01/09/2012 Dateline London

the disease and two have died. I will be back in an hour. Now it

Welcome to Dateline London. Is throwing out bogus students one way

of dealing with Britain's immigration problems? The Prime

Minister is told to be a man and not a mouse and the Paralympic

Games. Will they change attitudes to disability? Our guest today a

Grunenthal of Kayhan, and Vincent Magombe. Cracking down on

immigration is popular with many voters and this week the British

government took the decision to tell London Metropolitan University

that its practices were so sloppy that 2000 students will have to

leave the country. Do we agree that something must be done about bogus

students and is this the right thing? Do you accept the principle

that if students are here and there are not going to university,

basically they are trying to get in as immigrants, that is wrong?

a very great critic of anything immigration from the government

here because I feel the premise that this has been done is not what

we are being told. This to me is not resolving a problem. They are

not trying to solve this problem of students coming here through visas,

it is much more to do with what I would call political fanaticism.

That type of ideological positioning of a party. A party who

feel so antique immigration all the time and have agendas to crack down

on people from outside. Many say this is responding to public mood.

Why does this not happen when other governments are room place? Labour

also used to crack down on foreign students but not in this very

fanatical way. What is happening, I teach at the university as well so

I am aware of a few students who might be able to be such a problem

in terms of immigration, but the bulk of students, and that is where

the problem is, are they really fighting immigrants who are causing

problems and want to get all students to go away? The whole

issue, this has to be seen in the context of wider immigration. I can

tell you, if only my home country wants democratic today, is peaceful,

Britain and America are not interfering and supporting

dictators there, I would rather be at home. We have a beautiful

education system but some of the type of quality that you get...

Britain is very wrong here. The money that foreign students are

paying is too much. It is true that there is a very competitive market

to bring foreign students in and many universities are trying to get

the money but on the other side, this is sending a message to

students, do not come here. It is an immensely complex problem. It

seems to me that this country has a deserved reputation for fair play

and that the move that was made this week, which appears to put

2000 students at London Metropolitan University and perhaps

some thousands of others in other universities and colleges which

have also heard on this issue at risk of being thrown out of the

country when they are halfway through a degree will be widely

recognised to be unfair and that doing that, if they actually do do

it and it seems to me the story is not told yet. To do that what harm

does he want a new responsible, control of immigration. It seems to

mean it is a bad move. There is more to this story than only

immigration. In 2009 it was London Metropolitan University had to pay

the government �36 million because of bogus students. Since then they

have realised that there was massive problems within their own

administration said they brought in a new vice chancellor and he

started cutting back on giving out a lot of courses, cutting back on

courses, or releasing the staff and he has faced a lot of controversy

because London Metropolitan is not only under threat from the

government but it is being threatened by its own staff and the

students as well. There was also the controversy when they banned

having pubs or drinking on campus, this was in London Metropolitan and

the Muslim student association brought out a letter condemning

this move, condemning the ban. Why? Because they said they did not have

enough money so they are bringing all these excuses, so it has been

very controversial. Also something very interesting is that the amount

of scholarship programmes that London Metropolitan has for foreign

students. BBC World Service has a London Metropolitan course, but all

of this at the end of the day comes back to internal London

Metropolitan problems. Immigration policy has been a shambles in this

country for years and years and years under successive governments.

I never remember -- and remember a conversation I had with a Labour

minister who was sitting in his office and piles of paper were

bringing -- were brought in. These were papers that he wanted to see.

Not only is it incompetent administration and government

policy, the UK Border Agency is a shambles and the real problem is we

have no proper controls in this country. We know roughly who is

coming in but we have no idea who is going out. If we had a proper

system of control, we would not have to go down this draconian

policy we seem to be adopting in respect of this one slightly ropey

University. It is totally disproportionate what the

government is doing and it is the result of the government and the UK

Border Agency that has landed us in this problem. I do not think it is

the failures of the Border Agency, it is because they have brought in

no rules and regulations. I spoke to London Metropolitan and they

said that the UK Border Agency took a sample and they did not tell me

how much of this sample belong to students before 2009, said this was

a problem but also admitted before. However this force and would ever

happens to this students, it is bad for the image of Britain's

educational centre? Is that true? It mussy mussy -- much less

welcoming? Be image of Britain by asked out there -- pass out there...

