Is Mrs May about to do a U-turn on foreign students?

FOREIGN students do not affect long-term immigration, Theresa May said yesterday, raising the prospect that they could be dropped from the official total.

The Prime Minister’s comments appear to mark a U-turn for her.

She was a staunch opponent of removing students from net immigration figures for years, putting her at odds with most of her Cabinet.

Mrs May has repeatedly warned that many foreign students fail to go home after their studies, and insisted removing them from immigration figures would undermine public confidence. As home secretary, she led a crackdown on bogus colleges.

However, speaking on her visit to China, she said the tough measures she introduced meant students no longer had an impact on long-term immigration.

Mrs May said she was reluctant to remove them from the figures while they were included in a UN definition of migrants that counts all those who move to a nation for more than 12 months. But in a significant shift in tone, she suggested there was no other reason to continue including them because former abuses had been dealt with.

She added: ‘What’s important for us, when we looked at what happened to students in the UK, was a lot of abuse was taking place.

‘Something like 900 colleges are no longer bringing in students. So actually, if you’ve seen that abuse come out of the system, they don’t have a long-term impact on the numbers.’

The shift follows a private warning from Home Secretary Amber Rudd that the Government is likely to lose a Commons vote on the issue later this year when the new Immigration Bill comes to Parliament.

Mrs May is also under pressure to change her position from senior Cabinet members including Miss Rudd, Chancellor Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Business Secretary Greg Clark.

According to official data, annual net migration of international students is 76,000 – around a third of the 250,000 annual total.

Comment – Page 16

‘They don’t have a long-term impact’