Education and Society

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the most reverend Primate for introducing this debate and for his insightful words. Education is not only essential in building a flourishing and skilled society but for maintaining it. Increasingly, there is an economic and social imperative for lifelong learning. Education has a seminal role to play in ensuring that children and young people acquire the skills for life and work. It should engender a love of learning, a sense of excitement and self-worth in young people as they explore and develop.

Children’s education starts in the home. We have all seen the joy on the face of a young child who takes its first step, catches its first ball or recites its first nursery rhyme. That is the sort of satisfaction which education should continue to generate, building confidence and aspiration. Sadly, our education system is not always the happy and productive experience it could and should be.

I pay tribute to the Church of England, which plays a key part in education at all levels but a particularly valuable part at primary level, where C of E schools tend to be sought after by those of all faiths and none, as the most reverend Primate has set out. They have an ethos of care and encouragement, which makes for a good start for little people and certainly plays its part in helping to fight embedded squalor.

When formal schooling starts, the Government should ensure that this love of learning continues. Too often, curiosity and enthusiasm are trumped by testing and assessment, with children measured not against where their talents and interests lie but against academic yardsticks, which for many prove difficult and a source of failure. I have asked Ministers before—without getting a satisfactory answer—what importance the Government give to love of learning and fun in the curriculum. What credit are teachers given for stimulating ideas and aspiration in the young, particularly in those who prefer doing and making to thinking and studying?

Constant assessment and measuring play havoc with building skills and knowledge, and can generate feelings of failure even in the very young. If education becomes associated with hopelessness, it becomes increasingly challenging to build up self-respect and aspiration. I taught in numerous secondary schools in England and Germany during a peripatetic life as an RAF wife. I remember only too well the challenges of capturing imagination and encouraging even the slowest and the worst behaved. Teaching can be very satisfying but, my goodness me, it is hard work.

Enthusiasm for learning can be generated in the most unlikely pupil if they can see a purpose in a practical pathway and grow in self-respect with the confidence that they too can be achievers. Dare I ask the Minister to impress on his colleagues the immense value of good careers information at the earliest stage in education? If young people are intrigued by cars, cooking, care or computers, they will see a purpose in learning. Engagement in a practical subject can lead to grasping its academic counterpart. Calculating measurements for building or cooking can clarify the purpose of maths when maths lessons have previously been impenetrable.

Schools can, and do, aim to encourage learning of all sorts but are often held back by oft-changing Ministers and policies—the remorseless “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. Can the Minister persuade his education colleagues to hold fire, to consult and to undertake cost and benefit analyses before introducing changes which all too often are politically driven and have little to do with improving the life chances of young people?

I worked for City & Guilds for 20 years. I have asked before and ask again: what steps are the Government taking to incentivise schools to promote apprenticeships and other work-based skills by celebrating pupils who achieve in those areas? League tables and financial incentives lead schools to channel students into GCSEs, A-levels and university, even when their talents, skills and motivation are practical and work based. We face acute skills shortages. We need people with those practical skills.

I recall years ago writing a pretentious A-level essay on Adam Smith’s comment that every man is a student all his life and longer too. This of course was well before political correctness, when “man” was deemed to embrace “woman”—I think that that is how the Romans put it. Education should be lifelong. Adult education and our wonderful and hard-pressed further education colleges have such an important part to play.

The overall number of students from lower participation areas entering higher education in England has fallen by 15% since 2011-12. While figures for full-time students have risen by 7%, there has been a simultaneous 47% fall in part-time students from those same areas. Therefore, overall, fewer people from disadvantaged backgrounds are now going to university.

The adult skills budget has been reduced. Gone are many of those life-enhancing evening classes which could broaden minds, enrich lives and promote aspiration in a wide variety of ways, leading to the flourishing and skilled society we are addressing. It is well proven that learning as an adult brings benefits such as better health and well-being, greater social engagement, increased confidence and better employability, as well as benefits to family and community life. Further education colleges are essential to this progress, with valuable contributions too from great institutions such as the Open University and Birkbeck. The services which they provide enable adults to fulfil their potential and to contribute to the economy. However, all of them are 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 in 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 hope that the Government will listen to all those who work to enhance learning, and that they will provide more generous and more reliable funding to ensure the fulfilment of individual potential and the prosperity of the country. I look forward to hearing the other speakers and, again, thank the most reverend Primate for giving us the opportunity of this debate.

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for introducing this important debate and to noble Lords for their insightful and caring contributions around the House. Home education arouses strong feelings, not only between those who support school against home education, but within home education supporters, where there are significant differences of opinion, as we have witnessed from the briefings we have received for this debate. This is hardly surprising considering that every home-educated child will have a slightly different reason for being home educated. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and others have said, this is a cloudy and murky issue. On these Benches we would wish to accentuate the positive about home education

It is interesting to note that there is little information on the Government’s website bar a referral to your local council, and there is little uniform advice from local councils. As has been mentioned, there appears to be no central register of home education of children and no record of how many home-educated children there may be. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, quoted some figures, but as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, we need evidence. We need to be sure of it.

I was struck by a comment from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who said that as a society we now feel more responsible for children. This may be one reason why this issue has surfaced again, but there is also an underlying feeling that the Government do not wish to know what might embarrass them or cost them money.

