Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

03 November 2016

Moved by Lord Soley

That this House takes note of the potential impact of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union on funding for universities and scientific research.

 

Lord Bilimoria:

My Lords, when I visited CERN in Geneva, I realised that the experiments that led to the famous Higgs boson discovery, ATLAS and CMS, were both headed by British scientists: Professor Dave Charlton from the University of Birmingham, and Professor Sir Tejinder Virdee from Imperial College. And of course it was Sir Tim Berners-Lee who actually created the world wide web at CERN. Then, this year, we had the gravitational waves proving Einstein’s theory of relativity, 100 years later, with 1.3 billion light years being measured. Who were two of the principal scientists behind that? Professor Alberto Vecchio and Professor Andreas Frieze—EU scientists at the University of Birmingham. What makes this country great—this 1% of the world’s population, as my noble friend Lord Kakkar said—is not our natural resources but our talent. The jewel in our crown is our universities, which are the best in the world, along with those in the United States of America.

 

I declare my various interests, including being the proud chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School and the president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, representing the 450,000 international students in this country, of whom 180,000 are from the EU.

 

I say that we achieve all this excellence in spite of underspending on HE. We spend way below the EU and OECD average, and we are well behind the United States of America. When it comes to our research and development spending as a proportion of GDP, South Korea spends double the percentage that we do and we are way below the EU average, let alone that of the United States. What is scary is that the proportion of GDP spent on R&D, 1.6%, has been falling from 1985 to 2013. Will the Minister acknowledge this?

 

We heard from my noble friends Lord Rees and Lord Smith and others that at the University of Cambridge, around 16.5% of university staff are EEA nationals. When it comes to PhD students, that figure is 27%, and for MPhils, it is 21%. Look at the awards: UK institutions have won more ERC awards than any other country—989 compared with France’s 577.

 

On the implications and opportunities of leaving the EU on science and research, the University of Cambridge’s response is that,

 

“it will create significant challenges for Universities. We recognise that there is a great deal of uncertainty”.

 

Everyone has said that today. But the university also said that the political instability raises significant questions in the following areas. It refers to,

 

“our recruitment and retention of the brightest and best staff and students regardless of nationality … the future of our substantial European research funding”,

 

and the point that many noble Lords have touched on,

 

“the extensive global network of the University’s collaborations”.​

Sixty percent of the UK’s internationally co-authored papers are with EU partners. The mobility of our scientists is phenomenal—I have given you just one illustration. Professor Alice Gast of Imperial College, one of the top 10 universities in the world, said:

 

“Foreigners improve the creativity and productivity of home-grown talent, too”.

 

They enrich our universities, both academics and students.

 

Cambridge was the highest recipient of EU funding allocated under Horizon 2020, about which lots of Peers have spoken. I want to ask the Minister about intellectual property. In the event of Brexit—which may not happen, by the way—the value of any EU-based research for exploitation may be limited. Does the Minister agree with that? The UK has played a key role in shaping the design and implementation of the EU’s research programmes to ensure that the funding has been allocated on excellence. That has not been mentioned so far. Legislating for the ERA could have potential negative impacts on our current world-class systems.

 

People talk about the drop in the number of EU applicants, which is real—will the Minister confirm that? But the other aspect is that as the Royal Society said, the scientific community often works beyond national boundaries on problems of common interest and so is well placed to support diplomatic efforts that require non-traditional alliances of nations, sectors and non-governmental organisations. This is known as science diplomacy.

 

I conclude by saying that what worries and saddens me about this whole situation is that here we are talking about excellence and Britain being the best in the world, and yet my noble friend Lord Smith spoke about hate crime. I have lived in this country since I came here from India as a 19 year-old student in the early 80s. In 35 years I have never experienced any hate crime except for this year—and this year I have received it in abundance. Whether it is tweets, emails or letters, I cannot even repeat what people have been saying to me. It has saddened me. And yet this is the country that Liam Fox talks about opening up to the world. The world is laughing at us. They see us as closing up to the world, inward looking and insular, not open, not diverse, not plural, not tolerant and not brilliant. The headline of an Indian newspaper would read: Lord Bilimoria—this is not the Britain that I know and this is not the Britain that I love.

Lord Bilimoria: UK should welcome people from overseas

The Indian-born peer is exasperated by official policy on foreigners studying and working in the UK

As a 19-year-old in India in 1981, Karan Bilimoria was unusual in wanting to study in the UK. Many of his contemporaries were headed for the US. He remembers them asking: “What are you doing going to Britain? It’s a loser of a country.” Family and friends told him that if he stayed on in the UK after qualifying as an accountant, he would never amount to anything. He was a foreigner — and Britain was riven with prejudice.

Did he amount to anything? The 53-year-old Lord Bilimoria of Chelsea — chancellor of the University of Birmingham, honorary fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and founder of Cobra Beer, which supplies 97 per cent of the UK’s licensed Indian restaurants — thinks he probably did.

His friends were not wrong about the UK of the early 1980s. “The Britain I came to was the sick man of Europe. It was a country that had no respect in the world economy,” he says. And while he did not personally experience the prej­udice he had been warned about, when he trained as an accountant at what is now EY, there was only one Indian partner. “And they said it was because he had an English wife,” he says.

But in the years after he arrived as he was making his way from accountancy to a law degree at Cambridge university, the UK changed. The old barriers were swept away, and not just for Indian immigrants. “If you hadn’t gone to the right school and the right university, many career paths were limited,” he says. “I saw that all change in front of my eyes, and I put that down to Margaret Thatcher. I saw her transform this country into a country that economically was going places.”

