Examination of Witnesses (Questions 272-332)
Q272 Chair: Minister,
Mr Oppenheim, Mr Williams, can I first of all start by apologising
for keeping you waiting. We thought we were making rapid progress
and then it suddenly slowed down. Would you like to just introduce
your officials for the purposes of the record?
Damian Green: On
my left is Glyn Williams, who is the Director of Immigration Policy,
and on my right is Jeremy Oppenheim, who leads for us on temporary
migration, which obviously includes students.
Q273 Chair: Thank you
for coming. The Committee has heard a great deal of evidence,
compelling evidence, which raises concerns about the Government's
proposals over student visas. Members of the Committee will ask
about the particular details of this, but can you answer this
question about the overall direction of Government policy. There
is a feeling that Britain will be closed for business as a result
of the Government's proposals on student visas. You presumably
do not agree that that is going to happen, but do you understand
why people are saying this in the academic world?
Damian Green: Not
if they read the consultation carefully. It is perfectly clear
from everything I have said in speeches and, indeed, in private
meetings with many of the figures who you will have been having
in front of the Committee that of course Britain is open for business.
Of course we recognise that the international aspects of our universities
in particular are extremely important, both to them and to us
as a country, and we want to continue to attract at least our
fair share, if not more than our fair share, of the brightest
and the best to come to this country, and nothing we are seeking
to do in terms of eliminating abuse of the student visa—which
has been massively abused over the past few years—or as
part of the wider policy of reducing net migration to sustainable
levels will have any damaging effect on our great academic institutions.
Q274 Chair: Because I
think there is unity, or there appears to be unity, that everybody
in this room—or at least as far as the Committee is concerned—and
our witnesses are all against bogus colleges and bogus students.
What are sought are genuine people coming to study in the United
Kingdom. So is the thrust of your policy directed against abuse
and bogus students and bogus colleges, or is it also going to
affect genuine students who have been coming into this country?
Damian Green: The
thrust of the policy is to eliminate abuses in the system, precisely.
Chair: That is it?
Damian Green: I
think the biggest misunderstanding that I have found—and
I have obviously seen transcripts of last week's evidence, but
I haven't heard this morning's evidence—is that people think
that the vast bulk of student visas are people coming to university
and there is a small amount happening elsewhere, and that's just
factually wrong. 40% of those who come with a student visa are
not studying at universities, they are studying courses at below
degree level and a subset of that particularly who are private
sector colleges are—they are where the problem lies, frankly—
Chair: Indeed.
Damian Green: —because
very few of them are regulated by Ofsted, very few of them are
highly trusted sponsors. I think the key number—if I say
nothing else that sticks with the Committee this morning, this
is the key number—is that in the last year we had 91,000
visas issued to that particular sub-sector, so we are not talking
about a small number, we are talking about a huge number, where
we think the potential abuse is likely to lie.
Q275 Chair: So it is
about abuse and bogus colleges that we are concerned with, and
you would be upset if you found that a genuine student coming
to study in the United Kingdom, whether it is at degree level,
or sub-degree level on a pathway to a degree level, was prevented
from coming here as a result of the Government's proposals? It
is not your intention?
Damian Green: As
long as the genuine student was coming here to study and wasn't
using the student visa to do some studying, while being more interested
in a work visa. So there are obviously gradations around the edge.
Chair: Of course.
Damian Green: But
the bulk in terms of the sheer numbers will come, I suspect, from
people who are not studying genuine courses at genuine institutions.
Q276 Chair: Excellent.
Now, I wrote to you last week in preparation for this session
and the Committee have just seen a copy of your reply. It appears
that you now say that there are 2,313 sponsors on the Tier 4 register.
That is correct?
Damian Green: Yes.
Q277 Chair: So students
coming to those universities or institutions, they are okay, they
are genuine, are they?
Damian Green: Well,
the distinction I would draw would be between highly trusted sponsors
and not highly trusted sponsors and, if you like, the key element
in the consultation is that we say, "If you are not a highly
trusted sponsor, you shouldn't be allowed to bring people in below
degree level".
Chair: Sure.
Damian Green: As
it happens, we have offered highly trusted sponsorship to every
university as a matter of course, and I think three of them haven't
taken it up for their reasons. But we assume for the moment that
all universities are highly trusted.
Q278 Chair: But that
is how many universities?
Damian Green: It
is about 124.
Q279 Chair: You have
found out in the last year, since you have been a Minister, 235
educational establishments where the Government has had to take
action against them, basically bogus colleges; is that right?
Damian Green: That
would be slightly unfair, in that they have had their licences
revoked or suspended. Now, if you have had a licence, it is possible
to get it back, if you address the problem. So 58 now is the latest
number I have seen of licences that have been revoked, but Glyn
will have all the figures in detail.
Glyn Williams:
Well, firstly universities, there are 155 on the sponsor register.
Q280 Chair: Right, but
I am interested in the bogus colleges. How many bogus colleges
have we found since 7 May last year?
Damian Green: It
is 58 over the past 12 months.
Glyn Williams:
We have revoked the licences of 58 and we have suspended the licences
of another 240 or so.
Chair: Sorry, you are
mumbling, Mr Williams. I think we need it for the record.
Glyn Williams:
Apart from the 58 that we revoked, we also suspended the licences
of 248.
