LONDON: Leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul has hit out at Britain’s restrictive student visa policy, a day after Prime Minister David Cameron said there was no limit on the number of Indian students coming to his country.
Delivering the inaugural India Link Lecture here on ‘Indo-British Relations – The Way Forward’, Lord Paul said, “The top students in our key recruiting nations are choosing to attend universities in Canada, Australia and the US.”
“The UK is now seen as an unfriendly place for international students and we are fast loosing our place in the international market,” he said.
“If the UK is to remain a leading international power, we must welcome students from across the world. If we do not, we will lose influence and our competitive position,” Lord Paul said last night.
“A major objective to the changes in the student visa policy was to attract high caliber students to study in the UK. This has not happened,” Lord Paul, Chancellor of two British Universities – Wolverhampton and Westminster – said.
“Changing our immigration policies to remove students from the net migration figures will show the world that we are open to genuine, hard-working students from all nations. We must also provide opportunity for them to work in the UK for two years following their studies,” he said.
Lord Paul’s criticism of the changes in the UK’s visa policy came a day after Cameron said in India that there was no limit on the number of Indian students in his country.
“There is no limit on the number of Indian students in Britain… What is needed is genuine students who have genuine British university admissions,” Cameron said in New Delhi.
Lord Paul said he was disappointed with the negative worldwide publicity of the UK’s visa system and the effect it is having on current and potential international students.
“In, May last year, I, along with 67 fellow University leaders in the UK Higher Education sector, wrote to the Prime Minister outlining our concerns about changes to the visa policy for incoming international students,” he said.
“We asked the government not to include students in the net immigration statistics. However, the government chose to implement their policies and we are now seeing the repercussions,” he said. . Lord Paul also expressed surprise over the UK government’s special exemption for business people coming here in preference to students.
The UK government recently announced that around 100 wealthy foreigners will initially be invited to join a new “bespoke” visa service which the Home Office said will ensure their passage through the UK border system is “swift and smooth”.
“In my view it should be the other way round because by educating people from other countries they become life-long spokesmen for the UK,” he said.
“At the University of Wolverhampton, for example, the new immigration policies have caused a significant decrease in the number of postgraduate students from abroad,” Lord Paul added.
He said both the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Westminster have worked hard to develop their partnerships with India, and the whole of South East Asia.
“This must be a priority for all. The key to positive educational exchanges with India is opportunity – seizing opportunities as they present but more importantly creating opportunities for all stakeholders. By doing this we will not only strengthen the educational ties between India and the UK, but cultural and economic ties too,” he said.
Lord Paul said India and Britain must not think of trade alone as being the prime benefit.
“There are a lot of other things we can gain from each other and in my view education is the most important,” he said.
Lord Paul said that Britain and India should place more emphasis on the area of education, especially higher education, because he strongly believes that this is something where both nations will gain a great deal from each other.
He suggested that Indian and UK universities in particular should collaborate and network, building on their deep cultural roots, to work together on solving the challenges of the future.
“We can work together to develop a more open, accessible Higher Education sector for our mutual benefit, that is in tune with ideas of a ‘global civil society’, a vision that might bind our universities together through common research, teaching practices and values,” he said.–PTI
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