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Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2007

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, for her contribution; to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for his rather longer contribution; and to the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, for his comments and questions. I thought that this was a modest and perhaps slightly boring order, but it has elicited more interest than I anticipated. That does not mean that these issues are not serious—they are—and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, always raises them in a courteous and proper way and asks many useful and valuable questions. I now have a wodge of answers, but if I cannot successfully thread them together this afternoon, I shall answer them in more detail in correspondence. I shall first deal with the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, about the legislative authority for this and the date at which we might bring forward a fee regime. The legislative provision for sponsorship appears in the immigration rules which we introduced under powers obtained by virtue of the Immigration Act 1971. No additional legislation is required to introduce a sponsorship scheme but we made clear at an earlier stage that that is what we were embarked upon. We believe that a sponsorship scheme will encourage responsibility among employers and those who seek to benefit from migrant workers coming here. It will also encourage greater responsibility in the education sector, where there have been examples of abuse. We need do much more to ensure that people who genuinely come here benefit from our education system. I recognise the noble Lord’s point about the value to our education institutions of overseas students. The Government have been very proactive in this field because we recognise that we operate in an aggressive market. I have a friend who does marketing for one of the Melbourne universities. He travels internationally to secure new students and does a good job in that regard. We know from the past experience of our inter-governmental work that we operate in an international marketplace. That means that our fee structure needs to be competitive and we need to ensure that we have the right offer. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, asked about the date on which fees will be set next year. I cannot give a precise date. We are following parliamentary procedures and we must work within the legislative framework. We must have the power to set the fees early next year and we will make the regulations using any additional legislative powers necessary to set those fees. At that point there will be an appropriate opportunity for a full parliamentary scrutiny of the fee proposals. They will be subject, of course, to the affirmative procedure in both Houses.