Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

My Lords, we have heard about the importance of international students in the context of soft power and global Britain. I want to talk about the importance of international students from my perspective as an engineer. They are crucial to the delivery of our industrial strategy and to the UK being able to develop the STEM skills that it will need to deliver that strategy.

When I was principal of the engineering faculty at Imperial College, many of my engineering courses had more than 50% overseas students. Those students were not taking the places of UK students; they were providing the additional fee income that enabled Imperial College to provide the outstanding facilities to train UK students in key engineering disciplines. Some of those courses would not have been sustainable without the income from our overseas students. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has highlighted to us a number of times that universities have used additional funding that they now get for arts students in order to subsidise the high-cost subjects.

An outstanding institution such as Cranfield, for example, relies on overseas students to run the wide range of industry-focused Master’s programmes that are of huge benefit to UK industry. Again, those programmes would not be sustainable without the higher levels of overseas student fees that they can charge. These overseas students are critical to enabling us to maintain the quality of engineering education in our universities that will enable us to ensure that UK students can develop the STEM skills that we will need in future.

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I do not have much to add to the eloquent comments that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and other speakers. I would like to express bafflement that we are still banging on about this issue, which surely has been a compelling argument for more than two years. In the time of the coalition there was already discussion about this but the Government resisted, although there was clearly support for this within BIS.

It is clear that what is happening is an own goal in a number of ways. We need these students in our universities for academic reasons, to sustain specialised courses, to maintain academic quality and to make friends in the long term. It is a matter of perception as well as reality. The reason why the numbers from India plummeted more than from China was that the Indian press were able to present the message that students were not welcome any more in the UK. So perception is very important. We will lose a great deal of soft power in the long run if we maintain this perception. The present Government’s policy is baffling, not only to many of us on the Cross Benches, but to many people within the Government and on the Conservative Benches. George Osborne expressed concern about this, and other Ministers have too.

There is the separate issue of whether we should be more liberal in allowing graduates with talent to stay in this country. Our policy has been strongly attacked by James Dyson, one of our leading entrepreneurs, who presented a report for the Conservative Government.

On all these grounds, I support this amendment and renew my bafflement that it is—at least up till now—meeting so much resistance from the Government. I hope that there will be a change of view and a realisation that it is an own goal to sustain this policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, in at least one of the universities in which I am involved, I know of a specific example where a very able and impressive member of staff was offered, and encouraged to take, a promotion in the department but turned it down because he and his family had come to the conclusion that the UK was not a place where they saw their future.

[Lord Rees of Ludlow]

My Lords, I fully endorse the amendment and the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Patten. I am from a different university but it has entirely similar concerns. I work in a small department where all of the last five faculty appointments were of people from outside the UK. Crucially, we depend upon being attractive to these people but it has been much harder to persuade them to accept positions post Brexit, because not only is there uncertainty about their future employment but they will almost certainly risk losing the freedom for their family to come here in the post-Brexit era. Therefore, we have the same concerns of many other segments of society.

One has only to imagine a young academic from, say, India, Singapore or China deciding which country they wish to work in. It is clear that the attraction of the UK compared with other countries has been greatly diminished by recent events and, unless we can send a signal to counter those trends, we will lose out in the long run. I note that the Government promised some special treatment for bankers; I think that, equally, they should provide it for other skilled occupations, including academics.

I want to make one further remark. Of the last six presidents of the Royal Society, three were born outside this country. We have had a great tradition of attracting to this country scientists who have made their careers here because of the appeal of our universities and our scientific excellence. All that is in jeopardy if we do not pay regard to the concerns expressed in connection with this amendment.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I hope that in the course of this Bill we will make an amendment somewhere in this area or in that of the previous amendment, and I think that we will have to consider carefully what that amendment is. We know that we will be up against a tough negotiator who, in the case of Brexit, has said that no deal is preferable to a bad deal. Unless we can steel ourselves to that level, we will not get our way.