UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE
To be published as HC 773 - iii

house of commons

oral evidence

taken before the

Home Affairs Committee

Student Visas

Thursday 3 March 2011

Rt Hon David Willetts MP, Jeremy Browne MP, Fiona Clouder and Andrew Whyte

Evidence heard in Public Questions 333 - 405

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Thursday 3 March 2011

Members present:

Rt Hon Keith Vaz (Chair)

Nicola Blackwood

Mr James Clappison

Michael Ellis

Dr Julian Huppert

Steve McCabe

Bridget Phillipson

Mark Reckless

Mr David Winnick

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Rt Hon David Willetts MP, Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Jeremy Browne MP, Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Fiona Clouder, Acting Director, Migration, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Andrew Whyte, Director of Communications, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Q333 Chair: Could I refer to the Register of Members’ Interests, where the interests of all Members of this Committee are noted, and could I welcome the Minister of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Thank you very much for giving evidence. We know that you have a very busy schedule, as does the Secretary of State. He recommended that you should come before us rather than himself, so I am sure you would be pleased with that recommendation. Minister, I am sure you have been following the inquiry that the Committee has been conducting into student visas. How important are international students to the UK economy?

Mr Willetts: First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to be questioned by your Committee. There are a range of estimates of the significance of foreign students. We calculate that international non-EU student tuition fees themselves are £2.2 billion a year. UUK have done an estimate of the wider economic value in terms of the spending by those students that came in at £2.3 billion a year, so we are clearly talking about significant extra resources being brought into the British economy.

Q334 Chair: So your department welcomes international students to come and study in this country and feels they make a significant contribution to our economy?

Mr Willetts: We believe that legitimate students coming to British universities and FE colleges are indeed a valuable contribution, yes.

Q335 Chair: How would you define illegitimate students then?

Mr Willetts: There is always the challenge of abuse and this is something that, quite rightly, the UK Border Agency has been focused on. So I wanted it to be clear that our welcome was for people who can genuinely benefit from education here, and it isn’t extended to people who don’t have the qualifications that would enable them to benefit from the kind of educational provision we have. But, yes, we have an internationally respected education system. People from around the world wish to come and participate in it and will pay for that and it is an excellent British export industry.

Q336 Chair: So you would not want to see any Government policy that stopped international students choosing Britain rather than going to America and Canada or Australia, you want them to come here?

Mr Willetts: Yes, I do want them to come here, but within a framework, which we fully understand the coalition is committed to bringing down net migration, and we do believe that there are abuses-loopholes in the system-that means that, sadly, there are people getting in who aren’t in a position to benefit from an education here and who shouldn’t be coming here.

Chair: As far as bogus colleges are concerned-and indeed bogus students-I think that everyone is against them coming into this country and abusing the system. There is general agreement across the House on this.

Mr Willetts: Correct.

Q337 Chair: The Committee, in its last report, recommended that we look at the term "college" and one way of stopping people setting up a college above a fish and chip shop in, say, Brighton and calling themselves a college was to limit that term. Your junior Minister has written and said that your department is still against the limiting of the word "college". Could you just explain why?

Mr Willetts: Yes, and of course the letter that John Hayes sent you on 8 February does set it out, I think. The biggest single problem is that the word "college" is used in so many different contexts for such a wide range of institutions that trying to regulate it would, we think, be very hard to do in practice and would place unfair burdens on legitimate institutions. It is such a generic term in the English language, it would be very hard to control it in that way. That is our main concern. I think the second point I would make is that you quite rightly, Chairman, moved from bogus colleges to bogus students. Although this is more for the Home Office than for us in BIS, I think that picture of a kind of PO Box with absolutely no education activity going on, or a single room above a fish and chip shop as the bogus college, I think the effective action by the UKBA has made great progress in eliminating those. The attention is shifting more to people who maybe do not have the education or qualifications they claim to have, perhaps colleges that have rather lax procedures for checking qualifications. So it is the under-qualified or inappropriate student, which I detect from my conversations with the Home Office is increasingly the focus, rather than those absolutely unacceptable and absurd abuses where I believe, and the UKBA say are probably diminishing now.

Q338 Chair: That is very helpful. On the point of the international reputation, when Ministers go abroad, as you have been abroad recently, do you go abroad and you say to governments, "We want you to come and do business with Britain and we would like your international students to come and study here"? Is that one of the messages of the Government, that Britain is open for business as far as international students are concerned?

Mr Willetts: The Prime Minister has said Britain is open for business, and one of the businesses where we excel is education. Indeed, therefore, when I was with him on his visit to India in July, we were very keen to strengthen links between our education arrangements in India. But I would say that the kind of very direct marketing, "Come here and get an education in Britain" does not go down as well as saying, "There are benefits from exchange in education between our two countries". I personally urge British students to do more to go and study abroad and I find that a very good way of having a conversation with, for example, the Indian Education Minister is to discuss how we can also increase-I think from memory it is-the 500 British students currently studying in India, because there are some excellent institutions in India and it is a great way of broadening people’s minds. So when I do attend international events, we think of it as a two-way exchange.

Q339 Mr Winnick: Minister, I noticed a slight hesitation on your part when you were replying to the Chair about whether or not we need more students. I note that the Home Secretary said in a speech on 23 November 2010, "However, the majority of non-EU migrants are in fact students. They represent almost two-thirds of non-EU migrants entering the UK each year" and then she spoke about reforming visas. I can understand obviously the need to clamp down very firmly, as the previous Government started to do, on bogus colleges, bogus students; we could do without them. But as far as genuine students are concerned in genuine colleges, is it firmly the Government’s view that it is the desire of the United Kingdom authorities to encourage, as previously, students to come here?

Mr Willetts: You are quite right, Mr Winnick, about my hesitation, and the reason why I hesitated was that I was considering some of the other aspects of that question, for example, students who come here and do have a qualification, but they stay here and study for so long that they build up a strong claim for settlement, so in reality it has become a route into this country, even if it was not necessarily their intention when they started, or students who come here with dependants. There is a blurred division between simply coming here to study and then going back home, and on the other side, the bogus student. There are some areas in the middle where you could argue-and it is in the consultation paper-that the education route has become a route to settlement and has become a route for bringing other people who are not themselves studying. That was the reason for my hesitation.

Q340 Mr Winnick: We have taken evidence about some students who stayed on and they have been much welcomed by the academic community and have become very distinguished, but that is not an argument of ever-increasing numbers of students, once they finish, to stay on in the United Kingdom. I accept that entirely. So the division line as far as the Government is concerned is the difference between students coming here for genuine reasons to genuine colleges and then there is another factor: the desire to make sure that most of them do not find some excuse-genuine as it may be-to stay on permanently in employment in Britain.

Mr Willetts: That is certainly one of our concerns, correct.

Q341 Steve McCabe: How damaging do you think the impression that you want to clamp down on students has been in terms of our reputation abroad and the likelihood that you will succeed in the future in attracting the types of students that you are interested in coming to the UK?

Mr Willetts: We tracked the statistics, and the current application process is not completed, but the evidence so far is that applications to study here from abroad remain buoyant, so we are not seeing a tailing off of applications. I do get asked sometimes when I am at conferences on this subject. I was in Russia last week and students at the Moscow University were asking me, "Can we come and study in Britain?" and I was able to say, "If you have excellent qualifications and are coming to a mainstream British university, yes, you can come". So you do get asked about it but, as I say, if you look at the application figures, they appear to be holding up.

Q342 Steve McCabe: So no one has given you the impression that, in fact, Canada, the United States and increasingly Australia are developing much more favourable regimes for attracting high-quality foreign students and that we are in danger of losing out? You have not heard that?

Mr Willetts: You are right. Those are our leading competitors. We always keep an eye on the competition and some of them are growing market share. Our reading at the moment is that New Zealand and Canada are the ones that are making the biggest effort to grow their share of this market and we keep an eye of their offerings. But so far I would say there is still strong international interest in coming to study at our education institutions.

Q343 Dr Huppert: How much has your department been involved in the consultation?

Mr Willetts: We have been in close touch with the Home Office and of course especially now that the consultation process is over, we are, between us, sifting through the responses that have come in.

