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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 217-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
MANAGING MIGRATION: POINTS-BASED SYSTEM
Tuesday 3 March 2009 Professor Paul Wellings and Mr Simeon Underwood Ms Louise De Winter, Mr Malcolm Clay and Ms Ruth Jarratt Evidence heard in Public Questions 187 - 248
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 3 March 2009 Members present Keith Vaz, in the Chair Ms Karen Buck David T C Davies Mrs Janet Dean Patrick Mercer Martin Salter Mr Gary Streeter Mr David Winnick ________________ Memorandum submitted by London School of Economics, supplementary
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Professor Paul Wellings, Universities UK (and Vice-Chancellor, Lancaster University) and Mr Simeon Underwood, Registrar, London School of Economics and Political Science, gave evidence. Q187 Chairman: Professor Wellings and Mr Underwood, may I apologise for keeping you waiting. The select committee at the moment is undertaking a number of very lengthy inquiries and we were deliberating on our conclusions and pathways to concluding some of them. Thank you very much for coming. May I refer everybody to the register of members' interests where the interests of members are noted, and can I declare in fact that my wife is an immigration solicitor and a part-time judge. We are currently undertaking an inquiry into the points-based system. We have undertaken this inquiry for a number of months. We are reaching the end of the process. We thought it was highly relevant to have the universities in because you are some of the organisations that will be directly affected by the operation of the points-based system. If I could ask you first, Mr Underwood: how important are foreign students to the LSE? How much revenue is generated from them for the LSE? Mr Underwood: They are extremely important to the LSE. In some ways the LSE is not entirely typical. We are probably the most international in the proportion of international students we have. Broadly speaking, 30% of our students are from the United Kingdom; 20% from other EU countries; and 50% from non-EU international countries. We get graduate applications from 177 countries; 67% of those graduate applications are from non-EU countries. We are seeing, for example, particular growth in students coming to us from Asia; 28% of our undergraduates, 26% of our postgraduates are from Asia compared to 21% and 18% six years ago. In financial terms, this means that in the financial year 2007-08 we have £60 million in tuition fees from international students, compared for example to £29 million from the Funding Council in our block grant. The tuition fees that we receive from international students amount to about one-third of our income. Q188 Patrick Mercer: Mr Underwood, I will direct this to you. Is the higher revenue that universities are able to generate from international student fees the primary reason that universities seek to enrol them? Do they look for international students above UK students? Mr Underwood: The revenue is very important to us. The position, broadly speaking, is that universities have only a limited number of sources, other than direct government funding, to look to. At a time of recession, those sources become even more difficult to access. Thus, for example, we are encouraged to develop funding through former students or through endowments, but obviously in recession that kind of income really dries up. Industry is a willing partner but not in a position to give us much help at the moment, and certainly not on the scale of the kind of income we get from overseas student fees. Even the money that we get from Government for research funding is now, in a way, very complex. You will see in the next few days announcements which indicate the pattern of funding has changed and so an LSE which actually came first or second in all the league tables resulting from the research assessment exercise is going to get the biggest proportionate cut in its research grant for the next few years. So, in this context, the income we get from international students is crucial to us, but I do not think it would be true to say that we have prioritised this over our responsibilities to home students. The home students we take at undergraduate level are specified for us by Government. What we get by way of international students and their fee income is supplementary to that. Q189 Mrs Dean: Given the Home Office's poor past record in running large-scale IT databases, how confident are you that the Sponsorship Management System will operate effectively? Mr Underwood: I think it would be true to say we are quite nervous. There are two particular issues here that are troubling us. The first is timing. At the moment, there are major discussions going on about IT development between UKBA, the various suppliers of student record IT systems and the institutions. If there are delays in the UKBA developmental work, this is going to have a serious knock-on effect on us within the institutions and also in the work that the student record system suppliers can do in preparing things for us. Perhaps I should explain that the UK higher education sector really uses two or three major suppliers of student record systems. There is an organisation called Tribal, which give us a system called SITS and there is another one called Banner. Basically, we are dealing with two or three suppliers. These systems are immensely sophisticated and have to be to meet the many demands that Government and other bodies make on us for information. One of our concerns is that the specification for what, for example, we are going to have to provide prior to entry is still not absolutely finalised. There are discussions going on; there is another meeting in the middle of March where some of this will be taken forward, but we are nervous here about the timing, the time that we will have to adapt our systems to the new regime. The suppliers will be working on additional systems components, but again there is implementation and there is testing to be done in this area. That is one of our major concerns. The other one I would add is that we are concerned with volume issues. We have repeatedly warned UKBA that PBS is going to result in a very high level of demand on their system in a very concentrated space of time, principally between July and September each year, and there are risks attached to that. I should also say, as an illustration of the kind of thing we are concerned about, that even in the process of registering to go on the sponsors' register, we have been meeting serious problems with a number of institutions being registered for Tier 2 and Tier 4 simultaneously in a way that means that they have had to re-apply. I do not know precisely what is happening in our HR area but certainly for Tier 2 registration they have had to apply three times already, and this is the simple bit of the exercise. As I say, we are nervous. We do not wish to assume the worst but what