Jeremy Oppenheim: 237.
Q281 Chair: But we cannot
call them bogus colleges, but we can call the 58 bogus colleges.
That is right, is it, because if we are talking about abuse in
bogus colleges, we must know what they are. How many have we closed
down?
Damian Green: 58.
Chair: 58, in the last
year.
Damian Green: And
of the 237 that have been suspended, it is of course possible
that some or all of them will end up having their licences revoked,
so that figure will go up. It is a continuous process.
Q282 Chair: You think
there are many more floating around, because you keep referring
to what you found under the woodwork. I think you said that in
your interview with Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics programme,
"It is amazing what you find under the woodwork".
Damian Green: I
think it was under the—I said I had turned over stones and
found unpleasant things.
Chair: Right, sorry.
Damian Green: Some
of those unpleasant things are illustrative of colleges where
the college is based in London and we found all the students working
in west Wales. We found a college that had two lecturers for 940
students and so on. I won't go into that.
Chair: The Committee welcomes
what you have done. This is specifically on bogus colleges, colleagues.
Q283 Dr Huppert: Thank
you, and I think all of us are very concerned about the bogus
colleges. I am just trying to understand, Minister, your allocation
of resources, because a lot of this consultation does not seem
to be particularly targeted at bogus colleges. It seems to be
targeted at all students. Would it not be more sensible to dedicate
more of UKBA's efforts to finding these bogus colleges which behave
as poorly as you say and making sure that we get rid of them,
rather than taking a more sort of broadbrush approach?
Damian Green: Well,
I don't agree that we are not making huge efforts to close the
bogus colleges, and the figures I have just quoted show that activity
is intense and accelerating. The reason why the consultation is
so wide-ranging is, if you like, precisely because the student
visa under Tier 4 of the points-based system is precisely that.
It is a student visa that allows you to come in to read post-graduate
physics at Imperial or to do a course that you or I might not
recognise as an academic course, particularly if you are in west
Wales and the course is in London. So we have to deal with the
whole issue of the fact that the student visa itself has been
undifferentiated, if you like, or insufficiently differentiated,
and if you want—as I hear the Chairman and the whole Committee
want to do, as well as Ministers—take a more intelligent
approach to who is coming here under the student visa, then you
have to look at the whole thing and decide what is working and
what is not working.
Q284 Steve McCabe:
I just wondered if we could have some idea what proportion of
the total sector 58 colleges amounts to?
Chair: What percentage
is 58 of the number of colleges?
Damian Green: Well,
of the particular sub-sector, which are the private funded colleges,
there are 744, so I mean—
Steve McCabe: I
am trying to do the math.
Chair: To help those of
us who cannot, what is the math, Mr McCabe?
Steve McCabe:
I am just working it out, Chairman. I
will come back.
Damian Green: Well,
by definition, there are 744 that have a licence now, so the 58
would be on top of that.
Chair: Dr Huppert is the
scientist. He tells me it is—
Q285 Steve McCabe:
Minister, does that indicate that the problem is not quite as
great as you think, or does it indicate that the Department are
very slow in getting round to dealing with it?
Damian Green: I
don't think it indicates either, really. I think the problem is
clearly great, and there are clearly colleges that were and always
have been completely bogus. There will be, I am sure, colleges
out there that are doing things that you and I and the Committee
would disapprove of, but may be doing bits of proper academic
work as well. So as we work on with our enforcement, then we will
work through the system.
Q286 Mr Clappison: Just
a quick question. Are you able to say how long some of these bogus
colleges have been in existence?
Chair: Mr Clappison, could
you repeat that, because—
Mr Clappison: Yes. These
bogus colleges, how long have they been in existence or were they
springing up all the time and closing down, or have some of them
been running for years with bogus students?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
Before the points-based system, there were 4,500 colleges in total
on the old DIUS register. We reduced that to the current just
over 2,300. Some of those establishments, bogus or otherwise,
have been going a long time. Some are new. But very few are new
since the points-based system came in because we are incredibly
careful about who we accredit and who we then allow to bring in
students from outside the European—
Q287 Mr Clappison: But
of the 58, some of those had been going for some time?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
Yes, some of them had been going for some time.
Q288 Nicola Blackwood:
You mentioned that you were very careful about accreditation,
but we have received evidence that the number of accreditation
bodies can cause confusion and that a college which is refused
accreditation by one body can then gain accreditation by another,
and that not only is this difficult for colleges, who feel their
reputation is under question, but also it leaves a loophole for
bogus colleges. Do you have any intention of reforming the accreditation
bodies?
Damian Green: Yes,
absolutely. Accreditation is one of the things we have been consulting
on and it is one of the areas where we have had very sort of positive
feedback, and I know you have heard evidence from others saying
that the accreditation does need sorting out and I completely
agree. When we bring forward proposals as a result of the consultation,
accreditation will play a part in that. I agree with all those
who have told you that the accreditation system is a mess.
Q289 Nicola Blackwood:
There is a second loophole that we have observed, or we have heard
about, which is agents abroad who recruit international students,
and you can have some very genuine, effective agents and some
not so much, and there has been a recommendation of accrediting
those agents with British Council or embassy officials in country.
What is your opinion about that?