Q344 Dr Huppert: Roughly how many meetings would there have been between BIS officials and Home Office officials?

Mr Willetts: I think there have been several meetings and we are in close touch. I think there have been seven meetings of officials since the outcome of the consultation. I have had three meetings with the Minister at the Home Office, Damian Green.

Q345 Dr Huppert: I am struck that you described that the test for students being valid is whether they could benefit from study. That is not what the Home Office has been saying and is not what the Immigration Minister said when we questioned him. They clearly have a very different concept of what the test would be. Are you still trying to persuade them of the voracity of your position?

Mr Willetts: We are working together to reach an agreed position in the light of the consultation. I am not in a position, sadly, to bring to this Committee the final outcome. We are still considering all this. The Government has a shared belief and a commitment in the coalition agreement on bringing down net migration and the Government also recognises the strength of education-not just as a good thing in its own right, but a successful British export business-and we are working together to reach a satisfactory outcome to the consultation.

Q346 Mark Reckless: Regarding your answer to Mr Winnick’s first question, I think you accepted that it was more than just about clamping down on bogus students at bogus colleges. We asked a similar question to the Minister for Immigration and I am still not entirely clear where we are on this. If you look at the consultation, there were various restrictions that make it less attractive perhaps to become a student here in terms of dependants, working, post-study work, what language you had to have and so on. Do you expect these changes to lead to some sort of genuine but marginal students or marginal colleges perhaps not carrying on under the new regime in the way they are now, or do you see it restricted to bogus students at bogus colleges?

Mr Willetts: As I said, Mr Reckless, this is where there is a fuzzy boundary. This is precisely what we are exploring with the Home Office at the moment. Take one of your examples, the language requirement: you can argue that if a college or university takes on someone with rather rudimentary English, are they able to participate in the educational process in the way they should? That is a legitimate concern. Universities say that they are the custodians of their admissions procedures and are best able to judge whether someone has the English to be able to properly study. Dependants: again, where we look at what other countries do, bringing in dependants, that can increase the migration figures and they are not coming here to study. To what extent does people’s ability to bring in dependants affect their own willingness to come and study here? These are the grey areas that we identified in the consultation document and we now are considering with the Home Office.

Q347 Michael Ellis: I would like to move on slightly, if I may, to look at economic impact. Hitherto in recent years, absence of proper scrutiny has undoubtedly led to discussing bogus students and bogus colleges and examples of colleges without students and students without lecturers and the like. Have you or your department a plan to undertake some type of internal economic assessment of the impact of this policy and of the reduction in student numbers that may well occur as to the impact on the BIS department and its policy areas?

Mr Willetts: The impact assessment that is being prepared as part of the Government’s review of this policy will cover these economic impacts-it is intended to do so-and of course we will then release our overall impact assessment as part of the process when the decision is taken. So yes, the regulatory impact assessment is intended to capture those sorts of effects and it is being prepared as a shared analysis, agreed starting point for the discussions, that should be agreed between BIS and the Home Office.

Michael Ellis: When are you expecting that?

Mr Willetts: The impact assessment has been sent to the Regulatory Policy Committee for its consideration as part of this policy process.

Q348 Chair: In terms of the timetable, the Committee has written to the Minister suggesting that they might like to see the Select Committee’s report before announcing their proposals. Do you know if there is any date for the announcement of the final proposals?

Mr Willetts: I do not believe there is such a date and agree with you, Mr Chairman, I think it would be very helpful if we had sight of this Committee’s report before any final decisions were taken.

Q349 Nicola Blackwood: Just to follow up on that point briefly: do you think that it would cause a problem for universities or language colleges if the announcement were to come later in May? Would it cause problems with admissions, do you think?

Mr Willetts: The uncertainties about exactly what the visa regime will be are raised with me by universities. The sooner universities know where they are the better. But equally, the process of Government has to work. The consultation period has only just ended so we are working flat out. That is why I have already had meetings with the Home Office Minister, so we are trying to get this resolved as quickly as we can.

Q350 Nicola Blackwood: Could we talk about the post-study work route? You have mentioned that you think that British education has a cache regardless of the visa system perhaps and regardless of the right to work, but we have received quite a lot of evidence from students saying that it is one of the major reasons why they do come to study in the UK: because they are going to have this two years’ post-study work opportunity, in particular for MBAs, lawyers and those whose study courses require some kind of work experience attached. How do you respond as Minister of Education to the recommendation to entirely abolish that route?

Mr Willetts: You rightly identify a strand of argument that has come in in the responses to the consultation document. Going back to Mr McCabe’s question, as we look around our competitors, they vary. The US does not quite have an offer as generous as our post-study work offer. New Zealand and Canada-who I said are growing market share-they seem to be using post-study work as part of the appeal. So it is a feature, but there may be ways we can tighten it up or make sure it is not abused and becoming a route to settlement. It is part of that fuzzy boundary that we are investigating.

Q351 Nicola Blackwood: Yes, but you think something short of abolition would probably be more useful from the higher education rather than the immigration standpoint?

Mr Willetts: I am trying to avoid the model. There are two standpoints and because we are working as a team in the Government, coming from two different departments, trying to solve it.

Q352 Chair: We do understand that, Minister, but of course we have called you here because we have heard such powerful evidence from the universities and the colleges of higher education. We want to know about the impact on your department. So we do understand that you are part of a Government, but I think Nicola Blackwood’s question is quite pertinent. Will it have an effect? There must be an opinion or a paper on this.

Mr Willetts: I think it would depend on exactly what was proposed, and there are a whole range of options between complete closure of the route and the status quo. Obviously one thing we are discussing with the Home Office is what those options might be.

Chair: But complete closure would not be something you would favour?

Mr Willetts: There are certainly universities that tell us very clearly that if they were to completely lose the post-study work option that would put them at a disadvantage compared with the competition.

Chair: Are you still a visiting professor at John Cass?

Mr Willetts: I believe I have lapsed. I am not aware of having any communication with them for two or three years now, but I certainly was a visiting professor several years ago.

Q353 Chair: The MBAs have sent us a table that was published in the Financial Times and I was astonished to note that the London Business School was the top business school in the world. I always thought it was one of the American universities, but it is UK first above Wharton, Harvard, Stanford and Colombia, and the MBAs in their evidence are unanimous that any abolition of the post-study work route would devastate their position in the lead table. Of the top 100, I think ten to 15 are UK universities, including Imperial, Cambridge, Oxford, Cranfield School of Management, which surprises me.

Mr Willetts: Oh, no, it is an excellent institution, if I may say so.

Chair: These are world-beaters. Are you satisfied that we might lose our status if-

Mr Willetts: That is a classic example of where we can be so proud of excellent institutions that also are a very sensible export business, and I think the Home Office has worked to not doing things that would damage their international performance.

Q354 Mark Reckless: I recall the Foreign Secretary, who is an INSEAD graduate, telling students at London Business School in his speech that they should not believe everything that they read in the Financial Times in respect to these rankings. I did though want to ask you about this post-study work, their argument, "It gives us a leg-up on the competition and if you take this away we will be less attractive". Is that a proper argument? Should they not be attracting students on the basis of their educational offer?

Mr Willetts: Yes, I understand that argument. In reality, there may be benefits. It does go, strictly speaking, beyond the education offer, but you could argue that as there are other countries that have something like it, and I accept the US is not quite so flexible, but Canada and New Zealand I think have similar offers. When you are looking at the competition, you have to assess what we offer compared with other countries. But you are certainly right: there are purists who would say that if the argument is they are coming here for education, they are coming here for education; they cannot get a kind of free pass into work. But we are working with the Home Office for ways in which we can reach a sensible way forward.

Q355 Bridget Phillipson: Much of this so far was focused on university students, but we have had a lot of evidence from the further education sector on this area, firstly for those standalone courses, but also evidence that many students would not be able to go on and study at British universities if they were not able to come and study some degree-level courses in the UK in order to get their language skills up to scratch, but also because some of them study for a year less in their home countries than we would do in the UK. What discussions have you had with the Home Office on the area of further education and the impact any changes could have?