We know that if parents inform a school that they are taking their child out of the school, it is required to remove the child’s name within three working days. They may inform the local authority, but then what? As has already been mentioned, if the child is below compulsory age and has never gone to school, parents do not need to inform their local authority; they do not need to inform anybody. There will be no record for that child, who could remain for ever unacknowledged. Various noble Lords set out the iniquity of this position.

I welcomed the intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, about Gipsy and Traveller children. She is a great champion of these people and she understands the issues well. I hope the Minister will heed what she says and give a positive response.

We could all surely agree that the option of home schooling must always be chosen because it is in the best interests of the child. I have some sympathy for the wish of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that school should be compulsory for everyone. I feel that parents’ wishes and interests should never be allowed to prevent a child attending school where that is the child’s preferred option. Yet we have heard of children being home educated because the parents insist even when the child would prefer school. That is surely not right. The noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, eloquently raised concerns about such children. After all, schools have the resources, professionalism and skills to provide young people with the full range of learning opportunities. These include access to not only academic, and, I hope, vocational learning and skills, but sport, music, drama, art and social interaction with their peers, learning to be part of the community. But as we have heard, and as we know, there is a wide variety of reasons why, for some children, the advantages of attending school are outweighed by the disadvantages, and home education is deemed to be the preferred option.

We have many examples of excellent home education which does the students proud and equips them very well for life. I heard the other day of a five year-old excluded from school for biting, hitting, shouting and generally being out of control. His parents find themselves having to home school because their little person is showing every sign of being a little monster. What support and advice is available for those who find themselves unwilling home educators in such circumstances? As the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris and Lady Richardson, referred to, what if no place can be found and the parents, who do not wish to home educate, have no option but to do so? What is the Government’s response to that?

The two main issues at stake are the quality of the education and safeguarding. On safeguarding, we know that it is possible for children to fall off the radar of any authorities. If they never attended school, they will not have a pupil number and tracking their whereabouts and their progress will be difficult, if not impossible—although it was interesting to hear that the NHS ought to be able to track them.

Alongside home education is the issue of unregulated schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, made reference to Muslim schools, and we know there are some, but there are other faiths and, indeed, unregulated schools of no faith at all. where the quality of the education is unknown. There is a much greater possibility of physical and mental abuse of children who are outside the remit of anyone with a duty of care and where the staff, as has already been mentioned, may not be qualified in any way or may have no safeguarding qualifications. What action are the Government taking about unregulated schools?

We are in the strange position, as has been mentioned, that councils retain duties to oversee home school arrangements, yet lack the necessary powers to check unregulated schools or the nature of home education that children are receiving. This is one of the key issues in the Bill. There is case law, such as Phillips v Brown of 20 June 1980, where we hear that local authorities may make informal inquiries of parents who are educating their children at home but,

“parents will be under no duty to comply. However it would be sensible for them to do so.”

Indeed, the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Richardson, pointed out that parents are under no legal duty to respond to inquiries from local authorities and that perhaps they should be.

There is much evidence of parents who home educate and do a great job in ensuring that their children develop and learn in a happy atmosphere where they can flourish. Most parents work closely with their local council to ensure that they can take advantage of all the opportunities for their children to access academic learning and socialise with their peers. The concerns will always be with those who do not engage or communicate. How can local authorities ensure that those children are receiving suitable education, are not subject to neglect or abuse and that their future achievements and prospects are not being put at risk? We believe there is a case to be made for visits, as set out in the Bill, but agree with the noble Lord, Lord Soley, about the deletion of the physical and emotional parts and question the value or feasibility of these being “assessments”.

I note my noble friend Lord Addington’s concern over those with special educational needs. Assessment would need specified criteria and benchmarks, which may not align with the method of home education being followed or with special educational needs. I also note the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Richardson, that specialist assessors would be needed to undertake this and that there would be associated costs. Formal assessment would take time and expertise, which could put considerable burden and costs on local authorities. Home educated children may acquire skills and knowledge in a different order and timescale from those in mainstream schools; they may still be learning and developing, but of course, with no requirement to follow the national curriculum, this could be in a completely different way and in a completely different order.

It would be more productive for the visits to be supportive and advisory. That could be done alongside investigating, if it appears that no education is taking place. If that is the case, it should trigger further inquiries and action, but building positive relationships between home educators and local authorities is more important than tasking hard-pressed officials with attempting to undertake formal assessments of educational development. We certainly support what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, aims to do with his Bill, and look forward to amendment and clarification in Committee to ensure that it achieves its aims to provide a safe, supportive and educationally fulfilling environment for all those children for whom school is not the answer and whose families can meet all the demands and requirements—and the costs—of learning and developing from within their own resources.

The briefings we have received indicate that this is an area of very differing views, with some excellent work but some worrying gaps in provision. In January the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said that the Government were looking at this issue carefully. Can the Minister update the House on this careful consideration? The noble Lord, Lord Soley, has done a service in allowing us to debate home education and to help to support all that is good in this area as well as throwing light on the areas of concern.

Dyslexia: Disabled Students’ Allowance

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I will need to write to my noble friend on that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, there is proof that students who use computer assistive technology do better than those who are eligible for it but do not, but it appears that the additional charge of £200 is having a detrimental effect on take-up. What measures are the Government taking to ensure that all those who need it have access to it, regardless of their means?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, once an assessment has been carried out, and there are 180 assessment centres in the country, they will produce a package that is relevant for the individual sufferer of the condition. There are four bands of assistance graded by the assessor when they meet the person needing the help.

