You may have heard rumblings in the news recently about plans to ‘curb’ immigration, by changing the rules so as to prevent foreign postgraduate students at U.K. universities from bringing family members to the U.K. with them. This comes off the back of an awful lot of ‘pitch rolling’ for an announcement that net migration to the U.K. has been in the region of 700,000 – 1,000,000 over the past year. Clearly, the Government wants to be seen to be doing something, and to have things under control. And this move might actually help matters (even while deflecting attention away from the fact that it is a problem almost entirely of the Tory party’s own making). Is it to be hoped that we are going to see a rational discussion emerge about the scale of immigration into the U.K.? Not judging by the reaction of the chattering classes, but perhaps among the people who actually count – i.e., the electorate.
First things first: the postgraduate dependant issue may sound like a fringe one, but it is genuinely important. In 2019, the Government changed the rules for foreign students, permitting them to stay in the country for two years (on a Graduate Visa) after their course has finished to look for work – the idea being, of course, that they will then find jobs and stay for longer. No doubt the government thought this was a brilliant wheeze for boosting the economy. And no doubt there was a similar rationale for allowing dependants of postgraduate students to also come to, and stay, in the U.K.: it would encourage more people to study at U.K. universities and hopefully contribute to the economy afterwards.
But – entirely predictably – this new scheme rapidly turned into a gravy train, the true scale of which has been concealed by the fact that universities are very reluctant to talk about it. Basically, U.K. universities are in a tough position financially at the moment. The number of domestic students is flatlining and will gradually decline over time due to falling birth rates. At the same time, inflation is increasing and universities haven’t been allowed to charge more in the way of fees. They are therefore being squeezed. What, then is a university VC to do? The only way to shore up, and hopefully increase, student numbers in these circumstances is to try to get more international students in. (In this way, of course, universities are a kind of microcosm for the U.K. economy as a whole.) Naturally, VCs seized upon these changes to the visa rules as a way to inflate international student numbers – by dreaming up myriad new taught master’s degrees with almost nothing in the way of entry requirements, advertised almost exclusively in overseas markets, and nakedly billed to prospective students as a pathway to employment in the U.K. The message has been simple: “Come to us to study for a two-year MA in International Something or Other, bring your family, and you will get a student visa, which will then allow you to matriculate to a graduate visa, and hence in the fullness of time a working visa, and you and your dependants can all stay in the country for as long as you like. Oh, and by the way, the course will be a piece of the proverbial and you’ll barely have to do any studying at all. PS – Please give us £24k for the privilege.”
The result has been entirely predictable: huge numbers of bullshit postgraduate courses, huge numbers of international postgraduate students who aren’t actually here to study but to look for work, and huge numbers of demoralised staff and domestic students who are forced to deal with the consequences of large influxes of very bad and unmotivated people on university campuses. My university’s library, for example, has been utterly transformed into what I can only describe as a creche – full of the family members of international students, many of them children, simply treating the place as a kind of public square. And what goes on in the classroom is abysmal. When most of these students turn up, they haven’t done a lick of preparation or reading (why would they, when they are fundamentally not here to study, but to get a visa?), and very often spend their time disrupting the session because they have no respect for the university experience and basically don’t give a toss what happens so long as they get that all important graduation and hence graduate status. Meanwhile, the quality of the experience for domestic students goes down the toilet, and the entire educational calling of universities is utterly degraded and debased: we have in a very real sense been reduced to the status of a mere hoop which people have to jump through in order to migrate into the country on a semi-permanent basis.
This isn’t to mention the impact on house prices, public services, wages… the familiar litany. Even in terms of sheer numbers, the consequences have been shocking – according to the Beeb there were nearly 140,000 visas granted to dependants last year, up from around 19,000 in 2020 and around 50,000 in 2021. It is fashionable and trite to use the phrase ‘this is not sustainable’, but, well, this really isn’t sustainable.
But this also makes abolishing the ‘right’ (I hate the use of that word in this context) for dependants of postgraduate students to come to live in the U.K. a relatively ‘easy win’ to get net immigration down by a not inconsiderable amount, if done properly. And the move is therefore to be welcomed, as anyone with an ounce of common sense would realise.
Of course, common sense is in short supply in U.K. academia, and the reaction from that sector has been predictably foolish. The same BBC article as linked to above cites Jo Grady – the utterly incompetent General Secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) – calling the change a “vindictive move” (welcome to left wing politics in 2023, where it is vindictive for a Government to want to have some control over how many people enter the country), and Adam Habib, director of SOAS (by some distance the most easily caricatured loony-left academic institution in the country) bleating that this will create a “financial crisis” for those universities which are “dependent on the fee income of international students”. That becoming dependent on international student fees might not have been such a wise move in the first place is of course lost on him; the Government might reflect that a financial crisis at SOAS and other institutions like it may be precisely what the country needs right now.
