She went on to make, I think, the sole pitch of the evening for the Norway model.

[Joseph Johnson]

Has the Chancellor by any chance read the powerful letter in today’s Financial Times from the former EU Financial Services Commissioner, Jonathan Hill? He said that he had yet to meet anybody who felt that the Norway model would work for the UK’s financial services industry. In fact, he felt that EEA members had so little influence on the EU’s rule making for financial services that they were grateful if anybody even replied to any of their correspondence.

[Mr Hammond]

I have been making effectively the same point myself for about the last year. We concluded that the EEA model would not work for Britain’s most important sector, financial services. The deal that the Prime Minister has negotiated has within it good and strong provisions for financial services and will be a much better result for the financial services industry than the EEA model would be.