Mr Willetts: Yes, I very much agree with that point, and I think the Home Office recognises that there are several countries from which we recruit where you finish your school education at what we regard essentially as AS-level, and so part of the British market is doing a course where you move on from AS-level to A-level and improve your English at the same time and might have a kind of conditional offer from a university that depends on your getting up to the A-level standard and improving your English. So, yes, I think there is a very legitimate activity and I hope as we work through the proposal in the consultation that that continues to remain possible as a route into universities in Britain.

Bridget Phillipson: We visited a language school in Brighton, and what struck me was the number of students that had come over to study English, often coming with very little English, who now had offers from the top universities in Britain and were very keen to stress that. I think that is an important part of this we need to not overlook, and I think the figure was something like 40% or 50% of those international students of British universities had come and studied some degree-level course. While obviously we want to crack down on bogus students and bogus colleges, some of the language schools I think feel that their good work is perhaps being undermined by the constant talk of that, whereas much of the work cracking down on those bogus colleges has already been very successful.

Mr Willetts: Yes, I accept that the worst-case bogus college problem is less acute than it was. We are fortunate, people want to come and study to learn English and they want to come and study in its home country, so to speak, and that is something that is a great business for us to be in, and of course it is one route into university. Again, it has to be policed and there are issues about exactly what people’s language competence is, but yes, I agree with your broad point.

Q356 Chair: You would agree with the point that if people want to learn English very, very well they would want to come and live in England. Similarly, if I wanted to learn Spanish, of course I could go to Linguarama or whatever it is called, but at the end of the day, the pathway from language school to university is an important one for the British economy?

Mr Willetts: Otherwise they might be speaking it with an American accent.

Chair: Or even worse, an Australian accent.

Mr Willetts: I think it is great that people want to come here. Of course we have to accept-and this is another interesting strand that we are very interested in at BIS and I am working on at the moment-that education, as it becomes more international, there is going to be distance learning. There are campuses at British universities and other institutions set up abroad. There are ways in that people can benefit from a British education without physically coming here and there must be capacity limit to what we can do. So in parallel with trying to get a sensible way forward on student visas I am very proud that the Open University is something that people around the world use and that there are British universities that want to operate abroad directly.

Chair: The Committee has just come back from Turkey, where we have been looking at the implications of enlargement and what was interesting was the desire of a lot of middle-ranking officials in the Turkish authorities to come and study here. If they were going to learn English, of course they could learn it in the English school in Istanbul or Ankara, but they prefer to come to a college like Brighton.

Mr Willetts: Yes, I understand that argument.

Chair: What has also been interesting in the evidence is that the universities faced with these proposals are not trying to throw the language schools overboard by saying, "Government, look at them and limit their numbers". They were quite supportive of the pathway from language school to universities.

Mr Willetts: Yes, we understand that, and that is a legitimate route into university and I accept that, and I think the Home Office does as well.

Q357 Mark Reckless: You told us about £2.2 billion of fees and I think a study showing about £2.3 billion of other economic benefits, but what about the soft power element? How important do you think that is and is that something you have been pushing forward in any discussions you have had with the Home Office on the subject?

Mr Willetts: Yes, that is the case, and you do come across ministers in other countries, business people, who have very fond memories of studying at university here and it is very hard to measure precisely, but I think it is a source of enormous good will.

Mr Winnick: Muammar Gaddafi’s son currently.

Q358 Mark Reckless: The issue with overseas campuses, could universities not be encouraged to put a sort of greater emphasis on expanding there and developing the reach to the United Kingdom in that way?

Mr Willetts: I think we are at the early stages of globalisation in our education and it is going to play out over the next decade. At the moment they do have to commit a significant amount of management resource and financial resource to setting up a campus abroad. You can imagine university partnerships, a bit like what happened in the airline industry, networks of universities linking together. I think a lot of this is going to develop in the years ahead.

Q359 Mark Reckless: Finally, the Prime Minister, when he was in China, spoke to some Chinese students and said one of the issues was about them having to pay such high fees when our fees here were so low. Is there a prospect that studying in Britain may be more attractive to international students because international fees may become less high than they otherwise would because of the fee reforms here?

Mr Willetts: We do keep them separate. There is control over student numbers and regulation of fees for British and EU students and no such regime for non-EU students, so they are separate issues. But I think anything that gets our universities to focus on high-quality teaching should improve, which is one of the crucial reasons for our reforms, and should also be something that overseas students appreciate as well.

Q360 Steve McCabe: In order to clear up a bit of the fuzziness you have referred to, in your discussions with your Home Office colleagues, of the two-thirds of non-EU migrants who are students, have you argued that the reduction should be only in bogus students or is there a part of that two-thirds figure that you think can safely come down without doing any damage to our universities and other institutions? What advice have you given to your colleagues on that?

Mr Willetts: When I say it is fuzzy, it is because it is fuzzy. The question is on issues like the terms on which dependants come or the terms on which people are going to do post-study work, you are talking about something that is different than an individual student coming to study here. It is that penumbra around the edge where the universities say, quite understandably-

Q361 Steve McCabe: So if a student has dependants with maybe somebody you would want to discourage, is that a message that you would want us to understand?

Mr Willetts: The universities and colleges say, and I quite understand this, "It is part of the offer. If you come here and you are a post-graduate aged 35 saying you are going to come here for more than a year and yet you cannot bring your partner, your husband or wife, that makes the offer less attractive". On the other hand, the partner is not coming here themselves for education, so we are trying to find a sensible way forward that does enable us to deliver the coalition agreement without damaging the core offer from our excellent education institutions, and I think we are making great progress on that.

Q362 Steve McCabe: When the British Government second staff overseas, we do not say that their families and dependents cannot go with them. We think it is quite reasonable as part of the package that when we send someone overseas for four years their family go with them. What is the big distinction? If someone is coming here to a high-quality university and is a high-quality student who will make a contribution, is it numbers? You are prepared to see a reduction in those numbers in order to get your overall migration numbers down. Is that what you are saying?

Mr Willetts: The question is at what point is a perfect legitimate desire to carry on with one’s family life while studying-or in your example, working for one’s country abroad-does that slip into an attempt to come to this country, where the real aim is to get your partner working and the student bit is the junior element in the deal, so to speak? But you are using the student route to get your partner in and in employment. It is very hard to draw that line, but those are the kinds of issues that we quite rightly have to consider as part of this exercise.

Q363 Chair: But you are not a marriage guidance counsellor, you are the Business Minister, are you not, and therefore what concerns me is that there should be fuzziness at this stage. Surely the fuzziness should have been sorted out in the coalition before the proposals were put to the public? It seems that these discussions are ongoing because of the coalition, which if it was not a coalition Government perhaps we would have had one clear policy that all departments would have signed up to. Should the business department be part of the consultation? Should it not be part of the proposal?

Mr Willetts: These are all the issues that were brought out, quite rightly, in the consultation document and the final-

Chair: Minister, one second, should the Government not have had a firm set of proposals first and then put them out to consultation, rather than the poor old business department putting its views forward as part of the consultation?

Mr Willetts: No, I do not think that is how it has been conducted. It is absolutely right that this is put out for consultation so that all the outside bodies affected-and my understanding is that there has been 30,000 responses to the consultation-it is absolutely right to do a proper consultation, and now what is happening is there is a shared exercise by the Home Office and BIS working together now developing precise proposals in the light of that consultation. What I have been trying to do is to share with this Committee the area that our discussions are focusing on and how we are trying to draw the boundary in some of these genuinely rather tricky areas.

Chair: You have been very helpful. I did say the words "final question". It is an elastic final, because other colleagues just want to ask very brief final questions.

Q364 Dr Huppert: My apologies for my brief absence; I had to be in the Chamber for a question. You made it relatively clear, I think, that there is this tension between what you would most like to see happening with students coming in and the Government’s drive to reduce net migration. Do you think that students ought to count as part of net migration, because presumably roughly as many arrive as leave, which ought to suggest that it is zero? Secondly, most of the public, including organisations such as Migration Watch, would say that students coming in, studying then leaving, is a completely different category from people coming to settle. Would you agree with those suggestions that we should reclassify what we are looking at?

Mr Willetts: Setting aside your rather tendentious introduction, I am assured that the international measures of migration-the statistics that are used across the world-do count essentially as people coming to one country for more than a year as migrants, and therefore the fact that students are enclosed is not some eccentric British policy. It is, I am told, how the international statistics are compiled.

