There was a flutter of excitement among the Higher Education community this morning, when the education editor of the Times tweeted that David Willetts, the Universities Minister, was about to announce that overseas students would be excluded from net migration figures, and therefore from the Prime Minister’s pledge to reduce net migration to under 100,000
As an ambitious young MP rewarded with promotion to Immigration Minister, Mark Harper could be forgiven for viewing the job with mixed emotions. Traditionally one of the most senior ministerial jobs outside Cabinet, it will certainly guarantee him plenty of exposure, but not always for the right reasons. His first and biggest problem is the
The latest immigration figures published by the ONS today, for the calendar year 2011, show net migration falling for the first time under the coalition – but nowhere near fast enough to give ministers confidence that they will hit their target by 2015. The ONS estimates that immigration last year fell by 25,000, and emigration
Yesterday the ONS published a report showing average disposable incomes at their lowest level since 2003. This is difficult news for ministers: as Isabel pointed out, concerns about the cost of living – stagnant wages and rising prices – are one of the main reasons given by voters in recent polls for turning away from
The report published this week by Louise Casey, the Government’s ‘Troubled Families’ Tsar, has attracted a fair amount of criticism, but what it does illustrate is the chaotic lives these families lead – and the implausibility of thinking that their problems can be solved by the kind of flagship social policies traditionally favoured by either
If you have been confused over the last couple of days by the mixed messages emerging from Downing Street about the government’s policy on international students, you are not alone: the same applies to many figures inside Whitehall. The Sunday Times reported a Number 10 source saying David Cameron is ‘definitely considering a change in
There was welcome news yesterday for our forces in Afghanistan, and for those who want to see them supplied with the best equipment, with pictures of the first ‘Foxhound’ patrol vehicles arriving in Helmand. Foxhound is the long-awaited replacement for the Snatch Land Rover, whose inadequate protection against Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and then
I hope that CoffeeHousers, regardless of political affiliation, will welcome a speech by a Labour leader that is explicitly patriotic, about England as well as the United Kingdom. As Ed Miliband said today, Labour has too often seemed either uninterested in Englishness or embarrassed by it, when there is nothing in its history and values
International students are currently the largest single category of immigrants who count in the net migration figures, which cover all those intending to stay more than a year. In the most recent figures (the year to June 2011) there were 242,000 such students — making up 40 per cent of so-called ‘long term’ immigration. However,
After last August’s riots the debate became quickly polarised. Were socio-economic factors like unemployment to blame, or was it all down to the individual choices of the rioters? David Cameron and other Conservative ministers knew which side of this debate they wanted to be on. They had been taken by surprise by the riots, initially
A small silver lining for David Cameron in the ‘cash for access scandal’: on a quieter day, today’s report on the coalition’s replacement of control orders with ‘Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures’ (TPIMs) might have got more attention. The report, published by the Independent Reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, makes for difficult reading
The government’s official advisers on immigration, the Migration Advisory Committee, have today published a report into the restrictions on skilled migrant workers from outside the EU. Turns out that the much-vaunted ‘cap’ on skilled workers has only been half taken up — with numbers likely to be around 10,000 against the cap of 20,700 —
If you have an interest in the military campaign in Afghanistan, or in modern film-making — and if you have a strong stomach — I would strongly recommend Hell and Back Again, a contender in the Best Documentary category at the Oscars this weekend. Despite winning the World Documentary prize at Sundance last year, it
Today brought closure of a kind to last year’s border fiasco (which I covered for Coffee House here and here), with the publication of the report by the Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, John Vine. On first reading, there is no ‘smoking gun’ which would trigger a ministerial resignation. The report does find
Pete posted earlier on the Prime Minister’s latest intervention on the issue of problem drinking. The new proposals — like a greater police presence in A&Es, and ‘drunk tanks’, special units where drunks are taken to sober up — are sensible enough, but seem small relative to the scale of the supposed problem, and focus on peripheral (though
Today’s White Paper on defence procurement makes disappointing reading for the UK defence industry — and for anyone who believes that one of the lessons of the last few years is that we need a more active industrial policy. IPPR set out the case in a recent report on globalisation, arguing for sustained support for
Today’s leaked NATO report on ‘the state of the Taliban’ has generated the predictable responses: excessive attempts by the media to hype it up, and excessive attempts by NATO and the Pakistani government to play it down. What is its true significance? It’s a good scoop, but there is little or nothing in it which
Remember Theresa May’s border skirmish against Brodie Clark back in November? This morning the Home Affairs Select Committee published their report into the whole affair. Ideally it would have cleared up some of the confusions over who was responsible for waiving various security checks at our borders last summer, and whether they were right to
Immigration will remain at the heart of political debate in 2012. Economic downturns tend to heighten concerns about migrants competing for jobs and depressing wages, and spending cuts tend to sharpen resentment over migrants claiming benefits or adding to pressure on public services. The latest e-petition to garner a hundred thousand signatures will get its
David Cameron has finally announced the way forward on his pledge to ‘turn round the lives of 120,000 of Britain’s troubled families’ — and it is good news. These families combine behaviour that is harmful or disruptive to the rest of society with reliance on benefits, social housing and other services, reinforcing the sense that
