Speeches

The Marquess of Lothian – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by The Marquess of Lothian on 2016-04-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, on 14 March (HC29894), and in the light of the figures released by the Home Office on the number of non-EU students who had their visas curtailed in the three years to the end of December 2015 as part of their strategy to clamp down on immigration abuse, how many educational institutions were affected, and whether any of those educational institutions remain open to British and EU students.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

It is not possible to run a report linking each curtailment decision to a specific educational institution. To provide the information requested would require a manual check of every curtailment in the cohort referenced which would incur a disproportionate cost.

The Immigration Rules allow for leave of an individual to be curtailed for a variety of reasons, not only as a result of an institution losing its sponsor licence but also, for example, is a student drops out of their course of study and is reported to the Home Office by the sponsor. Sponsors have a number of reporting duties in respect of their students, and these can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sponsor-a-tier-4-student-guidance-for-educators

The Home Office does not close down educational institutions. The revocation of a Tier 4 sponsor licence means that an educational institution can no longer recruit non-EEA students under the Points Based System. The institution may, however, continue to operate and teach UK and EEA students. The Home Office does not routinely monitor educational institutions who do not hold a sponsor licence.