Balls to ask about Amendment to Immigration Bill

The Union’s campaign to stop international students being charged for NHS services under the Government’s Immigration Bill received a strong boost late last month when Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, agreed to look into an amendment to the bill that would exempt students from the charge. Responding to a question put to him by the author as part of an Imperial College Labour Society delegation that went to meet with Mr Balls in December, he explained his views on the government’s new drive to reduce immigration to the UK.

When asked what he thought of the Union’s campaign, Mr Balls responded by saying that ‘we’re not opposed to migrants contributing to the NHS’ (presumably in the same way that UK citizens pay National Insurance contributions), but stated that the government’s attitude toward international students was daft. ‘What we’re seeing is a reduction in the number of students from India and Pakistan’, which he agreed was ‘not beneficial’ to the economy. In response to the author’s questions about what could be done to ensure that international students from poorer backgrounds weren’t disadvantaged, Mr Balls agreed to ‘ask Yvette [Cooper]’, the Shadow Home Secretary about a potential amendment to the bill.

Mr Balls’ agreement to do this comes at a critical time – Labour MPs recently abstained from voting on the second reading of the Bill in the House of Commons in an attempt to force the addition of several other amendments, including one that tackles the exploitation of low-paid migrant workers. Should Labour end up in a position to pass these amendments in the final reading of the Bill in the Commons, it will go forward to the Lords and if passed there (as seems likely), will come back to the Commons for a final consideration of amendments. Once these are approved by the Lords, the Bill will be signed into law.

Many have asked why international students were not excluded from NHS charges under the original wording of the Bill – was it an oversight, or deliberate? Mr Balls had a few ideas to share, and seemed to suggest that it was the latter: ‘the majority of illegal migration into this country is from people who are here legally to begin with and who overstay their visas, and the Conservatives aren’t doing very well to manage this’. As a result, he suggests that the Tories are attempting to reduce net migration by targeting sectors of the population that they can manage – nominally, international students and migrant workers, even if doing this is detrimental to the long-term health of the economy.

One might expect Mr Balls to be suspicious of the Conservatives’ motives, but his suggestion is supported by the statistics. The government looks likely to miss its target of reducing net migration to below 100,000 people per year (a target many have ridiculed as meaningless), and this isn’t the only piece of legislation that has discriminated against international students in recent years. Caps on the number of visas issued and an increase in tuition fees have reduced the number of applicants for taught postgraduate courses. Unfortunately the decrease has been most noticeable in students coming from the ‘poorer’ Asian countries of the Indian Subcontinent, with a 23% drop in the number of Indian students and a 20% drop in the number of Pakistanis.

This does really seem unfortunate, given that the speed at which the economies on the subcontinent are growing and the potential benefit to the British economies that their young, enthusiastic populations could bring. We can only hope that the Government will see sense and not stick another financial hurdle in the way of those who want to bring their talent to the UK. If they don’t, I’m sure the onset of damage to our economy will be apparent soon enough - and what a mess that would be..