But it is rarely worth taking the views of academics seriously. The wider point to be made is that, at long last, we might just be seeing the Conservative Party begin to do what it is supposed to do and respond to electoral forces. Long before the release of these latest figures, people could see for themselves just how widespread and rapid the increase in immigration has been since 2016. It is not racist, nor indeed in any sense illegitimate, to be worried about the effect this is all having on schools, hospitals, housing costs, wages, and so on. And people are actually now starting to talk about it properly where for a long time they were simply forbidden from doing so. The issue – and the fact that it has long been impossible to even discuss it as an issue – has been a running sore in our politics for too long. This move to cut down on international student dependants is a sign that, while it might be a while before the tanker turns completely, the Tory party is beginning to grasp that it has to do something about immigration or lose power for a generation.
Busqueros is a pseudonym.
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Expurgated version of the headline
“Labour Hasn’t Done its Homework”
The policy may well be “crackers” but it plays well to the audience Labour plays to. But I don’t much care whether it is crackers or not, I just think it’s wrong because it is a politically motivated attack on people exercising their free choice to opt out of the state indoctrination camps.
Well said – this is the heart of the matter. Not only do private schools enable people to escape indoctrination, they supply employment to a tranche of the educated class – like the author – who in one way, shape or form object to overweening state power. The left longs to impoverish such heretics. Finally, as bastions of high standards and free thought (now somewhat compromised), private institutions doubly expose the abysmal failure of the comprehensive dump. With Stalinist tenacity and no care at all for real world fallout, the malignant, oppressive goons of the left want to stamp them out. The darkness, in matters of schooling, policing, health, banking, foreign policy (the long kow-tow to red Beijing), the church, the media, the arts, journalism, has never been more Stygian in my lifetime.
Indeed – I would not want to work in any school (and few schools would have me, as I am Literally Hitler) but if I had to then an independent school could be an option, if it had the right leadership.
I went to a local boys’ private school as a day pupil back in the 1980s on an assisted place. My parents were both working and, with a lot of sacrifices, were able to send my brother and me to the school. When my Mum lost her job at our local TV station as a result of the 1990s’ ITV franchise war closing many TV stations around the country, I left the school because I wasn’t happy there and restarted my A Levels at a further education college. My brother left when he finished his GCSEs.
Now, there’d be no possibility of people like my brother and me ever going there in the first place. A VAT increase would wipe out even more pupils and close many. I can imagine all the schools are looking to the super-rich from abroad, the same as the universities.
From what I understand, my old school is a co-educational school now – I haven’t been involved with old boys’ clubs or anything. It’s likely woke as hell, doing everything the leftists want.
My conclusion is that the wealthy leftists who now run much of the left in this country want these schools for their children and no one else’s. We’re in the odd situation here – one that’s happened with Democrats in the USA – where the left are run by the super-rich and the right of centre, usually self-made, are less rich.
I live in an area of north London where the private schools have been taking unfair advantage of their privileged tax status in engaging in extremely expensive luxurious development projects to the detriment of their resident neighbours. These projects are driven by the headmater wanting to create a legacy but primarily in trying to cater nowadays for an extremely wealthy international clientele rather than as used to be local children. Private schools and universities too need to go back to looking after the locals not foreigners, otherwise privately educated people like me, will also question why they should be having these tax advantages.
Well that may be the case for the schools you have in mind and possibly others, but it’s surely not the case for all of them. You could also argue that people sending their kids to those schools are saving taxpayer’s money so why not reward that in part?
I think universities are a different case as they are effectively subsidised by the taxpayer because student “loans” are not loans and are underwritten by the government. You could also argue that charging foreign students/pupils lots of money subsidises it for the locals.
Why are they not loans? Interest is charged and they are repayable (unless you can’t afford to repay them) – you can’t just walk away from them if you earn sufficient income over many years.
It’s a graduate tax, not a loan. What other “loan” products are simply forgiven if you “don’t have enough money” to pay them back? When you take out a loan, both parties risk something – the lender risks not getting their money back, the lendee risks a CCJ and ruined credit score, or bankrupty. Students loans are risk-free for students and universities. The effect has been to subsidise a huge increase in people going to university partly from those who graduate and earn decent money, which I don’t think completely unreasonable, and partly from general taxation because such a high % of “loans” are likely to be defaulted on.
I could equally ask what tax are you aware of that is calculated by reference to a principal advanced and and annual interest rate. It feels like a blend of the two, possibly.
