Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as pro-chancellor of Lancaster University. I fear that noble Lords may feel that I have worked out my line with the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, because it is very similar to hers in its thrust.

I am not against competition per se. I am in favour of it. There is a lot of competition in the university sector as it is. My own institution is deeply competitive in trying to recruit students within a group of universities which it sees as its prime competitors. For instance, we have to invest an awful lot in our high-quality management school if we are going to continue to attract the international students who are so important to our income. Let us not pretend that we do not have competition. We have a lot of it. On the whole, at present it is healthy.

If we are to have more competition, it must not be bargain basement competition at the bottom end of the market, trying to erode margins in the cheap-to-teach subjects—let us put it like that—because ultimately that would undermine the viability of the university sector as a whole. Therefore, when we are talking about competition, the duties ought to have a heavy emphasis on innovation. I would like to see more competition in the area of new courses and institutions that reach out to people who have had apprenticeships and give them a ladder of opportunity into degrees. I would like to see more innovation in trying to attract to university people who are bright but have not succeeded in our conventional education system. There is a strong role for innovation but it has to be guided and managed. I would be horrified by the possibility that the OfS should think that competition should override all other considerations.

I do not have a word formula to meet these requirements, but this requires thought. I would like to hear from the Minister whether the Government share the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and I and others have expressed in this debate, and to hear that they emphatically do not think that the promotion of competition should override other objectives. My noble friend Lord Stevenson spoke to his amendments on having regard to the public interest. I would like to see a provision on having regard to the financial sustainability of the sector as a whole. Such amendments are very important, as we have to have balance on this question.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to amendments in this group as set out by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. I also support Amendment 57, as introduced by my noble friend Lord Addington. They relate to the general duties of the Office for Students and reflect some of the concerns over the unprecedented powers of this new body. We have already addressed the issues in Amendment 41 to do with part-time study and lifelong learning.

Amendment 42 comes from MillionPlus, which is the Association for Modern Universities and has as much interest as anybody in maintaining confidence in the sector, which they have all joined relatively recently, and promoting the reputation which has been hard earned and needs to be protected.

Of the other amendments in the group, Amendment 43 is on the provision of higher education which meets the vocational and professional needs of the students. In the 20 years that I worked for City & Guilds, my work involved linking in with universities, professional bodies and the higher reaches on trying to gain transferability and acceptance for different types of awards. Anything that can be done to try to promote that transferability between types of qualification has to be commended—particularly, I suppose, in view of the degree apprenticeships coming up. Again, recognition of vocational achievement within an academic context there would surely be for the good.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has introduced amendments on supporting and working with student representatives. As we have addressed previously, if the Office for Students is to live up to its name it would be quite useful if students had something to do with it. Amendment 67 suggests that they could even have current experience of being a student.

The amendments on the financial health and viability of the sector are all self-explanatory and seem good. My last comment is on the right reverend Prelate’s amendment. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, about the importance of diversity and how having providers with a denominational characteristic has to be a good part of the mix that we are trying to promote in higher education.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to comment on some of the interventions we have heard expressing concerns about alternative providers. Sometimes, it has been an unhappy story and alternative providers have not delivered what they were supposed to but some of the criticisms are unfair, for two reasons.

First, we should remember that these organisations have no access to research funding or funding for higher cost subjects, so there is a large range of university activities for which they have no access to public funding to engage in. In fact I know that for some of them, their grievance is that they would rather like to have access to some of these strands of funding so that they could provide a greater range of subjects.

Secondly, it is not entirely true to say that they are all of a sort. In my experience, they are quite astute at identifying where there are gaps in provision. For example, modern music is not a subject which is particularly accessible and well taught in higher education institutions. If you want some qualifications of higher education standard for modern music, you by and large go to an alternative provider. Many of them have focused on vocational courses. There is increasing interest in alternative models for delivering medical education. I am being wary as I see the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is poised but there is beginning to be debate about whether medical education could do with some innovation, and some new providers would like to come in.

The argument on this was very well set out at the time of Robbins. There was a lively debate then about new ways of delivering higher education, and the conclusion of some of the leading universities at the time and of the UGC was that the best way to get innovation in higher education was to allow in new institutions to deliver it, as that was a better way of achieving it than expecting the existing ones to do things differently. The new Robbins universities were of course set up without any prior track record. They got university title straightaway and came in with great ambitions for doing things differently.

As we go through these clauses there are lots of genuine concerns, which we need to focus on, about the weight given to competition and collaboration. I may come to those when we debate those clauses, but we should just remember that the story of the advance of British higher education is successive waves of new entrants coming in and doing things differently. That is why we have the diversity that we currently celebrate, and we should, as a minimum, expect it to be as possible in the future for new entrants to come in as it was at the time of Robbins and of the great Victorian reforms.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment for all the good reasons that we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. The Office for Students takes on powerful responsibilities to approve and disband universities and other higher education organisations with speedier timescales and lower thresholds. It is only right that criteria for these new organisations should be clearly set out. One reason given for the legislation has been that it is 25 years since the last Higher Education Bill in 1992. We do not question that some updating is necessary to reflect developments and to ensure that teaching has the same status as research, but we question whether 119 clauses and 12 schedules are necessary for this purpose. Could it be that our universities have flourished and retained world rankings because they have not been subjected to government interference? Within education, schools and colleges have suffered from changes imposed by different Governments and by the churn of Ministers seeking to make their mark, regardless of advice from professionals in the sector. Universities for some years have been relatively free of such assistance, and they have flourished as a result.

