Former chancellor attacks May over inclusion of students in immigration target after Boris Johnson refused to back her

The former chancellor George Osborne has urged Conservative MPs to rebel against Theresa May and vote to remove students from the government’s immigration targets, after the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, refused to back the prime minister on the issue.

In a coruscating editorial in the Evening Standard, the newspaper he now edits, Osborne says new migration data published on Thursday showed “the Home Office’s policymaking on immigration for the past seven years was based on wholly inaccurate information”.

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The piece concludes by turning May’s slogan of “global Britain” back on her. “Let’s hope someone puts down an amendment in parliament to remove students from migration numbers. With the facts now known, most of the cabinet privately supporting it, and no government majority, it will surely be carried — and we can have a shot at being ‘global Britain’,” it says.

Osborne’s editorial claims May was the only senior cabinet minister in the Cameron government pressing for students to remain in the target of bringing down immigration to below 100,000.

He echoes claims by Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, who was business secretary in the coalition, that May relied heavily on official figures suggesting around 100,000 students a year remained in Britain illegally when their visas expired, which experts say were widely suspected at the time to be unreliable.



More accurate figures published on Thursday, based on new exit checks at Britain’s borders, showed that the true figure is lower than 5,000.

“Repeated attempts by the Treasury, Foreign Office and business department to get the Home Office to investigate the accuracy of the numbers were rebuffed – the then home secretary thought it was better to stick with false information than get the real facts, which might force her to change the policy,” the Standard editorial says.

It was published shortly after Johnson repeatedly refused to back May’s insistence that foreign students must continue to be counted as part of the government’s target of bringing immigration down to the tens of thousands.

Asked whether students should continue to be included in the figures, he said: “I am content with the success we are having in attracting international students, and also ensuring that those international students do not overstay their period here.”

Pressed on the issue on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “The prime minister rightly points out that that is the technical ... that is the way that they are currently counted.”

The home secretary, Amber Rudd, has announced an independent review of the economic benefits of international students – a move many Conservative MPs hope will lead to a shift in the government’s position. Johnson, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, have all expressed the view in the past that students should not be included.

The backbench MP Anna Soubry said: “I believe the majority of MPs support overseas students being taken out of the figures,” and pointed out that a rebellion on the issue was already brewing before the general election.

It is unclear what legislation MPs could seek to amend in order to make their point, but the government has said it will publish an immigration bill in the coming months, as part of the complex task of preparing for Britain to leave the EU in March 2019.

Johnson, who denied that he was manoeuvring for the Conservative leadership after the party’s disastrous election performance, also issued a thinly veiled criticism of the prime minister over her decision to call the snap poll.



During a visit to Libya this week, Johnson was caught on a microphone warning the head of the country’s government, Fayez al-Sarraj, of the perils of holding a vote without being properly prepared.



“We have had an election since I last saw you [in May]. It went more or less to plan. Well, not entirely to plan. It is a bit of a lesson, which is that, if you are going to have elections, you have got to get ready,” he said.

Theresa May decided to call a snap general election for June this year in the hope of extending her majority, thus strengthening her hand in the Brexit negotiations. The move backfired as the slim majority the Tories won in 2015 was wiped out, leaving them reliant on a deal with the DUP in order to stay in government.

The foreign secretary admitted in his BBC interview that Britain had been “way over-optimistic” about the impact of deposing Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, in 2011.