we would like to see is more discussion with us about the precise specification and the way that the UKBA system can integrate with the student record systems that exist. We would also like to see piloting going on. If we were introducing a system of this scale within our own institution, we would be introducing it probably over a two or three year timescale with great care and with piloting in certain areas to see that it is working. Q190 Mrs Dean: Are UKBA being responsive to your concerns? Mr Underwood: Yes, I think so. We have been talking to them in some detail about the system for probably about the last 18 months or so. A number of changes have been made. I think I would like to acknowledge that UKBA have met our needs in a number of ways. For example, the timescale has actually been slowed down - not as much as we would like but it has been slowed down. A major change happened in terms of the system pre-arrival where at one stage UKBA were looking for one student, one certificate of acceptance for studies; they have now moved to what is called multiples CASs, which actually offers us a great deal more flexibility. They have made changes about the level of maintenance students will have to show they have. They have made changes to the length of the visa; once the students are actually there, they have made changes in the monitoring arrangements. There are various other changes around the edges, too. In many ways they have been extremely helpful, but I think I would add two glosses there. Firstly, in this kind of 18-12 months that we have been talking to them, these changes have come quite late on. I think it took a certain amount of time for them to realise the sheer scale, complexity and diversity of what they were dealing with. Q191 Chairman: Could there have been better consultation at the beginning? Mr Underwood: In my view, yes. The other thing I think that applies here too is that we are dealing with several different organisational elements of UKBA: policy people, operations people, IT people. In the meetings we have had with them on a number of occasions we have dealt with different individuals and had to go back to the start on certain issues, and we still have a residual nervousness, if I might put it that way, that what the policy people are saying to us might, in a way, turn out to be different in practice over time. Yes, they have been extremely helpful; there have been a lot of meetings about this. Some of my staff have actually during most of the past year spent a lot of time developing and finding out what is going on and adjusting our systems to it. Q192 Chairman: Professor Wellings, would you like to comment on any of the questions that Mrs Dean has raised? Professor Wellings: I would, and thank you, Chair. This links back to Mr Mercer. There are approximately 240,000 international students registered at UK universities. These are students who are not European or British; they are international students. That is the scale of the risk that we face because clearly all of those students have to be in the system and there are new cohorts that will be recruited, usually each October for the start of the academic year. It gives you an idea of the diversity and the complexity of the systems that we are putting in place. Those students are drawn from over 100 countries around the world, and so the IT systems have to be resilient to draw in students from all of those different economies, and also the communication strategies back into those countries have to be in place so that the prospective students understand the systems that they are about to engage with and the seriousness with which the universities and the Home Office will take what they put on record in-country. It is an enormous challenge for us to do that and it is enormously important. Higher education is worth something like £19.5 billion to the UK economy. International students are worth 8% of that. If you look at the additional on-costs of what people spend in the economy when they are here, it is the equivalent of 9% of all of the UK's receipts from overseas visitors to the UK. It is a very substantial enterprise. So moving to an IT system by the end of this calendar month, given the risks that Mr Underwood has outlined, is a very high risk position for one of the most significant service industries, if I can put it like that, that the United Kingdom has. Q193 David Davies: At the risk of bandying economic statistics with professors of economics, your figures do not really take account of the fact that there is a net cost to the UK taxpayer as well if people are working part-time whilst they are studying at the LSE or elsewhere and effectively taking work away from people who are already in this country who will therefore be receiving benefits. Your statistics obviously would not take account of that, would they?? Professor Wellings: They would certainly take into account the added value that international students, in fact all students, bring to their sub-regional economies. I think there was a piece of work done by the University of Strathclyde which has been applied by many universities around the UK looking at the whole range of benefits and leverages that come from students spending money in their local economies, and you can compartmentalise that into those funds that then come from receipts for international students. Q194 David Davies: What percentage of internationals students work in this country while they are studying? Professor Wellings: I would have to take that on notice. I do not have the numbers in front of me. I do not want to mislead you. Q195 Chairman: Could you write to us with that information? Professor Wellings: I will certainly take that on notice. Q196 David Davies: You have made a complaint about Tier 5 being used to sponsor academic researchers and the problems that that causes. Do academic researchers pay any fees in order to come into this country to research here? Professor Wellings: These of course are people usually in their own workforce in the country that they are coming from. One of the parts of the university system around the world is in fact to encourage mobility of staff in order to get ideas to move with people. Most of the academic visitors who come here would be early career researchers and they would be coming specifically because they want to build a relationship with an academic at an institution here in the UK and work with facilities and infrastructure here. Q197 David Davies: I understand but they are not directly paying any fees, so there is no direct loss? Professor Wellings: They are not paying fees to us. They would normally come on secondment from their own institution and be paid a salary by their own institution and on occasion they would pay a bench fee, depending on the complexity of the research they were doing. There are a lot of scholarship schemes. Q198 David Davies: Have you done any research into how many of these people stay and how many go back? The Government might say that what you are actually doing is allowing people from