The importance of setting out the functions of universities is all the more crucial, given that increasing the numbers of universities and opening up new commercial providers sits oddly with other government policy. The country faces acute skill shortages: we need more builders, engineers, carers and technicians. The Government have ambitious plans to increase the numbers, quality and status of apprenticeships. How can that be achieved if they are also set on increasing provision of degrees, in whatever discipline—probably mainly business and other cheaper-to-run programmes—from an expanding range of organisations whose skills could be better focused on training and reskilling for real jobs in real shortage areas? In the interests of joined-up government, could the Minister say what discussions have taken place with the Skills Minister and his team over the unintended consequences for raising the profile of much-needed skills of implying, through this Bill, that degrees are the only game in town?

Without this clause, the first reference to universities comes in Clause 51. Not long ago, universities were pretty well the only option for higher education. Many of the expansions into higher education by colleges, for instance, have been welcome responses to demand and to opening opportunities for non-traditional students. This Bill brings to mind attempts to create corporate universities in the 1990s. There was British Aerospace’s Virtual University; Unipart U, which is now a virtual U; and the University for Industry—the misnomer of all time—which came into its own only when it abandoned any claims on the title of university and changed its name to learndirect. But those initiatives morphed into closer collaboration between academia and industry, to the benefit of both, and with both contributing their different skills and ethos. Encouraging more such partnerships would surely be better for students, employers and the country than trying to widen and potentially weaken the range of higher education providers.

The criteria in this amendment provide safeguards that the core functions and values of British universities will be protected. It would be sadly ironic if the Bill produced a double whammy of undermining efforts to raise the standing and importance of skills, while damaging the standing and reputation of UK universities. There is much at stake in this Bill. We look forward to working with Ministers to ensure that market forces, competition and red tape are not allowed to damage our world-ranking universities. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope that he feels able to accept the amendment.

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to this important amendment and speak in support of it. I declare my interests in higher education, as indicated in the register, and declare and acknowledge the research support from colleagues at Universities UK and my university, Aston University.

As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, says, UK universities have an exceptional international reputation for teaching and scholarship in many forms. They are places where teaching and research are intimately interwoven. Undergraduate programmes benefit from research-based learning, and graduate students and researchers are beneficially involved in teaching. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Stern, commented very positively on that in his recent review of the research excellence framework. Universities are places where new academic fields grow from interactions between colleagues in different disciplines, and places where the encouragement of independent thought and the challenge to the status quo delivers technological change and innovation. Indeed, that is why so many large companies, such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, engage closely with universities—for example, through their university technology centres—to ensure that academics can challenge the stove-pipe thinking that can develop in large corporations.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has commented, the autonomy of UK universities is recognised by our European colleagues as key to their exceptional positions in the ranking tables. Surely a broad and inclusive definition of the functions of something as important as a university in the UK is to be welcomed. That proposed in the amendment encompasses the key ingredients: autonomy; free speech; academic freedom; interdisciplinarity; teaching, scholarship and research; and, of course, the mission to contribute to society. We must recognise that being a higher education provider, delivering high-quality teaching, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for being a university. I look forward to the Minister’s response in this area.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

Perhaps I may add to my earlier remarks. This proposed new clause is absolute anathema to those of us who are chancellors of substantial private universities set up under the 2004 legislation and regulated to the hilt. My organisation, BPP, has 20,000 students, we have 5,000 to 6,000 undergraduates and we make a profit. We charge £5,000 a year, which is very much less than £9,000 a year, for a three-year degree, and £6,000 a year for a two-year degree. We have part-time degrees all over the place and we offer degree-awarding apprenticeships. We are fairly specialised. We stick within the general field of law and business, although we have just branched out into nursing and medicine—so tomorrow the world.

However, none of that is envisaged in the clause produced by my noble friend Lord Stevenson. I cannot believe that this House intends to outlaw this kind of university. Indeed, you can hardly do so because BPP was granted university status in 2013 after four heavy-duty years of regulation—and we are still heavily regulated, which we do not mind at all.

We would all be perfectly happy with the autonomy clause. For BPP, autonomy is guaranteed by a very tough academic council. You try telling the academic council what to do. That is just impossible—and occasionally it frustrates things that the management would like to do.

Therefore, we really do have to rethink this and, as my noble friend said, bottom out what we mean by “for-profit universities”. I cannot believe that BPP is the only organisation that would be affected by this proposal, yet it is the only one of any size that I can describe. Further on in the debate I will want to emphasise that we went through four years of heavy-duty regulation to get there. To be honest, that is about what it took to convert us from a first-class, long-established training establishment to something that had proper academic qualifications and worked as a university. Therefore, I suggest that we look very carefully at probationary degree-awarding powers. I feel equally strongly about the idea of outlawing private sector universities. There would be one set of things called UK universities, which would be the gold standard, and then there would be the rest of us. What would that say about the 2004 legislation—or indeed about the future of universities in this country? We will have to think about this rather carefully.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment on the basis that it seemed to contain some things that were very worthy of discussion. As we have heard, this is obviously a rather controversial area, but it gives us another chance to look closely at what we understand by universities and at what characteristics in them we value.

