THE UK's universities minister, David Willetts, is to launch a global drive to “protect Britain's reputation” and spread the message that it remains open to students from overseas in the wake of the government's curbs on student visas.

He is also to set up a GBP2m hardship fund to help “legitimate overseas students” at London Metropolitan University, who now face extra costs as a result of the home secretary's decision to strip it of its licence to sponsor overseas students. But Willetts stopped short of demands from vice-chancellors to remove overseas students from the government's drive to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by the next election.

Instead, Willetts told a universities conference in Keele that the Office for National Statistics would publicise immigration statistics that made clearer the separate contribution of overseas students to the figures and try to improve their methods of estimating how many go home at the end of their studies.

The university lecturers’ union said it appeared that the government was finally recognising the damage that its student visa policy was doing to Britain's international reputation.

Willetts's olive branch to the higher education sector over the government's drive to curb numbers of students from overseas came as Sept 21 was fixed as the date for the high court hearing for London Met's legal challenge to the revocation of its Home Office sponsorship licence.

The minister also suggested that it was now necessary for higher education to develop a longer protection scheme for foreign students — similar to the Abta scheme when travel agents fail — should other universities face a similar situation.

Universities UK said they welcomed the setting up of the GBP2m London Met hardship fund and said they would take part in talks over a protection scheme. While they welcomed changes to the immigration figures to make it possible to see what contribution students were making to future reductions, they wanted the government to go further and remove students from the net migration target entirely.

The University and College Union's general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: “It appears the government is finally recognising the damage its student visa policy, coupled with threatening to deport thousands of fee-paying overseas students, is doing to our international reputation.”

However, the National Union of Students said that the immigration statistics already gave details of overseas student flows in and out of Britain and criticised the GBP2m hardship fund as offering “scant relief” to students who now faced an average bill of GBP4,610 each as a result of moving university.

Willetts told the universities conference that the London Met issue must not be allowed to jeopardise the success story of the 400,000 overseas students who bring in almost GBP8bn a year in export earnings.

He said that it was necessary to take short-term action “to protect our international reputation” beyond the London Met hardship fund and the mini-clearing operation that will start next Monday.

“We have already used our Foreign Office posts to signal that we remain open to overseas students,” Willetts said, before announcing a joint publicity drive with Universities UK in key newspapers “in our target markets”, explaining that overseas students are welcome in Britain and reminding them of what a great opportunity it is to study in the UK.

Willetts acknowledged that the public did not regard overseas students as immigrants and saw “someone coming to study for a time and then going back home as different from someone permanently coming to Britain as a migrant”.

But the minister made clear that they would not be removed from the overall net migration count: “We will publish disaggregated figures. We will disaggregate the headline totals for net migration so that people can see the student element within that. We are not removing students from the totals. We are improving the quality of data on students leaving the country.”

By arrangement with the Guardian