UK Visas and Immigration

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood for this debate. It is couched in extremely wide terms and I may introduce two subjects that no one else may consider come within its purview, but I think they do.

The first thing I wish to say in this short space of time concerns universities and overseas students which, as everyone knows, is a vexed subject at the moment. It is of huge importance for this country in that we have, for our size, the most successful university sector in the world in attracting overseas students, particularly non-EU students. It has quite extraordinary benefits for us, and not only the obvious financial and economic ones. One cannot put a finger on the cultural value of having in our midst these amazing overseas students who bring to us all their particular knowledge, culture, language, arts and so on. Most important are the friendships created by this mingling of British students with overseas students. That has value for the future in terms of one’s personal development, in terms of knowledge and understanding between different cultures and countries, and in terms of affection and friendship, which spills over into all sorts of economic outlets and manifestations.

I put it to the Minister, as it has been put to many other Ministers, that bundling up overseas students at our universities with other economic migrants who are here permanently and equating the temporary, three-year undergraduate to a permanent economic migrant for the purposes of our immigration figures is wrong. It gives a wrong impression and creates unnecessary tensions within this country. I know that the UN has a definition of students that would pull in the temporary, learning immigrant coming to university, but we do not have to use that UN definition for our own internal purposes. Indeed, it is different from the OECD definition. It is a simple but important point. We have not got through the Immigration Bill and I hope that the Government will be moved to exclude university students from its purview in terms of immigration figures.

The other thing that I want to talk about in the three minutes that I have left is the report that came out in February called Tier 1 (Investor Route): Investment Thresholds and Economic Benefits, produced, as it was, by the Migration Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Professor Sir David Metcalf. It had a brief to look at the economic benefits of these tier 1 immigrants. Most here will know that, under that arrangement, if one invests £1 million, one can have an unlimited right to remain in this country—in effect, becoming a permanent migrant resident in the UK. There is a residence test and you have to spend at least 180 out of 365 days here, but that, as it stands, is the rule.

I put it to the Minister that I think the Migration Advisory Committee did its very best. In its final report it expressed all sorts of reservations about some of the assumptions underlying this scheme, but one thing that it was not asked to do but which I think it is absolutely essential is done before the outcome of its consideration is finalised in any change to the tier 1 scheme is to consider the serious damage to our reputation as a financial centre from the fact that this scheme encourages some of the biggest rogues on earth to come to this country. Black money in tens of billions has flooded into the UK because this scheme gives the so-called owner of this black money the right to permanent residency here. One thing is clear from the report: people bring their money here for non-pecuniary reasons. They do so because this is a safe and stable country, it has relatively incorrupt markets and, interestingly enough—this comes on everybody’s list of factors—there is an excellent private education system to which they can send their children.

I have not got long anyhow, but I do not think that one needs to labour the point that the reputation of this country, through all the awful things that have happened in the City in the past six or eight years, is already seriously damaged. In looking at the report of the Migration Advisory Committee, the Government should look at the whole issue of due diligence to make sure that money that comes in is good money and not corrupt money, and is properly owned by the people who invest it here.