There is much to support the ongoing role of the Privy Council in the establishment of universities, providing as it does impartiality, expertise and universal standing in the awarding of royal charters. This clause would also allow for Acts of Parliament—but, again, it is open to debate as to whether there should be other sources of authority. There is a general anxiety that there should be authoritative powers to set up new universities because there is a concern that the Bill as it stands seems to give a fairly free hand for new universities to be set up without necessarily the standards that we have all grown accustomed to.

The other amendments in this group to which I have added my name are all to do with autonomy, which we discussed at great length in the debate on Amendment 1. The success of universities depends on their ability to take their own decisions, so that they can be flexible and responsible to the environment in which they are working and decide for themselves on courses, staffing and admissions. The Bill as drafted includes a number of areas where a future regime could seek to intervene in matters that are for individual institutions. Autonomy has been recognised as providing a key competitive advantage and, indeed, has been identified as a critical factor in making the UK the top performer in the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending in tertiary education. These amendments would enshrine university autonomy in the Bill.

We welcome the Government’s amendment that states:

“Guidance framed by reference to a particular course of study must not guide the OfS to perform a function in a way which prohibits or requires the provision of a particular course of study”.

This addresses concerns about the Government directing individual institutions on which courses they can open or close. However, autonomy is such a fundamental principle of the UK higher education system that we would want the Bill to go further. The amendments in this group enshrine that.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 65 and give my general support to the other amendments in the group. I first declare my interest as chair of Sheffield Hallam University’s board of governors.

Free institutions are a fundamental part of a truly democratic society. We sadly know that simply having the power to vote is not in itself a guarantee of a democratic and free society—you need only to look at Russia to see an example of that. For me, the issue of free institutions is not simply about the benefit to the institution itself but is fundamental to an open society. That is true of a free press but, in my view, it is equally true of free universities. This has been a fundamental tenet of thinking for a long time. Indeed, there is unanimous agreement across all parties about the issue of institutional autonomy.

The question therefore is: why does the issue arise now? I am afraid that it arises precisely because of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, put it well when he said that the Bill itself has raised concerns and questions about institutional autonomy. Yet we would all sign up to the freedom of universities to decide which courses they run, which staff they employ and which students they choose to admit or not admit.

The very particular concern goes to the powers given to the Secretary of State and to the new Office for Students. Others have spoken on this at length and I will not repeat that. However, I will cite three examples that concern me. First, the threshold for the OfS to undertake action against a university is if it appears to the OfS—I emphasise “appears”—that it has breached the conditions of its registration. Surely that is too broad a basis on which to intervene. Secondly, the Bill gives the OfS the power to search and enter the premises of an HE provider registered with it, subject to a court order. Surely that should be limited to situations where there is a concern about fraud or severe financial mismanagement. It is too open at the moment.

Thirdly, the Bill allows the Secretary of State to frame the guidance given to the OfS by reference to particular courses. As this House will know, that contrasts sharply with the current legislation—the 1992 Act—in which the Secretary of State is specifically forbidden from setting guidance to HEFCE in this way. Those are three very specific examples of why this Bill causes concern.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

I support my noble friend Lord Lipsey in deploring this title. Words are significant. My noble friend mentioned George Orwell. He knew how slippery language can be. In the fake news and post-truth era, getting words exact matters more than ever. We know that in the light of the Bill students could be called consumers and providers could be entrepreneurs—business men or women. We know that language is loose and being used loosely in politics generally. Hard, soft—when have these words ever been as powerful as they are today? We have to be very thoughtful about this title.

We have spent the day discussing a whole range of activities—knowledge, research, wisdom, range of scholarship, academic life, the global achievements of our universities—and the best we can come up with is the Office for Students. What about the rest of us? What about all the universities and their authority? What about the range of scholarship and achievement of which we are so proud? Finally, on a rather silly note, are the Government really pleased that this will become known as “Ofstud”?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. The Office for Students was always a rather strange title for this all-encompassing and all-powerful body. It was particularly ironic because it took quite some effort to get students in any way involved with it or represented on it. The Office for Higher Education seems an eminently sensible title for it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, that covers all the aspects that this strange body is going to be responsible for. The Minister should think very seriously about changing the title.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I agree that the Office for Students is a very strange name for this body. I take this opportunity to remind anybody in the House who does not already know how very opposed to much of what it is going to do most of our students are, and publicly so. Although the automatic response one gets when this is pointed out is, “Oh, they just don’t want their fees put up”, that is not the sole thing they are complaining about—not at all. I also take this opportunity to put on record my appreciation of the University of Warwick student union, with which I have no connection whatever, which wrote an extremely well-thought-out critique of the Bill back in June, which was the first thing to alert me to many of the things that I have become very concerned about since. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, that this is not an appropriate title and it would be very good if we could come up with another—but I do not think I will be collecting his champagne.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

Can I just confirm that that is exactly what I meant?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I add my wholehearted support to these amendments. Further education is all too often the Cinderella of the education world, yet further education colleges do an absolutely phenomenal job across a very wide range of students and subjects, so having them represented on this body is absolutely essential. I also support the adult and part-time education students, who form a critical and very important part of the student body. They have different sorts of views and needs from those who are the typical 18 year-olds going to university.

