British business needs foreign students – if only ministers would listen

At the House of Commons on Thursday evening, there was little sign of any government ministers. It was a pity, because I rather wished they’d been walking past the doors of the packed Members’ Dining Room and looked in.

E2E, the business networking and mentoring organisation, was holding a dinner to launch the “E2E International 100”, tracking Britain’s 100 most successful small to medium enterprises. It’s the third such track, all produced in association with The Independent, coming after the E2E Female 100 and E2E Tech 100. “Job Creation”, “Dynamic” and “Profit” are next.

The criteria for the International 100 is more than £5m in export sales over the past two years and more than £10m in turnover.

In the room were assembled many of our finest up-and-coming entrepreneurs, people who had formed their own businesses and were now selling their products overseas. They ranged across all sectors, from food and drink to automotive accessories to data to tech to professional services to leisure goods (the figures for the hot-tubs supplier were especially impressive). It was a glittering array of British commercial talent on display in one place. The atmosphere was crackling and energetic, as you might expect.

If a minister had stopped by, not only would they have been reassured that our enterprise culture is very much alive and thriving, but they would have heard pleas for the cutting of red tape, and tales of businesses that could do even better if only they could find the right staff.

A passing minister could not have failed to notice, too, the broad ethnic diversity, on the day when the government unveiled the latest net migration figures and the promise of yet another crackdown.

This was a point raised by Karan Bilimoria, the keynote speaker. Paying tribute to Shalini Khemka CBE, the redoubtable founder of E2E, Bilimoria highlighted the fact that, like him, Shalini is an immigrant. She came to the UK from India, aged five, and now runs E2E, an organisation that boasts 23,000 future business leaders among its ranks.

Bilimoria, as is well known, created Cobra Beer and became one of the UK’s most successful and high-profile business figures. He has sat on numerous bodies, including a period as president of the CBI.

His mantra has always been the encouragement of others coupled with gratitude for the opportunity given to him by the UK.

However, on this particular evening, it was laced with frustration – and anger. Earlier in the day, when the government released the migration statistics, Bilimoria responded in the Lords by citing a meeting he’d just held with leading hoteliers. “One of them is shortly opening one of the best hotels in London and is targeting under 100 per cent occupancy: he cannot recruit the people he needs.”

It’s madness, building a top-end luxury hotel at vast expense in one of the world’s great cities and not aiming for 100 per cent occupancy – where else would a hotelier have to do this? The hotel is investing in Britain, putting its faith in this country, but in return, we’re not supplying the hotel with everything it requires to function as successfully as possible.

The government, said Bilimoria, “must activate the shortage occupation list”. Recognising that there are some sectors and jobs in which there are gaping vacancies that can only be filled by encouraging workers to come from overseas is easier said than done when the Conservative Party and its friends in the media are so fixated on curbing what they view as the scourge of immigration.

Their blanket approach rules out little scope for flexibility, with the result that business, the driver of the economy, is suffering unnecessarily.

That attitude extends to another aspect raised by Bilimoria at the dinner, and previously that day in the Lords. He’s co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on international students, and the chancellor of Birmingham University. Britain, he said, is “in a global race for international students”. Said Bilimoria, “We are against Australia, the United States of America and Canada, in particular, and those countries offer far better postgraduate work opportunities than we do. We offer two years; Australia offers four, five and six years.”

To go with that is the way in which foreign students are regarded by the government. “Why do we keep including international students in our net migration figures? It is wrong and fooling the public,” he continued.

Elsewhere, such as in the US and Australia, they “treat them as temporary migrants, which is what they are. If you exclude international students from the net migration figures, maybe the government will hit the targets they have wanted to hit for so many years.”

There is a calculated reason behind other countries going out of their way to attract overseas students and treating them as separate from their official migration numbers. They contribute to research, to innovation, to employment, and to the strength of our economy. We absolutely want their brains and the potential they bring.

Not only do we make them feel not wanted, but by including them in the net migration statistics, they are feeding the argument for cracking down on immigration – and for moving against foreigners wishing to study in the UK. It’s a circular, damaging argument. The students end up being targeted because the numbers are so bad because students are included in those numbers, and so on.

Our university sector is one of our greatest success stories, and one of our best exports. On a night commending exports achievement, that was a point that drew sustained applause. If only ministers had been listening.