Q365 Dr Huppert: Australia analyses it differently, but one can certainly categorise them differently. What message would you like to be sending to international students considering applying to study in Britain?

Mr Willetts: That we have a clear, fair, robust visa regime and a legitimate student coming to a legitimate British education institution of high quality will be welcome to come and study.

Q366 Nicola Blackwood: I wanted to take you back to your comments on globalisation and the Open University and the fact that we are delivering British education in all sorts of places in the world. There is also a need-I hope you agree-for immersion, especially in cases of English language education especially for students coming from abroad. Is that something that you are factoring into discussions?

Mr Willetts: Yes, and of course people want to come and study here and improve their language in that way. The only point I was trying to make, and I think it is very topical at the moment-and forgive me, this is from memory and I apologise in advance if I have this wrong-but I believe reading somewhere that more women in the Arab world have access to higher education through the Open University than from any other education institution. It is when you come across points like that, you realise that there are various ways in which people can have that opportunity. I think we can be very proud of institutions like the Open University, so I just did not want those kinds of routes to be overlooked.

Q367 Chair: Thank you very much. You have been extremely helpful. I am most grateful. Thank you, Minister. Could I call to the dais the Minister from the Foreign Office, Jeremy Browne. Minister, thank you very much to come and give evidence today. I am sorry you were kept waiting, but the evidence from the Minister of Business was so interesting that we continued with our questioning. Welcome back to the Committee. As a former Member of this Committee, we are delighted that you have risen so fast so quickly.

Mr Browne: Thank you very much, Chairman. I think I served on the Committee under your chairmanship in my last few weeks.

Chair: Indeed.

Mr Browne: To a former Foreign Office Minister, I am delighted to be here.

Chair: I am glad you are here, because I was reading a copy of the West Country Newspaper, and I understand that the concerns that so many people have about the Government’s proposals on immigration are now sorted, because it quotes this in the edition on Monday, 28 February 2011, "Taunton MP Jeremy Browne has assured the heads of Taunton and Wellington’s four independent schools that changes to visa arrangements will mean overseas children will be welcome to study here. He said this, ‘I was pleased to be able to tell them that the Government has listened to their concerns and the visa system will make sure that British schools remain attractive to international students’".

Mr Winnick: All due to the Minister.

Chair: Do we take it then, as this is coming at the end of our inquiry, that everyone is very happy about the Government’s proposals?

Mr Browne: I am pleased you are such an assiduous reader of important newspapers like that one, Chairman. There are different categories, as the Committee will know. There are children under the age of 18, many of which studied at independent schools. There are further education colleges, many of them teaching English, and then there are higher education institutions, but for under-18s there are indeed four independent schools in my constituency and they have something in the region of 10% of their students recruited from outside of the European Union.

Chair: They are all fine?

Mr Browne: They see it as a value in terms of the fee income to the school, in terms of enriching the cultural experience of the British and other European pupils at the school, so it is important for them to be able to attract children from outside the European Union, and it is not the Government’s intention to harm or restrict that, because the restrictions would not apply to children.

Q368 Chair: Are you getting any emails from your posts abroad that countries are concerned about the Government’s proposals on student visas? Is anyone upset about this?

Mr Browne: When I travel, lots of countries have raised concerns, which are not necessarily hostility, but are questions they wish to discuss about the Government’s overall immigration policy.

Chair: Yes, but specifically on visas-we are doing an inquiry on student visas-you have had no concerns from any governments about the Government’s proposals on student visas?

Mr Browne: Four governments have specifically responded to the consultation process.

Chair: Yes, but I am talking about you in your capacity. As a Minister for Foreign Affairs, as you travel around the world, as you get emails from your posts-

Mr Browne: It gets raised in the course of conversations. I have to say it was raised more frequently when I first became a Minister in the first month of the Government than it does now, and I think a lot of the initial concerns that foreign governments had were-

Chair: So it is not being raised now with you?

Mr Browne: I cannot remember it being raised specifically in the last month or two in a general conversation.

Q369 Chair: How are communications with Delhi, good between London and Delhi between the Foreign Office in London and the High Commission? Would they tell you if they had meetings?

Mr Browne: They would. Although I am the Minister of Immigration, I am not the Minister specifically responsible for India, so I have not had the opportunity to travel to India, but I have travelled-

Chair: But you know?

Mr Browne: I would hope to, but I have travelled to quite a lot of countries that do have significant numbers of people coming to study in this country, China most obviously, but the Philippines, for example, and it does come up in conversation.

Chair: It is just that India’s Higher Education Secretary, Mr Dass, met the High Commissioner for India-it is reported in yesterday’s Times of India-to express his grave concern about the proposals and how they would affect relations with India. Were you aware of that, since the Prime Minister did go over last year and try to build up links with India?

Mr Browne: Seeing you asked what my experience has been, let me explain what my experience has been, which is that when I became a Minister, and certainly in the first few months of the Government, there were anxieties raised on a frequent basis about whether greater restrictions on immigration in Britain would have an impact on the country that I happened to be in at the time, or the Ambassador or the High Commissioner of the country I happened to be speaking to. That was partly about students, but it was also about work visas and it very obviously came up in a country like the Philippines that has large numbers of people working here and some people studying here as well. I think as the Government’s proposals have become better understood and the consultation process has evolved, those concerns in some cases have been allayed, but obviously the final arrangements the British Government intends to put in place have not yet been announced and so countries who wish to express their views are still able to do so and may wish to do so. India, along with China, Japan and Canada, is one of the four countries that has formally raised concerns and specifically to do with students, as I understand it, in higher education-

Q370 Chair: How much money does the Foreign Office spend annually on attracting international students?

Mr Browne: I do not have a specific figure.

Chair: You asked for two officials to come. Do they have the figures?

Mr Browne: Let me ask them in a second, but it is worth mentioning that I may extol the virtues of young people from around the world coming to study at excellent British universities during the course of my overall business, but it would be rather hard to quantify that in financial terms with the value of my speeches.

Chair: No, I am not trying to put a value on your speeches.

Mr Browne: But it is all part of our everyday offer as a country.

Q371 Chair: I think we would like to know, Ms Clouder, what is your position in the Foreign Office?

Fiona Clouder: I am Acting Director, Migration.

Chair: Do you know how much money is spent by the Government of the United Kingdom to attract international students by the Foreign Office?

Fiona Clouder: I think putting a specific figure on it is very difficult. My colleague can talk about our studentship scheme that has a specific funding line associated with it.

Chair: So you do not have a figure?

Fiona Clouder: I think attracting students to the UK is done through a number of mechanisms, through high-level bilateral attractions-

Chair: No, I do not want to know the mechanisms, we will come on to that. Do you know the figure, just yes or no?

Fiona Clouder: No.

Chair: Can somebody see if they can find us a figure?

Andrew Whyte: I can add some information, Chairman, certainly for the British Council. The British Council contributes to the Prime Minister’s Initiative for International Education, which comes from a variety of sources, and £1.7 million of the British Council’s grant in aid from the Foreign Office-

Q372 Chair: I am sorry, Mr Whyte, just remind the Committee, what is your position in the Foreign Office?

Andrew Whyte: Sorry, my apologies. I am Andrew Whyte, I am Director of Communications and I oversee the relationship with the British Council.

Q373 Chair: So basically £1.7 million is spent, is it?

Andrew Whyte: £1.7 million is spent through the Prime Minister’s Initiative for International Education, which is the British Council’s contribution to that. The British Council also contributes to the Education UK Partnership, which is an international brand for promoting UK international education, and they put £1.15 million into that, and that is money from their grant in aid. In addition, the British Council runs a number of exhibitions using the Education UK brand-

Q374 Chair: How often are they held?

Andrew Whyte: Well, I don’t know how often they are, but I know they’re held in 33 countries every year.

Chair: To recruit students?

Andrew Whyte: Well, not specifically to recruit students, because a lot of that of course is done by institutions, but to promote international education in the UK. Those cost £3.6 million, but they are done on a full cost recovery basis so there’s no actual cost to the Council.