Damian Green: It
is an interesting idea. It does slightly entail spreading the
tentacles of the British state and the British regulatory system
across the world in a way that might be expensive and impractical
and not necessarily welcome everywhere. But the distinction is
a good one. I was in India a few months ago talking to respectable
education agents and they were urging us, they said, "Of
course there are huge scams going on, and of course, you know,
many of them are run by local agents, and please drive them out
of business". Jeremy, you know more of the detail of this
and of things that are feasible.
Jeremy Oppenheim:
Yes, of course. One of the things that many reputable organisations
do—and the universities do this a great deal—is employ
the agents directly, so they employ the agents as UK employees
who are then posted out abroad, and that is very reassuring and
very successful.
Q290 Chair: What
I think Ms Blackwood is asking is: with the agents who are not
part of the offices of British universities, should we have some
regulation?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
There are two things I might say. Firstly, regulating outside
the United Kingdom is extremely difficult to do. Employment in
the United Kingdom is easier.
Secondly, the British Council does help in those
areas, and we need to exploit the British Council's options and
opportunities more than we perhaps do at the moment.
Q291 Chair: This
is really a question for Mr Oppenheim and Mr Williams, because
we cannot hold you, Minister, responsible for the points-based
system; that was the predecessor Government. However, one of the
points made by MigrationWatch that I tend to agree with is the
fact that all discretion was taken away—I know you might
find that hard to believe, Minister—from entry clearance
officers, and therefore once you get the points under the points-based
system, the visa is granted. Isn't the right way to deal with
this an administrative change that would allow an ECO or an ECM
to interview the applicant abroad, thus dealing with this problem
before the bogus student comes into the country? Mr Williams,
you were the Head of Policy under the previous Government, I understand.
Glyn Williams:
Yes, and I was there when the previous system was in operation
too, and we were often heavily criticised by the education sector
and by the Independent Monitor for Entry Clearance refusals over
some of the refusals that we were making on the basis of discretion,
and often the education providers would say that the entry clearance
officer was substituting his judgment for their academic judgment
and was attempting to judge whether somebody was capable of following
a course and genuinely intended to come to the UK to study. The
agreed system that was put in its place was that that was the
job of the education providers and they would choose their own
students, and we would have a series of objective tests going
to the immigration aspect of it.
Q292 Chair: Basically,
you would not consider letting the ECO look at the student himself
or herself?
Glyn Williams:
It does not fit within the current system that we have.
Mr Clappison: The Committee
went to Nigeria in 2007. This point was raised to us by entry
clearance officers in Nigeria, and the point that they put was
that they knew far more about the local circumstances and conditions,
and they sometimes knew more than the universities or educational
institutions themselves did. They said there were clear examples,
in their experience, where people whom they did not have confidence
in had been given permission to come to this country.
Q293 Chair: Finally,
perhaps you can help us on this, Mr Oppenheim, before we move
past bogus colleges. You were in your post when the number of
visas from Bangladesh went up from 3,000 in 2008 to 17,303 in
2009. How was it possible for this huge increase to occur during
a year? Surely someone at UKBA would have realised that the number
of visas going to Bangladesh had increased almost 50%, well more
than 50%—my maths, as I say, is not particularly good—over
a year. The point that others have made to this Committee is that
UKBA has not really been in control of the administration. You
should have spotted this, shouldn't you?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
We did spot it. We spotted it quite early and we did things about
it, so we are—
Chair: But 17,000 visas
were issued. How is that early?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
We spotted it in Bangladesh, Nepal, India and southern China,
and we took action in each of those places to do something about
it.
Chair: Mr Oppenheim, isn't
that after the visas were issued? Surely you would have known
something like this by February.
Jeremy Oppenheim:
In some cases, it was after the visa was issued, and in some cases—many,
actually—it was well before they were issued. Our missions
abroad let us know about those issues and we took action to limit
quite significantly the number of visas we were able to issue,
certainly in southern China—
Chair: Do you mean it
could have been more than 17,000?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
No, I am not saying it could have been more than 17,000, Chairman.
What I am saying is that as soon as we saw those numbers—and
we tracked them every single week—we took action to do something
about it.
Chair: Mr McCabe has a
final point on bogus colleges.
Q294 Steve McCabe:
I should say, Minister, this incident happened two years ago,
so I am not trying to pin it on you. I wonder who is responsible
for dealing with the bogus students? I say that because we were
sent some information by a Mr Lawrence Eke from Hove English Language
School yesterday, who claimed that he tried to report four bogus
students from Belarus, and he phoned the Nationality Unit of Sussex
Police, who told him that it was not their jurisdiction and to
contact the Home Office, who told him to contact the UKBA. When
he contacted the UKBA, they said that since they had already entered
the UK and had not registered at the school, it was not the college's
responsibility but that he should contact the Home Office. Presumably,
your officials are taking some steps to try to make sure that
as well as closing a relatively small number of bogus colleges,
someone is taking responsibility for bogus students once they
are identified.
Damian Green: Exactly.
I think that tale is illustrative of the sort of thing that has
gone on.
Q295 Steve McCabe:
What is happening now?