There is also the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made about vocational and professional education, which often links very closely with higher education institutions but has a different sort of ethos and different cohorts of people. All these amendments to add to the membership of the OfS board are critical, and I hope that the Minister will look favourably on these amendments.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said about part-time students. We will come back to that subject in more detail during these debates. Of all days, today we should think about that really seriously. London has been brought to a standstill by a transport strike, and it is only a matter of time before the drivers of those trains, not merely the people and guards and the other people on the platforms, will no longer be working, because science and technology is advancing rapidly. That is a model for our society, and people will have to retrain.

In my 15 years’ involvement with Sheffield Hallam University, one thing that I have learned above all is that people taking part-time courses have transformed their lives in gaining skills, coming from relatively manual jobs, or jobs with a low level of skill. It is vital that we find every possibility of supporting those students. I urge the Government to consider that during the passage of this Bill. I also briefly defer to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and congratulate him on his interest in school students, which has been long-standing and of great importance.

From my experience, I cannot emphasise enough the lack of aspiration that so many school students have because they do not really believe that they can go to university. That is why it is so important that we have the bridge between school and university which this minor amendment would help to promote. There are all sorts of reasons why that is important. We may have the best school teachers in the world, but so many children go home to a desert where there is no aspiration. Their parents ask them: “Why aren’t you going out to work; why aren’t you earning money; why aren’t you supporting the household?”. It is extremely important to find ways of encouraging people from those sorts of backgrounds to understand that they should be considering further or higher education. Having people on this new body who can help universities interface with schools and teachers to give better career guidance would be a blessing and it should be incorporated in the Bill.

Technical Education and Apprenticeships

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My noble friend is absolutely right and I pay tribute to him, and indeed to Dearing, for the part they played in setting up the UTC programme. I remember standing at this very Dispatch Box about three years ago and speaking about just seven UTCs; there are now 48. We continue to look at the performance of the UTC model and learn lessons from those that are open to ensure that they offer a great education for young people who want to follow a technical path and that, crucially, they produce the necessary skills to help us grow our talent.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

What consideration have the Government given to including technical and vocational achievement in school league tables and to encouraging schools to celebrate their apprenticeship leavers with the same pride that they show in their university entrants?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That is a good point. It is very much up to schools to make those decisions but, again, as part of our campaign—our PR—we are encouraging schools in what they do to give advice on careers in general. This is very much part of it.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to all those who have spoken in this informed and erudite debate. We have heard expertise from all around the Chamber, with views across the spectrum. I join in the congratulations and welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg. I wish to start by thanking the Ministers, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe; the Higher Education Minister, Jo Johnson; Sir John Kingman; the Bill team; and the copious number of outside organisations for their helpful briefings. My pile of briefings has risen so that I can barely see across my desk. We shall aim to take account of them all.

As we have heard, despite the time and patience of the Government, this House still has very significant concerns with the scope and nature of the changes proposed in the Bill. We recognise the need for updated legislation and we welcome parts of the Bill, but we question the wisdom of imposing such major revisions on a world-beating sector, which is also having to grapple with unwelcome outcomes from Brexit. There are real-life concerns over the status of EU nationals, staff and students, where the Government’s stance is less then helpful, as we have heard.

We hope to use the Bill to argue yet again for measures to take international students out of the immigration figures, as we heard so eloquently from the noble Lords, Lord Patten, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Hannay, and others. It is damaging, counterproductive and unreal to categorise time-limited students as immigrants, much valued as they are, but it is closely followed by the need to reduce immigration numbers. Brexit concerns also hover over research funding, where funds and collaboration from the EU play a significant part in the success of projects.

As the 67th speaker, and therefore the post-graveyard slot, it is unlikely I shall have anything new to share with the House, but I will draw together some, but not necessarily all, of the issues where these Benches will seek clarity and amendments. Along with so many of your Lordships, we believe that the autonomy of universities—or “higher education providers”—is a factor that has contributed to their undoubted international success. Anything that erodes that autonomy is unlikely to have a positive effect, so we shall be challenging the extraordinary powers of the Office for Students to create and disband providers and to remove their royal charters. We shall be looking for strengthened checks and balances to match the unprecedented responsibilities of the OfS.

The Bill makes it easier for more profit-making organisations to move into the market primarily for financial gain, which could see a repeat of scandals at private colleges in the US. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, apparently if you are seven feet six you are guaranteed a good degree. This is not a well-known academic criterion. There may be benefit in competition—which is already happening, so the legislation is catching up—but proper safeguards are needed to ensure that high standards and quality are maintained. The thresholds for university status must be robust.

We wish to see better defined provision for adult and part-time learners. We have heard support for lifelong learning and part-timers from the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell, Lady Rebuck and Lady Dean, and others, and for better provision for students with disability, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Addington. We shall explore whether universities should have an explicit duty of care towards students and staff, with particular regard for mental health problems, which can so very easily be ignored. Pastoral resources should be essential to a good university, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned.

Where in the Bill is the encouragement of degree apprentices and vocational degrees, which provide essential skills that will help to meet the skills shortages? I suggest to the noble Lords, Lord Hennessy and Lord Sawyer, that we need plumbers as well as poets.