For many years, he was a member of the Conservative party. At one time, he even thought of attempting to become a Conservative MP. But he resigned his membership some years ago. He sits in the House of Lords as an independent cross-bencher. He is a critic of the Conservatives’ policies on immigration and foreign students and is particularly fierce about Theresa May, the home secretary.

We are sitting in the meeting room of Cobra’s offices overlooking an autumn sun-dappled square in central London. Lord Bilimoria is in a smart dark suit, a paisley handkerchief peeking out of his jacket pocket, but the young staff bustling around are casually dressed. The place looks more like an advertising agency than a beer company headquarters.

What are they all doing? There is a tele­phone sales team selling beer to Indian restaurants. When the area managers meet up, they do it here. “We have the most authoritative database of all the Indian restaurants . . . which restaurants are opening and closing. So this is where all that happens.”

The company owes its start to something Lord Bilimoria did not like when he arrived in the UK: gassy beer. He started brewing Cobra as a more palat­able option in India. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first bottle being imported into the UK.

He may have been a nervous immigrant to the UK, but his Zoroastrian Parsi family back home, while not wealthy, were distinguished military officers. His grandfather was one of the first Indians at Sandhurst. His father was a general. A cousin was chief of the Indian navy.

Where did the interest in beer come from? There were some family precedents: his maternal great-grandfather ran a liquor business near Hyderabad.

He relaxes as he tells the story. His accent is posh English, with the occasional Indian inflection. He swings a foot up to cross his legs, a flash of bright red sock matching his cuff links. It is easy to see his story as one of untrammelled success, but Cobra came close to collapsing three times.

The first was in 1998 when Tandoori Magazine, a trade title in which he had a 45 per cent stake, criticised service in Indian restaurants. Lord Bilimoria had no hand in the article, but the restaurants decided to boycott Cobra. It took a year to persuade them to buy his beer again. He had to cut staff numbers from 120 to 17. “We had to make awful, tough decisions just to survive.”

Lord Bilimoria is a big admirer of Mr Modi. “I think that he is a breath of fresh air in terms of the things he’s saying, the initiatives he’s started, whether it’s Clean India — huge, huge requirement there — whether it’s Make In India, encouraging manufacturing. He’s set a target for manufacturing. I think we need to do the same over here.”

He admires Mr Modi’s speaking skills too. “He’s a brilliant orator. If you hear Prime Minister Modi speak in Hindi, I would go so far as to say he’s one of the top four orators in the world today.”

Who are the other three? “Archbishop Desmond Tutu is absolutely superb. Bill Clinton is brilliant and Tony Blair at his best is fantastic.”

Ten years later, and growing fast, Cobra needed investment and agreed to Diageo, the drinks conglomerate, taking a substantial minority stake with a full sale five years later. The due diligence was done and Lord Bilimoria went on holiday, expecting to come back and sign the deal. While he was away, he got a call. “They said, ‘The deal’s off, we’ve got cold feet and we don’t want to go ahead’.”

Luckily, he had a Plan B, a bank loan. Days after the money arrived, Lehman Brothers went bust. His bank told him it would not have lent him the money if he had asked for it after that. “It was that close.”

As the financial crisis bit, a hedge fund investor in Cobra insisted he put the company up for sale. This was near-collapse number three. Lord Bilimoria calls it “the most painful process at the worst possible time”. Instead, Molson Coors, the North American beer company, which brews in the UK at Burton-on-Trent, agreed to a joint venture, which has given Cobra stability and, he says, profitability.

He devotes much of his energy to supporting foreign students. He finds it an infuriating task. Higher education is one of Britain’s great export industries — “except we don’t send goods out there; we bring students into the country” — and the Conservative government is making it harder for them.

He has just heard that six Indian students with places at Cranfield School of Management, where he also studied, have had their UK visa applications refused. “How ridiculous is that?” Students who come to the UK establish life-long links with the country, becoming its champions and supporters, he says.

He blames Ms May for her hostility both to foreign students and to valuable, legal immigrants. “She is on a rampage. I have said this and I will say it time and again: she is economically illiterate when it comes to immigration.”

Ms May, he says, tried to end foreign graduates’ already limited ability to stay on to work. “She goes and makes a statement before the [2015 UK] elections: I want every foreign student to leave the day they graduate. [Chancellor] George Osborne had to step in and say, we will not have that in the manifesto, we’re not going to do that. But this is how rabid she is.”

He is calmer about the House of Lords. It should be smaller, but it should not be elected, he says. “The more I have studied it the more I realised how lucky we are to have this institution. You’ve got world-class people there, world leaders in their fields and you’ve got that amazing input that scrutinises legislation, challenges government, debates.

“In an elected house you’d never get those people, they wouldn’t stand for election. You’d get people who were rejects from the House of Commons.”

United Kingdom: Productivity

My Lords, matching UK productivity to United States levels would raise GDP by 31%. The graph in the Government’s report clearly shows that the United States has high living standards and high productivity. In Britain we have a lot going for us: we have less than 1% of the world’s population but have the fifth largest economy in the world. However, if our GDP was 31% higher, it would allow us to leapfrog Germany as the biggest economy in Europe and the fourth largest economy in the world.

 

The Government’s report very clearly outlines several factors that increase productivity, and as a happy businessman—to quote the noble Lord, Lord Desai—I commend the Government’s decision to reduce corporation tax to 18% by 2020. I am proud to be chancellor of the University of Birmingham, one of the top 100 universities in the world. The UK has more universities in the top 100 in the world than any other country except the United States. We have phenomenal capabilities in a variety of sectors. We also have one of the most open economies in the world and are a true trading nation. In fact, most people do not realise that we are the second largest inward investment destination in the world. Yet when it comes to productivity, as the Minister acknowledged, we have lagged behind other economies. We are ranked 18th out of 34 OECD countries, in the bottom half of the list.

