I thank the noble Baroness for that intervention. I can come back to her in due course after today. I think that we understand each other on that point.
On the consultation, we targeted over 1,100 representatives from the education, employment, business and tourism sectors, who were sent the document and encouraged to reply. We held workshops with representatives from different sectors and immigration lawyers. The document was also available to members of the public. We consulted on the principles of charging for immigration and the nationality fees, and that included questions on the simplifying of the fee structure; fee levels; legislation; optional and premium services; Border Force services; commercial partnerships; refunds; and administration fees. The responses were generally supportive of our charging strategy; of the principle that fast-track service at the border and premium services should be expanded to provide more choice and convenience for customers; and of the suggestion that the fee structure should be simplified.
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The noble Baroness stopped for quite a while on students. There has been a 4% growth in the route increase and there is no evidence that the fees affect demand. I understand that she is talking about future projections, but we do not think that there will be a direct relationship between the visa fee and the volume demand at these price levels.
The price of a Tier 4 visa represents less than 0.5% of the total cost of coming to study in the UK for three years and the fees are insignificant compared with other costs. I do not decry that the other costs are not quite huge, but as a proportion the fees are quite small. Research by Universities UK on the 2013-14 academic year indicates that the mid-range for an undergraduate student’s tuition fee was £11,400 per year for a classroom-based degree and £29,200 for a clinical medical degree. Research by the NUS for the
2012-13 academic year shows that the average cost of living inside London was £13,388 and just over £12,000 outside London. Some of the analysis will be retrospective, so we will see what effect it has had in a year’s time, but as a percentage of the general cost of non-EEA students coming here, it is quite a small proportion.
The UK is still attractive for students. We have seen strong growth in the number of study visas granted to key emerging markets: for example, 3% growth from China, 12% from Saudi Arabia and 7% from Malaysia. Estimates on future projections of student numbers are developed by the Home Office and are shared with other departments each year. For the reasons I have just outlined, the impact of fees is believed to be zero or negligible. The impact of the policy is different for further education and for higher education. We have seen some further education student numbers decline, but we have tackled some of the bogus colleges that have abused the further education route.
I hope that I have answered most of the noble Baroness’s questions, but I will come back to the point that the economists made on the benefits of people leaving. There was one final point on how robust the methodology used in the impact assessment was and how accurate we believe the estimates to be. We think that the methodology used is as robust as it can be, given the limitations in available data. We have taken further care to demonstrate this uncertainty by introducing a range of estimates, thus providing high and low case impacts for the effect on demand.
With that, and if the noble Baroness is satisfied—