It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). She made a number of points of principle with which I have a great deal of sympathy, especially about the long-term indications for our getting immigration policy right for our institutes of higher education.
Let me take this opportunity to praise my hon. Friend the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation. In the best of circumstances, this Bill would have required deft handling, compassion, understanding and compromise to resolve the issues in not just this House but the other place. Moreover, given the truncated procedure that has become necessary, the fact that we have reached this point is, I think, due to my hon. Friend’s significant abilities and dexterity in the management of different interests.
It is also a great pleasure to see that my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration is in the Chamber—I can be nicer to him today. I will say of him that he is a true man of Yorkshire. I know that the principles of securing our borders and ensuring that the systems work effectively is at the core of everything that he has done as Immigration Minister, and those two great points of view have come together in amendments (a) to (c) in lieu of Lords amendment 156.
I support the Government amendments, because although I personally believe, like the hon. Member for Glasgow North West, that the long-term goal should be to exclude student numbers from the immigration statistics,
I also think that we need precision first. The truth is that many of our immigration statistics are represented on sample sets. Information about immigration may be available to the Home Office in very specific circumstances, but out there in the great blue yonder—trust me, it is a great blue yonder—there will be a lot of misunderstanding about what immigration really is.
People have a very sensitive understanding of different types of immigration. We should not treat immigration as a single clump, because that is not how the population think of it. People understand that it can be good for the country, particularly when it comes to the transfer of skills and the transfer of people who will contribute in the long term to the economic vitality of our country. In that context, I think that the Government’s proposal is worthy of support, because it will establish a structure within which we can secure precision and that will be understood not only by the Government, but by the institutes of higher education. I think that that would provide a firmer basis for the future direction of the control of student immigration numbers that we seek.