Q375 Chair: So do you have universities coming out and saying, "Come to Britain"?

Andrew Whyte: Yes.

Chair: So they would pay the cost?

Andrew Whyte: Yes.

Q376 Chair: Minister, you just-

Mr Browne: I just want to say that I think it’s very-I understand the basis of your question, but I think it’s a hard one to quantify because a lot of young people around the world come to study in Britain for all kinds of reasons and may or may not be attracted by the efforts of the Government. I mean, they may be attracted by cultural reasons or historical reasons or even academic reasons beyond what the Government is saying, but we do routinely, in the course of our business as Ministers and officials, explain what Britain has to offer, which includes world-class education.

Q377 Mr Clappison: Very quickly, notwithstanding what the Chairman has just said, we have been supplied with a table of students coming to study in this country and it looks as though the number one country is India in supplying students to come to this country-and correct me if I am wrong-and that the numbers have been increasing in each year, it would appear, in the last few years, and in one year jumped from 27,000 to 58,000. I do not know if you have seen those figures or can throw any light on them.

Mr Browne: The most recent figures I have are for 2009. I don’t know if that’s the calendar year, but I have 61,000 Indians and they are indeed the top country, ahead of China, which is-

Q378 Mr Clappison: Yes, and it has grown very substantially from previous years apparently, according to the table we have been supplied with. Is that right? The official is nodding her head. Is there an explanation for this leap? Because it has been put to you that you are not listening to India, oddly enough, and the figures seem to show otherwise. I was just wondering what the explanation is.

Fiona Clouder: I think if we look at how we have upped our engagement with India in recent years across a number of fronts, not least by the Prime Minister’s recent initiative with a major delegation last summer, India is of course a growing economy. It is very, very important that we attract the brightest and the best from India, but also India is also a source of abuse and I think in developing the policy on the student visa system, it is important we get that balance right between attracting the brightest and the best and cutting down on sources of abuse.

Q379 Mark Reckless: Before we were in Turkey, I was on an IPU delegation to Georgia, and one of the issues that was raised there with me, by both the patriarch of the Georgia church and the leader of the Christian Democrat opposition, was the importance of the Chevening sort of scholarships for international students, and very serious concerns were expressed on the cutbacks there, and given we have just spent an enormous amount on a new embassy, I just wondered if this economy was sensible and whether its impact on our foreign policy was sort of greater than any money saved.

Mr Browne: Let me take a sort of broad approach, which is that the Foreign Office shares the overall corporate objectives of the Government, which is to address our chronic budget deficit, we are borrowing £425 million, as you know, every single day, and we regard that as unsustainable. Now, of course the Foreign Office budget as a share of total Government spending is very small. In fact, we borrow, as a country, more money every weekend than we spend on global diplomacy annually. But nevertheless, we have to make our contribution to what the Government as a whole is trying to achieve, and that means finding greater efficiencies within our own department, and there are very few exemptions, and the scholarship programme is not one of them. But we value the programme, we wish it to be successful, we are keen to ensure that the money is spent as efficiently and as effectively as possible, we are exploring options for reducing overhead costs, we are exploring options for increasing the amount of additional sponsorship and revenue that comes into the scheme. Of course in total immigration terms, we are talking about a very small number of people, so in the immigration context this is not a particularly significant issue, but in terms of global influence and reach, I meet Chevening scholars on a frequent basis, and they are generally well-disposed towards Britain and it’s an asset to us that they are so.

Q380 Mark Reckless: With respect, Mr Browne, there is one very big exception from the cuts in terms of the Foreign Office’s, which is the European Union, and in particular what I saw in Georgia was there was 200 people in this EU monitoring mission, which was set up on the assumption they would be patrolling both sides of the sort of boundary line with the Russian enclaves, on one of those people are saying that there is too much in terms of sort of flower picking and bunny hugging and the people there did not seem to have an awful lot to do. There is the 16 million just spent on a new embassy, very luxurious for our officials, yet the one thing raised with us by both the leading opposition spokesman and the patriarch of the church, a very modest cost, these scholarships, seemed to be having this sort of huge reaction, and I just wondered in terms of your priorities.

Mr Browne: There are some exceptions, and the Foreign Secretary is due to announce shortly how the Foreign Office intends to spent its budget allocation for the next financial year, but there will be some countries where we will increase our amount of spending to reflect the increased importance of that country in our foreign relations, even against an overall reduction in the headline Foreign Office budget. So there are areas that will be protected, or in some cases enhanced, but it is against an overall backdrop, as I say, of reduced costs. The one area that is not so obviously and directly within our control is our contribution to the European Union; I am not the Europe Minister, but that is part of a process that the Chairman no doubt could shed additional light on in terms of negotiations with the other 26 member states of the European Union.

Q381 Chair: But it would be helpful-I will certainly shed some light on that with Mr Reckless privately later, but it would be helpful if you could take up Mr Reckless’ point about the Chevening scholarships and perhaps write to us, unless you have-

Mr Browne: Well, Mr Whyte leads on this specific programme in the past.

Chair: How many Chevening scholars are there now?

Andrew Whyte: Around about 600.

Chair: Why are we cutting them in Georgia?

Andrew Whyte: I don’t know the details on Georgia, what I do know, and Mr Reckless is absolutely right, there was a reduction in the Chevening budget this year as part of the initial response, when the new Government came in, to the scenario that the Minister has just outlined, and there was a reduction in expenditure this year.

Chair: But you understand Mr Reckless’ point, you are not a politician, but you are an official, and his point is he has just come back from Georgia where they spent £16 million on a new embassy, and all they want is a few scholarships to come and study here. It seems a priority issue.

Andrew Whyte: I can’t give you the answer on Georgia; what I can tell you is that we are increasing expenditure on Chevening scholarships next year-

Chair: Excellent.

Andrew Whyte:-not back to the level they were previously, but increased on there, so 2011/12 Chevening scholarships will be higher than they are in 2010/11.

Q382 Mark Reckless: Can we follow-up on this issue?

Mr Browne: Write to me directly.

Mark Reckless: Well, if you could write to me.

Mr Browne: But they are separate budget headings, there is not a pool of money that is spent on estate management and Chevening scholarships, and we need to make sure that we have suitable buildings for our staff to work in around the world. There is a completely separate budget heading, which is how much money we spend on Chevening scholarships.

Chair: We do not need you to defend that, we perfectly understand, having been-

Mr Browne: There is not a pot of money for Georgia and then a discretion about whether you have a new building or a Chevening scholarship.

Chair: Minister, we do understand that, but what would be helpful is if you could write to me about the current position on Chevening scholars generally with some facts and figures, which obviously you do not have now; and Mr Reckless will then follow up with you.

Q383 Nicola Blackwood: Thank you, Chair. One of the concerns which we have received from degree-offering colleges and also lower than degree-offering colleges, are the problem of bogus agents who act as a route for bogus students to come into the UK to genuine colleges. There have been a number of recommendations along the lines of different versions of accrediting. We were wondering what role the British Council thought it could play in helping these colleges to ensure that the agents they engage with are genuine and are genuinely trying to bring in legitimate students.

Mr Browne: Well, maybe I’ll answer initially and then, with your permission, Mr Whyte could add to it. First of all, I am delighted that Oxford and Cambridge University MPs are sitting next to each other, great global brands in the context of this conversation, and there is a concern about abuse. I think it’s one of the main public concerns in this country. I mean, this is an issue better addressed by the Immigration Minister than by me, but it is a concern to people here that people who would not be able to get visas to come into the country by a work route come into the country by an education route instead and then work illegally when they are here, and I think it’s right and proper the Government should address that. It also has some diplomatic disadvantages, because of course some people coming from other countries are seeking to exploit the system, but others may be coming here innocently with good intentions and then find that the course is inadequate compared to the amount of money they paid for it because the institution is not expressly designed to provide courses, it is there to provide a way of circumnavigating the immigration rules. So we are keen to address that; it is obviously a Home Office lead, but we want to maintain the reputation of British education around the world and that is why the Home Office is looking at the accreditation process and trying to make sure that it has a robust integrity. But you may wish to-

Chair: Mr Whyte?

Andrew Whyte: Yes. I mean, obviously the British Council provides an accreditation service for English language teaching institutions here, and I think you have had evidence from somebody from there previously.

