Labour’s ‘silence’ on graduate visas raises UK sector alarm

Labour has been urged to “show political leadership” over the future of the graduate visa route seen as vital to UK universities’ international recruitment and finances, amid fears the party is deliberately opting for “continued silence” on Conservative pressure to scrap or scale back the route.

The Home Office announced before Christmas that it was asking the Migration Advisory Committee to review the graduate visa route – introduced in 2021 and allowing overseas graduates of UK universities to stay in the country for two years after graduation – “to ensure it works in the best interests of the UK and to ensure steps are being taken to prevent abuse”, part of a wider “plan to cut net migration”.

As Tory anxieties over net migration levels deepen ahead of an election tipped for the autumn, there is a growing political and media backlash against what critics have dubbed the “Deliveroo visa” offering a perceived route to low-skill immigration. Labour has offered no public comment on the graduate visa route.

UK universities, already nervous about a slowdown in international recruitment that could tip many into financial turmoil, regard it as key to attracting international students to compete with rival nations with post-study work offers such as Australia and Canada.

The opposition party’s reticence may raise concerns that if the Conservative government scaled back or scrapped the graduate visa route – Conservative former home secretary Theresa May abolished a previous version of the visa route in 2012 – a Labour government also likely to be under intense pressure on net migration may not reverse such measures.

“The continued silence from the shadow cabinet over the planned review of the graduate route stands in stark contrast to its vocal opposition to the government’s Rwanda plan, for example, suggesting that the party is keeping its powder dry over potential moves to restrict international student inflows further,” said Diana Beech, chief executive of London Higher and a former policy adviser to Conservative universities ministers.

“After all, not putting up a political fight is a good way of ensuring immigration reforms are in train before the next general election, without having to be the ones to announce them.”

However, there are also hopes that Labour could be more open than the Conservatives to revising the way students are treated in the Office for National Statistics’ net migration figures – a long-running goal for the sector which would ease the impact that political battles over migration have on international student visa policy.

“I think Labour has an opportunity to show political leadership: to end the yo-yo of boom and bust policies, to provide essential certainty to universities and to students looking to plan their studies in the UK,” said Vivienne Stern, the Universities UK chief executive.

“Whichever party forms the next government, we have to seize the opportunity to reset, to create stability and a basis for sustainable growth. The top priority must be reassuring prospective students that the graduate route is here to stay. Immigration figures should be reported in a way which doesn’t lead to international students being the target of efforts to reduce immigration, even though they are not permanent migrants.”

Daniel Zeichner, the Labour MP for Cambridge, said universities “should be celebrated, rather than denigrated, by government” and criticised “chopping and changing around graduate visas”, which he said was driven by “the short-term needs of the Conservative Party”.

“I hope the next government will take a much calmer, long-term approach, recognising the full value we get from international students and those who seek to be part of our excellent universities,” Mr Zeichner said.

Paul Blomfield, Labour MP for Sheffield Central, said the government has “deliberately created a funding model in which universities are dependent on income from international students”.

“Any restrictions to [the graduate visa route] will hit income, damaging research and teaching for all, and pushing some universities over the edge,” he added.

But Dr Beech highlighted revised estimates from the ONS that the UK population will reach 74 million by 2036, fuelled by migration.

The next UK government, “irrespective of political colour, is going to be under pressure to slow down international migration”, she said. “So, the sad reality is that any measures to curtail the record inflows of international students currently coming into the UK are likely to be considered seriously by whoever is sat in No 10.”

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com