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There is no evidence of widespread abuse of the UK’s graduate visa route, the government’s immigration advisers have concluded, despite repeated claims from senior Conservatives that it is being exploited to enter the jobs market.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) said the graduate visa entitlement – allowing international students to work for two or three years after graduating – should remain in place. Members said the risks of abuse were relatively low and were “not undermining” the integrity and quality of the higher education system.
The report’s release has stoked an internal Conservative party row over net migration, with senior rightwing MPs describing it as a “whitewash”.
Robert Jenrick, a former immigration minister, wrote that the committee’s inquiries were tightly controlled by the commission from James Cleverly, the home secretary.
“The MAC’s conclusions have clearly been constrained by the narrow terms of reference deliberately set by the government. If you order white paint, you get a whitewash,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Neil O’Brien, a Tory MP who is an ally of Jenrick, described the report as a “whitewash” on Substack: “We are pursuing an arbitrary target, and the expansion of universities for their own sake.”
Another Conservative MP said backbenchers were “piling pressure” on Rishi Sunak to ignore the committee’s conclusions.
The government has so far declined to say whether it will accept the MAC recommendations. A source close to the home secretary said he would read the review thoroughly and listen to Prof Brian Bell, the committee’s chair, carefully before he makes any decision. They were due to meet on Tuesday afternoon.
The committee’s decision was greeted with relief by university vice-chancellors, who have warned that abolishing the graduate visa would spell financial turmoil for the sector. But higher education leaders said they still feared No 10 could cherrypick elements of the report to justify a further crackdown.
University leaders had been told to expect the government’s response in the middle of next week, alongside the publication of the ONS’s net migration figures. But the MAC report in favour of retaining graduate visas may have scuppered plans by ministers to use it as the centrepiece of a fresh crackdown.
Cleverly commissioned the review amid a growing clamour in Tory circles that graduate visas were being abused to gain access to employment.
Last week, Jenrick published a report with the Centre for Policy Studies thinktank that called for the graduate visa to be abolished, claiming it “allowed people to come and work in the gig economy and on very low wages”.
In a forthright response, Bell said: “Our review recommends the graduate route should remain as it is, and is not undermining the quality and integrity of the UK’s higher education system.
“The graduate route is a key part of the offer that we make to international students to come and study in the UK. The fees that these students pay helps universities to cover the losses they make in teaching British students and doing research. Without those students, many universities would need to shrink and less research would be done.”
