Sunak’s election boost as big fall in migration predicted
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Rishi Sunak has a “fighting chance” of reducing net migration to below 2019 levels by the time of the election, says the head of the Government’s migration advisory body.
Prof Brian Bell, chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), said that net migration could fall to between 150,000 and 200,000 by September because a ban on foreign students bringing dependants was having a far bigger impact than the Government expected.
It would mean that Mr Sunak could go into the election claiming to be on course to meet Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto pledge of reducing net migration from its then level of 240,000 a year.
The Prime Minister has introduced a series of measures to reduce the figure after net migration hit a record high of 745,000 in 2022 after a surge in student, work and humanitarian visas.
Prof Bell said: “It is entirely possible if you look at any of those numbers, it looks like a really big reduction in international student numbers. That is going to have an enormous effect on net migration very quickly…In September you could suddenly see a massive drop.”
He added: “I think [the Government] have a fighting chance of getting to where they wanted to be in terms of no increase relative to the 2019 manifesto.”
He forecast the number of foreign postgraduate students and dependants could more than halve from 450,000 to 200,000. This was because the restrictions on dependants – which mean only PhD research students can bring them to the UK – was having a big knock-on effect in deterring students from coming to Britain.
He suggested that not only had the restriction wiped out the 100,000 dependants who would have come but was also leading to falls of between 50 and 60 per cent in the number of foreign students seeking to come to the UK for postgraduate study.
Tougher measures needed to reduce figure to ‘tens of thousands’
The Government had also benefited from the US and Australia opening up after Covid which meant foreign students had alternatives, Prof Bell said. Nigeria, a big supplier of students to the UK, was also in the midst of an economic crisis which had pushed the cost of a foreign degree out of the reach of many families.
Prof Bell also projected that the number of foreign graduates opting to stay and work would fall from around 70,000 to 26,000 because of restrictions on dependants and the increase in the skilled worker salary threshold from £26,200 to £38,700.
However, he said that the Government would need to introduce even tougher restrictions on legal migration if it was to meet demands from Tory Right-wing MPs to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands”.
His comments came as the MAC rejected calls to further slash the number of foreign graduates at UK universities. It said the two-year graduate visa route was “not undermining” the integrity and quality of the higher education system and should remain in place.
It said it found no evidence of “significant abuse” of the route which allows international students to stay in the UK for two or three years after graduation.
The MAC concluded it was helping universities to make up for financial losses on domestic students and research through income from international tuition fees. It warned further curbs on foreign graduates could lead to course closures and “in the extreme”, the collapse of some universities.
It comes amid demands from ministers and senior Tory MPs for the route to be axed amid claims that the visas are being used as a backdoor immigration route rather than education. The Government is under pressure to cut net migration from its record high of 745,000 and has already introduced measures to cut it by 300,000.
Calls to end ‘toxic’ uncertainty over future of graduate route
Esther McVey, the minister for common sense, sparked fury this week when she said she had “no sympathy” for people who claimed universities face financial difficulties due to visa changes, branding them “ignorant, ill-informed and dangerous”.
University leaders have, however, called on ministers to end the “toxic” uncertainty over the future of the graduate route by announcing there will be no changes.
The MAC was commissioned to review the graduate route after James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, said he wanted to ensure the route was “not being abused” and demand for study visas was “not being driven more by a desire for immigration rather than education”.
The committee said it was concerned about “potential exploitation” of international students due to poor practices by some agents recruiting people overseas who may be “misselling UK higher education”, but it stressed this was a separate issue from abuse of the graduate route.
The number of graduate visas has more than doubled in a year to 114,000 main applicants, with a further 30,000 for dependants. They are largely concentrated on four nationalities – India, Nigeria, China and Pakistan – which account for 70 per cent of the visas, with India accounting for over 40 per cent.
‘Some institutions could fail’
The MAC said graduate visa holders were initially “overrepresented in lower-paid work” but their outcomes improved over time. It was unable to assess the risk of overstaying due to a lack of Home Office data.
It said that restrictions on foreign students bringing in dependants, announced last year, would reduce numbers, with initial deposits for places down by 63 per cent this year. It warned any further restrictions would increase the decline in overseas students.
This, it said, would mean the Government would miss its target to attract 600,000 foreign students to the UK. It would also mean “further substantial financial difficulty” for universities leading to “job losses, course closures and a reduction in research, and in the extreme it is not inconceivable that some institutions would fail”.
The MAC was, however, critical of “bad practices” by agents. “The potential poor practice by some agents recruiting international students does risk undermining the integrity of higher education in the UK,” it said.
It follows an investigation by The Sunday Times which found Britain’s top universities were paying agents to recruit lucrative overseas students on far lower grades than those required of UK applicants.
The MAC recommended that the Government should establish a mandatory registration system for international recruitment agents, and universities should be required to publish data on their use of agents to “help protect the integrity” of the UK higher education system.
The MAC’s recommendations are not binding on Government but will make it politically more difficult to cut the graduate visa route.