English Baccalaureate: Creative and Technical Subjects

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

I join in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, on securing this important debate. She is a doughty champion of creative and technical education and shares the concerns of so many of us around this Chamber at the decline in take-up up of such valuable subjects. As we have heard, the English baccalaureate has done good work in promoting the academic subjects it specifies, but has caused a deal of neglect of others which should rightfully have their place in the curriculum.

The Government’s concentration—an obsession one might think—with English, maths and other academic subjects is resulting in a school syllabus, and school leavers, with few outlets for more practical skills. School league tables and funding contribute to the focus on academic learning, and we have recently had highlighted the inequity of schools banning their lower-achieving pupils ahead of exams, to shore up their league tables presumably, but with little regard to the effect that that may have on the young people so treated.

As we have heard, education should be about so much more: preparation for life; creating good citizens; empowering young people to succeed; and giving them the aspiration, resilience, confidence and self-respect to know that they may have a contribution to make to society. This may, or may not, be an academic contribution, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Young. Sadly, if it is not academic, schools have limited means of encouraging them. It was interesting to hear the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, with the Steiner schools, and perhaps reassuring to know that if his children do become hippies at least they will be refined hippies. It was also interesting to hear of his own unplanned but, in a way, privileged education.

For education to succeed, we of course need the full co-operation of employers. We know that work experience has been shown to be invaluable in motivating young people and giving them a real step into employment. We also know that the country faces an acute skills shortage, in craft and creative as well as technical skills. Our creative industries play an immensely significant part in our economy, as well as our quality of life, as we have heard from my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter and as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, set out so clearly. But young people do not emerge from their years of compulsory education equipped with the knowledge and skills to embark on careers in these areas.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, said in her introductory remarks, we note that the total entries in GCSE creative and technical subjects have fallen by 28%, 181,000 people in the last seven years. IT and computer skills have similarly been in decline. Schools are now so beset with the calls to meet targets and tick boxes that, as one head teacher said to me recently, “It knocks out any time for encouraging a love of learning”. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, spoke also of the importance of the love of learning. No longer can young people learn because it is fun and fascinating; there has to be a test at the end of it to be recorded into the school statistics.

How can we return to the days when all was not well with the educational world but at least there was time in the school day for music, drama, exploration and curiosity? What has happened to woodwork, metalwork, cookery and needlework? Many schools have dismantled the labs and kitchens, disposed of the chisels and sewing machines. But young people whose fortes are not grammar and algebra but doing and creating can be re-engaged into learning by those practical skills. I am sure that I am not the only the noble Lord who has found very little use for my wonderful proficiency in logarithms and trigonometry since I sat my O-level.

The negative impact of the EBacc on music provision in schools is clearly a concern for the commercial music industry, which contributes £4.1 billion to the UK economy. Michael Dugher, the CEO of UK Music, recently warned that cuts to music in schools, coupled with the closure of hundreds of small venues, means that the music industry is potentially facing a perfect storm which, if allowed to develop unchecked, poses an existential threat. How much the poorer would life be without music? We wish every success to the granddaughter of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and her trumpet—and I speak as the grandmother of a cornet-playing grandson. I know what enormous pleasure they get from this, even if practising it is not always at the top of their agenda; computer games sometimes, alas, take precedence. The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, also spoke eloquently of the importance of music.

What steps will the Government take to ensure that the existential threat is averted? My noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter cited the concern of Darren Henley, who was brought in some years ago to advise the Government on creativity and music. His voice should have been heard far more clearly than it has been.

The EBacc set out to remedy what was perceived as a shortfall of academic achievement in schools. It is intended as a core, but with seven subjects that leaves little space for any but the most academically able students to take up additional ones. I notice what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said about doing computing instead of modern languages. As a modern linguist, I always bitterly regret any suggestion that modern languages are not important. Post Brexit, it will be even more important that we can communicate with our European and international neighbours and friends in their language, rather than speaking our own loudly, as is so often the way with the British. I also note that in the Edge proposals, modern languages go not head to head with science but head to head with history, under the humanity heading. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, will be reassured that computer science is contained within the sciences, so it is not entirely neglected even if it is in competition with chemistry.

The EBacc did not arise out of demands from the teaching profession to reform the exam process. Any teacher knows that the benefits of any reform, whether changing the name or curriculum, or changing the marking from letters to numbers, only ever emerge after totally disproportionate administrative burdens, which take teachers away from delivering exciting lessons and into the tedium of administrative negotiations. Teachers prefer reforms and updating which are introduced gradually to allow the continuation of lesson planning and time spent on students. Sadly, that is not dramatic enough for politicians, very seldom themselves practising educationalists, who love to make their mark on future generations. Can I put in a plea for school decisions to be taken primarily by those in the profession, with politicians standing well back?

The Government love to say that our teachers are the best ever. That is a bit of a blow to some of us who were teachers way back, because we did not think that we were totally hopeless then—but there we are. But if they are the best ever, why are they so beset by constantly having to record and justify their work? As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, why cannot the Government not just trust the teachers more and assess them less?

