HC Deb 03 February 1983 vol 36 cc527-34

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Mather.]

11.30 pm
Sir Paul Bryan (Howden)

I and my hon. Friends are raising the subject of overseas student fees because we understand that the Government are at long last coming up to making important policy decisions. We wish to underline the fact that the House feels just as strongly today that radical changes of policy are required as it did last June when 140 right hon. and hon. Members put their names to the early-day motion pressing the Government to adopt the recommendations in the report of the Overseas Students Trust to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) made such an excellent contribution.

Everything that we have seen and heard since last June increases our misgivings. The number of foreign students continues to fall as they are deterred by our high fees and attracted to the universities and institutions of other countries, our main competitors, which are only too keen to educate them in their culture and methods.

To give one example, in 1979, 45 per cent. of students leaving Hong Kong to study abroad came to the United Kingdom. In 1982, the percentage fell to 24 per cent. Those figures tell the story of thousands of Hong Kong students, who have always been students of the highest quality who would have wished to come and study here, diverted to America, Canada and Australia.

As we travel the world we are all increasingly impressed and depressed by the effect of our overseas student policies on our relations with our old friends such as Malaysia and Hong Kong, which for generations have relied on our education system to our mutual benefit. The continuing and growing concern in industry is shown by a letter to the editor in The Daily Telegraph on 25 January, signed by the chairmen of Shell, Unilever, BICC, British American Tobacco Industries, BP and Blue Circle Industries. One does not often get any letter to the press on any subject signed by six such distinguished men. They really are the leaders of British industry. Once again they stress the worries that industry has so often expressed before. They say: The Governments of our competitor countries, the United States, Germany, France, Japan, recognise the value for their overseas trade of training nationals from countries where their long term interest will lie. This country should do the same and we hope the Government will see its way to adopting policies with this aim in view. Fortunately, it is not only Back Benchers, industrialists and educationists who share that concern. The last Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, and indeed the present Foreign Secretary—in fact, almost any Minister one speaks to—are refreshingly and encouragingly in agreement on the fact that something should be done.

Nevertheless, I have my fears. They could not be better put than they were by the Lord Beloff in The Times last Monday. I wish that there was time for me to read the article in toto, but I shall content myself by reading some extracts. He said: No one doubts that the need is there. Indeed, ever since the first decisions were taken to limit the number of non-British students in this country by differential fees, the potential damage to British interests has been repeatedly pointed out and from many quarters … The obstacle does not lie in any dispute over the desirability of making available the necessary funds; it lies solely in the inability of the departments involved to find a way of paying the bill. He goes on: One has a classic case of an agreed policy that seemingly cannot be carried out because it does not fall within the remit of a single Department as that remit is defined by the Treasury … So long as the two guiding principles are the division of responsibilities between Departments and the subordination of policy to the Treasury's practices in respect of estimates, no civil servants will be able to break through the rigidities of the system. The policy for overseas students is uniquely vulnerable to becoming stuck in this bureaucratic bog. It comes under three Departments. Everyone agrees that it is important as a whole, but it is not all important to any one Minister.

The Hong Kong Government have offered to pay half the cost involved in restoring Hong Kong students to British student status. It could be that, for the reasons given by Lord Beloff, that offer, which should simplify and open the way to progress, is an obstacle, as it does not fit the established system. I should like an assurance from the Under-Secretary that the acceptance of the offer is not beyond the capacity of the Government machine.

Finally, I emphasise the need for speed. Prospective students are making their plans now for the 1983–84 academic year. Any delay in introducing new measures could make those plans useless.

11.36 pm
Mr. Christopher Price (Lewisham, West)

I support the hon. Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan) in everything that he has said. I am grateful to him for giving other hon. Members an opportunity to support his views. The Select Committee of which I am chairman has expressed great anxiety about this problem and is continuing to follow it up.

I want to make three points. First, those hon. Members who accompanied me on an all-party delegation to Malaysia last summer could not have been more affected by the virulence of our reception by the Malaysians, because this decision changed the whole relationship between Malaysia and Great Britain which had existed for many years. Malaysia is only one example.

Secondly, this decision has succeeded in convincing reasonable people in places as far apart as Mauritius and Cyprus that the Soviet Government are more benign than the British Government towards the needs of young people in the world. Any decision that creates that sort of impression abroad must be wrong.

I believe that the Government now recognise that they made a mistake in the precipitate nature of their original decision.

With its moderate, balanced and inexpensive proposals the Overseas Students Trust has given the Government an opportunity to put the matter right. In view of the money that the Chancellor now seems to have available for tax cuts, I hope that the Government seize that chance.

The House of Lords judgment before Christmas makes clarification by the Government of their attitude to overseas students all the more urgent.

I hope that the points made in the Overseas Student Trust report, particularly as regards Cyprus, will be taken seriously by the Government, because they have important foreign policy implications.