poor Third World countries, who are incredibly intelligent and could be so useful to those countries, to come over here, to stay over here and to keep their talents here instead of returning. Professor Wellings: We have done a desk-top audit on that, and this is from memory so I stand corrected. I think we looked at 300 individuals who came as visitors to a whole range of institutions. One person subsequently got a job in the United States and did not go back to their own country from here; one person got a job in the United Kingdom; and everybody else went back to the countries they came from and carried on with their gainful employment there. Q199 Martin Salter: To Professor Wellings, I should imagine: we have reports that universities obviously have academics visiting for short periods of time and that there have been some instances where the UK visas have required a wholly disproportionate amount of bureaucracy for people visiting for a designated purpose for two or three day visits, for example giving presentations or even attending conferences. This would be far more likely to apply to non-EU academics than academics from within the EU. Have you evidence of this as being a real problem or is this perhaps an isolated incident? Professor Wellings: We have heard isolated incidents of that. There is a whole range of different mobilities that go on. The classic would be somebody coming on secondment for six months to a year. We are not hearing any problems around that because clearly people can forward plan and engage with Home Office systems to do that. I think it is much more likely that we are going to run into problems where somebody comes for a week or less than a week in order to go to an international congress at one of our own institutions as a keynote speaker or is coming in as part of the audience for that and then gets held up in the system. You may miss a critical date. If you are required to be in London on a Tuesday morning and you miss that, then you have missed your slot. The problem will be how responsive and flexible the system will be for people coming on short-term visits. Q200 Martin Salter: Is this a current problem or a problem that is being envisaged? Professor Wellings: We have anecdotal evidence to say that it has popped up on a small number of occasions and we are just concerned if it were to happen regularly because clearly, and as I said to Mr Davies, the issues of academic mobility are at the heart of our liberal higher education system globally. Q201 Ms Buck: May I ask you about the issue of the maximum stay under Tier 4 of four years and how that fits or where it does not fit, if you have examples, with courses in medicine or dentistry or whatever that are longer than four years? What is the scale of the problem and what is the solution? Professor Wellings: This has been subject to a certain amount of discussion because clearly there are students who are coming in on courses which go beyond four years and they are predominantly in areas like medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy and architecture and those sorts of things. We were very pleased to receive notice last week of a letter from the Minister for Immigration, Phil Willis, who has now accepted our representations on issues to do with students who are studying on courses for periods of time longer than four years. Q202 Chairman: Do you think he knew you were giving evidence today? Professor Wellings: He certainly did not know that I was giving evidence, but we were pleased to receive notice of it and it is a very important issue for us. If there are students who are coming on those long and complex courses that have a break in their visa mid-course that would require them to expend more money or to go through a cycle again with the Home Office, it did not make much sense from colleagues in Universities UK or in the individual institutions. We are very pleased that, having made representations on those issues over several months, that we have been able to get the adjustment that we were seeking. Mr Underwood: Might I supplement Professor Wellings' answer on that? This is not a complaint, to use Mr Davies' word, but it is a fact that we spent something like seven months or so lobbying on this issue involving vice chancellors, peers and others to press our case for a change which now in retrospect looks completely straightforward and simple. This is illustrative of the nature of the discussion we as a sector have been having with UKBA over a period. Q203 Chairman: At what level are you dealing with UKBA? I would have thought that those who represent the universities would have access to the very highest levels so you are able to put your case in a very straightforward way. What kind of level are you dealing with here? Mr Underwood: We have been fairly inventive as a sector, including through Universities UK in whom we have been lobbying, so we have been lobbying everybody from minsters through the senior levels of UKBA to the people who have been attending meetings with us. Q204 Mr Streeter: This is a question to each of you. In the worst case scenario, if this new system does not work this year, and you have October coming down the track at you, what could happen? What are we looking at if this new system, particularly the IT element of it, and government agencies and IT systems do not fly very high, all goes belly up? Mr Underwood: From the point of view of LSE, we face considerable uncertainty in this area anyway. Each year, in recruiting international students, we do not really know what the conversion rate will be until it happens - conversion rate in the sense of people who apply to us, receive offers, accept those offers - and how many of those convert to actually turning up. Every year there is a certain element of almost magic around September when we finally find out how many students we have. I think with this we would be totally unable to plan for the year that is happening around us, because these students are starting in September/October, the financial year starts in August. From the point of view of our finances, given the volume of fee income that I talked about earlier, this could be very dramatic to us as an institution indeed. I think that this would be the same across the sector but probably not on the same proportionate scale that it was for us. This would mean that we would find ourselves, for example, with issues of staffing (staff employed without the students to teach), potentially, particularly on some courses which are very highly international student based, and we could find ourselves in a position where we are more or less having to rearrange substantial parts of our curriculum and our timetable at very short notice indeed. Professor Wellings: As I indicated earlier, there are around 240,000 international students. I think that means that we are bringing into the country each year in excess of 80,000 people, roughly one-third of that cohort. Universities across the United Kingdom have an average surplus of around 1%; it varies between