There is little to encourage disadvantaged learners in the Bill. We need to build on the success of programmes such as Aimhigher and the Office for Fair Access, which have had really good results in opening access, but we need to do more to open opportunities to those whose horizons would otherwise be limited. We shall be scrutinising the Bill for more open systems while safeguarding standards for all providers, so that a degree from a British university retains the credibility and respect which universities have earned for their students over the centuries. This can be done while promoting diversity of learners, of staff, and of programmes of study, even the very small specialist subjects. The aim should be for the whole university experience to be a positive one that broadens minds and encourages aspiration in a community of scholars.

As the Bill covers the well-being of universities, we support calls for the repeal of the statutory Prevent duty in universities. We further urge a wider review of the Government’s Prevent strategy. Freedom of speech is essential for academic thinking to remain cutting-edge, for uncomfortable ideas to be explored and challenged —we heard on that from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, but we also heard of the incident mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, which is totally unacceptable. There are legal safeguards, but universities should provide a safe space to challenge extreme views, to confront through reason and not to ban.

As has been said, although the teaching excellence framework does not feature directly in this Bill, its impact does. We, too, deplore the branding of universities into gold, silver and bronze, thus displaying to the world our national assessment of weaknesses on the most dubious of metrics. Measuring things takes time, resource and money, all of which could be more profitably put to use in promoting academic excellence. The proposed metrics are particularly detrimental to the arts. The quality of teaching cannot be so simplistically measured and, dare I say, speaking as a former teacher, some students are more readily open to learning than others, which may say more about the students than the teachers. As was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, students perhaps regard themselves as customers. They may not be customers, but we certainly hope that they will be voters. Therefore, we support the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for student voter registration.

It is true that, for decades, university teaching has been regarded as secondary to university research. Anything the Bill can do to raise the standards and status of teaching would of course be welcome, but we shall look carefully at whether the measures in the Bill may have unintended consequences and not achieve the desired effect. Universities have well-respected teaching departments, which could certainly be used to raise standards of proficiency within their own organisations as well as within schools and colleges. We would seek ways in the Bill to encourage rather than to brand. We know that there are high levels of job insecurity, particularly among more junior academic staff. We have heard today of zero-hours contracts, of academics needing multiple jobs just to make a living and of pressures which can do nothing to improve the quality of their teaching. Higher levels of job security and access to supportive teacher training would do far more to raise standards than harmful and simplistic branding.

What about the “precious symbiosis” of teaching and research—what a lovely phrase? Teaching and research go hand in glove. It is perhaps unfortunate that teaching and research are now found in different government departments, which will surely make it more difficult to integrate the two.

On UKRI, we recognise that there is room to improve the commercial profit from the UK’s pioneering research, which Innovate UK was set up to foster. While fully supporting that aspect of research, we shall look carefully at the remit of UKRI to ensure that the proposals do not undermine pure research, which may have no immediate financial returns but may prove in time of immense value to national life. Concerns have been expressed about the limitations on the commercial work of Innovate UK if it is to share its governance with the research councils, but we welcome the enhanced funding which UKRI has attracted from the Government and which appears to show the Government’s support for this establishment. We look forward to hearing more about how the Government intend to ensure that both these valuable aspects of research will flourish under UKRI.

I hope that we can insert post-legislative scrutiny into the Bill to ensure that any unintended consequences do not persist far into the future. I assure the Government that we on these Benches will work constructively on the Bill. I hope that the detailed scrutiny which is the role of this House will enable beneficial amendments and assurances so that our higher education and research continue to earn worldwide respect. Meanwhile, I look forward to the Minister’s reply to this exhaustive, and exhausting, Second Reading.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I too add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for introducing this vitally important debate. The only interest I can possibly declare is that I was once educated at and by Oxford, but I assure my old university that my mistakes are all my own.

At this, the tail-end of the debate, we have heard so many distinguished and expert speakers that it is a challenge for those of us speaking at this stage to produce any new evidence. However, I would like to add my voice in support of much that has been said. It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, who brings such energy and enthusiasm in his support for universities.

In all the publicity and dialogue during the referendum campaign, too little notice was taken of the impact on our universities of severing links with the European Union, which have been so productive and valuable over many years, as we have heard from all around the House today. In fairness, not only did the Leave campaign not highlight the impact on universities, the Remain campaign did not speak up loudly enough either. It was apparent that university communities understood, as they tended to vote in large numbers to remain. They appreciated the value of all the many connections that the EU offers, for scholarship, research, cultural and economic reasons. We must remember that scientific research is one of the UK’s strongest assets.

That is one reason why my party is arguing for clarity over the Brexit negotiations and for Parliament and the people to decide, when the options are much clearer, whether the new deal is the one that the country really wants and needs. After all, the battle bus promise of £350 million to the NHS if we left the EU is not looking as though it will be a promise kept in the near future. So it is just possible that the Brexiteers’ sunny uplands may turn out to be not so sunny, nor indeed so up.

In an insightful article in the Guardian this week, Peter Scott from the Institute of Education set out some of the threats to universities, which we have heard again today. First, as this debate highlights, is the threat to the UK’s participation in European research programmes, access to funding and to student exchange schemes such as Erasmus. The Government have done nothing to reassure EU nationals, staff and students of their continuing welcome here. Yet, we know that teachers and researchers from the EU play a key role in maintaining the UK’s enviable position in global league tables. In a number of important disciplines, we need European students to fill deficits in domestic demand, particularly in science, engineering and medicine, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley and others have set out. I repeat the question: what assurances can the Minister give of continued working rights for current EU staff and their dependants at UK universities and for those who take up positions during the transition period before the UK has left the EU? In the longer term, will universities be sure that they can continue to recruit the talented staff they need from all over the world without overly burdensome visa requirements?