Damian Green: We
now have much better checks. We have increasing numbers of biometric
residence permits so, if you come here to do a course, it is much
easier to know who you are if you try to interact with the benefit
system or if you try to work. Employers know that you have to
produce a document that will be able to be checked that it belongs
to you, and all that kind of thing. The system has been tightened
up since that is a not untypical example of the sort of thing
that is happening. If you have an entirely unregulated sector,
where you not only have bogus colleges but you also have bogus
individuals trying to exploit—
Q296 Steve McCabe:
Isn't this about the agencies not accepting any responsibility?
It sounds like pass the parcel.
Damian Green: Absolutely.
It is not for me to comment particularly on what happened under
the previous Administration—otherwise we will get partisan,
which is not the point—but absolutely. If people come from
overseas to this country, it is the responsibility of the UK Border
Agency to check that they are genuine and they are who they say
they are and they have the qualifications.
Chair: We will move on
to overstayers. We will have a quick question from Ms Phillipson,
and then we must move on to other areas.
Q297 Bridget Phillipson:
Given the likely reduction in staffing levels at the UKBA, do
you still feel that where reports are received, it will be possible
for those to be acted on thoroughly?
Damian Green: Yes,
for two reasons. In the course of the next few years, we will
be moving many more of our basic systems onto something that we
would all recognise as modern technology. Essentially, the whole
computer revolution has come late to the UKBA, but it is now happening.
Also, we will get smarter at differentiating. That is what a lot
of this whole student consultation is about.
Q298 Mark Reckless:
Minister, I detect something of a dichotomy between what we see
in the consultation paper, which has a number of questions but
there does seem to be a common theme, at least to me, of decreasing
numbers by making coming to the UK less attractive for overseas
students, and what you appear to say today in terms that this
is focused on bogus colleges and bogus students. Is there not
actually a genuine trade-off in that there are some students coming
perfectly reasonably to some colleges but they are studying part
time and working as well? A fair amount of them stay on afterwards.
A lot of them have children and get married, and not very many
go back home. Even if there is not an issue of being bogus, may
we not want to restrict people coming in order to reduce the amount
of net immigration from this source?
Damian Green: I
think one of the interesting things is that if all you do is concentrate
on the overtly bogus, you actually have quite a significant fall
in numbers. By definition, it is quite difficult to say exactly
how many people are here illegally or being bogus because they
do not show up in the statistics until you find them.
I am surprised you say that about the consultation.
I do not agree. It is not meant to be that we are going to make
it less welcoming to come here. The whole thrust of the consultation
is, precisely because we want more than our fair share of the
brightest and the best, we need to have a system that is not so
all-encompassing that people can use it as a loophole. That has
been the problem. The biggest single loophole in the immigration
system has been the student visa system, and what we want to do
is drive out all the things that lead to the loopholes. People
concentrate on bogus colleges because that is where most things
are, but it does also entail asking questions about people who
come here. For instance, we are consulting on whether people should
be able to bring their dependants with them as a right, and we
have looked at what other countries offer, and some of the things
that people have complained about, the post-study work route and
so on—
Q299 Mr Winnick: In
your busy life, Minister, I do not know if you have seen the advertisement
in "The House" magazine, which is an open letter signed
by UK business schools. None of them could be classified as bogus
colleges: Cranfield School of Management, Birmingham Business
School, Bristol Business School, Imperial College Business School,
and so on. They are very critical of some aspects of what you
are intending. I very briefly quote; they say, "While supporting
your objective of ending current abuses, we disagree profoundly
with the proposal that all overseas students, regardless of level
or course of study, should lose the opportunity to apply for work
in the UK and instead be required to leave as soon as they have
completed their course." Have you seen their letter?
Damian Green: I
have seen something similar. I cannot remember if I saw it in
"The House" magazine, but obviously they have responded
to the consultation, or the individual institutions have. Post-study
work is, I know, one of the interesting areas. It is one of the
reasons you have consultations, as you know. We propose to say,
"Let's scrap it altogether". Other people have said,
"No, you must keep it altogether", and one of the interesting
aspects of this is international comparisons, because if we are
looking at what we do and how we make ourselves attractive, we
need to look at what other countries do. The Americans do not
offer anything like as generous an offering as that. They offer
a small one-year extension directly related to the student's area
of study, so that is nothing like as generous. The Australians
offer an 18-month visa for temporary and skilled jobs, so those
would be jobs available under Tier 2 in our system. I know that
some of the evidence you have heard says that the French are now
offering a three-year extension. What the French are offering
is a new skills and talent visa, which is not open just to those
who study in France. It sounds more to me like our new Tier 1—our
exceptionals visa—so we are, if you like, out of line in
just saying that you can come here on any kind of student visa
and you have an absolute right to look for work for two years
afterwards.
We have discovered that there are a significant number
of those who have finished their studying who are then not going
into the sort of skilled jobs that I imagine graduates of all
those distinguished business schools would go to, but more than
50% of them are going to unskilled jobs, so it is clear that has
become another of the loopholes.
Q300 Mr Winnick:
Do I take it from that answer that the response will be "no"
to what they are objecting to?
Damian Green: I
think what they are arguing for is that we should not change the
system at all.
Mr Winnick: They make
it clear they are against abuses.
Damian Green: It
is not an abuse. That is the interesting thing. I think this is
where, as it were, the subtleties come in. There is bogus and
there is not bogus, but there is a range in between, and nobody
is abusing the current system if they finish an academic course
and sit in this country for two years looking for work or taking
unskilled work. That is fine; that is allowed in the current system—
Q301 Chair: These
are the graduates who are working on the tills at Tesco that you
keep mentioning, the PhDs that you have discovered?