institutions. You only have to do the arithmetic to realise that a substantial portion of the sector would go into deficit, and that would lead to some of the short-term mitigation issues that Mr Underwood has just identified. There are some very strategic things that would then follow very quickly. We know, for example, that in engineering and technology at postgraduate level there are 6,400 UK and European students and 6,600 international students. If we got that wrong and it was disproportionate in a subject like engineering, you would see a massive downturn in the ability of universities to supply those courses. Similarly in computer science, 7,770 UK students at postgraduate taught level (these are the one-year course) and 8,300 international. You would see rather forensic holes appearing in the system at discipline level that would be really rather unintended and potentially quite deleterious to the UK's economy going forward. That is the real risk. It is not just a short-term effect; it is actually some of the long-term sustainability issues around that. Q205 Mr Streeter: Mr Underwood, on the things you have been calling CASs (Certificate of Acceptance for Studies), have you now got a deal with the UK Border Agency that where there are multiple applications, they will issue certificates to the same student? Mr Underwood: That is certainly better than the original proposal which the UKBA made to us, which was in effect one student/one CAS. We did put to them an alternative solution, which was based, in effect, upon a system vouching for a student at the point when the student applied for a visa. We saw that as a much more effective and efficient model for us, for the student, and ultimately for the UKBA, but they rejected that in the discussions. We can certainly live with the compromise we have. One issue we are encountering, though, is variability in what the UKBA will give to individual institutions in terms of the volume of CAS. Some institutions are getting the volume that they asked for, where others are having the numbers that they requested cut back, in some cases to less than half. This is one of the things, if I might just broaden this answer out very slightly and quickly, that is a concern about differences of interpretation between different regional areas and also the more operational people making decisions which, in effect, undercut the kinds of compromises which we agreed in the discussions. Q206 Mr Winnick: As you know, gentlemen, the changes will mean that foreign students will have to demonstrate a minimum standard of English language understanding. Do you take the view, either of you, that in the past at least certain colleges, not only the bogus ones but established institutions, have in fact lowered standards as far as the English language is concerned because it is profitable to get overseas students into the \united Kingdom? Such accusations have been made. Professor Wellings: I have certainly heard those accusations. From the perspective of Universities UK, I do not think that would be true. I think all universities in the United Kingdom are quality-assured, and we are very sensitive to the standards of students who come in. There is no point in a university like mine, for example, registering students who are not capable of taking that course of study. We have used the ILEs scores, and of course they vary between institutions. The minimum threshold for ILEs to get into a UK university is set at a standard where people would have English competence for those courses. Q207 Mr Winnick: You plead not guilty to that? Professor Wellings: There may be guilt for some of the colleges on the high street but applied to anything that is called a university, I do not think that accusation would stand. Q208 Mr Winnick: Mr Underwood would never dream in a thousand years of taking students because it is profitable to do so? Mr Underwood: Absolutely not. The purpose of the LSE as a highly distinctive institution in the UK sector and it is globally know for this --- Chairman: You do not have to sell the virtues of the LSE. None of us went to the LSE. Q209 Mr Winnick: I must correct that. If I say anything too critical of the LSE, I will never be invited back. Mr Underwood: I would make sure you did not! Q210 Mr Winnick: If I can continue, however, do you take the view that the new minimum standards which are coming in, and which the Government are quite determined on, will weed out weaker students and in fact will be an advantage to genuine higher education? Professor Wellings: I think that would be true. Anything that sets a minimum threshold that is clearly defined for UK universities will be very helpful. I suspect that all of our institutions already pass that threshold test. Mr Underwood: Certainly anything that helps weed out the bogus institutions is of great importance to us. Q211 Martin Salter: Representing a constituency like Reading, I have a substantial immigration case load and I am deeply concerned about high street colleges that have established themselves as no more than visa factories. Is it a matter of some embarrassment to you that there are organisations out there that are seeking, if you like, to piggy-back on the good name of higher education in this country purely in order to operate a commercial franchise? Do you have any suggestions that you could put to us as to how the Government could do a little bit more to clamp down on the bogus colleges, and I am using your definition? Mr Underwood: Put like that, the answer is: yes, it is a matter of embarrassment to the sector. A lot of effort goes in through organisations like the QAA to try to keep this under control, but certainly the accreditation element of what is happening with the points-based system is something that we welcome wholly. Q212 Martin Salter: How do you think it will actually bear down on this abuse of our immigration rules? Professor Wellings: I think it will make it much more difficult for students who are not pre‑qualified to come to university to get into those colleges because the thresholds will be set. The licence to operate for those colleges that are recruiting very poor students will be quite restrictive. We are assuming that officers in-country on looking at the visa system will be able to use those criteria to exclude weak students from the outset. We welcome as a long overdue move the clap down on bogus and poor quality operators. We think that this will strengthen the UK higher education system in the long run. Q213 Chairman: The anecdotal evidence that certainly I and others have received is that students who used to come to the UK have decided to go elsewhere, perhaps to the United States. Has there been any comparison made by yourselves as to the difference in obtaining entry clearance in the UK to study at a university like the LSE or going to America and studying at a university like Harvard? Is it easier to get there, not in terms of academic qualifications but in terms of visa requirements? Mr Underwood: It is premature to make those comparisons because we do