Chair: We have received evidence from them, yes.

Andrew Whyte: But I think their view would be that they don’t think that it would be appropriate for a number of reasons for them to extend that accreditation into overseas operations, into the international arena. I think first of all there is a cost element, it would be very costly to do it, they are not geared up to do it at the moment, they don’t believe they have the capacity in their staffing at the moment; that is not what their role is, and it would be expensive to add that, and they see no way of recovering those costs. I think there are some legal issues as well, there are no sort of established legal criteria and legal processes by which you could judge accreditation in different countries, so there would be some difficulty in establishing criteria and then perhaps some of the judgments being open to challenge in individual countries-that they would make. Also, there is no real international consensus on what aspects of-that you could do to set up an accreditation service, so what are the principles that you would work on. The other thing I think they would say is that, on their experience, there is very little evidence from the UK higher education sector that they want the British Council to play that particular role. But, having said all of that, I mean they do encourage UK institutions to carry out due diligence on their agencies, so the people they are talking to in this country when they are accrediting them, they do encourage them to carry out due diligence and they do provide them some support and advice, I think an online training programme, to help people go through the sort of questions they should be asking to do that due diligence themselves.

Q384 Nicola Blackwood: That is an interesting start, but what is the current system, if a college feels like it has concerns about a specific agent, is there communication between UKBA and the in-country embassy to ensure that those concerns are passed on and that information is communicated perhaps to other colleges who might similarly have experienced problems?

Mr Browne: Well, that is more of a Home Office lead than a Foreign Office lead, so it is better to ask the Immigration Minister, but-

Chair: Do you want to chip in, Ms Clouder?

Fiona Clouder: Yes, Chair, if I can just comment. Certainly there are lots of mechanisms of communication between the universities and between the Home Office, and there is then very active communication back to our embassies and including colleagues from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, risk assessment officers based in our visa sections overseas, so there is good communication to try and track down these bogus agents and clamp down on that, and it is a very important part of the system.

Q385 Dr Huppert: Thank you. If I could turn the Government’s proposals for the consultation, how involved has the Foreign Office been in developing that policy in response to the consultation and in looking at the responses to the consultation?

Mr Browne: Yes, it is a Home Office lead, but we have been closely involved. I meet with the Immigration Minister on a monthly basis; they are very open, good exchanges, and we have the opportunity to raise any concerns that we have and we do so if that is appropriate. We are keen, I mean I was going to come back to the point that Mr Clappison was making a few minutes ago, which is we shouldn’t regard an increase in the number of students coming here, obviously with the caveat that they are doing so properly, as being a sign of failure, it is a great sign of success that a growing economy like India, and a growing middle class in India, sees an attraction of their young people, and their cleverest young people, coming and studying in the United Kingdom. In some places, if you take somewhere like Indonesia, it is the fourth biggest population in the world, a G20 country, we are in very direct competition with Australia, for example, to try and attract their brightest young people who want to study in a country where the first language is English, so we-

Q386 Chair: So you would not want any proposals that would limit that?

Mr Browne: Well, it is appropriate that we have an overall migration policy that enjoys the confidence of the British public, and the abuses that have been alluded to by some Members of the Committee are ironed out of the system so much as that is possible. But one of the greatest opportunities Britain has to project itself on the global stage, if you like, is the quality and reputation of our education, particularly our higher education, but right through to independent schools and elsewhere, and it has a substantial immediate financial benefit to those institutions and to our economy as a whole, but it has a longer-lasting reputational benefit, because there are extraordinarily large numbers of people right around the world in positions of influence in politics, business and elsewhere, who have studied at British institutions, and we are keen to use that opportunity to continue to have that kind of influence.

Chair: Indeed. Minister, we will be coming on to all those points. Because time is short, if you could just tailor your answers to the particular question, we are going to deal with all the other points.

Q387 Dr Huppert: I think it does link to what I was about to ask you. We have had some comments from other witnesses that a focus on net migration, in as much as it affects students, is simply the wrong way to look at this, because the vast majority of students come and then they leave, so in fact net, over a long time period, there are not extra numbers, and that countries such as Australia are very successful at distinguishing between students coming and leaving, and people coming to settle, a different terminology. Do you think it would be appropriate to change the way we discuss the figures, to move away from counting students as migrants? Because we have struggled to find organisations, which consider them to be in the same category, Migration Watch were not concerned about student numbers per se.

Mr Browne: Well, it would be possible to do that, but the Government’s commitment is to reduce from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands the levels of net migration based on the current calculations rather than a new set of calculations, and, as you rightly say, we may have some new success, particularly because a lot of the economies of the world where we should be very pleased that bright young people want to come and study in Britain, like India and China, are growing very strongly, so the demand is likely to increase in the short to medium term. But, as you rightly say, if it levels out, then we will be in a position where the inflow and outflow will roughly match and it would not have an impact on the Government’s overall statistics.

Q388 Dr Huppert: But how do you fit your stated desire a couple of questions ago, to see an increase in international students competing in Indonesia and so forth, with the Government’s objective of reducing that number?

Mr Browne: There are quite a few issues, and again it is a Home Office matter, but there are a few issues with using net migration as the overall measure, because of course one of the things you do not control is the number of British people who migrate to other countries, and that has an impact on the net migration, and you might reduce the amount of immigration, but find that the amount of emigration has also reduced and you are not at the point you wish to be at. So it is a difficult measure for the Government to be certain that it will meet, but the Government is not proposing, or at least not as far as I’m aware, to change the-move the goalposts, if you like, in terms of the way that immigration is measured in terms of the Prime Minister’s commitment to reduce to tens of thousands the number of net migrants coming into the country each year. So, if there is an increase in student numbers, for the two or three years before they feed out of the system, that would have an impact on the overall net migration statistics as measured by the Home Office.

Q389 Chair: I think Dr Huppert’s point is obviously you have put the legal position forward, public opinion, for example in the West Country, would not regard those bright young people from abroad who pay very large fees and go to Wellington to be taught by the great Dr Seldon, they would not regard them as migrants, would they?

Mr Browne: I should clarify a point, which is that it is a different Wellington school from the one the great Lord Archer, Weston Super Mare, attended the one in my constituency. So some people feel that he could have not conveyed that more clearly.

Chair: But these four independent schools that you spoke to over the weekend, or whenever you spoke to them, the fact is, does the public regard a student, coming here genuinely to study, and leaving after three years, would they regard them as a migrant?

Mr Browne: Well, they wouldn’t be counted, the ones at the four independent schools in my constituency, and they may stay for more than three years, because they would be under the age of 18.

Chair: But you understand the point I am making?

Mr Browne: I understand the point that you are making. One could make the case for the rules to be reframed in such a way that students weren’t counted in the overall figures on net migration, but-

Chair: I am not talking about the rules; I’m talking about public opinion.

Mr Browne:-but that is not the Government’s position. I think the public do, for what it’s worth, I mean, I have no more insight into public opinion than anyone else in the room, but my view is that the public probably do differentiate between students and other forms of migration, with the caveat that they are concerned about abuses, and they probably, within education, differentiate between a brilliant Indian scientist going to study physics at Cambridge University and some of what they might regard as the rather easier routes of entry to do some English language courses at some other institutions. So it is important that, if there is public confidence in our institutions attracting bright young people from around the world that that public confidence is well deserved, because we are tightening the entry routes that are particularly-

Q390 Steve McCabe: Morning, Minister. Minister, can I ask you, how many of the top five or six high-risk visa countries are you responsible for?

Mr Browne: In geographic terms, half I think of all students studying from outside the European Union in the United Kingdom, half of them come from the top five countries, so there is quite a concentration, and they are India, China, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America, and I am only responsible-

Steve McCabe: I have the list; I want to know how many you are responsible for, Minister.

Mr Browne: I am responsible for one of those, which is China. Although British higher education has a great attraction in South East Asia, which I’m also responsible for, and of course it is partly distorted, that list, by those being very high population countries in the main, so it’s quite a high proportion of students, for example, from Thailand, as a percentage of their population, come to study here, but because the population of Thailand is comparable to ours, whereas China’s is 25 times bigger-

Q391 Steve McCabe: For the purposes of this, you are responsible for China, which is one of the top five?