Damian Green: I
think one of things we need to address when we announce what is
coming out of the consultation is whether that is good for the
British labour market and good for the British economy. It seems
to me that there are quite strong arguments to say that is not
what we want to use the student visa system for. That is probably
not what these colleges think they are educating people for.
Q302 Mr Winnick:
What would you say, however, Minister, to the feeling, accusation—call
it what you like—that in the general desire to reduce immigration,
in the atmosphere of the present moment and suchlike, that overseas
students are being caught in the firing line?
Damian Green: I
do not think that is true. The simplistic thing of, "More
immigration is better" or, "All immigration should be
stopped altogether", obviously we need to steer a sensible
course between those two extremes.
Mr Winnick: Leaving aside
the general position, whether immigration should be increased
or not, what I am saying to you is that in the general desire
of the Government to demonstrate that immigration is being cut,
students are in the firing line in the sense that it is going
to become much more difficult to study in the United Kingdom.
Damian Green: Genuine
students doing genuine studies are absolutely not in the firing
line. We want them. To take up the last point you made about students
who come here to study in the United Kingdom, that is what I want
to see students doing. People who use the student visa to come
here and work in the United Kingdom seem to me to be a different
issue altogether.
Q303 Chair: The
problem is that most of the academic institutions—and almost
all the evidence before this Committee so far, including, to be
frank, MigrationWatch when they talked about dealing with the
abuses of the system—are concerned about genuine students
being affected by your proposals. Do you think they are wrong?
Damian Green: Whenever
you have change, people are concerned. One of the reasons we have
a consultation before we announce is precisely so we can address
those concerns.
Q304 Mr Winnick:
Just a final question, are you telling us, Minister, that genuine
students who want to study in the United Kingdom should have no
more difficulty than previously?
Damian Green: Genuine
students who are coming to study should have no more difficulties.
Chair: Excellent.
Q305 Nicola Blackwood:
Could I just take us back to the post-study work route for a moment?
It seems that we are looking at two poles: either keeping it exactly
as it is now, in which anything is permitted, or closing it entirely.
We have received evidence that some form of post-study work is
a recruitment tool so that people can go back to their own countries
having a bit of a CV line. We have also received evidence that
with some courses you need to do a period of post-study training
in order to properly qualify; for example, architecture or law
and other courses such as those, and this would prevent that entirely.
I wonder if you could comment on those particular aspects.
Damian Green: As
you say, we have received a lot of responses to the consultation
on this issue. It is clearly one of the important issues.
Chair: 31,000.
Damian Green: Yes,
but not specifically on this issue. We have had 31,000 altogether,
many of them from individuals, so I am glad we had a consultation.
As we are sifting through those, we will develop the policy. You
are tempting me down the line of announcing what the policy will
be, which the Home Secretary will announce in some weeks' time,
but I do not think that now is the time to do that. Not least
because as the Chairman says, we have had 31,000 consultations,
we need to give them all a fair look at first before we make our
final decision.
Q306 Alun Michael:
Can I just ask about the impact of biometric residence permits?
Won't that be effective in ensuring that we know precisely whether
students have left as they are supposed to do?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
No, is the simple answer. Biometric residence permits, of which
we have issued over a third of a million for non-EU citizens to
date, will tie down identity and we can reconfirm identity each
time we have contact with the student or worker, but no, it will
not confirm departure. What confirms departure is the use of e-borders,
and the biometric residence permit is only one tool.
Q307 Alun Michael:
Won't it clarify lack of departures, then?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
It may do, but what is even more effective—and we do this
regularly now—is that we check individual groups of students
against the embarkation controls that e-borders offers us.
Q308 Alun Michael:
But surely the whole difficulty has been with certainty and being
able to identify whether those who are meant to leave have left
and the lack of certainty about whether that is the case. Are
you saying this will make no difference?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
No. It makes it a contribution because it can confirm the identity
of a person departing, but so can many passports as well, so it
is not the only tool that we use.
Damian Green: The
essential use of the biometric residence permit is to stop people
interacting in ways they should not be: working and claiming benefits
and so on. When e-borders is 100% operational, at that point it
would be possible but—
Q309 Alun Michael:
The reason I am trying to get at this is that one of the concerns
that has been expressed is that there are a number of students
that are remaining after the end of their course at the point
when they are expected to leave, and there is the suggestion that
the estimates are too high because there is not a proper and accurate
measurement of "out" as well as "in". I am
surprised that there is no thought that this would make a difference
to that accuracy.
Damian Green: Specifically
the biometric residence permits, as Jeremy has explained, will
help, but in the end you need to have a system that counts people
out as well as counts people in—
Alun Michael: Understood.
Damian Green: At
the moment, e-borders covers between 55% and 60%, and obviously
the biggest gap is with the EU, and we are in discussions with
the Commission about how to do that.
Q310 Chair: I
am sure you have seen the Committee's report on this. Have we
now issued the contract for the replacement for the previous company
that was administering e-borders?
Damian Green: It
will be issued during the course of this year; it has not been
issued yet.
