My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 28, 48 and 465 in this group, which have nothing at all to do with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. Perhaps they were grouped together for the convenience of having a short debate. I hope to disappoint my noble friend on that front because here we come across what I hope will be one of the areas in which we choose to stand firm against the Government as a whole—but not at all against the Minister for Universities—with regard to the Government’s relationship with universities.
As we debated at some length a few weeks ago, universities face a very serious problem with the current attitudes being taken by the Home Office to immigration. The Home Office will not say what it seeks to achieve, why it seeks to achieve it or how it hopes universities can do better in forming a partnership with the Home Office to achieve its legitimate objectives and universities’ objectives at the same time. I find that a deeply unsatisfactory state of affairs and I greatly regret that the Home Office is choosing to take that position. There is a much more constructive position that it
could take: one of seeking partnership with the university sector to address problems that we as a nation have and perceive and to resolve those problems in the interests of the country as a whole, not leaving out the financial, commercial and human interests of the university sector. With a more rational attitude taken by the Home Office, there could be a real resolution of these problems.
In the context of the Bill, with these amendments I am trying to search for ways in which the university sector could organise and present itself so that the nation would be on its side and it would be equipped with the data, the information and the means of self-improvement to make it an excellent partner for the Home Office when we get a change of heart in the Home Office—as eventually we must.
I do not lay any particular force on the wording of the amendments. Amendment 28 says that the sector, and therefore the Office for Students, should make it clear what contribution overseas students are making to this country—we should not wait on the Home Office to produce that information for us but do it as a sector. The Office for Students should have a responsibility for making sure that that information is gathered and published so that we have a clear, well-presented statement of the benefits that come from having overseas students.
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Amendment 48 gives the Office for Students an interest in helping universities co-ordinate in this area. It is really not useful for universities to try to tackle the Home Office one by one. The Home Office picks them off. Imperial College, which is a most excellent institution, is one of only four which have managed to do a top-level deal with the Home Office. It deserves it. It runs international students extremely well and very few students who come to Imperial have any thought of transgressing from an immigration point of view. But if the best universities allow themselves to be picked off, the rest will have that much harder a time. This really is an area where the university sector as a whole should be working together so that it presents a united but constructive front to the Home Office.
Amendment 465 looks further at the question of data in order to enable people to understand what is going on with visa approvals and refusals so that we can all have the information we need for a serious debate in this area; so that it can be clear which institutions are doing well; so that we can start to ask questions about that; and, indeed, so that we can start to look at the performance of the Home Office. There are a lot of stories about what in-country Home Office representatives are doing and about their eccentricities and the difficulties and damage this causes universities and, indeed, schools—but it is not published in any coherent, co-ordinated or verified way. Until that information is available, it is very difficult to have a stand-up argument with the Home Office about what is going on.
My three amendments together are saying: let us have some co-ordination, some leadership and some information so that when we have a conversation we will do so from a position of strength.