not really know what the shape of the points-based system is. There is still a fair amount to be settled, even in the space of the next few weeks before it is up and running. Q214 Chairman: Presumably that worries you? Mr Underwood: Yes, deeply; we will have to be implementing this system in the space of about a month and at the moment the specifications are still very much in draft. This is a point Professor Wellings was making earlier about the speed with which we are implementing major administrative change within a very large area of activity. In answer to your question, no we have not made those comparisons yet, not least because also just as we are changing, other countries are changing too. It used to be much more difficult to get into America than it is now. This is an essential part of a kind of global higher educationalist approach and we do need to be mindful of that. Q215 Chairman: As constituency MPs, we often get people turning up at our surgeries, the sponsors of students, complaining about a decision being made by the entry clearance officers. Do you think there ought to be a right of appeal under the points-based system? At the moment, of course there are two administrative reviews but that is done internally by the Home Office. Do you feel that a right of appeal would be useful in this situation? Mr Underwood: From our point of view, yes. Professor Wellings: I think the UUK position is that we should retain for visa refusals a right of appeal. There is a distinction here where entry clearance officers have to look at a new system instantly overnight. We know that there will be some wrinkles in that system. It strikes us as being slightly perverse that you would not allow a right of appeal against a very new system where entry clearance officers were clearly having to make judgments that they have never been charged to make before. Chairman: Thank you very much, Professor Wellings and Mr Underwood, for giving evidence to us today. If there are nay other issues that you wish to raise with us, the inquiry is incomplete, please do not hesitate to write and keep us informed. Memoranda submitted by National Campaign for the Arts and Royal Opera House Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Ms Louise De Winter, Director, National Campaign for the Arts, Mr Malcolm Clay, Secretary, Association of Circus Proprietors, and Ms Ruth Jarratt, Director of Policy Development, Royal Opera House, gave evidence. Q216 Chairman: Mr Clay, Ms Jarratt and Ms De Winter, thank you for coming here today to give evidence to the committee. I will not reintroduce the nature of the inquiry as I saw that you were sitting in the public gallery. Could I start with you first, Ms De Winter: what proportion of artists in leading UK arts organisations come from outside the EU? Ms De Winter: May I just open by saying that we very much welcome your committee's inquiry today. This is a huge issue that concerns many of our members, and indeed the sector more widely. In terms of the proportion that come to the UK, that is quite a difficult question to answer. We would have to look at both levels of entry, whether they are coming in under Tier 2, which are the more permanent settlers, or under Tier 5, the more temporary workers. We would say that the vast majority of artists will come in under Tier 5. Those that come in under Tier 5 would probably only be coming in for a tour or a gig or maybe to attend a festival or event. We did survey some of our membership about this last year. These are only rough percentages I will have to give you. When we surveyed our members, 55% said they brought between one and 50 artists into the UK over a two-year period; 10% had brought between 50 and 100; 23% had brought in up to 1000, and we suspect those are mainly the promoters. Then the remainder said they brought in too many, they had not counted them. Those figures were over a two-year period. I would suggest they were mainly for Tier 5. We have managed to survey some of our main national institutions that perhaps would be more likely to have more artists coming in under Tier 2, but again it has been a very limited survey and a very limited picture. What we have are the main numbers of figures for dancers; they vary between 13 and 40%, but again the caveat is that we are talking about institutions that have quite small employment figures anyway, so these figures sound larger proportionately because of that. Artistic, music, administrative and technical staff is 1% and orchestral musicians 1 to 2%. Q217 Mr Streeter: What criteria are used for appointing lead singers and dancers or circus performers? As this is the country of Darcy Bussell, Amy Whitehouse and even Coco the Clown, why on earth can we not just appoint artists from within the UK or the EU? Ms Jarratt: May I start by talking about the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet. The two companies, the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera, are clearly amongst the very top companies in the world. To maintain that position, we do need to bring in either on a long-term basis, particularly to be a member of the ballet company, or on a short-term basis to take part in an opera production, the very best singers, dancers, choreographers and conductors in the world. We totally treasure Darcy Bussell and her kin - she has of course just retired - but we cannot at the moment find the best 90 dancers in the world all from the UK. Mr Clay: With circus artists, I think there is a need for circuses to show something different every year. Some circuses will change their programmes every year; some circuses will perhaps change them every two years. Although we did have a long tradition of producing acrobats and bare-back riders particularly in this country, we no longer do. The present generation of circus children are not interested in learning the traditional skills. There is probably more interest from outside circuses - that is why you see so many jugglers on street corners - but none of those people actually want to do it six times a week professionally. The source is the countries that have had until recently, and some still have, very rigorous state training schools - in eastern Europe, in China - that are still producing performers of an international level. Things like Cirque du Soleil have rejuvenated British circus, and people do look for unusual and exciting acts and we just do not have the facilities or the interest for training those people. Regrettably, we do not have old British circus performers who want to pass their routines on to the next generation. They seem to want to take them to the grave with them. Q218 Patrick Mercer: How do you respond to concerns expressed by those such as Equity that the new system risks undercutting British artists, many of whom are already out of work, by bringing in non-EU performers and in inferior conditions? What is your view on that? Ms De Winter: We have worked quite closely with Equity and with other management associations to draft codes of practice and agree codes of