 

The Government’s report talks about school reforms. Again, there have been good initiatives on this front, with the Labour Government’s introduction of academies, which the coalition continued and which this Government continue to promote, and the Government’s promotion of free schools. However, I believe that the biggest mistake that this country made was to close grammar schools, of which only 164 are now left. To think that at their peak in the 1960s there were 1,300. These grammar schools gave the opportunity to a bright child, regardless of background, to get to the very top, and no one—including Margaret Thatcher, herself a grammar school product—has had the guts to reintroduce them. Why cannot the Government promote academies and free schools but also support the reintroduction of grammar schools? That would definitely provide a huge fillip and have a direct impact on our productivity.

 

Where our universities are concerned, Universities UK states that the higher education sector generated £73 billion of output, both directly and indirectly, for the British economy. In Britain, government expenditure on higher education is 0.88% of GDP, which is lower than that of other OECD countries. In Finland, 1.87% of GDP is spent on higher education, in Germany the figure is 1.12%, and even in the United States more public expenditure goes on higher education, at 0.94% of GDP. In fact, universities in the United States go further. They receive a significant amount of private funding. I am an alumnus of Harvard University through its executive education, and Harvard has an endowment of more than $36 billion. The philanthropy at Harvard is extraordinary. Last year one alumnus contributed $350 million for the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and this year an alumnus donated $400 million for the John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

 

Universities in the United States boost their revenues through not only private benefaction but corporate partnerships—something that we should emulate here. The University of Cambridge has made a great start, raising £1 billion for its 800th anniversary. That was excellent, with the money being raised ahead of time. And I am proud to say that the University of Birmingham has raised £160 million in its latest fundraising campaign. Looking at combined public and private expenditure on higher education, the UK spends 1.2% of GDP;

 

The Minister spoke about encouraging innovation. When it comes to R&D, the Royal Society has produced some interesting figures. My noble fried Lord Rees was an eminent president of the Royal Society, and the next president, for the first time ever, is going to be an Indian. Sir Venki Ramakrishnan is a Nobel laureate and a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, where my noble friend Lord Rees was master. Cambridge University has produced more Nobel prize-winners—90—than any other university in the world. Within Cambridge University, Trinity College alone has produced 32 Nobel prize-winners. According to the Royal Society, 51% of productivity between 2000 and 2008 was due to innovation. The Royal Society has also noted that firms that invest consistently in R&D are 13% more productive than those that do not.

 

Today I had a meeting with the Secretary of State for Defra, Elizabeth Truss. I was informed that Britain’s food and drink industry is bringing 16,000 new products to markets per year. That is brilliant; it is more than the figure for France and Germany combined. This is extraordinary and very exciting, and there is a new initiative being promoted which I am delighted to be supporting.

 

The UK is great at research. Figures from the Royal Society show that, with less than 1% of the world’s population, we achieve 3.2% of global R&D expenditure. We have 4.1% of researchers globally and we produce almost 16% of the world’s most cited academic articles. This is in spite of the UK Government hugely underinvesting in research and development as a percentage of GDP. They invest 0.49% of GDP in R&D compared with 0.67% invested by OECD countries and 0.76% invested by the US. The figure for Germany is 0.85%. Does the Minister accept that we should increase government expenditure on both higher education and R&D and innovation? The Government talk about the science budget being ring-fenced. As it stands, it is not protected from inflation and is going to go down in real terms. Does the Minister accept that?

 

Our universities are also being stifled by the Home Office and, in particular, by the Home Secretary’s economically illiterate policies on immigration, removing the two-year post-study work visa for foreign students—75% of the population think that they should be allowed to stay on and work if they want to—having a target to reduce net immigration to the tens of thousands and continuing to include students in the immigration figures. Does the Minister agree that foreign students should be removed from the Government’s immigration statistics and targets? Is it any wonder that the number of students from India has declined by 50% in the last five years?

 

I was recently appointed as a president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs. ·Is it any wonder that 51% of foreign students feel unwelcome? Is it any wonder that, when the Home Secretary makes statements saying that foreign students should leave the day they graduate, headlines from India read: “Graduate, then get the hell out!”. Foreign students are one of our greatest forms of soft power, with the vast majority returning to their country of origin as ambassadors for Britain for years—for generations—to come. I am the third generation of my family, from both sides, to have been educated in this country. One in seven world leaders has been educated at British universities, including Greece’s current and former Finance Ministers. Dr Manmohan Singh, the former Prime Minister of India, was a graduate of Oxford and Cambridge. Foreign academics make up 30% of academics at our top universities, including Oxford, Cambridge and the University of Birmingham. These Immigration Rules and negative perceptions are damaging our universities and directly damaging our productivity. Does the Minister agree? We should be attracting foreign graduate entrepreneurs, for example by using the Sirius scheme of UKTI, which is brilliant.

 

We should of course invest more in infrastructure. As regards the airports report that has just come out, we should expand both Heathrow and Gatwick. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, spoke about investment. I am proud to say that private industry is doing its job. My joint venture partner Molson-Coors has invested £80 million in the biggest brewery in the country, in Burton-on-Trent, where we brew Cobra beer, by upgrading our bottling and packaging to make it world class, and improve our quality and productivity. I recently chaired an event in Parliament for entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur exchange, at which Sherry Coutu spoke about her scale-up report. If we close the scale-up gap, the estimate is that it will be worth an extra £225 billion and 150,000 jobs in the next 20 years. Does the Minister agree that we should have a Minister responsible for reversing the UK’s scale-up gap?

