My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for introducing the order for consideration by the Grand Committee today. As pointed out by my noble friend, the Committee will recall that the House looked at this matter in great detail when we approved the principle during the passage of the Immigration Act last year. Our task today is to ensure that the Minister is properly and appropriately implementing the legislation. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, will be as forensic as she usually is.
I recall last year enjoying privately teasing some noble Lords who were involved in the higher education sector by asking them to promise me that they would not use these provisions as a selling point in their organisation’s prospectus. The plain fact is that we are capping health charges for overseas students at £150 per annum. If you tell someone that something is free, they will probably not believe you. If you tell an overseas student that their healthcare is capped at £150 per annum, they will think that it is a bargain. I think that it would help the Committee if the Minister, when she replies to the debate, would tell us how leading academic institutions in the United States of America treat healthcare costs.
A constant refrain last year was the suggestion that the Government wanted to reduce the number of overseas students by a variety of means. When I was in the Government, we were very keen on reducing the number of bogus students, but I never saw any evidence suggesting that we wanted to do anything other than encourage genuine students. Ironically, soft power is being debated in the Chamber this afternoon and
overseas students are a very important component of our soft power portfolio. The Minister has already told the Committee that the number of full time, non-EEA students rose by 6%. That does not suggest that the Government’s action is deterring overseas students from coming here and, of course, they are very welcome.