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The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, can the noble Lord help me as I am a genuine seeker after information? My daughter is a doctor and, when she did her houseman's training, there was no Working Time Directive. The directive has now cut the hours to a 44-hour week, if I am not mistaken. Before that, junior doctors were doing an awful lot more and gaining more training and more experience. How has the problem of what is, in effect, a reduction in productivity been overcome?
Lord Warner: My Lords, it has been overcome with the usual adaptation and ingenuity of the NHS, to which I pay tribute.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: My Lords, I very much welcome the information that my noble friend has been able to give about the increase in the number of people entering the profession. However, can he say what the Government are doing to increase the interest that medical graduates are prepared to take in the rather less glamorous specialties? I have a particular interest in the current shortfall in specialists in psychiatric medicine. Can he say what efforts are being made to close the gap?
Lord Warner: My Lords, specialty areas continue to seem to be less popular with people qualifying as doctors. We continue to work with all the interested parties to try to ensure that there is a good understanding of the opportunities in those areas. I do
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not have the precise figures in the specialty that my noble friend mentioned but I shall look into it and, if I can shed any more light, I shall write to her.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, can the Minister tell the House how many doctors and nurses now working in the United Kingdom are from Africa? Will he reflect on the criticisms made by the BMA yesterday that it is immoral to rely on thousands of people who are trained as doctors and nurses in Africa when we are not training enough graduates in this country to fill those needs?
Lord Warner: My Lords, people have a right to come here to train. We have a long tradition of helping doctors from around the world both to become trained and qualified and to improve their postgraduate qualifications. I say to the noble Lord that the number of home graduates accepted to study medicine in the UK increased from 281 in the 1994 intake to 1,303 in 2003. Therefore, the increase in numbers in our medical training schools comes predominantly from people from within this country, and we have undertakings and understandings with different countries not to over-attract people to come to work in this country, thus denuding them of medical and nursing expertise.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords—
The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Amos): My Lords, the Liberal Democrats.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, given that all 29 medical schools in this country have reported an over-subscription to their courses and that last year 120 people from the United Kingdom sought medical training in places as far afield as the Cayman Islands and Prague, can the Minister say what the Government are doing to ensure that there is a sufficient number of teachers of clinical medicine in this country?
Lord Warner: My Lords, I tried to address that issue when I responded to the noble Earl, Lord Howe.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, what is the Government's attitude to the establishment of a private medical school, which will certainly increase the number of medical graduates?
Lord Warner: My Lords, it is for the General Medical Council to decide and determine the suitability of particular places to carry out medical training. There are no plans, as I understand it, for a particular school to be endorsed, but no doubt if in the medium to long term there is an expansion of medical school places, consideration will be given by the GMC to any proposals coming out of the private sector.
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Overseas Students
Lord Renton of Mount Harry asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether it remains their policy to encourage overseas students to come to English universities for their graduate and postgraduate courses.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Lord Filkin): My Lords, it is very much our policy to attract more international students to the UK. We recognise from the DfES international strategy the success and importance of the Prime Minister's initiative and emphasise our commitment to continue to expand the numbers of international students. We are currently considering a range of options for the recruitment of international students to the UK when the Prime Minister's initiative comes to an end in April.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry: My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the council of Sussex University. About 20 per cent of the university's students are international and they make an important contribution to its income and to its international reputation and knowledge.
Will the Minister explain his statement that the Government seriously wish to attract more overseas students, against the background of the Home Secretary's two statements, first, that international students will not be allowed to appeal to an independent agent if their visa application to study here is refused—despite the fact that the Immigration Advisory Service points out that about 65 per cent of such appeals are successful—and, secondly, the rise in visa application charges from £155 to £250 for postal applications and from £250 to £500 for applications in person?
Surely such measures are bound to put off young students from trying to come to universities in this country. They will look elsewhere instead.
Lord Filkin: My Lords, yes, I can. First, the regulatory impact assessment, published at the time the Home Office announced those charges, set out why the Home Office did not believe that that would have a significant impact by deterring applications to the UK from students wishing to study here. That is for a good reason; we are seeing growth rates of between 12 and 14 per cent in the number of students coming to the UK.
The second reason is that the appeal right is at this stage only a proposal. We do not recognise the figures of the Immigration Advisory Service from our data. In many cases, it is more sensible for the student to make another application electronically than to go through the delay of an appeal, which can take some months. Above all, I urge the noble Lord and others who have an interest in the matter to cast their eyes to the bigger picture rather than at
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the narrow tree of this issue, which is obsessing the House, and to look at the massive expansion in the potential of UK education exports over the next two decades. There is a massive market there for us if we can focus on it and seize it.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the London School of Commerce. Is my noble friend aware that overseas students should not only be encouraged to our universities but also to the high-quality private providers who are working collaboratively with British universities? Is he also aware that the greatest encouragement to both those entering the universities and the private sector of higher education is the significant progress made in recent months by UK Visas in achieving a much smoother pattern in the issue of UK visas? I hope that my noble friend will assure the House that that progress will continue.
Lord Filkin: My Lords, yes, I can. UK Visas has committed to raising its standards as part of the service. Of course, the fundamental question is how much the noble Lord, Lord Renton, believes that taxpayers should subsidise the cost of administering visas to foreign students. Does he believe that the taxpayers should subsidise them totally or only in part, as we are currently proposing to do? The big issue is the enormous expansion that has taken place in HE and FE education over the past five years. We have almost doubled the value of UK educational exports in this country and we intend to go further, in partnership with private sector providers, as was signalled, and we are confident that we will be able to do so, as the Chancellor recently indicated.
Lord Quirk: My Lords, has the Minister seen the report in the current issue of the Economist, which states that overseas student applications to this country have in fact fallen this year by a hefty 5.3 per cent? But is he aware that the universities will at least take heart from what he has said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, about visa appeal matters, just as they took heart when the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, spoke on 8 February (col. 656) on the continuing "availability of an appeals system", the very day Her Majesty's Government announced their plans to remove it?
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