 

In conclusion, we have a lot going for us in this country. We have world-class capabilities and institutions —whether they are the Royal Society, institutes of engineering, livery companies, high-end aerospace, lawyers, accountants, beer, cars, JLR or Tata. They are shining examples. Just imagine how much better we would be if we invested more in higher education, better schooling, R&D and innovation, and had a sensible policy on immigration. We are great; but in the words of Saint Jerome:

 

“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best”.

“Theresa May is economically illiterate when it comes to immigration” – Lord Bilimoria

 

Cobra Beer tycoon Lord Karan Bilimoria has described Home Secretary Theresa May as “economically illiterate” when it comes to immigration and expressed serious concerns at the government’s treatment of everyone from curry chefs and nurses to international students.

 

In an interview with the UKAsian, Lord Bilimoria – who was recently appointed President of the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) – reiterated calls for overseas students to be taken out of the government’s net migration targets.

 

The life peer is one of a string of top entrepreneurs who have warned that the government’s controversial crackdown on international students – including the scrapping of the Post Study Work (PSW) visa and draconian restrictions on working – coupled with the often venomous rhetoric against immigration is harming the British economy and damaging perceptions of Britain abroad.

The Hyderabad-born millionaire was particularly scathing about Mrs May whose time in office has seen a dramatic decline in the number of international students from outside the European Union as well as such measures as the “Go Home or Face Arrest” vans in London.

 

Many international students – and other migrants from outside the EU – say they are being unfairly targeted as the government struggles to stem the flow of migrants from Europe.

 

The result of which is that an increasing number of non-EU migrants are finding it ever-more difficult to travel to the UK or remain here.

 

Under new measures announced by Mrs May, international students will be required to leave Britain as soon as their studies are complete.  Foreign nurses, meanwhile, will be required to earn more than £30,000 if they are to remain in the UK.  And the list goes on.

 

The UKAsian caught Lord Bilimoria in an impassioned mood.

 

On his own experiences as an international student in the UK:

 

I’ve been speaking about international student affairs particularly with regards to immigration now for a while.  I was an international student myself when I came over to this country as a 19-year-old for my higher education and I know what it’s like to be an international student in the UK.  I know how valued being an international student is for someone coming from abroad and how British higher education is regarded overseas.  It’s very prestigious and very special and it’s great to have the opportunity to study here.  However, I also know how expensive it is to study in Britain.  Not only the cost of the course but the living expenses.  I had to get a number of scholarships.  For example I’m a Tata scholar and I managed to raise the rest of the money – some of them were loans, some of them were grants, some was from family.  So when the government allowed students to work while they were studying that was a huge boost because not only does it give students the work experience that is so vital, they earn some money to help pay for their education.

 

Then in 2007 the Post Study Work (PSW) visa was brought out in England and Wales.  It was an excellent measure because it’s a huge advantage for a foreign student to have the ability to work for two years, to gain that work experience to build the relationships with Britain and to earn some money to pay for the expense they have incurred in gaining that education.  Sadly the coalition government in 2010 reversed everything.  They’ve brought in the ability to work but in a very difficult way where you are given a few months to try and find a job after you graduate.  You also have to earn a certain salary and get a company to sponsor you.  The hurdles are so much that very few international students are able to stay on and work.

 

On public attitudes:

 

Unfortunately this is completely out of synch with what the British public feel.  There have been surveys done which show very conclusively that an overwhelming majority of the public feel that international students should be allowed to stay on and work after graduation.  So I feel very strongly that the government and in particular this Home Secretary Theresa May have got it absolutely wrong on immigration and particularly with regards to international students.

 

On “Bad Immigration”

 

Illegal immigration – which we see everyday – needs to be handled and cracked down on very strongly and I think everyone would agree on that.  However it’s the good immigration that is suffering because all immigrants are being tarred with the same brush and that is wrong and it is harming our country and harming our economy.  For years I’ve been telling this government, bring back exit checks.  Tony Blair removed exit checks in 1998 so in the intervening years we know who’s come into the country but we don’t know who has left.  So how do you know if someone has overstayed.  How can you track down someone who has overstayed if you don’t know if they have left?  It’s basic because it’s a simple technology that is in place in most countries around the world.  In fact there are several excellent Indian IT companies based here in Britain who could provide the technology for it where every passport – EU and non-EU – should be scanned when someone comes into the country and every passport is scanned when people leave the country.  Now the government is finally saying that they will bring exit checks but I don’t think they are bringing it in as comprehensive a manner as is necessary.

 

If we bring in rigorous exit checks we would have much more control over our borders.  That’s the first thing I would do if I was the Home Secretary or was in charge of immigration.  The next thing I would do is to clamp down on illegal immigration in a very strong manner because that needs to be worked on.  Bogus colleges, need to be shut down.  But why should our 150 universities, of which many are the best in the world, be tarred with the same brush?

 

On the rise of UKIP:

 

There are so many misconceptions about immigration and that is why the immigration rhetoric of this government and in particular Mrs May, which unfortunately the Prime Minister seems to back up.  It’s so damaging because the perception is put out that all immigration is bad.  And of course Nigel Farage completely fuelled this in the run up to the General Election.  But where is Nigel Farage today?  He couldn’t win his own parliamentary seat.  UKIP won a grand total of ONE seat.  But the danger is that they had 13 percent of the vote.  13 percent of the people of this country subscribed to his rhetoric.  That is frightening.  And that rhetoric fuelled the behaviour of people like Theresa May.  And that is wrong and dangerous.  Good immigration has helped this country for decades.  Britain would not be the 5th largest economy in the world today, Britain would not be one of the most successful countries in the world were it not for immigration.  That is a fact.