If I am to look at it from an African point of view, first of all

I know that we seem to be poor but the majority of students who come

here come from good backgrounds. If foreign students said, they will go

to Britain instead of Britain, you will see Britain crying for them.

University leaders are out there in different countries, in India,

Africa, literally going there, hold seminars trying to recruit students.

We have to be careful not to play fast and loose with the facts.

There was not just a public we set -- perception but a reality that a

very large net in a word migration in this country has caused problems.

There is a broad agreement that something has to be done. How to do

that is very difficult but there was no doubt for anybody who lives

in a student town that there has been abuse of student visas. The

government has done something to curb the University above the chips

shop. By the latest figures they have reduced the number of student

visa approvals by 70,000. You are correct there is an immigration

issue that any government would have to deal with, but there is a

real point as to whether you should include students in that issue. If

we had proper controls, we knew the students who were here and when

they were going, it would be easier. This government is committed to

reducing net immigration flows to 100,000. They have decided that

students are a soft target and therefore that is why they are

going at this in this way. I wish there was a conspiracy but I fear

there is not. It is a total cock-up. These countries of the West are

very good at trying to chased everyone else. But we know very

well that Western countries, Britain included, you are very good

at going out there to our countries, without any hindrance but you are

very good at trying to tell everybody else to go away. And we

totally disagree. A member of his own party challenge

David Cameron to be a man not a mouse. He wants David Cameron to

say he will build a third runway at Heathrow airport. But Nick Clegg

wants a new tax on the rich. Should David Cameron should listen to all

this wide advice? A third runway at Heathrow - what do you think?

think that was totally irresponsible. Two things control

government - one is the manifesto which they fight an election. You

cannot just tear it up. And then there was also a coalition

agreement on which this government West which also agrees they should

be no third runway. The idea that you can tear up those agreements is

absurd. Cameron's position is sensible in that he is waiting

until after the next election. What will be interesting to see is

whether the Conservatives will go in on a third runway ticket. My own

view, Heathrow has been a disaster. It has been the wrong place and the

wrong time and if you tried to keep on expanding it, it will get worse

and worse. We need a proper new 61 way airport which can operate 24

hours a day and that can only be done in the Thames estuary.

Heathrow is frankly out of capacity. Since part of the argument is it

has to keep with Frankfurt and Berlin and they have all done the

same thing which is build a new airport away from the suburban

Santa. Event if Heathrow says they will have a third runway, it will

take 6-10 years to build and also the runway that they have planned,

normal advanced engines of aircraft that we are talking about, they

cannot use that runway so there were all these arguments that

actually convinced a lot of people to go for the Thames estuary like

the mayor of London. And more money but also another thing is parties

when they raised an election nearing, they make promises and

which party has not broken or torn up the platform? I can name a lot

A new airport would help bring in all these new students! London does

need a new airport, doesn't it? only that. We have always talk

about -- talked about Uganda and the lack of democracy there. I

would like to see a situation where you can day so democratic that our

people can demonstrate and protest about this, but I feel that in

terms of Western democracy, British democracy, something has become too

excessive. If you tell people in Uganda that they're going to build

an airport, and people want to protest, it is like semantics. On a

more serious note, I think what we are seeing in these discussions is

the condition of the so-called coalition government. They are very

sick. They agree on some things, but now the Conservatives are just

going their own way. What the legs -- what the Lib Dems say doesn't

matter to them. Given the context of the American election campaign,

it is interesting that we have a party leader... To use a French

word, Nick Clegg is being wicked. A wealth taxes -- tax is very

difficult to put into effect. It is unlikely that all parties will

accept it. But it does help him with his current problem of a

restive party who why increasingly unhappy about being locked into

this coalition. I don't think we'll see a wealth tax. I don't think

that the Liberal Democrats will break with the Conservatives,

because the polls seem to indicate that would be a disaster for them.

