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Student Visas

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for his comments and the tone of his response. The UK has a worldwide reputation for providing quality education to overseas students. We want to attract only the best and the brightest, but there has been too much abuse. We need to stop such abuse and return some common sense to our student visa system. The policies I have outlined today will achieve this. A proper system of accreditation will help to root out the bogus colleges. Tougher entry requirements will ensure that only genuine students who can speak English and support themselves financially can come here. The package of measures will protect our world-class universities and stop the abuse. The noble Lord referred to the Government’s second thoughts and talked about conflict within the Government. He must understand that a balance must be struck between all the needs of different government departments and different parts of the economy. We have listened: the position of universities has been protected in many ways and we have adjusted our proposals. The noble Lord said that other countries were lining up to take our place. They will be disappointed. Our target, as I said in the Statement, is the private sector further education colleges. It is too early to report on the response from the universities sector but I strongly agree with what the noble Lord said about the economic importance of that sector. The noble Lord talked about post-study work opportunities. I agreed with much of what he said. Yes, I am confident that we will have a good post-study work regime. An employer with a competent human resources department will be able to manage the changes and new procedures. The noble Lord referred to certain aspects of the drafting of the Statement. He will have been in exactly the same position as me; perhaps he could make a suggestion to the Procedure Committee about how drafting might best be addressed. We will certainly be monitoring implementation of this policy very carefully for the reasons that the noble Lord described.