Former Cabinet Minister Lord Heseltine has called for foreign students to be exempt from plans to slash net immigration to the UK.
Non-EU students should not be included in official immigration figures in order to avoid “damaging UK universities”, he said, with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg also lending his agreement.
However, the Home Office confirmed that students would continue to be counted in its overall immigration figures. Lord Heseltine said that including foreign students in Government plans to lower net non-EU migration could cause serious damage to the UK’s reputation abroad.
International students were “not the sort of people that are causing the anxiety about immigration”, he told the BBC. There was “no doubt” that students who were educated at UK universities became “ambassadors” for the country following their graduation, he added.
“In talking about tens of thousands of people, the Government will have to recognise that there are very large numbers of students in this country - in our universities, in our business schools - who are a great asset financially and educationally. The public do not see students who come and go as part of the immigration problem,” said Lord Heseltine.
Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to lower net migration to under than 100,000 a year by 2015. According to the Office for National Statistics, net long-term migration to the UK totalled 212,000 last year.