 

On those vans and those bonds…

 

In every facet of British life – be it economics, academia, business, sport, culture – immigration has helped this country to be where it is today.  But now this immigration rhetoric is damaging all that good immigration and the amazing contribution it has made to this country.  When you say things like we are going to introduce a £3000 bond for people visiting from South Asia and Africa, it sets off alarm bells everywhere.  I travel to India several times a year on business and I know how damaging it was even though the measure was withdrawn straight away.  Then, we had those vans going around London demanding illegal immigrants to go home.  Even Nigel Farage disagreed with that one!  Then to tell international students to get out the moment they finish their degrees.  Even George Osborne had to come in and shut Mrs May down, saying that would not be in the Conservative’s manifesto.

 

Now if you look at the good immigration, there are a huge number of international students in our universities.  I’m the chancellor of the University of Birmingham.  We have a very high proportion of international students.  Then you have the academics.  In our top universities, 30% of all academics are foreign.  Without that we would not have the excellence that we have at our universities.  Who is going to be the next president of the Royal Society, the most eminent position in all of academia?  Sir Venki Ramakrishnan who is a Nobel Laureate from Trinity College Cambridge.  We need people like that.  He could easily be in America.  In fact, we are competing with American universities like Harvard which have endowments running into the billions of dollars.  Our higher education spending is nothing compared to that.  And on of top of that we have to fight immigration rules such as those brought in by Mrs May.

 

More misconceptions…

 

The number of South Asian students to the UK has fallen by half in the last five years.  Foreign students bring in 14 billion pounds a year to the British economy.  It’s one of our biggest exports.  So the financial aspect is vital.  Then you have the enrichment of our own students with the experience of living and studying and working alongside foreign students.   Then you have the life-long links that are forged.  That is one of our biggest elements of soft power.  One in seven world leaders at any given time have been educated at a British university.  It’s very powerful soft power, people who have been enriched by our values.  When it comes to business, again the rhetoric is about “Eastern Europeans coming and taking our jobs”.  Firstly, as long as somebody is paying the minimum wage and the company is operating legally, what is the problem?  Eastern Europeans are allowed to come and work here in the same way hundreds of thousands of our people are allowed to go and work in Europe.  It’s a reciprocal arrangement.  Surveys have also shown that Polish migrants are the most respected by Britons, followed by Indians.  A majority of Britons appreciate migrants.  That is the reality.

 

On the Benefit System…

 

Of course there are some people – both EU and non-EU – who take advantage of our welfare state and our welfare state is generous and that is wrong.  So the reforms that the Prime Minister expects from the EU are absolutely right.  But those who exploit the system constitute a tiny minority.  The vast majority of the immigrants who come to this country are hard working contributors.  They do not draw on the NHS because they tend to be younger and healthier, they do not draw on welfare and they are actually net contributors to this economy.  There’s no question that the benefits system needs reform.  Britain has less than one percent of the world’s population and yet we have four percent of the world’s economy.  We also have seven percent of the world’s welfare spending.  The European Union has seven percent of the world population, 25 percent of the world’s economy and more than half the world’s welfare spending.  This is unsustainable, from Britain’s point of view and from the European Union’s point of view.  We have a welfare state that has to be restructured.  To that extent I subscribe to Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to create a system that is fair and helps those who need the help but on the other hand does not provide a benefits trap where it’s often better financially to not work than it is.  That cannot be right.

 

Immigration…why it’s important…

 

This country requires a lot of immigration at every level.  From an economic point of view, if you look at the city of London, many people don’t realize that we are the number two inward investment destination in the world.  45% of that is financial services because we have the City of London which is the number 1 financial centre in the world.  If you look at who is working in the city of London some of the biggest names in the City are international.  They come from all over the world.  That international talent, the best of the best in the world is what makes the City the top financial centre on the planet.  If you take manufacturing, Jaguar Land Rover – owned by India’s TATA – has been a huge success story.  Tata bought it in 2008 when nobody wanted to touch the company and today their profits are greater than the price they paid for it.  These are the companies that power Britain.  And then you hear about companies that have trouble getting visas for their foreign workers.  That’s wrong.  We need to attract the best and the brightest from around the world.

I support a programme by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) called ‘SIRIUS’ which allows outstanding young graduates from around the world to come to the UK and set up their businesses here.  What a brilliant idea?  The respect that that creates for Britain as an investment destination is stupendous.

 

On what awaits foreign nurses…

 

I have spoken to heads of hospitals about this and they are flabbergasted.  They keep asking, ‘how can the government do this?  Without foreign nurses the NHS would collapse.’  And how inhuman is it that you ask a man or woman who works in a very noble, service-oriented, selfless profession which doesn’t pay much in the first place, to up and leave because they don’t meet a random salary requirement set by the Home Secretary?  It’s inhuman.  Those same heads of hospitals say that they have had to train these people and when they are booted out they will have to spend millions more to train new nurses as their replacements.  Where is the sense in that?
I have said this before and I will reiterate it, Theresa May is economically illiterate when it comes to immigration.