practice for resident labour market testing. We now have those for most of the areas of work that artists would come into the UK on, so they are for performers, technical staff, dancers, actors, the works. We have agreed with them what the levels are for people to be able to come into the UK in the first place. So (a) we do not think there is necessarily a big problem because of that, but (b), as I have said, most of the artists will come in, sometimes just for one night. Sometimes they are on a guest tour. In many ways, it depends on the level of the skill and the work they are undertaking. As Ruth Jarratt has said, obviously there is a huge international pool of talent that one needs to go to for the very top jobs. Thereafter, most people come in briefly. They are not here to settle; they are just here to do a gig. I think there is an argument they are not displacing British workers. After all, it is very hard to justify British morris dancers dancing Hungarian folk dance, or even British circus providers working for Chinese State Circus. People go to see certain things. Q219 Chairman: There is no huge demand for British clowns for British circuses? Equity is not upset about this, is it? Mr Clay: I have been on the Tier 5 taskforce since its inception. I have quite a close relationship with Equity and Equity accepts that there is not a pool of British unemployed circuses performers. There are some British circus performers to an international standard and they tend to be working internationally and not in this country, but we do not have a problem with Equity. For a lot of reasons, we would prefer to have far more British artists. Q220 Mrs Dean: Ms De Winter, is it your view that many performers or artists would struggle to meet the points requirement for Tier 2? Ms De Winter: We do still have some concerns over this, yes. This is an area on which we still have not had proper resolution. Artists will need a minimum of 70 points to come in; 50 of those are under the attributes. In terms of ballet dancers, we have managed to get ballet dancers listed as a shortage occupation, so that helps a little. We are working with the Migration Advisory Committee about other levels of contemporary dancers as well and for some levels of orchestral musicians. If people can come in under the resident labour market testing, that gives them 30 points. We still then have to find the other 40 point to allow people in. The big area of contention and a problem for our artists is the issue around qualifications. Obviously, you do not need academic qualifications to be good at acting or dancing or playing the violin. Those are areas where we still do not entirely understand or really have some strong guidance on as to how much issues like training or a track record in performance might count towards the points system. Q221 Mrs Dean: Do you have a solution of what criteria could be found? Ms De Winter: We have had indications from Home Office and UKBA that they will take things like levels of training, who one has trained with and a track record of performance into account, but, as I have said, we do not entirely know yet how many points they will allocate for those. Q222 Martin Salter: Mr Clay, the points-based system brings in under Tier 2 an entry point, which I think is set at 50 points for attributes not including salary, 10 points for English language and 10 points for maintenance. Given that I would imagine the Borders and Immigration Agency are not so au fait with how you choose to regulate or judge the quality of circus performing, is there not a danger that the bar for the Tier 2 system could be set at a point which restricts the entry of highly qualified circus performers? Mr Clay: My view and the view of the industry is that Tier 2 is totally inappropriate to circus performers. They are on an international circuit. They come into this country specifically to perform for a contract. They are not contracted with a view to them settling in this country. At the end of that contract, they move on. We are not concerned about their leave to remain here. I do not believe that there are any circus proprietors who in fact have registered as sponsors for Tier 2. Tier 5 is ideal for our industry. Q223 Martin Salter: Do you believe that Tier 5 will be the route by which circus performers will come into the country and it should not be problematic? Mr Clay: Yes. They will all be Tier 5. They will come in for a contract, work for the period of that contract and then move out of the country. Q224 Ms Buck: Can I ask you, Ms Jarratt, about the Government's inclusion of ballet dancers on the shortage occupation list. Does that meet the concerns that you would have as a sector, in particular in respect of dance? Ms Jarratt: Yes. We were very pleased with that response. As Louise De Winter mentioned, we jointly lobbied the committee. I think they completely understood the situation. It is not a threat to local workers, if you like. The point that Louise made is that there are not standard academic qualifications that are relevant to ballet dancers, and we think it is the simplest, cleanest and most appropriate solution. We are very pleased. Q225 Ms Buck: Perhaps all of you might have a view on this. Could I ask you on the issue of an emergency replacement for a high profile international performer and whether you could give us an indication of how that works out, how you think this will be affected by the new system and what negotiations you are having with the Home Office about how such a problem might be dealt with? Ms Jarratt: If I may lead on this one, because this is an issue that occurs particularly with our opera company, in singing if you get a sore throat, it does for your performance that night or possibly the next couple of nights. It regularly occurs that we have international performers who wake up in the morning or go to bed at night realising they shall not be able to perform for the next day or two. What we have to do in these situations is to try and get somebody who is close to hand, somebody who knows the part, somebody who is of sufficient international standing that they can hold the Covent Garden stage. Obviously, if that is somebody with an appropriate passport, that makes life a lot easier, but it does sometimes happen that that is not the case. If I may give you a small example from some years back, when we were performing Boris Godunov, a Russian opera, the great Russian singers turned out indeed to be Russian. The guy woke up in the morning saying he would be unable to sing that night. We located Vladimir Galouzine, a Russian. He was the only person who would have fitted the bill. Without him coming, we would have had to cancel the performance, which in today's money would have cost us up to a quarter of a million pounds. With the help of the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, we were literally able to get Vladimir Galouzine into the country and onto the stage. By the time he was on the stage that night, he had the work permit. The reason for this story is that the