This approach has stopped us from becoming insular and allowed the UK to embrace new ideas and technological advances. In recent decades, universities across the country have achieved great success in attracting students from outside the UK, who have often settled here and developed businesses to boost our economy during times of uncertainty and strife.

It seems incredible that the Home Secretary Suella Braverman appears to be keen on cutting the number of international student numbers arriving here. She has used several media and Conservative Party conference appearances to suggest that the scale of foreign students coming to the UK to study was too high.

In an interview with The Sun newspaper over the weekend, the Home Secretary said: “We’ve also got a very high number of students coming into this country and we’ve got a really high number of dependents.

“So students are coming on their student visa, but they’re bringing in family members who can piggyback onto their student visa.

“Those people are coming here, they’re not necessarily working or they’re working in low-skilled jobs, and they’re not contributing to growing our economy.”

She doubled down on the comments at the party’s conference in Birmingham, telling the Chopper’s Politics podcast that her “ultimate aspiration” would be to get net migration down into the tens of thousands while refusing to set a target for the next election.

She explained how she wanted to target student and work visas, and the dependents they can bring with them, adding: “I think we have too many students coming into this country who are propping up, frankly, substandard courses in inadequate institutions.”

It seems incredible that Suella Braverman appears to have international student numbers in her sights, says Greg Wright

The comments drew criticism from Lord Johnson, a peer and the brother of the former prime minister, who called the remarks “disappointing”.

He warned that they “bode ill for her period as Home Secretary if this is going to be her approach to, frankly, one of the most promising export industries that the UK has”.

“Our higher education sector is one of very few globally competitive industries that we have as a country,” he told Times Radio.

“If we want to be a science superpower, which is one of the Government’s objectives, you can kiss goodbye to that completely if we don’t have international students.”

A report from London Economics, which was published last year, found that the 2018/19 cohort of international students delivered a net economic benefit of £25.9bn into the UK, with every region and parliamentary constituency benefitting.

To quote the report: “This is a 19 per cent increase in real terms from the net benefit found for the 2015/16 cohort of international students reported in the previous study.

“Put another way, for the 2018/19 cohort, every 14 EU students and every 10 non EU students generate £1m worth of net economic impact for the UK economy over the duration of their studies.”

The Home Secretary’s claim that a large influx of foreign students might be bad for Britain’s economic health doesn’t appear to be supported by the evidence. She should withdraw this shameful attack on people who have come to Britain for a better life.

This precious influx of talented, driven, overseas students is needed more than ever.

Home Secretary should withdraw shameful attack on overseas students - Greg Wright