If I could say something about Heathrow, I don't have the interest

that Adam does. I do not live under the flight path into Heathrow, and

divided, if I was awakened at 4:30am by a in -- by an aeroplane

coming of my roof, I might feel different. The objective situation

does seem to be that this city and this country are in imminent need

of more airport capacity. We agree on that. The question is where you

put the capacity. There will have to be a creative solution. I live

close to Stansted airport. They have a similar problem there. There

are a lot of people who do not want expansion there. But something will

have to be done somewhere. We cannot as a country afford to have

another 10 years arguing about this, because there is no doubt that

Heathrow as a hub will suffer. real issue on Heathrow is this,

that if you put a third in for a -- runway in, it will still run out of

capacity. If you destroy large parts of West London, you probably

could do it, but democratically, it cannot be done. All three

candidates for mayor for London were against it. The Conservatives

are buried on -- nervous about going into the next election on

April Heathrow platform. You should not build airports where it will

cause great problems for millions of people. Every other developed

country has moved to their bigger airports out of city centres.

Something we have not discussed that is very compelling in the

circumstances is the new deal at the end of the Second World War. A

strong step in the direction of ending the Depression was the New

Deal. It seems to me that a commitment to the study of an

estuary airport which may indeed cost $50 billion or more would be a

terrific idea because it would create thousands of jobs and could

be financed by private investment. And it would not be taxing current

taxpayers, putting the debt on the shoulders of of children yet unborn

to pay for current consumption. It will be building an airport that

our grandchildren and their children would use. In the last few

minutes, I want to ask about the amazing spectacle of the

Paralympics. Does it change the way that people regard disability in

our society and what we should do about it? There is the irony that

if you buy a wheelchair user in London it is still very difficult

to get around using public transport. A lot of underground

stations do not have elevators. think it does change attitudes

because I think that people look at these amazing athletes. It is a

reflection on the idea that disabled people cannot work. Of

course they can, and that is the other side of the coin. The idea

that these are somehow very separate people from the rest of us,

that is not true at all. It is amazing the extent they have been

able to perform in a way that people like myself do not have a

hope in hell of doing! I think it does change attitudes. Do you

agree? It is quite extraordinary, some of the contests. On the first

day of the Paralympics, an Iranian man, a blind man in goalball,

defeated China come and China have been the winners for years. This

man had his eyes closed. That is amazing! I wonder, what is

disability team that we were talking about it. You have this man

he cannot see that he can go straight to the goal. There are

others who can see, but they lack empathy. They lack empathy for

people with less physical powers than they have all they lack

empathy for people who won more deserving than they are.

question that really comes to mind, and they do not really understand

the history of the Paralympics and why it is made in the way it is,

because Oscar Pistorius, the man from South Africa, was able to run

with other people, but it is not about them doing something with

everybody at that time. But I cannot understand how you have the

Olympics, you do it, you finish it, completed, choose where it is going

to go, and then we come with the Paralympics. This, for me, even if

the idea was to give these people the opportunity to feel the same as

everybody else, is a measure of segregation again. Do you want them

to compete against each other?! They should be part of the main

Olympics. It does not matter if you then have a special event the next

day. I have talked to some people taking part to say this is the main

Olympics! Then why not just organise it say that they take

place at the same time? somebody like me who wants to see

all these games, it would be difficult. It seems to me that they

Paralympic Games and the Olympic Games bring us all together for

still -- bring us all together. You can argue with the wonderful scenes

we are seeing today from the Olympic Park End or the other

side's? I was very moved when I saw the opening ceremony and saw all

the countries who had been afflicted by war, people who had

lost their limbs or best site in those was. People out there

competing, and that is a wondrous thing to behold. In the minute we

have left, we have heard all the complaints about aircraft the

London, but are you proud of London? Yes, I am proud of London

and I am proud of being British. Both the Olympic Games and the

Paralympics have shown off British virtues to their best and the

spirit in the Olympic Stadium was truly marvellous, and they think

they recognise that it was well organised and it showed the best of

British. I agree with you. My only concern is that Africa will never

hold an Olympics. How many African Paralympic competitors are there?

Many of them one! They were the most brilliant one as I have ever

seen! Comparatively, they are very few. We have had a period of

Western countries being down in the dumps and wondering when they will