Chair: During the course
of this year? I thought we were told the last time by a Minister
that it would be done by Christmas. Maybe I have that wrong: I
will check my notes.
Q311 Nicola Blackwood:
I just wanted to take us back slightly to a student working, and
talk about the suggestion that students should work on-campus
in the week and off-campus in the weekend. I am not sure what
"on-campus" means at a university like Oxford, and it
would helpful to have some clarification about whether it means
on university property with the university employer.
Chair: Mr Oppenheim, can
you help us? What is "on-campus"? Did you go to Oxford?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
We used the phrase for the purposes of the consultation because
we had heard from places like Manchester, which certainly does
not have a clearly defined campus, that the buildings that the
university owns would be the group that we are concerned about.
It is the university and the environs—
Chair: Sorry, the university
and the?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
Its environs but it is the buildings—
Chair: Which means what,
exactly?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
It is the buildings the university controls and owns. The reason
for this is that universities have said to us that they use some
foreign national students to talk to other incoming students and
to help with the relationships with people who have not travelled
into the UK before—
Q312 Chair: So
the answer to Ms Blackwood is what? What is the definition?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
The buildings the university controls; the campus itself.
Q313 Nicola Blackwood:
What about research projects funded by the university but which
are taking place in non-university-owned properties?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
No. In the consultation, we designed it and it was intended to
describe those opportunities for work that helped the university
do its business. It was not about research and not about working
in a WHSmith on the campus.
Q314 Mark Reckless:
Minister, you may be aware Professor Acton last week had a proposal
to confirm the numbers of students who were overstaying for universities,
and thought this would be a very helpful piece of research and
said that universities would be happy to pay for it. Would the
Home Office accept that offer?
Damian Green: I
have had this conversation with Professor Acton as well, and essentially
what he is suggesting is actually what Jeremy has just described—sampling.
Professor Acton has this perfectly reasonable desire that with
e-borders we can get a 100% accurate figure of who is here and
who is not. Great, we all want to move towards that, but we all
know the history of e-borders and now is not the time to discuss
it. It will take us a few years to get there.
Q315 Chair: Are
you happy with the suggestion that you do not mind them paying?
Damian Green: I
certainly do not mind anyone else paying, but I just think it
will not actually get the sort of magic bullet that I think Professor
Acton is convinced the Committee would—
Chair: But why stop him,
if this is what he wants to do? He wants to be helpful.
Damian Green: I
have no desire to stop it.
Q316 Mark Reckless:
So you are happy for Professor Acton to do this research and pay
for it?
Chair: And send you a
copy at the end.
Damian Green: As
I say, I am more than happy for him to pay for it.
Q317 Dr Huppert:
Thank you. First, Minister, I was delighted to hear that the aim
of this is not to drive down legitimate students, because we have
struggled to find support for the proposals because there is a
perception that that is what would happen. We have heard many
concerns from across the sector about the effects. I do not know
if you heard earlier that the British Council are saying that
attendance at their events is already down just as a result of
this consultation.
The Secretary of State for DEFRA made a clear point
that her consultation was a genuine consultation. Presumably,
you would confirm that this is a genuine consultation and that
you will take all of the huge number of views expressed very seriously,
and that if they are expressing concern in this way, you would
listen very carefully to that.
Damian Green: It
depends whether they are valid points or not. You do not need
to look outside this Department. We held a consultation on the
work-based routes, and points were made and we listened to them,
and we produced a policy that was entirely consistent with what
we said we were going to do but which was improved by the consultation.
That will be the case in this instance as well.
When people say the attendance at an event is down
and it is because of the consultation, I would want to see a bit
of evidence for that and not because of local advertising problems.
Q318 Dr Huppert:
I believe the British Council has that. I would also like to ask
about one section, because a lot of the consultation deals with
different stages rather separately. We have had a lot of evidence
about pathway routes. For example, in Cambridge, one of my three
excellent universities, Anglia Ruskin University, has a partnership
with Navitas and the Cambridge Ruskin International College where
students come in, learn some English at the beginning, learn the
skills they need to study and go on to degree level. There is
a whole flow-through here that could be lost by changing things
right at the very beginning, with a knock-on effect at graduates
and beyond. How are you taking account of those issues?
Damian Green: It
is precisely on those sorts of issues where the very clear distinction—that
I think there is general support for—between highly trusted
sponsors and not highly trusted sponsors actually plays a very
significant role. We have said that you can bring people in at
below degree level if you are a highly trusted sponsor, and I
have spoken to universities as well about pathway colleges, and
Jeremy spends his life touring universities and talking about
this at the moment. That is clearly one of the areas where we
are having quite fruitful and constructive discussions.
Q319 Dr Huppert:
Have you looked at the experience of the US after 9/11, where
they put in greater controls and then saw a massive loss in numbers?
It cost money, reputational damage and so forth. Australia is
having a lot of internal arguments at the moment about the cuts
there from the Rudd Government, and there is a lot of pressure
to change that now. Seeing the steps that these places that went
through extra restrictions are now having to come to to attract
students back again, are you not concerned that Britain could
go through exactly the same cycle and we would end up having to
boost our economy again by trying to get people back?
