Student Loan Interest Rates

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 27th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As my noble friend touched on, the Government are trying to balance, or triangulate, a number of things. One is affordability for students, hence the freeze we have had for seven years on fees. Another is addressing poor-quality provision—at the other end of the issue from the one my noble friend raises—through the new Office for Students regime. In relation to motivation, reward and recognition for the highest-performing institutions, a review of allowing indexation of fees based on the TEF is not under consideration currently, but I will say that having a high-quality teaching framework does allow for strong recruitment and research income.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, has the Minister considered the level of graduate earnings currently and the threshold she refers to? Leading on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, in light of those two parameters, have the Government thought of increasing the level of fees so that those who go on to very high earnings can pay a proportionate amount, making it more progressive than the flat rate that now applies?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Of course, those who go on to much higher earnings end up repaying much more than those on lower earnings, but no additional consideration is currently being given to the suggestion from the noble Baroness.

Russell Group Universities: Foreign Student Admissions

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Barran

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following reporting by The Sunday Times on 28 January, what assessment they have made of admission policies for foreign students at Russell Group Universities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I was concerned to see the allegations of bad practice by recruitment agents and unfairness towards British students. The Department for Education has launched an urgent investigation into university admission practices, including the behaviours of agents involved in recruiting international students. We will take action to ensure fairness between domestic and international students. Every student should be able to benefit from a world-class education.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I am speaking in a personal capacity, but I also serve as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is responsible for compliance with the public sector equality duty. This seeks to prevent discrimination and to ensure equality of opportunity. The Sunday Times investigation has revealed that as many as 15 of our 24 top universities are accepting through the back door foreign students at lower grades than those applied to UK students for the same courses. In effect, they are accepting cash for access. This is unfair at best, and discriminatory at worst, as UK students do not have those choices. I am extremely relieved to hear the noble Baroness’s response about ordering an urgent investigation. Can she give the House a timeline and say what measures they might take to penalise the institutions that are creating this lack of a level playing field for domestic students?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes important points. To be clear, our work will focus particularly on the unscrupulous behaviour of recruitment agents, and whether it is genuinely easier for international students than for domestic students to get places on undergraduate courses. However, there is no evidence that international students are displacing domestic students in England, where UK students make up 85% of the total population. We will be working on this as a matter of urgency, but I do not have as yet a definite timeline to give the noble Baroness.

Schools: Transgender Guidance

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

If my noble friend or any Member of this House has specific examples, it would be really helpful for them to share these with the department so that we are able to respond. Certainly, if one looks at the data on, for example, children who have been referred to the NHS GIDS clinic, it shows that there are very, very few children as young as seven. I appreciate there are a number of other issues involved, but the more we can have practical examples, the more we are able to respond effectively.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I need to declare an interest as chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I completely endorse the department’s intention to consult widely on this; it is important that it does so. The Minister will also be aware that this matter has been tasked to her department since 2021, and parents, who are incredibly anxious, as well as children affected, really need her department to come to a speedy resolution. It cannot be right to let it stay out there in the ether, year after year.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

By my calculations, it has been only a year and a bit since 2021. More seriously, I say that one of the important elements in our considerations is the work that Dr Cass is doing in her review. Her interim report did not touch on the implications of these issues in relation to education, but we want to draw on important resources such as her work.

Higher Education Reform

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Barran

Monday 28th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the lifelong learning and other measures that will improve social mobility, but the higher education sector needs a root-and-branch review of the business model of our universities. Perhaps I need to declare that I have a family member who works in higher education and I have been associated with several universities in the past.

We are in another week when UCU members are on strike because of a broken system, where their pensions and working conditions are under attack, while managers pay themselves such astonishing amounts as to make even the private sector blush. USS administrators are using valuation scenarios so risk-averse as to lack any credibility, and the world-class system that the Government rightly applaud is in real danger of being depleted of future academic talent as rewards fall further behind, and the taxpayer’s interests are ignored under the pretext of university autonomy. When will the Government address these blatant anomalies in a sector that seems to have lost its sense of purpose? I associate myself with the remarks of the Labour Front Bench about vision.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness asks a number of important questions about the funding model for our universities but, as she acknowledged, they are incredibly successful in attracting international students, with over 605,000 of those students coming to our universities. In the other place the other day, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State quoted the figure that of every four international students, two go to the US, one comes to the UK and the rest of the world shares the last one.

We are aiming to build on that success; the investment that we announced along with this package aims to focus on both teaching and facilities to make sure that the highest-quality future-facing education is offered in our universities. My right honourable friend the Minister for Universities and Higher Education has been extremely active in stressing her concerns about how students’ experience has suffered over Covid and the responsibility of universities to respond, get back to face-to-face teaching and meet their needs, but I am happy to pick up in writing some of the wider points that the noble Baroness raised.

European Football Championships: Travel

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Barran

Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to exempt from quarantine restrictions (1) UEFA and FIFA officials, and (2) associated visitors, travelling to the United Kingdom for the final of the European football championships.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are proud that the UK is hosting 12 Euro 2020 matches, including both semi-finals and the final at Wembley. We already permit certain officials and accredited guests to enter the UK for these matches under the elite sport exemption. We will continue to keep the scope of these exemptions under review, and are working closely with the FA and UEFA to ensure that these Euro 2020 matches take place successfully. At all times in this pandemic, public health remains our priority.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to hear the Minister’s reassurance on that count. However, given the Government’s track record—travel from India having seeded the Delta variant and Cornwall spiking 2,400% after the G7 summit—does she accept that the public are rightly concerned that their right to life and livelihoods might again be at risk due to the possible importation of what we might call the UEFA variant if the exemptions highlighted in the media go ahead? Will the Government publish an impact assessment so that we can see on what basis this potentially risky and unfair decision has been taken?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I stress that no decision has yet been taken, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for acknowledging that public safety remains our top priority, including the safe delivery of Euro 2020. We have testing protocols and international restrictions in place to help ensure that this tournament can take place successfully and safely.

