David Hannay is a member of the House of Lords and former UK ambassador to the EU and UN.
Today’s press reports yet more dissension in the Cabinet, this time over the treatment of students coming to UK universities from the EU after the Brexit transition period in the prime minister’s deal ends. That is, of course, in the somewhat unlikely event of that deal ever being approved by Parliament. It is just one more sign of the chaos and self-harm into which the government’s post-Brexit immigration policy is fast descending.
The UK’s universities are second only to those in the US, and are world leaders in an international market for higher education services which continues to grow rapidly. This market caters not only for undergraduates but for post-graduate students and doctoral researchers. It could result in highly qualified entrants into our labour market – if only our immigration policies did not discourage that.
These international students bring major net benefits to our universities too, helping them to sustain many courses, including scientific and technical ones. They boost employment in our university cities and towns. They are a source of billions of pounds worth of invisible exports.
But, thanks in part to our restrictive visa policies, we are already losing market share to our main global competitors: the US, Australia, Canada and those other countries in the EU which are increasingly offering courses taught in English.
In a sensible, rational world you would expect any UK government to be doing its best to help our universities to regain market share and to strengthen an economic sector which could be a crucial contributor to our prosperity in the knowledge-based future in which we are going to be competing. But not at all. It is doing exactly the opposite – even now that the problem posed by dodgy language schools has been largely resolved and more soundly based immigration statistics show that only a very small number of those coming to the UK on education visas are illegal overstayers.
So we continue to treat international students as economic migrants for public policy purposes. This is surely nonsensical when they bring into this country substantial financial resources and provide employment up and down the UK. We harass those who come here on education visas, often deporting them without due cause. And we limit their access after graduation to our job market – the government’s latest Immigration Bill, currently before Parliament, offers an inadequate potential duration to extend their stay. And now it appears we are preparing to discourage EU students from studying here, as they have been doing in increasing numbers over recent years. It really is a Mad Hatters Tea Party.
What needs to be done? Well, the Immigration Bill really does need radical amendment along the lines of a cross-party initiative, backed by several former higher education ministers including Jo Johnson, which would provide for longer post-graduate work opportunities. We need to ban, in statute, continuing to treat students as economic migrants, thus ending the threat that including them in some arbitrary numerical target for immigration will damage the higher education sector.
Finally, we need to remember that, were we to decide after all to stay in the EU, this will bring with it major benefits for our universities and research centres. This government’s post-Brexit plans for international students did not exist in 2016. Now we know more about how a Brexit future will damage our universities, the people deserve to have the final say.