Cabinet row over push for 600,000 foreign students every year

THE Department for Education (DFE) is pushing for at least 600,000 foreign students to come to the UK every year amid a Cabinet row over immigration.

Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, has said she is “hugely proud” that more than 600,000 foreign students now come to the UK, a target that was meant to be hit by 2030 but has been achieved eight years early.

DFE sources have made clear that it is not a one-year target but is designed to be delivered every year because of the claimed benefits for economic growth and international relations.

Net migration is forecast to hit a record high of about 700,000, nearly three times the pre-brexit level, when figures for 2022 are published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) next Thursday.

The data will pile pressure on Rishi Sunak, who this week refused to promise that he would deliver Boris Johnson’s manifesto pledge of getting migration below where it was in 2019. Ministers are said to be close to agreement on plans to restrict the number of dependants who foreign students on postgraduate masters-degree courses can bring to the UK, a move that could reduce net migration by tens of thousands. It could be announced as early as next week ahead of the ONS data.

However, the DFE is resisting any attempt to go further by, for example, extending the ban on dependants to foreign PHD students because of concerns that it could jeopardise their participation in major domestic and international research projects in the UK.

A DFE note, seen by The Daily Telegraph, states: “The 600,000 target for international students is not a one-year expectation, we’re expected to deliver on it every year.”

The note reported a meeting last October in which Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, is said to have argued that because the UK had achieved its 600,000 target early, “now is the time to review and constrain numbers”.

She was pushing for restrictions on visas for students with dependants and the two-year graduate visa, which allows foreign students who have completed their courses to remain in the UK without any restrictions even if they are not in work.

The number of spouses and children brought into the UK by foreign students increased from 16,000 in 2019 to 135,800 last year.

The DFE note claimed that 300 students had brought in four or more dependants, although the Home Office said it did not recognise the figure. A further 73,000 are on two-year graduate visas.

Kit Malthouse, former education secretary, is said to have argued foreign students were worth more to the economy than the oil and gas sector, and that it was part of an “active strategy to grow the sector”.

In a speech earlier this month, Ms Keegan said: “I am hugely proud that we are welcoming more than 600,000 international students every year.”

For all the Government’s efforts to stop illegal migrants crossing the Channel, it could well be legal immigration that dominates the run-up to the next general election. Figures next week are expected to show net migration at a record high. The Prime Minister has struggled to develop a clear line on the issue, vowing to bring legal migration down but refusing to say that he would get it below 2019 levels. The Cabinet, meanwhile, is split. Some ministers favour a reduction in the number of visas issued and others are more worried about labour shortages.

Has the Government lost control? Comparisons with the migration figures during the UK’S EU membership need to be taken with a pinch of salt, given that it is clear that far more people moved to the UK over that period than were officially recorded in the statistics. Nevertheless, leaving the EU has coincided with immigration reaching unprecedented levels and it is not obvious how the Government plans to reduce it.

Sector after sector has become hooked on foreign workers – or in the case of universities, foreign students. It is claimed that such dependence has brought economic benefits. British universities have indeed grown rich and globally influential by admitting many more international students (on whom they can levy higher fees than British applicants). They are now one of the UK’S leading export industries, as well as a tool of soft power, and it is obvious why some in Government would want this to continue given the otherwise depressing state of the economy.

But are the present visa figures really sustainable given growing public disquiet over a system that is not only open to abuse but which also allows students to bring in family members as “dependants”? Permitting international students who have finished poor quality courses at low value universities to stay in the UK to work hardly seems like a targeted programme to retain the world’s best and brightest. It also has to be asked whether giving so many places to foreign students has resulted in a reduction in the opportunities afforded to young British people.

It was never going to be easy to wean Britain off its reliance on mass migration, but ministers are fooling themselves if they think the vote for Brexit was only about “control” of the borders. The public will not stand for politicians talking tough on bringing down immigration, while avoiding the hard decisions necessary to achieve it.