 

On how Cobra is helping…

 

We supply more than 98 percent of the curry restaurants in this country.  More than two thirds of them are run by Bangladeshis.  If you talk to the Bangladeshi Caterers Association or the industry as a whole, they are concerned that they are unable to bring in the skilled chefs they need from India and elsewhere in the sub-continent because immigration rules are so prohibitive.  The situation is mind-boggling.  I go around the country giving talks and British people talk about how much they love curry.  This is our national dish because true entrepreneurs have gone to High Streets across Britain, knowing no one, opening up businesses, developing business, gaining customers and taking the curry to everyone around this country.  Then you have a government which says, ‘Thank you very much, we love the curry but if you need skilled chefs to carry on your good work, you’re not allowed to get them’.  That’s just wrong.  This is why we’ve teamed up with some of the best chefs in this country, people like Atul Kochar, Alfred Prasad, Vivek Singh, Cyrus Todiwala, and Vineet Bhatia who are helping us now to provide lessons from their learning which they are sharing with restaurateurs around the country with workshops which Cobra Beer is funding.  Free of charge for restaurants so that these award-winning Michelin-starred chefs can share their best practice with any restaurant in the country.  It’s been popular with restaurateurs and we have a queue of restaurants lined up to attend these workshops.  So in our own small way we are helping the industry because we know they cannot get the skilled workers that they need from overseas from South Asia.

 

So the best thing could be if this government could get sensible about immigration.

Britain’s universities have been neglected

 

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

One does not have to be an economist to understand these words, written by the American statesman Benjamin Franklin in 1758.

An investment in education lasts longer than any other.

Though not the oldest in the world, Britain’s well-established universities have long set the standard for higher education, for the world’s future lawyers, doctors, financiers, business leaders and politicians.

One in seven world leaders are educated in the UK, the British Council has found. This makes our higher education sector a tremendous cultural and political force at a time when the greatest superpowers in the twenty-first century continue to be driven by innovation and supercharged by discovery in the laboratory and specialist research hubs.

And as other nations charge ahead in economic fields, particularly in productivity, I would urge the Chancellor to consider that public sector expenditure in higher education is far below where it should be.

“The neglect of Britain’s university faculties is starkly reflected in our low productivity rate, which sits around 15 percentage points below pre-crisis predictions for 2015.”

Real-term investment in both higher education and R&D has been dropping for decades and now sits well below the United States, as well as the EU and OECD average. Universities are vital to filling our hospitals and factories with skilled, talented staff and supplying the world of business with inquisitive and resourceful minds.

The neglect of Britain’s university faculties is starkly reflected in our low productivity rate, which sits around 15 percentage points below pre-crisis predictions for 2015. To bounce back from the blows dealt to the economy in the last decade, our nation needs a sturdy pipeline of skills and talent in every field.

If we look to the United States, public expenditure on Higher Education is over twice the size of ours, just in proportion to our GDP.

The United States suffered barely a blip in its labour productivity as a result of the financial crisis, but it cannot go unnoticed that it has for decades invested consistently and uncompromisingly in its keenest minds from Berkeley to Boston.

Their economy is more balanced and grows continuously, whereas growth and equality still remain points of contention in the United Kingdom. These blights do not befit an advanced economy like ours, and our deficient higher education investment may be culpable.

American universities such as Harvard benefit from greater public expenditure

On other fronts too, our universities are more vulnerable than ever. Coupled with the effects of the Home Secretary’s vengeful homilies on the soaring numbers of immigrants entering the country, deterring the brightest prospective students from approaching Britain’s shores, Britain becomes powerless to fill the ranks of its top businesses and manufacturing workforces, despite having no small share of the world’s business giants.

An increasingly unwelcoming policy agenda sees teenagers opting instead to study at new and competitive universities in Canberra and Melbourne, neglecting the UK institutions that have been formative for many of the world’s minds.

For example, in five years, Britain has suffered a 50 per cent drop in the number of Indian students studying in Britain, some of whom presumably sense that the international communities in Britain’s universities – who are still wrongfully included in net migration statistics – have a diminished voice.

“The less we stimulate growth in the higher education sector, particularly through public expenditure, the less productive and influential Britain will be.”

As a university Chancellor myself, this raises concerns for my colleagues and I. Recent estimates from the Department of Business, Industry and Skills place the value of selling British education to those from overseas at £14 billion.

And in the business world, many entrepreneurs start young. Some skip university altogether, but those who don’t must build global networks and reputations while they study. In this context, Chancellor George Osborne should consider universities an untapped vehicle for economic growth.

The appointment of Jo Johnson as universities and sciences minister offers those in the Higher Education sector hope. Yet a different approach to the universities is needed throughout the Cabinet.

The less we stimulate growth in the higher education sector, particularly through public expenditure, the less productive and influential Britain will be. It only remains for the Chancellor to act.

The full article is available here

Speaking about the appointment, Lord Bilimoria noted the excellence of the UK’s universities on the world stage and praised the significant contribution that international students provide to our economy and to Britain’s society as a whole.  As a previous international student to the UK, Lord Bilimoria is certainly well placed to represent the concerns of students travelling from abroad and he has vowed to represent all international students to the best of his ability.

Britain’s universities are amongst the finest in world, along with those found in the US, and international students make a vast contribution to the richness of student life in the UK, as well as to our economy – international students add £14 billion to the UK economy and make our higher education sector one of our largest and most successful exports. The strength of the UK’s higher education sector is clear to see on the world stage with one in every seven world leaders being educated in a UK university.

I am very pleased with all the work that UKCISA does to best represent the voice and mass of the international student body, particularly as I myself was an international student. I am enormously grateful to have been given the opportunity to lay down roots in the UK, where I found a second home, an open-armed welcome from the student community, and a chance to make an economic contribution to this country after I founded Cobra Beer. International students build generational long links with the UK, such as in my case where I was the third generation of both sides of my family to be educated here in Britain.