11.39 pm
Mr. Robert Rhodes James (Cambridge)

I strongly support what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan) and by the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price).

I declare an interest, in that I was involved in the report of the Overseas Students Trust, especially chapter 7. We attempted to achieve a balance between the interests of overseas students, the British taxpayer, the British institutions of higher learning and the British political and commercial interests involved, and also the Commonwealth, with which we were especially concerned.

The difficulty is that the advantages are very hard to quantify, although some of us realise that they are extremely important. The situation that the Government inherited in 1979 was indefensible, but they have now moved to an extreme position on the other side which I regard as equally indefensible. The time has therefore come for a sane compromise between the extremes of 1979 and those that followed.

I believe that the report of the Overseas Students Trust provides that compromise between the two extremes; and I strongly urge the Minister, in the interests of our country and our institutions of higher learning, and in the traditions of what this country has been and can be, to accept that the position should be reconsidered and altered so that we may return to the position that we once enjoyed.

11.41 pm
Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan) for initiating this debate and for giving me a small place in it. I agree with all that has been said. I echo especially the remarks of the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price), Chairman of the Select Committee on Education, Science and the Arts, and the unanimity of that Committee on this issue.

I had the honour and pleasure to go to Mauritius with a parliamentary delegation just over a year ago. I was struck, as other hon. Members have been struck in other countries, by the reaction of the people there to what has happened. Incidentally, it is a very sensitive area in terms of defence and one in which we wish to continue to have an interest. Yet we seem to be doing our best to get out of it all altogether.

The people of Mauritius, which has a population of about 1 million, are at present almost entirely Anglophile. They have been to schools and universities in this country. They even do the British football pools and listen to the results. That is surely the ultimate proof of their total integration with our way of life. When they discovered that I was an Aston Villa supporter I met many other people who supported that team without ever having been to this country. That is surely a wonderful thing.

The ultimate tragedy to me was to hear from the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons in Mauritius, which has a marvellous, democratic tradition, that although he had sent the first two of his four children to university in this country the third would be going to France, because he could not find the £7,000 to send him here. The children of others whom I met were going to Russia. They were being sent practically anywhere but here. When one considers the influence gained by France and the Soviet Union and the trade advantages that they derive, it is ridiculous for us to lose the advantages that we certainly gained as a result of our earlier policy with regard to overseas students.

I have spent a great deal of my life in institutions of education and I am convinced that the more diverse the population of pupils or students, the richer the interchange between them. It would be very sad to lose that in any event.

11.45 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind)

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Howden (Sir P. Bryan) for raising this subject and for giving me an opportunity to report to the House on the developments that have taken place on this subject since my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary announced to the House on 9 June last year the Government's preliminary response to the report of the Overseas Students Trust.

One acknowledges the concern felt on both sides of the House of this subject. The fact that a large number of hon. Members are in the Chamber for an Adjournment debate illustrates clearly and eloquently the importance that is attached to this topic.

When my right hon. Friend responded to the House on 9 June last year, he said that the Government welcomed the report of the trust and he would seek to give an instructive and helpful response to it. He announced also that the inter-departmental group of officials set up in 1980 to monitor the effect of the previous decision on overseas students' fees would be asked to scrutinise the recommendations of the trust and to put its conclusions to Ministers. That is a complicated matter, and hon. Members will have seen the size of the report—there are 300 pages of important and valuable information. It has been a difficult task for the group of officials.

The group represents the various interests that are involved in the subject. Not only is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including the Overseas Development Administration, involved in the matter, as is the Department of Education and Science—the presence of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for that Department shows the interest that it attaches to the subject—but the Treasury, the Department of Industry and Trade, the Home Office, the Scottish Office, the Welsh Office, the Northern Ireland Office and the British Council are all represented on the group. Over the past few months the group has been giving detailed examination to the recommendations in a helpful way.

The group has also had the benefit of the advice of other outside organisations and interest groups that have studied the report and made their views known. Organisations such as the United Kingdom Council for Overseas Students, the Council for Education in the Commonwealth and the National Union of Students have all made their views known, and this has been of particular benefit.

Mr. Bowen Wells (Hertford and Stevenage)

Does my hon. Friend agree that with the benefit of all the advice and help that the Minister has been given, the six months' delay has been unacceptable?

Mr. Rifkind

My hon. Friend has studied this document and should appreciate that the extremely large number of detailed recommendations, and the many bodies that wish to give their views on the subject would make it very difficult to make a response in less than that time. I assure my hon. Friend that the Government have not the slightest desire to delay conclusions on the matter.

The inter-departmental group has now submitted its conclusions to Ministers, and these are being considered. The Government approach this matter fully accepting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Howden said, that it is desirable to seek to encourage overseas students to come to the United Kingdom for their education, and that this is desirable not only for obvious educational reasons, but in terms of our longer-term commercial and industrial objectives, and our foreign policy objectives.