The report from the All-Party Design and Innovation Group, Developing Creative Education after Brexit, drew on a wide range of specialist organisations to support art and design as a core component of the EBacc. Art subjects could cover music, drama, dance, film—all the parts of our highly successful creative industries sector, which is being starved of talent in the state sector because of its exclusion from the syllabus. It is notable that the private sector sets great store by creative activities, as we have heard from the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. But why should these wonderful skills be available only to those already privileged? What steps are the Government taking to stop the decline in craft and creative teaching and learning? How are music, art, drama and technical teachers encouraged to stay in the profession, and will the Government give serious consideration to the Edge Foundation’s proposals for the EBacc, which would give a broader base for our young people to be equipped for life? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Schools Update: National Funding Formula

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, which on the face of it sounds extraordinarily good news. However, we have concerns that none of this money is actually new and is being taken from efficiencies and savings in the DfE budget. We have £420 million taken out of the capital budget, including £315 million from healthy pupils capital funding used to fund improvements in schools’ PE facilities. Surely, at a time when we hear of the concerns about children’s obesity, that is not a terribly wise transfer of money.

The free schools budget is also being cut. Three of the 14 planned new free schools will now be funded by local authorities. There is a sense about this Statement of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The National Audit Office estimates that it will cost £6.7 billion to return all school buildings to a satisfactory condition. Why is the Secretary of State pilfering from the capital budget to pay for the increase in core schools budget? If the Tories can find £1 billion for the DUP, can the Treasury please find some more money for schools?

The Government broke the pay cap on police and public sector pay, and yesterday they were unable to defend the cap on NHS staff pay. Will they now look again at giving teachers a pay rise above the 1% too, with the Secretary of State increasing the schools budget accordingly? The teaching profession faces a number of crises and shortages and, surely, a long-overdue pay increase would be most welcome to try to redress some of the iniquities in the system.

The Government have scrapped their plans to make private schools help out neighbouring state schools or lose their charitable status, which is particularly worrying at a time when we see state schools unable to afford building repairs and forced to cut back on resources for their students. In our earlier debate, we heard how there was much advantage to the independent sector in creative studies. Will the Education Secretary urge the Prime Minister to rethink her broken election promise as a matter of urgency? Does the Education Secretary not also think it deeply short-sighted to fund the core schools budget by cutting the capital funding for PE facilities? I have already mentioned this, I think: we know childhood obesity rates continue to rise.

The per-pupil funding for 16 to 19 year-olds in sixth forms and FE colleges has been frozen since the 2015 spending review. Now that the Government are pledging that per-pupil funding for schools will increase with inflation, will the Secretary of State make the same commitment to 16 to 19 year-olds? I repeat that we welcome anything which causes funding for schools to be fairer, particularly if it focuses on the more deprived children and areas, but I would be grateful for the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful for the general tenor of support for our proposals. It may not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Watson, if I do not go quite so far as he wished in his dreams that I would but I will write to him in more detail about his points. The £5.9 billion is for additional needs, not high needs, and we have maintained the existing total that authorities are currently allocated. This funding will be maintained in 2018-19 and 2019-20, and rise in line with pupil numbers, but I will write to him with a more detailed figure.

There is a lot of talk about cuts but, as I think everybody knows, they are not actually cuts. They are cost pressures, which everybody has suffered from in the private sector and business. Schools are more than half way through those cost pressures, caused by things such as pensions. Well-managed schools do their budgeting extremely well and are managing to improve this.

We have a huge amount of advice available to schools—I have referred to our website before—with a lot of resources such as toolkits, benchmarks and comparators for them to look at. We have a buying strategy in place, as £10 billion of schools’ spend is on buying services. This is a bit theoretical and top level but our analysis reveals that if all schools bought at the cheapest prices available there would be considerable savings, probably over £1 billion. We have a big programme in place on that and it is true that our best-performing school groups on finance, the MATs, are also often our best performers educationally—and, sadly, vice versa—because those school groups have learned how to focus their resources on exactly the areas they want. They have thought through where they want to spend their money and drive efficiencies so that there is much more available for the front line. If I have not covered any other points and noble Lords feel that they would like me to, I will write to them.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my declaration of interests in the register. It is not my intention to repeat the excellent contributions that have already been made, but I want to put on record my commendation for Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor of what some unwisely call the university in which I am involved “the other university in Sheffield”. Chris Husbands’ work is of an excellent quality and I hope that we will be able to build on it in the years to come.

However, I will repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said in relation to what happens after the general election and ensuring that nothing is done, particularly in relation to the evaluation and the ratings, that damages in any way the enormous contribution of the higher education sector in this country both to the well-being of students and to our economy and our standing in the world. There can be no doubt after the considerable debates that we have had that there is a deep commitment on the part of the Minister in this House to improving teaching and to recognising the critical role of the teaching excellence framework in ensuring that comparator with the research excellence framework.

It is worth putting on the record at this very late stage that there is still a major tendency to value what will pull in major grants for research, even when the research may be of doubtful value, rather than to balance the commitment to high-quality teaching and learning with the REF. That is why I have expressed to Jo Johnson, the Minister in the Commons, what I repeat today, which is my support for the endeavour to put teaching very much at the top of the agenda.