None that I am aware of but calling it a loan was political theatre so they had to dress it up, though to be fair it’s capped in terms of the total amount paid which is unusual for a tax
I’ve always found the charitable status odd. Are the ‘fees’ in effect a donation to a charity? The private school I went to had a lot of rundown areas, substandard desks and the lockers were rusty, battered and falling to bits. When I was at the end of my first year there, loads of posh new lockers got put in the entry hall, covered in plastic wrapping. Great! I thought. We’ll have those next year. I forgot about them over the summer holiday.
In the sixth form, the school’s fortunes had turned somewhat. The yearly intake had dropped by 25 per cent and half my year group quit after GCSEs to do A Levels elsewhere, which was a shock to the school. I left at the end of the first year sixth form. One time, I was in the school basement in the only year I did in the sixth form, helping a porter with move some tables. Those hundreds of ‘new’ lockers were all down there, still wrapped in plastic. They’d used the money from the likes of my parents and the state to buy new gear to keep for future generations, long after I was gone. I felt somewhat aggrieved about that, given the state of the lockers being used the whole time I was there. The school went fully co-ed a couple of years after I left. When I was there the sixth form, the school had quite a few girls, but they managed a paltry eight when I was in the sixth form.
Apparently lots of ex-pupils still hang out together at the school’s old boys’ club. I couldn’t imagine doing that. I got the hell out of there and never went back. Never really saw anyone from there again unless I bumped into them by chance. Lots went to the further education college. I had nothing in common with them anyway, being an assisted place pupil.
That said, parents who use private health and send their kids to private school should be able to get significant tax relief for taking the burden off the state system.
I think the schools qualify as “charities” if they meet certain criteria, such as offering x assisted places or having their pupils doing local community work (helping old folks, teaching reading in schools, etc) or allowing local residents access to sports facilities.
Hello, Chips here, there are not “tax advantages”. There would be “tax advantages” if other people were paying for Education and it was taxed. But they aren’t. 93pc of the market is provided via a state-run, state-funded near monopoly. The VAT-free status of top schools is not far off equivalent, per pupil, to the tax-paid expense in the state sector.
Nobody pays VAT on education. Some people get their education for “free”. Those that pay handsomely are not using the “free” education they are entitled to, they are instead paying quantities of income tax etc to buy education a second time.
I’m pretty convinced that nobody in Labour cares about arcane stuff like second- and third-order effects. They simply need money. And hence, they’re looking for a way to raise indirect taxes people cannot avoid by clever tax evasion schemes. They’re going to raise whatever can be raised and find then out what the outcome will be.
Indeed – and if they can do that by taxing the “rich” then so much the better.
And ‘rich’, in the left’s view, means ‘middle class’. ‘Super rich’ don’t count as they’re the Labour donor class.
Indeed. Most people I know are middle class but are well off enough to live in areas with reasonable state schools, so they will be happy to continue voting Labour, as most of them already do.
There is the conundrum in Labour. From their ivory towers, their six figure salaries and plush lives, I doubt if any Labour politician even knows any poor people anymore (Maybe a cleaner or their gardener). They have no connection with the granite of our nation and cannot grasp the obvious truth that the ONLY people who are taxed in our country are the rich. The only way to make more taxes is to MAKE MORE PEOPLE RICH.
Its the age old story of the guy driving past the bus queue in his Rolls Royce. The Free marketeer will say. ‘Gosh, If I work hard, I might have one of those one day’, and the Socialist will say ‘Look at him, Why doesn’t he catch the bus like us.?’. C’est la vie comrade.
They have no connection with the granite of our nation and cannot grasp the obvious truth that the ONLY people who are taxed in our country are the rich.
That’s obviously wrong because there are plenty of indirect taxes on all kinds of things (and probably second-order indirect taxes, too, eg, assuming someone buys a beer, that someone pays alcohol duty on the price of the beer and VAT on the price of the beer plus alcohol duty — at least, that’s how it works in Germany) and these not only affect everyone, they also affect poorer people disproportionally because these have to spend a higher part of their income which is thus subject to such taxation.
I’m also pretty certain that I’m being taxed and while I earn enough to make savings, I’m far from rich. Rich people own property and can thus make handy amounts of money without working (I’m meanwhile paying £1000 per month as rent for a pretty run-down and chronically mould-infested flat which cannot really be heated in winter, at least not to temperatures people apparently take for granted, ie, something in excess of 15 degrees centigrade [probably less — occasional chattering of teeth on colder days is a regular occurence]).
Fair comment. I had income taxes in my mind when I was typing
.
Hello, Chips here. If Labour don’t care about the effects, which are not “arcane” they are the reality of people’s lives, they must not form a government.
