Student visa numbers to drop by 260,000

The number of student visas issued in the next five years will drop by around 260,000, the government is to announce. But this figure is around 50 per cent of the originally announced plan to reduce the amount of foreign students in the UK.

On top of concessions on no longer capping state welfare handouts to £26,000 a year and allowing local authorities to keep collecting general household rubbish fortnightly, this halving of the original figure is being seen as another climbdown by the government from its original tough stance.

Previously, the Home Office had talked about cutting the number of student visas by roughly 100,000 a year but the figure is now 52,000. The move is meant to combat fraud in the system, including how some immigrants get student visas to stay in the UK longer. Student visas are said to account for nearly 70 per cent of all visas issued under the points-based system and 15 per cent of foreign students at private colleges are thought to be bogus. Roughly one student a day is arrested for breaking visa conditions.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The student changes will work alongside our other reforms to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands over the course of this Parliament."

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said the key issue was not the number of students who come the UK but the number who stay.

"Bogus students stay and therefore add to net migration whereas genuine students go home at the end of their courses and so do not," he said.

Since the general election, 89 education providers have been suspended or had their licenses revoked. The immigration minister said these figures proved that the coalition "will not hesitate in taking action against educational providers who do not abide by our rules".