Damian Green: Obviously,
9/11 was a total one-off, so things changed after that and decisions
were taken in uniquely dramatic circumstances. The Australian
example is interesting. The big drop in Australia was Indian students,
and what people in India have told me happened was that there
were riots in Australia and Indian students were being beaten
up, and that is what put Indian students off applying to Australia,
and you can't blame them. Clearly, we do not want anything like
that happening here.
Q320 Dr Huppert:
I think we agree that we do not want riots. There are a number
of other categories that are down in Australia quite significantly.
I think 20% is the overall, though it is focused on Indians.
Damian Green: Exactly.
Obviously, as I have said several times already, we want genuine
students at genuine institutions, and there is nervousness whenever
you propose change and we are going through the nervous phase
at the moment.
Q321 Bridget Phillipson:
Yesterday we visited a language college and met with a number
of the students who were studying there, the vast majority of
whom had offers at very prestigious universities conditional upon
the exams that they will be taking this year. What they were very
keen to stress was that many of them came in with a relatively
low level of English but with the right support were very quickly
able to improve their English, and they were clearly very talented,
intelligent and able people who will come and study at degree
level. The concern with the consultation is that the changes that
are made, if we proceed in terms of sub-degree level changes,
may stop those people coming in the first instance, and it is
actually only through being in an English-speaking country that
you are able to bring your English up to the necessary standard.
Also, the way in which we study at universities and in colleges
in this country is very different from many of the countries that
they have come from, and it is the kind of learning that they
undertake while in the UK that allows them to progress onto degree
level.
Damian Green: Assuming
that the college you were visiting was a highly trusted sponsor,
they will still be able to bring people in. Of course, specifically
on language schools, one of the changes I have made as a Minister
regards the student visa. Previously, the student visitor visa
could only operate for up to six months. I had very strong representations
from many colleagues as well as the language schools themselves
that that was not long enough, particularly for people from east
Asia and south-east Asia, so we have changed that to 11 months
and that was, broadly speaking, welcomed by the language colleges.
Chair: That was very welcomed
in the meeting we had yesterday; it was all the other bits that
were not.
Damian Green: Yes,
but I am not entirely clear what the other bits are.
Q322 Bridget Phillipson:
One of the concerns is around students having to return back to
their home country to reapply. For some students it was quicker
and cheaper to return to their home country to do so, but it might
simply deter others from applying to stay on at British universities.
Would it not be a better system to allow some kind of follow-through
so that account could be taken of their attendance and legitimacy
on the pre-degree course rather than having two separate, stand-alone
processes?
Damian Green: The
application would clearly take account of how well they had performed
on the previous course anyway, so I think—
Bridget Phillipson: The
colleges seem to suggest that they would welcome an improvement
on that. They did not feel that that was the case.
Damian Green: That
is obviously the principle that one would want to apply. That
is the whole point of not having entry clearance officers decide,
of trying to have an objective system—the points-based system
introduced under the previous Government. One of the reasons is
that if you can show genuine qualifications, and you have attended
a course and passed a reputable exam at the end of it, you can
show that, and so you get a tick in that box—
Q323 Bridget Phillipson:
The difficulty is that you may not have passed when you are applying.
You have to return home pending the outcome of exam results in
order to reapply to come back.
Damian Green: It
is not beyond the wit of man to organise to pass an exam and mark
it and produce the results so that you can then apply for a place,
I would have thought. Clearly, there are practical issues.
Bridget Phillipson: It
is the timescale, yes.
Damian Green: We
will look at them during the consultation.
Q324 Steve McCabe:
In terms of language schools, Minister, if you achieve a level
of success and a level of performance from your officials that
has eluded other Ministers, what contribution will it make to
your target of reducing immigration to tens of thousands?
Damian Green: We
do not have a specific number put to this, but as I say—
Steve McCabe: You must
have an idea, surely.
Damian Green: No,
I do not have an idea of a specific number—
Steve McCabe: We have
spent a lot of time talking about it if it is minimal, so I am
assuming it is significant.
Damian Green: I
have already explained to the Committee the size of the potential
issue. We have talked about the number of bogus colleges that
have been closed; I have explained that in that sector, in which
we closed 58 and suspended the licences of a couple of hundred
others, in the last year for which we have figures, there were
91,000 certificates granted, so that gives you the overall size.
Chair: The answer is that
you do not have an answer at the moment.
Damian Green: And
nor will we; we are not going to have a specific target for the
number of student visas issued, and if we had suggested that I
think the universities would—
Q325 Nicola Blackwood:
One of the comments we received yesterday from the language schools
and pathway colleges was that they are unhappy with the current
situation, where if they have a student who has applied to them
and they have offered them a place and that student is proceeding
through the visa process, the colleges are not informed whether
that student has been granted the visa or has failed the visa.
They are not informed by UKBA when that student arrives in the
UK, so they do not know until after 10 days of no appearance whether
or not there is a problem with that student coming over, and I
wonder if there is a way that communication could be tightened
up, because that might help a bit.
Jeremy Oppenheim:
We are very aware of it, and in the introduction of the points-based
system there were a series of compromises we had to make based
on cost to be able to have a system that allowed the sort of things
that colleges and others want. Part of what the Minister had mentioned
was the rollout of a 21st century piece of technology. Very much
a part of the specification is to allow colleges and universities
to have access to which visas have been issued and when they are
actually used, so that is very much a part of what we want to
do in the next 18 months.