EU: British Musicians

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

We absolutely recognise that musicians, and the performing arts more broadly, are a crucial part of our culture and our economy. We are working towards a reciprocal arrangement for a touring visa based on best precedent, so that UK musicians could work short term within the EU. However, we do not currently believe that a touring visa, such as the noble Earl suggests, is legally possible.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Non-Afl)]

The Minister mentioned reciprocal arrangements for UK citizens, but I wonder if she could disaggregate that and concentrate only on people in the performing arts. If reciprocal arrangements are not negotiated, will she consider the UK unilaterally allowing access for EU musicians to come here, in the hope that at least individual EU countries will then reciprocate? If we wait for the arrangements for all professionals to be able to travel back and forth, it will be too late for musicians who have contracts that are signed years in advance.

[Baroness Barran]

I am sorry if I was not clear; I was aiming to refer specifically to those in the performing arts. There are not currently plans for a unilateral agreement. We are optimistic that we can reach an effective reciprocal agreement. We are not looking for a bespoke or unique deal. We are trying to build on existing free trade agreements and ensure that they are appropriate for our performing arts and wider service sectors.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Baroness Barran

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I shall answer that in two ways, if I may. Of course, I would be delighted to meet the noble Lord in conjunction with my noble friends Lord Ahmad and Lady Williams, and with the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, if she wishes to join. We can pick that up after the Committee. I assure the Committee that there is no loss of will or momentum on the Government’s side about the telecoms security Bill. Purely practical issues prevent me giving a firm date for its introduction.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister for the manner in which she has dealt with this Bill. I will take up that offer of further conversations on it. In the meantime, I shall briefly address some of the issues raised by noble Lords.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for his support. Yes, these amendments are very close to those tabled in the House of Commons. They are certainly in scope of the Bill, and he will be reassured to know that Chi Onwurah supported them in the House of Commons in February and March, and in fact moved one of them.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned the new US-Australia trade war when he meant, I think, the China-Australia trade war. I say that just for the Hansard record. I think that is what he meant. I will leave it at that.

I was enormously grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his speech. He has great knowledge of human rights around the world. He is right to say that we have collaborated over a very long period on the situation of the Chinese Uighurs. It saddens me that that seems to have dropped off the agenda completely in the light of the Covid story. From what I read on the internet, those people have higher rates of infection and they were infected in their internment camps and so on. It is something we must continue to watch.

I come specifically to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes. I accept that the Bill is a less than ideal vehicle for the passage of these amendments, but I reiterate that they are not wrecking amendments of any sort. They are to strengthen the Government’s hand and to give predictability to providers about the necessary risks that face them as we go forward. She said that the manifesto target was part of the levelling-up agenda to improve connectivity, but I do not believe that United Kingdom citizens who have their personal details stolen or their financial details sold on the dark web and suffer losses would be grateful to the Government for having rolled out 5G perhaps 24 months sooner than if they had used an alternative provider. She and the Government may find themselves on the defensive when such things happen.

The noble Baroness also said that she believes that the decision is right in its assessment of risk, but future risk is always best approached tentatively, after careful evaluation. The most important thing is that the best way to evaluate risks is to have conversations with others who have been victims of the malpractice, particularly when the others are your trusted friends.

That brings me to the remark I find almost patronising on her part, when she warned us that those supporting the Bill in the House of Commons were perhaps part of an agenda to do a trade deal with the US—in other words, she was implying that those of us supporting the Bill here, particularly me, are being naive in our support for the discussions that took place in the Commons. I have pointed out that I do not think that one could accuse Mr Jeremy Corbyn, who added his signature to the Bill, of being desperately keen to do a trade deal with the US, or of being one of the usual suspects in terms of the European Union research group. I can reassure her that not only have I served on the National Security Council, but I first went to China 42 years ago, and I know it fairly well. So I am not walking into this with my eyes closed.

Let me also say, as I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on the screen and having been reminded of his Huawei connection, that perhaps I needed to have declared that I serve as a vice president of the APPG on China, along with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who is the vice chairman, if I recall correctly. So I have been engaged in Parliament in a very positive way with China as well.

It is almost trivialising to suggest that the motivation of lawmakers trying to improve legislation in the House of Lords is somehow guided by groupthink, or by a desire to fall into a certain line. All lawmakers across the House are motivated by the desire to do the best by the country, and there is nothing more important when trying to do the best by a country than caring for its national security.

I come to the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, and his questioning of the telecoms security Bill that the Minister has reassured the House will come to us shortly. In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, Mr Oliver Dowden gave repeated reassurances in the House, but only after some considerable pressure, that the Bill would be brought back before the summer.

I would actually be entirely content to deal with the context of the telecoms security Bill only when the House returns in full form, so that we can have the appropriate scrutiny of the Bill that we need in the proper manner. That Bill is of such critical importance to our national security that this virtual proceeding, and allowing Bills to go through on the basis of their being possibly uncontroversial, simply will not do. I say to the Minister that I would rather the Bill came back somewhat later than when the House is not ready to receive it in full, in the normal way.

Let me conclude by thanking the Minister for her very positive tone. I accept that she is eager to engage with those of us who have concerns and reservations, and I will go away and read her comments on these amendments more carefully, and will then consider my response and whether I will bring the amendments back on Report or not. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.