This appointment enables me to fully support the UKCISA manifesto and make a full commitment to speaking on behalf of Britain’s talented international student community in Westminster, in Whitehall, to the UK business community and around the world. In my new role I hope to represent our bright young people from overseas and to urge the government to reconsider its strategy towards those who have travelled from all over the world to learn in our world-class universities.

Britain urgently needs more skilled and talented graduates, yet its disparaging rhetoric towards immigrants among those in power, paired with our Home Secretary’s refusal to remove students from immigration targets, broadcasts the wrong message to those hoping to study here. As a result, we have seen members of the international student community turn its back on Britain in vast numbers. I aim to do all I can to turn this worrying trend around by promoting the huge benefits of studying in Britain’s great universities and pushing for talented and highly skilled students to be able to stay in Britain after graduation, through schemes like the two year post study work visa – which should be reintroduced. These measures will benefit international students, while strengthening the British economy and making Britain a hub for knowledge, skills and business.

As former international student himself, Lord Bilimoria remains a vocal support of the rights of people to study in at British universities, as well as being allowed to remain and work in the country after graduation.

The world’s brightest will shun the UK if isolationist rhetoric doesn’t stop now

We all have our own image of UK entrepreneurship. Sir Richard Branson is a common first choice, and Sir James Dyson is another. For me, it is the Indian Restaurateur.

When I first founded Cobra Beer 25 years ago, it was these tireless, unsung heroes of UK entrepreneurship who placed their trust and belief in my business. It is thanks to them that, today, I can see my Indian beer fill patrons’ glasses – both in the curry house and in that most British of all institutions, the pub.

That is what makes our economy one of the greatest in the world. It gives migrants the chance not only to build a business, but to see it become a part of the UK’s national identity – what, after all, could be more British than going out for a chicken tikka?

But as my own company has grown, so too has Britain’s antipathy towards migrants like myself. When I started Cobra in 1989, a little over 10 per cent of people considered immigration to be the most pressing issue facing the country; today it is nearly 40 per cent.

A report published this week by London First (and commissioned by Boris Johnson) highlights just how real the dangers of Britain taking the wrong path are. Calling openness to immigration one of the “critical underpinnings” of London’s success, it warns that turning away talented people could hamper Britain’s ability to remain competitive.

For a nation that still exports more to Switzerland than it does to India, this is sound advice. The long-term prospects of our economy depend upon Britain’s ability to successfully pivot its focus towards emerging Asian markets such as India and China.

Yet, in 2013, UK universities experienced a 25 per cent drop in the number of Indian-born students enrolling. Feeling spurned by Britain’s isolationist rhetoric, the world’s brightest and best are voting with their feet.

When politicians, like home secretary Theresa May, speak of moving towards “zero net student migration”, by sending foreign graduates home after they finish their studies – as she did last month, before having her proposals quashed by George Osborne – they are exhibiting a startling degree of economic illiteracy. While I’m glad that these specific plans look unlikely to happen, the broader shift in Britain’s immigration debate has not gone unnoticed abroad.

I recall being at a lecture in London where the Australian education minister Christopher Pyne thanked the UK government for its immigration policies because of the boost they provided to Australia’s higher education sector. Between May and Nigel Farage, we can hardly be surprised that Indian students are choosing to study in Brisbane and Canberra rather than Birmingham and Cambridge.

Today, 42 per cent of current international students profess an intention to set up their own business following graduation, but only 14 per cent wish to do this in the UK. If the government, and May in particular, persist with their vendetta, it will only be a matter of time before we turn away the next Steve Jobs or Sir James Dyson.

This year, Britain faces a fork in the road. On the one path lies openness and prosperity – on the other, isolation and decline. Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose the former.

The full piece is available online on City AM’s website.

The following article was published on the New Statesman’s “The Staggers’ blog on Monday 1st September.

Founded in 1913, the New Statesman is one of the most well-respected current affairs magazines in the United Kingdom.

The government must stop treating international students with hostility

This year, the number of foreign students undertaking higher education in Britain fell for the first time since 1983. The government must stop treating them with contempt.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi. Each one of them has shaped the world in which we live and, as it happens, every one of them was educated here in Britain.

Along with the United States, the UK’s universities are the finest on the planet. The ability that this gives us to attract the world’s talent to these shores represents not only an enormous economic opportunity but also a crucial component of our nation’s cultural strength. It is something I have been proud to observe in recent months as the newly appointed chancellor of the University of Birmingham.

I came to the UK from my birthplace of India because of the outstanding quality of its higher education institutions, but it was Britain’s internationalism – its unique role as a point of congregation for ideas and creativity from around the globe – that allowed me to start Cobra Beer here.

And yet despite the mutually beneficial historic relationship between the UK and international students, this government continues to badge them as immigrants, a group it treats with a contempt bordering on outright hostility.

That’s despite new research from Universities UK, which found that only 22 per cent of the British public considers overseas students to be immigrants. Political leaders from the Deputy Prime Minister to Lord Heseltine have added their voices to the call for international students to be removed from the immigration figures. And yet the Home Office still refuses to take action, despite the evident failure of its crude policies towards controlling net migration, shown recently to have risen by 68,000 in the last year.

Net migration may be rising but one vital statistic is going the other way, with potentially severe consequences. This year the number of foreign students undertaking higher education here in Britain fell by 1 per cent – the first time a decline has been recorded since 1983. With government-sponsored poster campaigns barking “go home or face arrest” and the disastrous, failed proposal for “high risk” visa applicants from nations like Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan to pay a £3,000 “security bond” deposit upon entering the UK, it’s little wonder that the world’s brightest and best are starting to look elsewhere.