Q326 Nicola Blackwood:
Will that system have a special email address or phone number
that students can call to alert UKBA if they have identified a
bogus student?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
We already have local immigration teams throughout the country
with published telephone numbers who will take a call, and the
Immigration Inquiry Bureau in Croydon would also take a call.
They answered 81% of all the calls in the last week in January.
So I think there are systems to allow individuals to report bogus
students.
The other thing that will happen in this new system
is that individuals will be able to track their own application.
One of the great frustrations to date is that you cannot track
online the progress of your application. We intend to make sure
that is an integral part of our system from later this year onwards.
Chair: I have here the
sheet—which I will give you, Minister—from Bellerbys
College, which we visited yesterday, which shows the pathway from
learning English all the way to university, and the success of
those colleges. The point being that you come to England to learn
English, just as Sir Andrew Green learned Arabic in Lebanon. The
point of coming here is to get those language skills. I am sure
that when you were at Balliol and President of the Union you met
international students who wanted to come to Britain because they
wanted to learn English and be part of the culture, and that is
Dr Huppert's question to you.
Q327 Dr Huppert:
Thank you, Chair. We have had quite a lot of evidence highlighting
benefits, internationally, from having good relations with countries
who send students and from having former students in significant
positions of power in those countries, and also the side benefits
to other students, to universities and to research of having international
students. Have you had conversations with colleagues in the Foreign
Office and in BIS about those aspects to do with the consultation
of what might happen afterwards, and what were they saying to
you?
Damian Green: You
are inviting me to repeat private conversations among Ministers—
Chair: Ministers will
be coming in for us as well.
Damian Green: In
which case, you can ask them. Yes. The short answer to your question
of whether we have had conversations is yes, of course, and we
are in constant conversation with colleagues across Whitehall,
because clearly this has implications for other Departments as
well, and everyone here will know there is a clearance system
and the consultation is a Government consultation; it is not just
a UKBA consultation, and the eventual policy will be a Government
policy, not just a UKBA policy.
Q328 Chair: Since
you are here, I was at York House last week as a witness in a
visitor's visa case, and there is a list at York House that has
all the cases where Home Office presentation officers do not turn
up at all. Has there been any progress in trying to get more of
these officers turning up at immigration tribunals?
Damian Green: The
short answer is yes, in that I share your concern. We may have
discussed it previously in this forum that the UKBA should do
better at presenting officers, and I do not know if you know the
figure off the top of your head—
Q329 Chair: Do
you know why a whole list had no presentation officers, having
gone through the entire immigration system, if we want to keep
people out of the country who are not genuine? Where do the Home
Office presentation officers go?
Jeremy Oppenheim:
I do not know the specific answer, but if it helps I can say that
in some regions, including my own in Yorkshire Humber in the north-east,
we achieve nearly 100%—and that does not mean 80%; it means
nearly 100%—of representation in both asylum and temporary
migration cases. The times we do not appear are often because
we are either conceding the case or because we think the papers
are strong enough for us not to need to have representation, and
that is accepted by the tribunals.
Q330 Chair: Mr
Oppenheim, in those cases would it not be a better idea to write
to the appellant and tell them? Because I was sitting in a waiting
room where there were 36 cases—people who had taken the
entire day off—waiting for a case where there was no presentation
officer.
Jeremy Oppenheim:
We do it when we can, but it is often because the evidence provided
by the appellant is provided extremely late. I am very happy to
arrange to write to you about York House.
Q331 Chair: That
would be great. The final question concerns timetable. You have
said you had 31,000 responses; I am sure you are not going to
read every one of them, Minister, because you will not have the
time to do so. I have just had a letter back from the Home Secretary
telling me that there are no firm dates for making an announcement.
The Committee is obviously keen to conclude its report and assist
the Government on this issue. Is that still the case? Her letter
is only dated yesterday. There is no firm date for making an announcement?
Damian Green: Of
course it is the case. The Home Secretary wrote this letter yesterday.
I am not about to disagree with my boss.
Q332 Chair: What
surprises me is that I heard this morning through a leak—and
I am sorry to bring up the issue of leaks from the Home Office—that
actually you have chosen 16 March as the date of the announcement.
Is that simply not correct? Will there be no announcement on 16
March?
Damian Green: I
am not saying there will be no announcement; I am simply saying
there is no firm date.
Chair: Excellent. So 16
March is wrong.
Damian Green: Hang
on, no. I would say there is no firm date, and I have participated
in no conversations in which 16 March is mentioned.
Chair: Maybe your two
officials could tell you, since they run the show in the Home
Office.
Damian Green: No,
they do not.
Chair: As officials, do
we have a date?
Damian Green: No.
Chair: We have no date.
Damian Green:
There is no firm date. That is what the Home Secretary said yesterday.
Chair: All right. 16 March
is all we know as—
Damian Green: Could
I say in response, I hope the Committee's report will be a valuable
contribution so the sooner it is produced clearly the better all
around.
Chair: I think it is very
helpful—we had a conversation with the Home Secretary about
this—if the Committee is scrutinising, it is always better
for the Government to have our report before it publishes its
results, and we will work as fast as we possibly can.
Damian Green: Good.
Chair: Minister, Mr Williams,
Mr Oppenheim, thank you very much indeed.
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