Equally, we have said all along, and my hon. Friends will accept this, that at a time when our home students are having to take into account reductions in public expenditure in education, there have to be implications in the Government's economic strategy for overseas students.

Many of the recommendations in the document are also concerned with longer-term proposals, and proposals that involve consultation with outside bodies. For example, there is the proposal that education establishments should be more flexible in their fee structure, which has to be studied both with the universities and with local education authorities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Howden mentioned the proposals for sharing the burden of supporting overseas students, and the proposals for co-operation with other Governments and with the private sector. These require consultation with the bodies concerned about a way of operating that will be of benefit.

There are a number of different aspects of the Government's overall attitude on which I want to comment. My hon. Friend the Member for Howden, who took an interest over the years in the problems of Hong Kong, drew the House's attention to the offer, which was welcomed by Her Majesty's Government, of the Government of Hong Kong to contribute towards the cost of certain Hong Kong students who will be studying in the United Kingdom. The document that I mentioned says that it is desirable that not only students of United Kingdom dependent territories be entitled to fees on a home student basis, but that, where appropriate, the Government of those territories should make a contribution. That is being taken into account.

Of course, it is not just a question of Hong Kong. The Government are particularly keen to encourage students from other Commonwealth countries. The proposals in the report of the Overseas Students Trust have also taken that fact into account. There are recommendations for extending the Commonwealth scholarship and fellowship pland and improving the Commonwealth post-secondary education, and they have been studied in detail by the inter-departmental group of officials. We recently received the first report of the Commonwealth standing committee on Commonwealth student mobility. That standing committee was recently established by the Commonwealth Secretary General, Sir Shridath Ramphal, under the distinguished chairmanship of Sir Roy Marshall. That, too, is of particular benefit at present.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) mentioned Malaysia and Cyprus, as did my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) and Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James). I pay tribute to my hon.

Friend the Member for Cambridge for the part he played in the establishment of the Overseas Students Trust report and survey, which are the basis of this discussion.

Members on both sides on a number of occasions have made clear their concern tha the problems of Cyprus should be known and understood by the Government. Recently, my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Temple-Morris) led an Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation, which met my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Lord Belstead, who has special responsibility for this matter in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to emphasise their concern on the topic.

Malaysia is not the subject of specific recommendations in the Overseas Students Trust report, but we have been aware of the comments made not only by the hon. Member for Lewisham, West, but by other hon. Members in recent months.

The commercial and economic implications of policy on overseas students has been referred to on a number of occasions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Howden mentioned the interesting letter that appeared in the press, signed by Sir Peter Baxendell and a number of other industrialists. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the contribution made by the private sector in the training of students and provision of facilities in the United Kingdom. Some £12 million has been made available over the past year for that purpose. The private sector has made a valuable contribution in this respect.

My hon. Friend referred to the recent article by Lord Beloff, which I read with great interest. I assure my hon. Friend that although a large number of outside bodies and Departments are interested in this subject and have made contributions to it, the decisions at the end of the day will be made by the Ministers. As a number of Departments are involved, it is clear that a collective decision is required. I hope that that information will reassure my hon. Friend.

Sir Paul Bryan

Will my hon. Friend say when we can expect at least a statement from the Government? As I said in my speech, a lot of prospective students are now making plans, so that a delay of a month at this stage is very serious.

Mr. Rifkind

I fully acknowledge what my hon. Friend says. He makes a valid and legitimate point, and I hope that I can reassure him in that respect.

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)

Announce it.

Mr. Rifkind

The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) will be aware that it is not normally the business of a person in my position to give the date of a Government announcement. That is the responsibility of certain other hon. Members.

The Government's consideration of the report and the recommendations of the inter-Departmental group of officials is virtually complete. A statement will be made in the near future. Decisions on the matter are imminent. The Government fully accept the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Howden that not only would it be undesirable from the point of view of potential students to be left in any doubt for a considerable time about the Government's policy but in any event the detailed studies to which I have referred have now been virtually completed. Therefore, there will be no problem about the Government making their views known—

Mr. Greenway

May we expect something to happen in the next three weeks, or four, at the outside, without asking my hon. Friend to make an announcement or give too much away?

Mr. Rifkind

My hon. Friend can reasonably make such an assumption. I hope that the House will forgive me if I do not go into greater detail, for reasons that I am sure hon. Members on both sides of the House will fully appreciate.

I am grateful to those hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. The importance and seriousness of the topic is well understood by the Government, otherwise we would not have been involved in such detailed analysis and study to ensure that proper, sensible and effective proposals are brought forward for the consideration of the House and the country. I am sure that the debate has been important in highlighting and publicising the continuing concern of the House for this policy. I hope that the announcements that will be made by the Government in the near future will be a reassurance to both my hon. Friend and the House as a whole.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Twelve o' clock.