I commend the Government on having listened. This Bill has been an exemplar of how we can work across the political divide both in this House and beyond. I will refer now to speculation in the more reliable media. I hope that no one will be punished in any way for having been prepared to listen and to debate. The idea that a Minister should not be able to express a view internally within the Government is a disgrace. I do not wish to bring in party-political matters, but I know that some MPs are thought to call the Prime Minister “Mummy”. I remember Mummy telling me that she had heard me once, heard me twice and did not want to hear me again—but you cannot conduct government on that basis. Therefore, whatever happens on 8 June, I hope that we will move forward on the understanding that a spirit of co-operation creates better legislation that is more easily implementable and receives a wider welcome than would otherwise be the case, and thus achieves its objective.

I thank the noble Viscount the Minister for repeating the words of Jo Johnson in relation to the move as rapidly as possible to subject rather than institutional comparators. This is an important part of what we were debating on what was Amendment 72, which morphed into Amendment 23 and is back with us in a different form today.

I also want to say, as a new Member of this House, how impressed I have been by the Cross-Bench contributions. I will echo the commendations made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, rather than go through them again. Ministers and civil servants on this Bill have shown that they are of the highest possible calibre by being prepared to listen and respond, and I thank them for that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may associate these Benches with the eloquent words we have already heard. It is inevitable that there will be a measure of disappointment that not all of your Lordships’ wisdom has been accepted unequivocally by the other House, but I think we can all agree that we have made immense strides in this Bill, and we are deeply appreciative of the way in which Ministers have listened and come forward with proposals. Perhaps I may pick up one thing about which we are particularly pleased, which is that there will be a delay in implementing this while a review is carried out. Some really key measures set out in the Bill need more reflection to see whether they are actually the right path to tread, so we appreciate the fact that the delay has been built in. Again, we appreciate the measures that the Government have taken to come towards us on these issues.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, first, I should declare an interest as a full-time Academic Council member of King’s College, London. I had not expected to speak in this part of the debate and I am afraid that I will be speaking again later. But, since I am on my feet, I would like to say that I agree with all noble Lords who have expressed their appreciation of how the Government have listened to opinions and to the House generally. I, too, feel that we have come a long way. In this context, I will bring back a couple of points that were made in the earlier debates by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and by me in the context of amendments that we had tabled. Since the noble Duke is unable to be here today, I will make them briefly on behalf of us both.

Along with almost all noble Lords here, we strongly welcome the delay in implementing the link with fees—here I endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lord Kerslake. I am delighted to hear that we are moving quickly towards a position where we will have subject-level rather than institution-level assessments. However, one reason we became so concerned about the TEF is that putting a label on an institution is potentially very damaging to it.

One thing that has been rather an eye-opener for me is the extent to which—perhaps inevitably and as someone who teaches public management I should not be surprised—the “sector” is, in the view of the Government, the organised universities and Universities UK, and how few good mechanisms there are for the Bill team and the department to get the voices of students, as opposed to occasionally that of the National Union of Students. Students have been desperately concerned about this, because they are in a world where they pay fees and where the reputation of their institutions is so important. They have been worried about and deeply opposed to anything that puts a single label on them. This single national ranking caused many of us concern.

I will say a couple of things that I hope the incoming Secretary of State will bear in mind. First, as others have alluded to, we have a pilot going on and a system of grades that is out there. I fully understand that that is under way and there are enormous lessons to be learned from it. However, I hope very much that, after the election, whoever the Government may be will think hard about how they use that information, how they publish it, and whether they are in any sense obliged to come forward with the type of single-rank national league table that has caused so much anxiety to students. That is of great concern and it is hard to see how it serves the purpose, also expressed in the current Conservative manifesto, of preserving the reputation of our great university sector.

The other thing, on which I do not have any particular inspiration but about which I would love the incoming Government to think, is how to widen out their contacts with not just the organised sector and Universities UK but the academics and students who are really what the sector is about. We have great universities not because we have activist managerial vice-chancellors but because they are autonomous in large measure internally as well as vis-à-vis the state. That has been of real concern to me. Since we are going to have an Office for Students, it would be very good if, post the election, we could make it genuinely an office for students.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I am very grateful to the Government for tabling Commons Amendments 15A and 15B and put on record my specific thanks to the Ministers—the honourable Jo Johnson and Chris Skidmore—along with their officials, for their time and willingness to find a compromise following the adoption by the House of my amendment on Report. This issue has been the subject of powerful advocacy by my honourable friend Paul Blomfield MP, who has done much work on the registration of students to vote, and by organisations such as Bite The Ballot and by the APPG on Democratic Participation.

The voice and views of the Association of Electoral Administrators was extremely helpful in supporting my case, and I have to say that the chief executive John Turner expressed some surprise that the Minister suggested on Report that the association did not take a positive view. UUK has been helpful to me personally, although it is divided on the issue. I trust that it will now do everything possible to ensure that all universities comply with this new obligation at the earliest opportunity.

I well understand that we all have the same aim: to enable the greatest number of students to register to vote and thus shape the future of this country so that it works for young people. It will probably not be possible for ministerial guidance to be published before the enrolment of students this autumn, so I hope that the Minister in office, whoever it is, will draw the attention of higher education institutions to the numerous examples of best practice that exist, including those cited by the Minister today. I am very proud of what Bath has done in these endeavours. I am grateful to the Minister for suggesting what will be in the guidance, which is very welcome, but could he say when the guidance is likely to be published and when the Government, if they are a Conservative Government, might expect higher education institutions to comply with the new obligation? Although we might not have another general election for perhaps five years, there will be local government elections in England in May 2018 and my fervent hope is that all HE institutions will have a system in place by then.