We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, about the importance of academic mobility, and the noble Lord, Lord Soley, mentioned the burdensome visa requirements that may well be a hindrance to some of those we really want to attract to our country. We can all be cynical about league tables, which we know can distort, mislead and be totally unreliable, but it is nevertheless gratifying to find that Oxford heads the global table of universities, with Cambridge and Imperial close behind. These positions are held by virtue of attracting talent from around the world, and notably from within the EU.

A further threat which Peter Scott described in his article, and which has been set out by the noble Lords, Lord Smith and Lord Bilimoria, is that the UK has established itself as a nasty country. Why should the brightest and best scholars and students choose to come to a country which is loath to welcome those in real distress and puts up barriers for genuine students, insisting that they be classified as immigrants and therefore included in the numbers that the Government are intent on reducing? We heard this from the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, from the noble Lords, Lord Hannay, Lord Liddle, Lord Smith and others around the House. How can it be encouraging to know that the UK is reluctant to accept you because it wants to accept as few foreigners, including foreign students, as possible in order to meet an imagined ideal number? We urge the Minister to have students removed from immigration figures. That is logical. They are, after all, not here to say. The vast majority return home at the end of their studies. It is right and it makes economic sense.

We need to do much more to recapture our reputation as an open, friendly and welcoming country, which will be much more difficult once we have shut the door on partnership with our closest geographical friends and neighbours. I too support the importance of networks, which the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, my noble friend Lady Smith and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, all referred to. The networks are as important as the funding. Other countries are not being slow in extending the hand of welcome to students who might well have chosen to come and study here.

Our withdrawal from the EU makes it even more important to increase and improve our ability to communicate with the world in languages other than English. Over the years, we have lost influence within the EU because not enough of our brightest and best opted to work in Brussels, and when they did they were frequently hindered by not having mastery of at least one and preferably more foreign languages. Without the umbrella of the EU, we are now on our own, negotiating collaboration, including on academic, trade and security matters, with countries where English is not the preferred language. What plans do the Government have for improving our language proficiency in preparation for our withdrawal from the EU?

Funding to keep us at the forefront of research in science, technology and engineering is of fundamental importance, but so too is funding for the ability to communicate internationally. Our universities deserve every encouragement and support in their promotion of modern languages. Networking is all the more effective when there is respect and fluency in people’s native languages. Within that context, I add my voice to others around the House on continued support for Erasmus and other programmes that encourage understanding, not only of other languages but of other cultures. There is immense value to our students of having the opportunity to live and study abroad. Exchanges promote international relations and understanding, and they in turn promote peace and security.

We heard from the noble Lords, Lord Hannay, Lord Rees, Lord Haskel and Lord Giddens, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and others that we will shortly be receiving in this House the Higher Education and Research Bill. Sufficient unto the day—there will be time enough to scrutinise this controversial Bill in the coming months, but it is worth raising within this debate the fact that the Government appear intent on adding to the sector’s challenges by wishing to impose some astonishing and unprecedented changes on this, our most highly regarded of sectors. We shall hear more than enough about that Bill in good time, so I simply note that universities facing Brexit probably should be spared home-made challenges from an intrusive and unhelpful Government. I also note the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth on the dangers of seeking to rank universities’ teaching in gold, silver and bronze. The Girl Guides and the Boy Scouts have some good ideas, but this is possibly not a good one to apply to universities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, reminded us, the metrics for teaching excellence are extremely dodgy—I do not think that she used that word because it may be unparliamentary, but that is a fact.

The noble Lords, Lord Kakkar, Lord Mair, Lord Hannay and Lord Broers, referred to the learned bodies—the Royal Society, the British Academy and the Royal Academy of Engineering. We have in our country these amazingly highly regarded institutions and the Government would do very well to pay attention and to seek advice from the people they represent.

Our world-renowned universities are facing uncertain and difficult times and in this House we shall do what we can to encourage the Government to work with them to consult, support and not compound their difficulties—indeed, to meet the tests of the noble Lord, Lord Fox. This debate has enabled us to air some of the concerns and solutions, to ensure that our universities flourish into the future. I hope that our universities have heard the support that they have had from all around the House for their future well-being and our concerns for the difficulties that they currently face. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Lifelong Learning

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how their policies are supporting and encouraging lifelong learning.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I make no apology for accepting the opportunity to renew the debate on lifelong learning, which has often been addressed in your Lordships’ House. I thank all noble Lords who have signed up to speak at very short notice, including those who will speak in the gap. I regret that the late introduction of this debate in the business means that many champions of the subject may have missed the opportunity to take part and encourage the Government to greater efforts.

Lifelong learning has been defined as the ongoing, voluntary and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. It enhances social mobility, active citizenship and personal development, all of which are surely of benefit to individuals, the community and the country. It is often considered learning that occurs after the formal education of childhood, where learning is instructor driven or pedagogical, and into adulthood, where the learning is individually driven or andragogical. I had never come across the term “andragogical” before, so my own lifelong learning has already been enhanced. This could be because without any training I drifted into teaching with just a degree. I discovered at first hand how different were the skills required to obtain a halfway decent degree from those required to engage young people in learning. As a result, I am deeply convinced of the importance—indeed, the necessity—of teacher training and will listen with interest to my noble friend Lord Storey’s debate after this.

