Higher Education (Fee Limits and Student Support) (England) (Coronavirus) (Revocation) Regulations 2020

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

I thank the Deputy Chairman for the advance notice of the schedule change.

Yesterday, in the internal market Bill debate, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, found it objectionable that my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb used the term hypercapitalism. I refer to this now because this statutory instrument is a second attempt to manage extreme competition between universities. What were once communities of scholars working for the advancement of knowledge are now pushed to operate like cut-throat businesses. The “aggressive recruitment practices” to which the Minister referred are a perfect illustration that the Government might like to study to further their understanding of the term. I draw on the Wiley Online Library discussion of hypercapitalism, which states that

“critical scholars believe that once separate spheres of culture and commerce now overlap … culture and the way of life in a hypercapitalist society becomes subsumed by the commercial sphere”.

Our universities are a case study for that subsuming. They have been pushed to become businesses by the policies of successive Governments over decades.

The original statutory instrument was a small concession from the Government, who were forced by the reality of our current circumstances to move away from their ideology of allowing market forces to run wild. They now acknowledge that there is a deep state of chaos. I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, and others in asking for cuts to student fees—a cut , or perhaps the dropping of all fees this year, given the kind of suffering to which the noble Lord referred. On another occasion, I shall talk about why they should be dropped altogether.

While competition between factories to produce the best tools, or between market gardens for the tastiest produce, might not be a bad thing, competition in the educational sphere, as I noted in our earlier debate on Ofsted inspections, is innately damaging, particularly in the state of confusion we now find ourselves. I can only hope that such confusion helps the Government to see the problems that we are in now and understand the swingeing damage being done by hypercapitalism, which I note the Wiley reference says is also called “zombie capitalism”. I would be interested in the Minister’s thoughts.