Mr Browne: It is the second highest; I think there’s about 85,000 Chinese students at any given point.

Q392 Steve McCabe: No, no, the proposal I understand is to make it more difficult to obtain visas from the high-risk countries; that is what you are consulting on. When you have spoken to your opposite number in China and their officials, how have you put that proposal to them and what have they said to you about it?

Mr Browne: Sorry, labouring the same point again, but a higher proportion of Thai come to study in Britain than the proportion of Chinese, so it’s not just absolute numbers, so these points-

Steve McCabe: No, I am asking about the high-risk visa countries though.

Mr Browne:-get raised in lots of countries, not just those. My-

Steve McCabe: No, I was asking about your discussions with China.

Mr Browne:-direct experience is that every country I have spoken to, they understand that we wish to prevent abuses through the education route and they are supportive of attempts to try and make sure that people are not coming here as students on student visas when their real purpose for being in the United Kingdom is because they wish to work or some other reason. If they thought that the migration system was being tightened beyond that, they may have additional concerns, but specific concerns about the integrity of the system; my experience is that foreign Governments support what we are trying to do there because they understand-

Q393 Steve McCabe: Minister, I do not want to put words in your mouth, but I just want to be clear that I have understood your answer. Is it the case that, when you have had recent discussions with Chinese officials and your opposite number in China, they have welcomed the proposals to tighten the visa regime because of the abuse that you suspect exists, have they said to you, and can we quite reliably put in the report, that you are saying the Chinese welcome this proposal to tighten visas against them, to differentiate?

Mr Browne: I can’t remember whether I have had, in those specific terms, that specific discussion with a Chinese Minister, but I have had those discussions with Ministers of Governments in Asian countries, and-

Steve McCabe: Yes, but it is a high-risk country; that is why I am asking about China.

Mr Browne: In every case that I can recall, they have recognised that we have to have an immigration system, which is robustly enforced and is not abused, and they don’t want their own citizens to be abusing it, and if we are taking measures to prevent their own citizens from abusing it, they fully understand that position. But it’s worth also saying that we want to attract the brightest and best students who wish to study outside their countries to the United Kingdom; it’s not the Government’s policy to try and necessarily attract every single young person in the world who might want to study, regardless of their aptitude, to the United Kingdom, so we want to be in a position where good, high-quality people can come here and add value to our institutions and revenue to our institutions, and that is what we are wishing to do, and it is an important part of our foreign policy and my view is that we will not have an immigration policy, which conflicts with that objective, but it ought to tighten the system where it is abused, and I think that is well understood by foreign nationals as well.

Q394 Chair: To be clear, it is the abuse from the bogus colleges and students you are concerned about? Genuine students coming here to study, you welcome the increase in India, for example, although some may be alarmed at the increase because they want to know why it was happening, such as in Bangladesh, when there was a huge increase, and it was then suspended, but clearly the Foreign Office is not alarmed about this.

Mr Browne: If the reason for the increase is because an increasingly outward-looking ambitious number of people in the said country wish their children, or the children themselves wish to be educated in the United Kingdom, rather than the United States or Germany or Australia or whatever it might be; that is something that I think we should be pleased about and our institutions will be pleased about that as well, and it is something that I make a virtue of, when I go to these countries I say, "I hope that you will consider coming to study in our country", and our country has become even more than that. When I went to Nottingham University 20 years ago myself, ten years ago Nottingham University opened a Malaysian campus, five years ago Nottingham University opened a China campus, and a few months ago I went to the Nottingham University China campus. The reason I’m making this point is because, so successful is the British educational model, that the institutions are able to take the product to the customer, rather than just waiting for the customer to come to the product, if I can put it in those terms, and there are 5,000 people studying at the Nottingham University China campus. I wish more of them were British, because I think it would be a great opportunity for British people to have exposure to China, but overwhelmingly they are Chinese people who are benefiting from British education without necessarily having to come to Britain.

Chair: There are now, as a result of you opening your campus at your old alma mater, there are now-

Mr Browne: I think Lord Prescott opened it, but I visited it.

Chair: There are now 10,000 Malaysian students, 10,265 in the United Kingdom, 5,000 of which were studying at Nottingham.

Mr Browne: I was not aware of those particular figures, but there are some Government figures that even I don’t know off the top of my head.

Chair: I have just told you what they are.

Mr Browne: The point I am making, I think it’s a very exciting development, and-

Chair: So you are very pleased about all of this?

Mr Browne:-I think we should be excited about it, which is, as I am saying, an individual could study an engineering degree at Nottingham University and they could spend one year in Nottingham, one year in Malaysia, one year in China, and have exactly the same degree at the end as if they had never left the East Midlands. Now, I think that is a very exciting opportunity for cultural exchange, for British higher education having even greater brand strength, if you want to put it, around the world, and in some cases that won’t require the students from the other countries to come to the United Kingdom at all if they don’t wish to.

Chair: I do understand, but could I just ask for a little bit of brevity in answers, because I think a lot of people want to come in, and we want to release you by midday.

Q395 Michael Ellis: Thank you, Mr Chairman. Just on the issue of campuses abroad, and, as you have said, a number of British universities have already opened campuses, or are opening campuses abroad, and there is China and there’s others in the Middle East. My specific question is concerning the-I’m interested in the UK projected overseas, and in a soft way, the soft power method. Now, it is going to become increasingly attractive, is it not, to both universities and students, if international students find it more difficult to come and travel to the UK for them to study here, for them to use the campuses overseas. Now, is that going to have an adverse effect, do you think, on British soft power projecting in that way, in other words, our influence in these areas may often relate to immersion in our culture, will we lose that?

Chair: Minister, a brief answer, because we do want to make progress.

Mr Browne: I hope the brightest and best young people from around the world will choose to come to the United Kingdom, or at least look seriously at the option of coming to the United Kingdom. Of course, the question depends on whether the Chinese student studying at the Ningbo Nottingham University campus would otherwise be studying at Nottingham, or whether otherwise they would not have gone to a British institution at all, and I have not seen any particular research into that matter. But, if it were the case that they would otherwise be going to an institution in another country, or another university in China, then you could regard that in soft power terms as a sort of net benefit.

Michael Ellis: Yes, they will doubtless have some influence on a British campus overseas, other than none if they were not.

Mr Browne: What I was quite interested in when I went to the Nottingham University China campus was, of course it’s not the same as being in Nottingham, and as I say, I would love more British young people to take the opportunity, if they were studying at Nottingham University, to spend some time at the China campus, I think it would be a good experience, and I was depressed that very few had chosen to take that opportunity. But they may have more exposure to British culture, if you can put it in those terms, than you might imagine. For example, all the courses are taught in English and it is not a franchise arrangement, this is a Nottingham University course with the same rigour and the same content in most cases as the courses as would be the case in Britain, and one of the attractions is that you are getting a British type of education, not just that it is physically located in the United Kingdom.

Q396 Steve McCabe: Very briefly, I wonder if you could just give me a glimpse into your diplomacy, Minister. When you say to foreign students, "I wish more of you would come and visit in Britain" and you say, "But I am going to make the visa regime tougher" what do they say back to you?

Mr Browne: What I say, for example, I spoke at a university in Indonesia, and per capita four times more Thais come to university in Britain than Indonesians. Indonesia is an increasingly important country; I think we should be looking to attract more Indonesians, the brightest and best Indonesians to study here. I always say to them that, "I think it’s important that we have a level of net migration, which can be assimilated into our society, and I think it’s important that the rules and systems are not abused, but I would strongly recommend that you look seriously at the option of studying at a British university or another educational institution because we have some of the best in the world and I think that you will enjoy it and you will benefit intellectually and in other ways from coming to study in the United Kingdom".

Steve McCabe: What do they say?

Mr Browne: I hope they find my arguments compelling, Mr McCabe. What is interesting is that we are generally regarded globally as second only to the United States in terms of the attraction of our education system, and particularly in Asia where about three-quarters, just short of three-quarters of all foreign nationals from outside the EU, who study in Britain, come from Asia, and the other part of the world that I’m responsible for is Latin America, I think we have a deficiency there. The value of British education is better understood in Asia than it is, for example, in Latin America.