However it is perceived, lifelong learning is dependent on people developing a love of learning, being excited about acquiring knowledge and skills, and having the confidence to take the risk of tackling new challenges. I have not limited this debate to adult education—although the focus is likely to be on continuing adult education—and I should like to begin at the beginning. As was touched on in the earlier Statement, the early years are crucial. Children’s learning starts in the home. We have all seen the joy on the face of a young child who takes their first step, catches their first ball or recites their first nursery rhyme. This is the sort of satisfaction that lifelong learning should continue to generate.

From the time of formal schooling, the Government have a major part to play to ensure that a love of learning forms part of education. Will the Minister tell us what importance the Government give to love of learning and fun in the curriculum? What place is there to generate enthusiasm, spontaneity and curiosity in the midst of the remorseless assessment, strict curriculum and constant competitiveness that is to be found in primary schools and, even more so, in secondary schools? In secondary schools, the dead hand of academic league tables drives teachers remorselessly to concentrate on tests and exam syllabuses.

I always feel that there is a valid analogy with carrots. You do not grow bigger and better carrots by pulling them up every day to check and measure their growth. Similarly, you do not grow better-educated youngsters by formally assessing and measuring them at every moment of their learning. With the overemphasis on formal measurement, our dedicated and hard-working teachers have little time or incentive to introduce innovation and excitement into the business of education.

As an aside, the great grammar school controversy, of which we heard more in the Statement earlier today, is an unnecessary distraction from the very real issue of engaging all young people, regardless of intelligence or aptitude, in learning.

In promoting lifelong learning, careers information, advice and guidance play a key part as a motivator, and as an introduction to the relevance of school learning to future life and work. This is especially important to those young people whose interests, talents and skills lie in practical learning. Enthusiasm for learning can be generated in the most unlikely pupil if they can see a purpose and a practical pathway, and can grow in confidence and self-respect that they too can be achievers. It is vital that the value of vocational and practical skills is given as much status and encouragement as academic achievement. Dare I ask the Minister to impress on his colleagues the immense value of good careers information at the earliest stage in education?

Schools can, and do, aim to encourage learning of all sorts, but are often held back by oft-changing government policies; what my former colleague Lady Sharp of Guildford referred to in her brilliantly insightful valedictory speech as the “churn of government”. It is pernicious that incoming Secretaries of State seem to feel it imperative to enforce their own new bright ideas, regardless of the impact and unproductive workload on teachers, and regardless of the fact that these very same bright new ideas might well have been tried, tested and found wanting in previous generations. Can the Minister persuade his education colleagues to hold fire, to consult, and to undertake cost and benefit analysis before making changes that are, all too often, politically driven and have little to do with improving life chances for all young people? After all, experts are sometimes right.

I mentioned league tables. They are the public face of achievement for GCSE and A-level results. What steps are the Government taking to incentivise schools over apprenticeships and other work-based skills by celebrating pupils who achieve in those areas?

After school, further education colleges play a vital, if underappreciated, role in taking forward provision for learning. Alas, the adult skills budget has been reduced by 35% over the last seven years with the proportion of adult learners over the last 15 years dropping from 50% to 15%. Gone are so many of those life-enhancing evening classes that can broaden minds, enrich lives and promote aspiration in a wide variety of ways. It is well proven that learning as an adult, including non-accredited learning, brings benefits such as better health and well-being, greater social engagement and increased confidence, as well as better employability, and benefits to family and community life. I remember years ago teaching French to adults in a college. What a contrast it was to some of the school pupils I was faced with. How exhilarating it was to have students with a sense of achievement and enjoyment at learning something new. They had rediscovered the joy of learning that we see in the very young.

On the employment side, the country is facing acute skills shortages. There are an estimated 31 million people in the current workforce of whom 12 million are due to retire in the next 10 years with only 7 million in the education system to replace them, so on numbers alone we need to be encouraging reskilling and retraining even before we consider the specific skills where shortages are most acute, such as science, technology, engineering, mathematics and languages.

Further education colleges are essential to this progress, with valuable contributions too from great institutions such as the Open University and Birkbeck College. The services that they provide enable adults to fulfil potential but also to contribute to the economy. All are currently too concerned about funding, qualified teachers and certainty about the future to enable them to plan their work to full benefit. Part-time learners have been heavily hit with changes to funding and colleges have struggled to keep up staffing numbers along with the wide range of courses they are expected to provide.

I flag up two issues. The first is funding for ELQs—equivalent or lower-level qualifications. Some exemptions have been made, but relaxing the rules would give great benefit in meeting shortages in the workforce. The second is individual learning accounts, where individuals contribute to their training costs alongside contributions from employers and tax exemptions from government. The scheme fell apart over fraudulent mismanagement, but the basic idea was sound and would be well worth revisiting, obviously with much tighter oversight to avoid the previous pitfalls.