issue then was the work permit. The issue now is the biometric visa. A work visa could probably be issued in time. In that situation, we do not know how we would do it. It is not clear to us yet that the Home Office actually knows how they would do it. Q226 Ms Buck: Is it not inconceivable that a performance artist at that level would not have some form of colour biometric ID or could not have it as a standby? Surely these people will be travelling internationally at a moment's notice in any event? Ms Jarratt: My understanding is there will be a period of time when not all countries will be requiring biometric visas. I think I understand that in a number of years this situation may be resolved but for some years, maybe up to five, I think we could be in difficulties. Q227 Chairman: It depends on the country, of course. Some countries will ask you to apply each time because they do not want to hold the data. Mr Clay: May I comment that the previous system was the envy of the circus industry across Europe. We had a great system for issuing work permits. The staff working in Sheffield were absolutely superb. The problems were with visas rather than with work permits. My sector is probably lucky that we are not dealing with named artists. If someone perhaps breaks a leg and we need to replace a member of the troupe, we can probably cover for a few days. I am certainly not going to criticise the previous work permit system. When I talk to my colleagues in Germany, they cannot believe how good the British system is. Q228 Chairman: So it is a better system? Mr Clay: I do not think it was a better system because the previous system was let down by the visa requirements. Q229 Chairman:
You mean the post aboard; when you went there, you got your visa from
Sheffield? Ms De Winter: To amplify on Ruth's points about the time it would now take to get biometrics, as you yourself said, most countries expect people at the moment to submit them every time. There are difficulties about where some of the posts are where you can get the biometrics processed. Something that could potentially have been turned round in a matter of hours now takes as much as up to 10 days. Q230 Mr Winnick: I want to ask you a question, Mr Clay, but, with the Chairman's permission, may I just come back to you, Ms De Winter, about overseas performers coming into the UK. The fact remains that on the information we have, Equity claims that almost two-thirds of all its members are likely to be unemployed on any given day. In view of those circumstances and at the expense of being rather parochial, it is difficult to see a good deal of justification for people coming in where the work could be undertaken by Equity members. Ms De Winter: I do not actually agree with that. I do not disagree with their statistics but I do not agree that people coming in are displacing British workers and British jobs. What we have is a situation where there is always a lot of people who are unemployed, unfortunately, in the cultural sector, and particularly amongst actors. That is very much the nature of the territory. Secondly, I think there is potentially an argument that we could make about visiting artists coming into the UK, adding to the cultural life of the country and potentially adding to the economic viability of some of the institutions that receive them. Some of the venues perhaps putting on some of the performers might struggle if there was not the rich mix of different types of artists coming through. Q231 Mr Winnick: I understand that but obviously it would be a farcical situation if no-one came into the UK; in other words, you could have a position when no-one in the UK would be performing, and of course many of our actors are performing very distinctive roles, certainly in America. It is a question of balance. If some actor wanted to play your namesake surname, I am sure they could be found in Britain without going abroad. Ms De Winter: There are already checks and balances in place mainly for actors anyway. If we are talking about actors, they do not tend to be the ones who are coming in. They might be coming in for a run but there is already the bilateral agreement between the UK and America, for example, between Equity and the association over there. Most of the artists who are coming in a temporary basis do tend to be dancers and musicians, on the whole. Q232 Mr Winnick: Mr Clay, you have a problem about people being only allowed to come in for 12 months. Your argument is that it should be at least two years. What is the Home Office viewpoint? Mr Clay: The original proposals were that although Tier 5 permits a two-year entry, entertainers were to be limited to 12 months. I gather that for every other sector this is acceptable because concert artists, et cetera, are in and out of the country within 12 months. The Chinese State Circus, which is a troupe of 40 people, does a two-year tour of the UK and at the end of two years the programme is changed and a different troupe comes in. They work almost continuously. They work in a tent from March to November; they then work in theatres over the winter; and back into the tent. They have been having a break and have gone home and then come back again for the second year. The problem is that this is an industry where acts often work for two years but not necessarily for the same management. A troupe may come in and work for one circus for a year, and perhaps then go into a pantomime, and then go for a different circus which is in a totally different part of the UK. It does seem strange with a system which basically permits two years and there is no right of leave to remain being acquired that entertainers should be limited to 12 months. I cannot understand the logic in it. The compromise which I achieved following my meeting with Liam Byrne is that the leave to remain may be extended in-country if the troupe is going to continue to work for the same sponsor. The problem with the 12 months is that not only are you limited to 12 months, you cannot apply in-country for renewal further. Chairman: We will be coming on to that. Q233 Mr Winnick: Could it be the position, like what I asked Ms De Winter, that the Home Office have in mind the need to protect British circus performers? Mr Clay: No. In the older days of work permits, we had an agreement with Equity that we would go to Equity and see which Equity members were unemployed. Equity now accepts that they do not have a list of unemployed circus performers. The one problem with lists is that they do not assess talent. Someone who can stand outside Marks and Spencer and juggle three clubs may look quite effective but really in the circus world you want someone who can juggle seven clubs to get to that skill level. Those people are not on Equity's list. The list itself, if there was one, can be misleading because it does not give levels of skill. Q234 Mr Winnick: And you are pursuing this with the Home Office, presumably? Mr Clay: Yes. Q235 Mr Streeter: Mr Clay, it is not unknown, is it, for circus performers from, say, Russia or China, to