Your country needs you...to write to your MP

LSCA Business Board member and university accounting teacher David Trodden urges ICAEW Chartered Accountants to call on their MPs to support future EU students, including work experience, and demand a green exhibition centre for London.

January 2019

I have been teaching accounting in universities for nearly 40 years and am an ACA who trained with KPMG. Student fees are a major source of university income.

Including spending, international students are worth £7.3bn to the UK economy. Our home students benefit from studying with international students. The students form diverse study groups of five or six to discuss their work with members from three or more continents. Their university friendship groups endure.

Employers value students who are able to work with those from a range of backgrounds.

I have three wishes, my first is for the EU students who are currently treated as home students and paying home fees. Please can we all ask our MP that the UK government gives EU students at least three years certainty of fees as home students, no matter how the Brexit negotiations are concluded.

My second wish is that international students be entitled to a four-year work visa after studying. They want to have a significant UK work experience. These able students both benefit the UK; they will be excellent for the UK economy and will benefit the world once we have allowed them to experience studying, living and working in the UK environment.

It is a very cost-effective way of achieving a fair, democratic society across the whole world.

My third wish is that the government and London Mayor Sadiq Khan invest in building a major green exhibition centre, flats and social housing on the former Earls Court Exhibition site. Post Grenfell, the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea needs social housing. The UK economy also needs a boost.

Mayor Sadiq Khan, as leader of TfL, already controls 33% of the business that owns this site as TfL is in a joint venture with the developer, Capital & Counties (CAPCO). One of the reasons for the success of the German economy is its exhibition halls; four of the world’s largest 10 exhibition halls are in Germany.

The exhibition centre industry wants a major exhibition hall in Central London. The now-demolished Earls Court centre achieved more than three million visitors a year at its peak.

Please write to your local MP - find you MP’s contact details.

David Trodden is member of the LSCA Business Board.

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