We have yet to see the impact of the apprenticeship levy on adult education, but the signs are worrying. I urge the Government to consult and monitor to avoid adverse unintended consequences of this new initiative. Lifelong learning is an essential component in providing long-term flexible career prospects and for creating a more productive workforce. I hope that the Government will listen to all those who work to enhance learning and will provide more generous and more reliable funding to ensure the fulfilment of individual potential and the prosperity of the country.

Brexit: UK Universities

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That is certainly one of the concerns that has arisen, and it is why the Minister has acted quickly to attempt to reassure the sector. It is essential that we move quickly to reassure all those who are based here, because it is incredibly important for the UK economy that we have skilled staff and that we have students studying here, because they provide a lot of revenue for the UK.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, the EU makes substantial financial contributions to research in UK universities, amounting to around £1 billion a year. What provision are the Government making to ensure the quality of research in our universities, should that funding be withdrawn?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

This is certainly one issue that will be at the top of the agenda when the discussions start on the future of our relationship with the EU. I am unable to go further on that point at the moment but I reassure the noble Baroness that this is a very important matter.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Grand Committee

Relevant documents: 1st and 2nd Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Clause 20: Social worker regulations

Amendment 135B

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Warner (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 135B seeks to replace the existing Clause 20 and much of Part 2 of the Bill with a new clause that establishes a new general social work council as an independent regulator of social workers accountable to Parliament through the Privy Council. This amendment needs to be seen alongside Amendment 135C, which seeks to set up a new social work improvement agency, and will be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It is no accident that both these amendments have the same names attached to them. We all start from a totally different position from that of the Government on social work regulation and improvement, as I think was very clear at the briefing meeting on Part 2 held last week. That is why I enlisted the help of the clerks in producing this amendment, and I am very grateful to them for their efforts.

The purpose of Amendment 135B is twofold. First, it would separate the work of regulating social workers from improving their development. Secondly, it would make the regulation of the social work profession independent of Ministers, as is the case with all other health and care professions. Under Part 2, the regulatory and improvement functions are combined. I think this totally misunderstands the function of profession regulators, who are there to protect the public by setting and upholding standards of conduct and competence, controlling entry to the profession and taking action in response to concerns about conduct and competence. Regulators are not there to secure improvement to a profession’s training, practice or continuing development. Those functions are for others. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others will say more about this second role when we come to the next amendment. All I would say now is that muddling these two separate roles is highly likely to produce a muddled and less-effective regulator. The former General Social Care Council, before its abolition by the coalition Government, was criticised for having an unclear remit covering both regulatory and improvement functions. A review of the Nursing and Midwifery Council in 2012 by the Professional Standards Authority criticised that council for increasingly seeing,

“its role as supporting the development of nurses and midwives beyond ‘fitness to practise’ and so had strayed into trying to provide a broader professional leadership role”.

Combining regulatory functions with those of professional development distracts people from the main purpose of a regulator, which is to protect the public by upholding standards. With the Bill in its present form, the Government are doing just that. They are repeating the failings of the General Social Care Council, which they abolished, and are not learning the lessons from the regulator oversight work of the Professional Standards Authority. The likely outcome is muddle and delay in the important fitness-to-practise work of a regulator that protects the public from unsatisfactory professionals.

The other major shortcoming of Part 2 of the Bill, as drafted, is that it could well lead to the Secretary of State exercising direct control over social workers. This can only jeopardise their professional independence and lead to a loss of public and judicial confidence in the independence of social workers. They could quickly be seen as agents of the state. This interpretation can most easily be avoided by the new regulatory body being independent of government but accountable to Parliament through the Privy Council. This amendment does just that, and has the added advantage that it avoids removing social workers’ regulation from the oversight of the Professional Standards Authority and retains the position it shares with other care professions. This will ensure the effectiveness of the regulation of social workers.

I recognise that the same effect could be achieved by keeping the regulation of social workers under the aegis of the Health and Care Professions Council, which would certainly be a little less disruptive and would avoid the cost of change. However, I can see the merits of the Government providing social workers with their own regulator and that that might enhance the standing of social work. The amendment provides for this. I hope the Government can see the force of the arguments for separating the functions of regulation and improvement, and for separating the governance of the regulator from too close a relationship with the Secretary of State. I hope it will be seen by the Government and the Minister as a reasonable compromise. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I have to inform the Committee that if Amendment 135B is agreed to, I cannot put the question that Clause 20 stand part of the Bill by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment because I was moved to do so, particularly by the British Association of Social Workers, which wrote saying that:

“We are not opposed to exploring new social work regulation options. We support steps to improve accountability of social workers, enabling them to show increasing specialism and skill. But we are opposed to these proposals that concentrate government control and that contain no incentive for the profession to lead in setting standards and developing its self-governance”.

In other words, it is not averse to regulation and it is all in favour of maintaining the independence of that regulator and separating him or her from the governance that is proposed in the Bill.

This is the second time in my life that I have supported an initiative in which my noble friend Lord Warner was involved. When I took over as Chief Inspector of Prisons in 1995, the control of young offenders was entirely in the hands of the Home Office, and it was an absolute disaster. They were treated badly, their conditions were appalling and nobody was taking an interest in the conditions and treatment that they received in the various establishments. Then came the Youth Justice Board—proposed and led by my noble friend—and there was immediate transformation. The merit of this amendment is not only that it has come from someone who clearly knows the profession because of his past experience; it also reflects both the practicalities of regulation that is required and has the support of the whole profession, which the Bill clearly does not.