come over here and then claim asylum or disappear into the undergrowth? I think I have read about this in the last couple of years. It does happen, does it not? Mr Clay: Inevitably, particularly the east Europeans, tend to be young; the boys meet girls here and perhaps want to stay. We do not agree with it. If we were aware of it, we would report it to the Home Office, but I think the incidence is very, very low. Q236 Mr Winnick: You are against boys meeting girls? Mr Clay: No. I am against people coming in on work permits for one purpose and then wanting to stay. Q237 Martin Salter: That is the nature of love, is it not? Mr Clay: It is the nature of love but it reflects badly on all of us. Chairman: Perhaps this is outside the remit of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Q238 David Davies: I am somebody who is married to an eastern European, former au pair. The current situation with in-country applications means that people have to go back to their country to re-apply. I wonder what your impression is on the impact that is going to have on people. Mr Clay: I think the impact is on my sector. If they have been issued with a certificate of sponsorship, the new form of work permit, then quite clearly the employer accepts that they are suitable for employment. To send them home to South America or to China, or wherever, to apply for entry clearance when they already hold a piece of paper to say that they are entitled to work here just does not seem logical. Q239 David Davies: Mr Salter has a point, does he not? Boys meet girls, or people find other means of employment, and this country is a magnet for people across the whole world. There have to be rules and they have to be strictly adhered to. Mr Clay: Yes, but this is Tier 5, because I am limited to Tier 5, so within Tier 5, they have not come with any right to remain. Q240 Mr Davies: But they will remain. Mr Clay: They should not remain. Q241 Mr Davies: But that they do - that is the reality - and they have done, lots of them. That is the truth though, is it not? Mr Clay: I would not say lots of them; there are certain ones who have stayed and it has been very difficult but under the new system because the entertainers are isolated --- Mr Davies: I do not blame them; I like them and I call them friends, but I know lots of Eastern Europeans who before they came into the EU and had the right to came over here, liked it and stayed and worked in ... Q242 Chairman: Rudolf Nureyev I think was one of them. Mr Clay: Yes, but I am looking at circus performers who are largely on an international circuit and having finished one contract here have another contract to move on to in France, Germany, Italy or where else. The incidence of circus performers overstaying I think is very, very few and far between. Martin Salter: Are we seriously trying to suggest - since we are in open session - that Britain is groaning under a tidal wave of overstaying circus people? For goodness sake! Are we not supposed to be treating this seriously? Chairman: We are. Mr Salter, you are quite right. Martin Salter: Turnip pickers, yes. Q243 Chairman: Mr Clay did say in evidence that the examples are very, very small. Can I ask you a question in conclusion about the previous regime and the way in which you dealt with the previous regime? Obviously over the years you will know in your various sectors who to deal with at Sheffield and you build up a relationship with these heads of sections. Under the present system of course there is no right of appeal; there is an administrative review followed by another administrative review. Do you think there ought to be a right of appeal? Can I ask each one of you in turn, starting with you, Ms De Winter? Ms De Winter: Yes, definitely. As the gentleman earlier from university said, not to be able to appeal against a new system would be a little bit perverse. Also to take up your point, at the moment there are real problems and issues with the system, primarily because we are dealing with a number of different people - the people seem to change on quite a frequent and regular basis, whereas before there was one named point of contact who knew about your sector and about particular case histories. There is not that at the moment and we would really like to see that reintroduced so that people actually understand how the arts sector and the cultural economy operates so that they can actually answer some of the very difficult and individual queries about which people are going to them. Ms Jarratt: I would like to echo that and also to say that certainly at the moment it is hard to find people to talk to who agree even in the advice that they are giving to us. Q244 Chairman: You mentioned a particular case and our next session with the Minister, who has just arrived outside, is all about the way in which Members of Parliament make representations when the system does not work. People tend to come to MPs at the end of the process. You mentioned a particular case where you went to the Home Secretary, presumably an emergency case as you have described. Ms Jarratt: Yes. Q245 Chairman: Presumably that is not going to be a substitute for a proper right of appeal before an independent judge? Ms Jarratt: Indeed not because those, as you say, have been reserved for very, very, very rare and exceptional circumstances; but the run of the mill, the 40 or 50 people that we are looking to bring in every year on a Tier 2 or Tier 5, that would need something more like the right of appeal. Q246 Chairman: Mr Clay, what about you? Mr Clay: I would agree entirely with what has been said, particularly in these early stages where we are getting decisions which we cannot understand, but which we feel strongly are based on a lack of understanding of the new regulations. There is no immediate appeal; probably the only way is to make a very quick fresh appeal with the costs that are involved. There needs to be first of all reasonable channels of contact; secondly, a speedy appeal procedure. Q247 Chairman: You obviously through your industry will have known of the immigration practice in other countries. I am not sure which country would compare to the United Kingdom in terms of circus performers. How do you compare our immigration system for artists, circus performers with other countries? Mr Clay: There is in Europe, you are probably aware, is it the Schengen system? Q248 Chairman: Schengen. Mr Clay: Where acts can move round Member States far easier than they can here. I do not hear problems, say, of people getting visas to go and work in France. The initial system is slow for the work permits but the visa system seems to be a lot smoother. Chairman: Mr Clay, Ms Jarratt and Ms De Winter, thank you very much for giving evidence to us. Our inquiry is not concluded. If you would like to send us any evidence, any statistics that you feel would be helpful to this Committee, please do so. Thank you very much. That concludes the first part of this morning's session and we will take a short adjournment before we begin the next section. |