I reiterate my thanks and look forward to working with the next Government to ensure that the maximum number of students register to vote so that not only their voices are heard but their views are expressed in the ballot box, thus enabling them to exert maximum influence, as they should, in the democratic life of this country.

As I will not speak again on this Bill, I wish to say that I too think the way in which all Benches have co-operated and collaborated on it has been extraordinary and very welcome. To be partisan for a moment, great thanks go to my noble friend Lord Stevenson and the support he has received from Molly Critchley. I understand that my noble friend is shortly to step down from the Front Bench. He has done the most superb job, not just for the Labour Benches but for the House as a whole, and I look forward to working with him on the Back Benches.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Having been a staunch supporter of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and indeed of trying to engage young people in the importance of voting in elections—I think this is a valuable step in enabling them to get involved at university level—I am grateful for the amendment that has come in from the Government. As we are trying to involve young people in voting, would it not be wonderful if we could now think of lowering the voting age to 16 to enable more of them to do so?

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment in this Motion regarding the appeals system is greatly improved, as my noble and learned friend Lord Judge has said. I am delighted that this has happened because it is of vital importance in relation to the very serious matters that the Office for Students has the power to deal with. I thank the Ministers who have been involved. I include in this particular thanks to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, for reasons that I shall explain in a moment, and the Minister in the Commons for the very kind way in which various reactions of mine to this extremely important Bill have been handled.

I want to mention a particular matter that does not arise especially under this Motion but, from my point of view, is rather important. When the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, raised the issue of the new power to search the headquarters of higher education providers, she indicated that it was something that the higher education providers anticipated with a degree of apprehension. In response to that, my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie read out from Schedule 5 the statutory requirements before such a warrant could be granted. I have listened to a lot of the Bill without particularly talking myself, but on that occasion it occurred to me that one of the assurances the academic community was entitled to get was that those restrictions, which are quite powerful and important, would definitely be the subject of consideration by the magistrate. I suggested that the magistrate should sign a document to that effect. I got a letter almost immediately, which is still on the website, to say that such a thing was unheard of.

It is 20 years since I handed over with confidence my responsibilities for this part of what is now the Ministry of Justice to my successor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, so it is a very long time since I dealt with this particular matter directly. Still, when I got that response, I thought, “Well, in that case the thing to do is to alter the words of the warrant to make it clear that the warrant’s signature carries that with it”. That was objected to for all sorts of reasons, as your Lordships may remember, and some of them were addressed by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham on Report. I felt rather strongly about it, as he recognised, and he kindly said the Government would consider it further before Report, giving me an opportunity, which otherwise I would not have had, to raise the matter on Report.

I was still very insistent on this, because I could not see any objection to it. I am particularly obliged to the Minister in the Commons, Mr Johnson, for arranging at the last minute for me to have a chance to deal directly with the Ministry of Justice, from which the objections to my amendments were coming. That afternoon, I was able to meet the official in that part of the Ministry of Justice for which, as I said, long ago I had responsibility. He eventually told me that in fact, the procedure for dealing with warrants had now been altered by order of the Lord Chief Justice, particularly in criminal cases so that, at the end of the application for the warrant—strangely enough—there is a place for the magistrate to indicate whether he or she agrees that the warrant should be granted and, if so, what the reasons are for that decision. He said that he thought that this was probably general practice in relation to warrants in the magistrates’ court—because this is not a criminal warrant under the Bill. My noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie said that that was the position when the Motion was moved on Third Reading.

I therefore express my gratitude to the Minister and the Bill team from the Department for Education for their kind treatment of me in connection with this and other matters. It is important that where a Ministry other than that directly responsible for a Bill gives advice to block an amendment from someone who, after all, was thought of as a government supporter, it should be blocked in a way that depends on Ministers’ expertise. With respect to Mr Johnson’s great variety of eminence, he would not be particularly interested in the magistrates’ courts procedure for warrants, so it is really nothing to do with him. Similarly, for my noble friends Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Younger of Leckie, it is a damaging way of damaging your colleagues without much apparent responsibility. I therefore qualify my thanks for the work that has been done behind the scenes here, modified by that matter, for which the Ministers responsible for the Bill have the right for me to make it clear that it was nothing to do with them; it was from a source for which they have only the responsibility of being in the one Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I will not attempt to emulate the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, by making a Fourth Reading speech, but I will make a couple of brief points. I strongly supported the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, when he introduced his amendment and have spoken many times on this subject in your Lordships’ House. I deeply regret that the Government have not felt able to accept the amendment and commend it to the other place. I echo everything that has been said about the understanding and capacity for listening both of my noble friend Lord Younger, the Minister in your Lordships’ House, and of Mr Jo Johnson, but it is a pity that an opportunity has been lost. I am sure that we will return to this subject, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, possibly in a future immigration Bill.

