'Licensing' of students planned in Export Bill

Claims by Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the Science minister, to peers that the new Export Control Bill would not require the licensing of foreign students were flatly contradicted by his own civil servants in private meetings, The Independent has established.

The revelation could prompt a backbench rebellion in favour of a Tory amendment that is being backed by the Liberal Democrats when the Bill returns to the Lords today.

The Bill, intended to update the old export controls that applied only to physical goods, will now also include the export of ideas, via electronic or physical means. But that has made it a source of concern for academics who fear it will give the Government the right to review and suppress research, and to demand that foreign students of courses such as genetic engineering or nuclear science be "licensed to learn".

Lord Sainsbury has repeatedly denied this – most recently in a Lords committee on 4 March, when he said: "There is no question of the Government licensing foreign students ... the Bill does not give us the powers to do that."

But The Independent has a copy of minutes of a meeting last September at which Bridget Butt, of the Department of Trade and Industry, met Universities UK. She said: "The proposed legislation is intended to enable government in a limited number of cases to inform an institution that an export licence would be needed to control the transfer of a particular sort of information to a particular individual."