Indeed, an NUS poll carried out earlier this year recorded that 51 per cent of international students found the British government “unwelcoming”. That damage is being done to Britain’s reputation on the world stage as a home for the future talent on which our economy increasingly depends couldn’t be more clear.

And while the government is helping promote a climate of hostility against overseas students, the Universities UK research clearly demonstrates that this does not reflect the public mood. 59 per cent of respondents to the survey said that the government should not reduce numbers of international students, even if such action made reducing overall immigration numbers harder.

Our universities are competing in a zero-sum game of global proportions and every engineer, programmer and aspiring entrepreneur that we turn away will be welcomed with open arms by the likes of Canada, Germany and Australia. Given that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills estimates overseas students contribute more than £13 billion to the UK economy, that is a prospect we should all be extremely worried about.

For years the government has been ignoring the well-founded requests of colleagues within the House of Lords and many more besides, to remove international students from the immigration statistics. Now the public has spoken too; and it is time the government started listening.

Lord Bilimoria CBE is founder and chairman of Cobra Beer, a crossbench peer and chancellor of the University of Birmingham

Lord Bilimoria also criticised the failure of the government to introduce exit-checks as British ports of entry, as well as the negative response to the mooted “Visitor Bond” system, which was scrapped last year after public outcry.

My Lords, arriving at his Cardiff primary school at the age of five, the future vice-chancellor of Cambridge University could use just one English phrase. Today, at the age of 63, he still remembers the kindness that people showed him as he learnt to speak English, and of course he now holds one of the world’s most influential academic positions. The gracious Speech talked about the packed programme of a busy and radical Government, but despite that there is no mention of immigration or of higher education. I want to talk about those two topics and I declare my various interests in the higher education field, as well as being an immigrant. Professor Leszek Borysiewicz has made a defence of the value of immigration. He opposes crude numerical limits and praises Britain’s plural society as one of its greatest strengths.

We all know that the target of tens of thousands has become a real issue. The number of students coming here from India fell by 39% between 2011 and 2012. The vice-chancellor has said that a university such as Cambridge is in the global race, a point also made by the Prime Minister. It is competing not just with other British universities, but with Princeton, Harvard and Stanford. Setting an immigration target of this kind is harming Britain, because for the first time in many years the number of international students coming to Britain has fallen overall. What is even more scary is that the numbers have fallen in the STEM subjects, which we so desperately need students to study.

Michael Kitson, a university lecturer in global macroeconomics at the University of Cambridge, has come up with some great insights. He feels that the popular press has been propelling the bandwagon in immigration. He has said that non-EU students contribute over £7 billion to our economy—our GDP and balance of trade—and, while some students may remain after they have finished their studies, the vast majority leave. When we look behind the figures for net immigration, if students are excluded, the net figure in 2013 was 58,000, averaging 49,000 between 2004 and 2013. Voilà, the Government’s target of net immigration to be measured in the tens of thousands has already been met if students are excluded. When we look at people who come here to work we see that, while 214,000 came to work here in the UK, some 186,000 left the country to work overseas.

The main driver of future prosperity in this country can be summed up in one word: innovation. Innovation is driven by diversity. Just look at Silicon Valley, one of the most diverse communities in the world, and what it has achieved in changing our lives. What has happened over here is that the popular press has been stirring up a hatred of immigration based on anecdotes, rumours and slurs, not on figures. I think we need to come to terms with that. The National Union of Students has conducted surveys which show that 51% of non-EU students think that the UK Government are either not welcoming or not at all welcoming towards international students. We had the Government’s £3,000 visa bond, which set off the alarm bells. In a U-turn, the Government withdrew it. They then had the idea of hoardings saying “Illegal immigrants go home” being driven around. Even Nigel Farage of UKIP objected to them, and they were the subject of another government U-turn. Yet here in this House we have the noble Lord, Lord Glendonbrook, who made an excellent maiden speech.

He is an immigrant who has made a brilliant contribution to this country. The Government’s attitude to immigration can be summed up in one word: hypocrisy. On the one hand, we have the immigration cap, while on the other hand, for years I have been saying that we should bring in exit controls at our borders: scan every passport that comes in and scan every passport that goes out. You will then know who is in the country and thus who should or should not be here. The Government must do this. The e-border scheme has been a miserable failure and over £500 million has been wasted on it.

The National Union of Students, which supports the aim of removing international students from the immigration figures, says clearly that such students contribute a great deal to the social and economic fabric of the UK, contributing more than £12.5 billion to the UK economy. Its surveys show that only 1% of all immigrants granted settlement in 2009 progressed directly from a study route to remain in this country. That is because the vast majority of students leave the UK within five years. The excellent post-graduation work visas need to be brought back in by the Government. In any case, we have one of the most expensive visa systems in the world.

I conclude by going back to the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, who has said:

When I think of how my parents were welcomed to this country, I find that actually quite saddening. I do feel we are an open, democratic country and we should be setting the standards for the rest of the world, not hindering them … One of Britain’s greatest strengths has been in the way it has assimilated so many different communities, and we are a very plural and open society … At a personal level I abhor the idea that we actually have a very strict migration target. There are so many nuances to numbers in this regard that it actually hides the true potential benefit that people coming into Britain can have. We should be looking at the capacity of individuals to contribute to our society here rather than have a political ding-dong over ‘we brought in 10,000 fewer than you did’”.