Although I welcome what the Minister said today and what is in the Commons amendment before us, it does not go far enough. There will be real interest in how the Government are able to produce good statistics. It is 35 years ago almost to the day when a famous BBC reporter in the Falklands said, “I counted them all out, and I counted them all back”. We must start doing that with students, and indeed with all immigrants. However, we must not do anything that damages our reputation—however gently—as a place where students at undergraduate and postgraduate level from all over the world can feel welcome. The more we can do to achieve that welcome the better, and we must do everything we possibly can to make sure that there are no implicit deterrents. I am sorry that after a very good morning where the Government have made some very real concessions, for which we are all extremely grateful, the concession on this particular subject is not as great as it should be. I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will take note of that and that we will come back before too long with a reinforced Government Front Bench and a new determination to accept the logic of the Hannay amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, from these Benches we strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just said. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, reminded us of the heady days of coalition when I was his opposite number in this House. I remember the debates that went on between the Secretary of State for BIS and the Home Secretary on this topic: the noble Lord could never get any movement on seeing the illogicality.

What baffles many of us is that the Government reiterate that there is no cap on genuine international students, but then they say, “But we will count them as migrants and we are determined to reduce the number of migrants”. It is incomprehensible that the Government cannot see how very unwelcoming it is to put those things together in sequence. We find it completely baffling that we are not getting any movement on this. We recognise that this issue is probably outside the departmental brief of the Minister, but I echo what has been said already: we hope that very soon there will be movement on this. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, always speaks with great passion and eloquence on this topic, backed with evidence and facts.

This is probably the last time that I shall speak on the Bill, so I reiterate the very sincere thanks to the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, and Minister Jo Johnson, to the Bill team and to other colleagues who have been so helpful to us on what has turned out to be a very long and drawn-out discussion on the Bill. The amendments that have come through today have already improved it again. As I said before, it would obviously have been lovely if all our amendments had been accepted, but we recognise that we have actually done a very good job in making this Bill a whole lot better than it was before.

I echo the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who led a collaboration of the engaged on these issues, made up of Members from these Benches, his Benches, the Cross Benches and occasionally some noble Lords on the Conservative Benches, to try to ensure that we could get the very best possible out of this Bill. I also thank my noble friend Lord Storey, who has been a tower of strength throughout. We have made this Bill much better than when it reached us and I am grateful to the Minister for helping that to happen.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, in relation to what the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said about the Prime Minister’s remarks on calling the election, I am relying only on my memory but I do not think that she said “the unelected House of Lords”. She referred to unelected Lords who had made it clear that everything they could do to stop Brexit would be done—it was something like that. I do not think that she was referring to the House of Lords as a whole, because apart from anything else it would not fit the description.

I also support what my noble friend Lord Willetts said. He knows much more about the atmosphere in Whitehall now than I do, and he said he hoped that the research promoted in this might well have a good effect in that direction.

Finally, I agree with what has been said about the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. I hope that he will enjoy the freedom of not being on the Front Bench. I want to thank all his colleagues on the Front Bench and those on the Front Bench of the liberal party and on the Cross Benches for their help with some of my efforts. I have enjoyed their co-operation and for that I am very grateful.

Technical Education

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 5th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, through the Children and Social Work Bill we are extending the opportunity for support from a personal adviser to all care leavers to the age of 25. We have introduced the “staying put” arrangements, which allow care leavers to continue with their foster parents until they reach the age of 21. We are also piloting the “staying close” scheme for those leaving residential care, and introducing compulsory relationship education in primary schools and a duty on secondary schools to teach relationship and sex education. Together with the MoJ and a partnership led by Achievement for All, we are improving support for young offenders with special educational needs.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, what encouragement can the Government offer to employers to engage more with schools and colleges, and what support can they give to schools and colleges to make time for employers to set out not only the technical skills, but the employability skills that are so necessary for future careers, and which mean that young people leave education ready for work?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely good point. The Government welcome the engagement of the business and professional communities with the school system in any way that works for them. We want that door to be wide open because it is absolutely clear that the more engagement students have with the world of work, the more likely they are to engage in their studies. This is why we have invested nearly £100 million in the Careers & Enterprise Company to work with other organisations such as Business in the Community, Make the Grade and Inspiring the Future, in order to ensure that this connection between the world of work and schools is close.

Higher Education: Loans

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 5th April 2017 Lords Chamber

This is not good enough. This is why my Motion calls on Her Majesty’s Government to report annually to Parliament on the impact on the economy of the increasing quantum of graduate debt and asks them to provide estimates of payback rates and an estimate of the annual cost to the Exchequer of the present system. It is not a lot to ask, and it is a no-brainer if the Government want to convince us that they are on the right track. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches support the case put so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and we much regret that he is stepping down from his Front-Bench role. We seem to have had to work together a lot in recent days, and it has always been a great pleasure to do so.

This increase in tuition fees is a significant further step towards full marketisation of the UK higher education sector, which threatens the accessibility and reputation of this vital sector. Allowing some universities with higher teaching ratings to charge higher fees means that students will increasingly have to weigh the opportunity presented by a particular course against the fee being charged. In fact, such a step could simply encourage the development of a two-tier university system whereby richer students go to higher-rated universities while the most disadvantaged students go to the lower-rated universities or not at all.