I wonder what is your point….do you agree with me they won’t raise any tax, and will probably cost more, therefore it’s a terrible policy? Or do you instead believe it will raise £1.5bn or whatever, in which case please explain why my reasoning is wrong? Or do you think it’s OK for Labour to wage class war and never mind the cost….that harming posh people is a pleasure not a chore, even if poor people suffer in the process?
As I have done my best to explain in the article, it’s not a particularly “clever” tax evasion, to withdraw kids from private school, then quit work (or go part-time, or retire early); and it certainly isn’t “clever” if schools are forced to cut costs and in the process of destroying taxable activity, less tax is raised.
That’s genrally the route that the ‘politics of envy’ follow. My only concern would be that those hypocritical members of the Labour party, who decry private education but ensure their childen get the benefot from it, will have to get the same crap state education as us proles get.
The kind of people affected by this policy are not stupid.
There are many options open to them.
Many of their older offspring already now avoid swingeing university fees by studying overseas for a great deal less.
It is no surprise that the private tutor market is booming. By the way, what is the difference between private tutors and private education?
It is also no surprise that property prices continue to boom in the vicinity of the many outstanding state schools that do exist.
But the continued obsession of the labour party to reduce choice, diversity, in this country is a reaffirmation of their commitment to totalitarian socialism.
Therein lies the Conservative route back to power if only they were not so hopelessly dim……
Absolutely. There are burgeoning “British private schools” in Portugal at half the price. South Africa is an option too. As is home school.
Which is all part of why there is no money in this policy.
Many parents scarpe by to fund private education. If the cost increases they may send their children to state schools or they may reduce their expenditure on other things. The latter would reduce the tax take from (eg) home improvements, meals out and holiday spending.
Just as with private medical choice, this would make private choices more elitist which would no doubt be welcomed by Pimlico Plumbers, Blair and others who have managed to geta great deal of money for doing not much.
That’s a good point. In the UK private schools tend to be thought of as something for rich families but in low-income countries even very poor parents send their children to private schools, run on a shoestring budget, just to get better tuition. In the UK there may be at least some private schools that are not targeted at wealthy families – out of hours supplementary schools for cultural minorities come to mind.
These days, going to an elite private school makes it very difficult to get into Oxford or Cambridge, not that one would want to.
Labour fail to do their due diligence once again
it is not because we have money we send our children to independent schools but because the safeguarding failures and harmful curriculum within the state system.
Remove the VAT relief and those that are able to will sacrifice even more than they already have to keep their precious children from the State sponsored bricks and mortar schools. For those that would be unable to meet the cost increase we’ll not roll over and send them back to the cesspits but would find an alternative way be that online schooling, home-ed etc.
Thank you, I agree
Ironically, all that Labour’s policy will achieve is the closure of a large number of “lower grade” and therefore lower priced private schools ….. leaving a small number of extremely expensive, elitist institutions – stuffed with the children of the mega-wealthy.
That smaller number of extremely expensive, elitist institutions will continue to dominate the governmental (in the widest sense) Old Boy’s Club which is destroying this country …. with an even more concentrated Group-Think of individuals completely detached from the lives/life experiences of the vast majority of the population.
And State schools, which will have to cope with an influx of pupils forced out of the private sector, won’t have their standards raised; they’ll be lowered as the former private pupils will be a small minority. It is quite likely that the lefty teachers will actively discriminate against them.
State Education – already pretty bad – will sink to the levels of the Socialist NHS.
Thank you, yes I also doubt that State Schools are capable of absorbing an influx. Many have physical constraints. They don’t have the organisation in place. And the inflx won’t be evenly spread, it will be some schools with dozens or hundreds of ex-private school children at the gates.
Even if there was extra money (which there won’t be) the expansion programme will need to be driven by LEAs, and there’s no way they can deliver anything without swallowing half the expense in their own bureaucracy
There are at least two unintended tax consequence here.
My own observation over many years is that a significant subsidy to school fees is made by grandparents. If, in order to meet increased fees, grandparents increase that subsidy then the likelihood is that Inheritance Tax down the line will be reduced – assuming IHT still exists of course.
In addition, I’d like to see the exact calculations on an example school. VAT is a complex tax and having done some work in the past on VAT exemption for education, the outcomes of the application of VAT on fees and the consequential ability to reclaim VAT on purchases will create some unexpected consequences and anomalies, with no two schools being the same.
At the very least I would expect a blanket application of VAT on school fees to trigger a large raft of complex, expensive and time-consuming tax tribunal cases as each school makes a case for its own VAT treatment.
As always, Labour is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Outside of the super rich, us ordinary folks choose a private education for our kids because the state system is genrally poor. If the state system was improved, the demand for private education would fall away.But that will never happen as the Labour supporting teaching unions don’t believe in excellenc, or even improving people.