Lord Harper (Con)

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Jackson’s Motion for several reasons. The first is that he set out a compelling case for why this data should be both collected, if it is not collected, and published so that we have a much clearer idea about the nature of student visas. I did not hear any compelling reason, in our debate on Report, why that should not be the case. In the House of Commons, when they debated this matter last week, the Minister went out of his way to say that “the Home Office already publishes data on a vast amount of migration statistics, including information on visas, returns and detention”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/25; col. 790.] He said that it is all “kept under review” and so on, but he did not actually give us a reason around this particular set of data. First, he did not tell us whether it is collected. He also did not tell us whether it was going to be published; actually, he did not come up with any reasons as to why my noble friend’s amendment could not be accepted. I certainly do not think that, either on Report here or in the House of Commons, Ministers set out any concerns about the drafting of my noble friend’s amendment—so it cannot just be that it is okay except that it is terribly badly drafted, in which case, of course, Ministers could have taken it away and used the skills of the Government’s parliamentary draftsmen to have it improved. That is the first thing; I cannot see any reason why we should not accept it. If the Minister were to suggest that he would be happy to publish it, I cannot see why we should not just put the amendment in place. This Minister is a very fine Minister—we like him very much, and he is very robust—but, sadly, he may not be the Minister for ever.