UK Borders Bill

I need to answer that point. The noble Baroness will recall that, in earlier legislation, we also obliged universities or institutions of higher education to report students who did not attend their courses. A student must attend a minimum number of hours a week—I think it is 20—to qualify as a student in higher education. If for any reason, even sickness, the person does not turn up for a particular percentage of the lectures or practicals, the university must report them to the immigration authorities. So although what the noble Baroness describes might have happened in the old days, she will find that the steps that have been taken to reduce abuses of the system have been reasonably successful. One institution in Scotland may have had a particularly unfortunate experience, but I hope that it has collaborated with the BIA in ensuring that those people who have abused the system by coming in, ostensibly as students, and then disappearing into the woodwork, have been reported and removed from the country.