Student Visas

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

International students are much-valued contributors to our world-class higher education system, which is a great asset to our country. We and Universities UK recognise that a tenfold increase in the number of dependants joining students in the UK since 2018 creates significant challenges and that enforcement measures are long overdue. Therefore, as the Leader of the Opposition has made clear, our entire Front-Bench team does not oppose these changes for masters students.

However, as usual, the Government have failed to deliver an impact assessment for the new rules and have left many of the details vague. How many people will this change affect, in terms of both students and dependants? What will the actual impact be on the numbers? The Office for National Statistics defines an immigrant as somebody who has been here for more than a year or who is coming for more than a year, yet masters students are typically here for less than a year.

What is clear is that dependants of students are only a fraction of the story. In their 2019 manifesto, the Conservatives acknowledged that the Brexit vote was a bid to take back control of immigration, but since then net migration has skyrocketed from 226,000 to 500,000, which is a record high even if we exclude Ukrainians and Hongkongers. The number of work visas has increased by a staggering 95%. We are clear that that has happened because for 13 years, the Conservatives have failed to train up Britain’s home-grown talent to fill the vacancies we have and because there are 6 million people on NHS waiting lists in England alone, most of whom wish to return to the workforce.

We want and expect net immigration to reduce, and we have set out plans for how we will get more of Britain’s workers trained up and back to work. Today, the Leader of the Opposition has announced that we will ditch the flawed Government policy that allows businesses to undercut British workers by paying migrant workers 20% less in sectors assigned to the shortage occupation list. Will the Minister commit to scrapping the 20% wage discount on the going rate for shortage occupations? Nothing could be clearer: the Conservatives have lost control of immigration. We are committed on the Opposition Benches to maximising opportunities for Britain’s home-grown talent.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman has had a damascene conversion to tighter border controls. Unfortunately, I do not think the British public will believe that. It is the same old Labour party—the party that has always believed in open borders. Its own leader campaigned for the leadership of the Labour party saying that he wanted to defend free movement. Only the other day, the chairwoman of the Labour party, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), said that she expected migration to rise under a future Labour Government. It is the same flip-flopping approach—and the same open door policy.

We want to ensure that we bring net migration down. We consider that to be a solemn promise to the British public, and an important manifesto commitment. This is a significant policy, which I am glad to hear the hon. Gentleman support, that will make a tangible difference on this issue. It will reduce very substantially the number of people coming into the country as dependants, but there might be more that needs to be done. We are determined to tackle this issue and to ensure that we bring net migration down.