Q397 Steve McCabe: Would we want to increase numbers from Latin America?

Mr Browne: I think that would be good for us, if we were attracting high-quality bright people to study from, say, Brazil, which is an increasingly important country, and one that we have links with, which, in my view, need to be strengthened in the future.

Q398 Steve McCabe: Have you any idea how much we could increase numbers from Latin America by without it affecting your overall targets, Minister?

Mr Browne: There’s a number of questions bound up in that, because of course it’s for the individual universities, if we’re talking about universities, to decide for themselves how many non-UK or non-EU students they wish to have, so they may not wish to recruit them, and we’re not in a position to force them.

Chair: A brief answer to Mr McCabe, around about how many more would you like to see?

Mr Browne: I don't have a figure in mind and it wouldn’t necessarily have an impact if, as I was saying to Dr Huppert, there is a corresponding outflow at the other end of the system.

Chair: Right, so we may have to send more people out.

Q399 Bridget Phillipson: Minister, on the issue of China, Sunderland University in my area attracts a large number of students from China, and what they have said to me is that the tone of pronouncements from Government Ministers, and just the very fact of the consultation in itself, is already having a knock-on effect on their ability to attract students and they are seeing a growing reluctance for Chinese students to come and study in the UK who are now considering other countries. Now, for a new university like Sunderland, who are already facing big cuts in their teaching grant, do you understand the kinds of concerns that they’re expressing about the tone that the Government has adopted in this area?

Mr Browne: I hope having a former Foreign Secretary on their advisory board will help, but I don't want to second guess, I haven’t had those conversations with Sunderland University myself, but my hope is that Chinese bright, talented people who would benefit from studying at Sunderland University, and Sunderland University wishes to recruit and attract them, that that should still be able to happen. I think it’s a very important part of Britain developing stronger relations with increasingly important countries like China. And it is possible-and I can’t speak for every individual student-but it is possible that the very fact the Government is looking at this area may be misinterpreted by some people or may create anxieties for some people, and I hope that those anxieties will be allayed, because our headline objective of Government, of trying to make sure that we attract people, particularly I think from these emerging economies, which are increasingly important to Britain’s foreign policy interests as well, that remains our objective, and so, if Chinese students don’t think that’s our objective then clearly we need to correct that. Although the overall numbers are very strong from China, and my suspicion is they will continue to grow. That may not be necessarily in every single institution, but, if there is a dip, perhaps I would suggest, as people in China and elsewhere come to see that their worst fears have not been realised, it may well be that we carry on, on an upward projection, as more and more people in China see the benefits of being educated in a British university.

Q400 Bridget Phillipson: With regards to soft power, we have received a great deal of evidence about the importance of British students being able to come and study in the UK in terms of our soft power overseas; that those people will often go on to become the leaders in business, in civil society, and in politics. What is your view on that?

Mr Browne: I am an extremely enthusiastic supporter of the premise that you have just put. Britain has the sixth biggest economy in the world. By the middle of the century it is projected that the total EU population will be 5% of the world’s population, the total EU economy will be 10% of the world’s economy, and Britain will have slipped from sixth to about tenth, depending on which projection you believe. But Britain’s place in the world is not just a league table of GDP, and we have all kinds of influence, which is beyond our economic strength, and one of those, possibly the greatest of all, is the reputation of our universities and broader education sector, and this gives us a huge amount of influence and goodwill and friendship and we must-

Chair: We must not put that at risk.

Mr Browne: I don’t wish us to put it at risk, but that is not incompatible with having a properly enforced and rigorous immigration system, and so, if the premise of your question was that a rigorous immigration system would put it at risk, I don’t accept that premise.

Q401 Chair: Because I asked the library to do a note on foreign heads of Government who were educated in this country, the King of Bhutan went to Oxford, the Prime Minister of India went to Oxford and Cambridge, the Prime Minister of Malaysia went to Nottingham, the Prime Minister of Singapore went to Cambridge, the King of Bahrain went to Cambridge, the King of Jordan went to Oxford, the King of Jordan also went to Kings College London, the Emir of Qatar went to Sandhurst, the Sultan of Oman was educated here until he was 16, the president of Syria went to the Western Eye Hospital, George Papandreou, the Prime Minister of Greece, went to the LSE, the King of Monaco went to Bristol, and the President of Turkey went to Exeter, and, of our senior Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister went to Minnesota University and the College of Europe in Bruges, the Foreign Secretary went to France to study, the Chancellor went to Davidson College in the United States, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate went to the Sorbonne in Paris, and Lord Strathclyde went to the University of Aix-en-Provence. So that means international students are very, very important to this country.

Mr Browne: I feel inadequate compared to that. When I went to Nottingham China campus, it was interesting; I had met the Chancellor of Nottingham University, who is a Chinese professor, that is not the Chancellor of the Nottingham China campus, that is the Chancellor of Nottingham fullstop. So a big change is taking place in the British educational institutions who have the imagination and the size of vision to realise how profound the overall changes are in the world and we have a great opportunity to be part of that process. But, as I say, I think we are doing well in Asia and parts of the Middle East, and your list suggested that there are great historical ties there, what is quite interesting and conspicuous is there are some other parts of the world, and I mentioned Latin America, which appear not to feature on your list, and I think there is further scope for improvement in that area.

Q402 Chair: But the Foreign Office position on this is very clear, you want to see more students coming here, you think we are an international centre, however, you want to make sure net migration goes down, which means in a sense-

Mr Browne: The view of the Foreign Office, my view, is that our approach to a rapidly changing world should not be to pull up the drawbridge, it should be to have global aspirations and to think in those terms, and we wish to attract more students from right around the world, particularly economies who are developing quickly and will become increasingly important to us. It is not a complete numbers game, we want to attract high-calibre good students, we don’t want to attract large numbers of people who are manifestly-don’t have the academic rigour to undertake the courses.

Chair: Indeed, get rid of all the bogus students.

Mr Browne: Bogus students, and also, be blunt about it, there will be some people who will not have the aptitude necessary to prosper at our educational institutions. We want to attract the brightest and the best people from around the world, particularly rapidly emerging economies, but we do regard that as being compatible with the Government’s overall objectives on migration.

Q403 Michael Ellis: So it does not follow, does it, Minister, that tightening up the system to reduce bogus applicants and to improve the quality of students is going to have a deleterious effect on the type of applicants that our Chairman has just outlined, in other words we can get the numbers down and improve the quality?

Mr Browne: I agree with that. In fact, it may even have a beneficial effect because it may further enhance the reputation of British education, if the abusers are tackled effectively.

Q404 Chair: It is abuse and the bogus colleges that you are most concerned with, as with other Ministers?

Mr Browne: Yes, we do not want the most brilliant Indian physicist to think that they are not able to come and study at Cambridge University, we hope that they will see the attraction in studying at Cambridge University rather than studying at an Indian university, or for that matter a university in the United States or Australia or Canada or some other country.

Chair: Or indeed at Nottingham. We have just come back from Turkey.

Mr Browne: We have so many brilliant people at Nottingham University.

Q405 Chair: Just a final question: the Committee is also doing an inquiry-because we also, like you, are multi-tasking-into the implications of Turkey joining the EU. I am not going to ask you any questions about Turkey, but we would like to place on record, Ms Clouder, because we understand you are in charge of the migration section in the Foreign Office, how impressed we were by the work that was being done by Emma Robinson, who is part of your section as the Migration Delivery Officer, and the relationship between her and the SOCA people who we met there, and that kind of work is extremely important, and I just thought it was-because the Members that went were very impressed with that. We are very grateful for what has been done there. Turkey is an extremely important country in terms of dealing with illegal migration and organised crime, and what Emma Robinson does, with the SOCA agents, is of great value to this country.

Fiona Clouder: Thank you very much, Chairman, that’s very good to hear. We think very highly of Emma, she is one of a network of 14 migration delivery officers around the world, and those posts in my department are funded by the UK Borders Agency, in collaboration with the Foreign Office, and I think that’s a very good example of cross-Government working.

Chair: Good, thank you very much. Minister, thank you so much for coming. That concludes the session.