We on these Benches totally reject the idea of linking fees to teaching excellence framework gradings, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, set out. They are an untried and untested form of assessment which should not be used to determine fees. There appears to be no correlation between increased fees and improved teaching quality. The National Union of Students points out that:

“Since tuition fees were trebled in 2012, there is no evidence to suggest that there was a consequential improvement in teaching quality. There has been no change in student satisfaction with the teaching on their course, while institutions have instead been shown to spend additional income from the fees rise on increased marketing materials, rather than on efforts to improve course quality”.


Doubtless some universities have used the fees to improve quality, but there is no guarantee that that is what the fees are there to do.

We have argued for many years that there is a serious lack of attention to teaching quality in universities. The emphasis has been heavily weighted to research for prestige, funding and career promotions, and we welcome the aims in the Higher Education and Research Bill to redress the balance, but we do not believe the way to solve this is through linking teaching quality to fees.

These changes come on top of other deeply damaging changes to student finance. First, there was the abolition of maintenance grants for lower-income students, which makes these regulations all the more damaging. Getting rid of grants while increasing the cost of university education may put lower-income students off attending higher-performing universities. Secondly, the retrospective change in loan conditions to freeze the repayment threshold for tuition fees at £21,000 breaks the deal done with students by the coalition and changes the terms for many students, meaning paying back from a lower starting point.

These measures will in no way encourage diversity or open access to mature or part-time students, nor encourage lifelong learning. We acknowledge the welcome increase to £833 million for the Director of Fair Access to improve student success for the more disadvantaged, but that is not going to solve the problem. Social mobility is simply not good enough. These measures will do nothing to improve opportunities for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We join in the regrets.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a visiting professor at King’s College London, an adviser to 2U and an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. I am discovering that this debate is a kind of valedictory for the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I would like to say how much I have enjoyed his interventions from the Front Bench during the debates we have both participated in. I am sure he will continue to contribute to this House; we need his contributions, and I have greatly appreciated what he has done.

It is rather peculiar that on this valedictory we are having a debate about these measures, when of course the truth is that the structure of higher education finance we are considering is one that all three parties have introduced during their times in government. If there is any example of a shared consensus on how to finance higher education, it is the Blair/coalition Government proposals for fees and loans. It is now a stable system, and one that all three parties have contributed to and should support.

It is of course not a system of up-front payment; that is its crucial feature. It is a graduate repayment scheme. When graduates repay, at a rate of 9% on earnings above £21,000, it is nothing like having a commercial debt. If a child of mine left university with £25,000 on their credit card or an overdraft of £50,000, I would be extremely worried as a parent. However, knowing that during their working lives they were going to pay back 9% of their earnings above £21,000, and that they would do so only if they were earning more, and if for whatever reason they were earning less they would not have to—in other words, they would be paying through PAYE—would not cause me concern.

Far more importantly, it does not concern students, which is why we have seen steady increases in the numbers of young people going to university as the successive changes have been brought about. Those changes have led to a growth in the number of places, particularly at universities that students have been choosing. We have indeed begun to see growth and shrinkage between different universities, reflecting student choice. We have seen more undergraduates getting their first choice of university. We have seen more places at university in total; indeed, these reforms made it possible to remove the cap on student numbers.

The increase in the number of university places has been particularly beneficial to students from lower-income backgrounds—the marginal students who are not otherwise getting in. Indeed, we have seen a surge in the number of people going to university from low-income backgrounds. At the beginning of this process, nearly 10 years ago when the Blair changes were first brought in and my party opposed them—with exactly the argument that we have been hearing again today: that they would put off low-income students—10% of students from the poorest backgrounds were going to university. After 10 years of these changes, 20% of students from the poorest backgrounds are going to university. That is not good enough—it is still way behind the 60% of young people from the most affluent backgrounds going to university—nevertheless, it is a doubling. We are on a journey in which we are gradually improving social mobility, with more young people from low-income backgrounds having this opportunity.

So the evidence is that they are not, to quote the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, “debt-averse”, for the reason that it is not debt. I love the noble Lord’s example of his time at university. When he left, I suspect—because we are roughly contemporary—that he was facing an income tax rate of 35%. Now graduates face an income tax rate of 29% above a very high threshold. If he was not income tax-averse to going to university, why should they be income tax-averse now if they are facing a 29% rate of PAYE above a high threshold?

I will not detain the House for much longer, but it is possible, if you get into the figures, to take a flow of payments and convert it into a stock. You can create extraordinary figures for liabilities or assets if you take what is essentially a flow of payments and convert it into a stock.

For example, graduates, during their working lives, are very likely to pay at least £500,000 in income tax. As, by and large, people who go to university earn a bit more, they leave university with the prospect of £500,000 of income tax debt, at least, around their necks. Should we be anxious about that? No. In their working lives, if they earn a decent income, of course we will expect them to make a contribution to the Exchequer through income tax. Just as you can apparently create enormous figures for debt by aggregating lots of years of income tax, if we think of the amount that we as a nation will spend on the National Health Service over the next 20 or 30 years, we can also construct an enormous figure by taking £100 billion a year or whatever and multiplying it by 20 or 30. So graduates have an enormous pile of income tax debt—£500,000 at least—in order to pay for trillions of pounds of National Health Service spending. That is because government is a going concern. Neither of those figures should be of concern to us, because we can manage them through the annual flows of income and expenditure.

I should like to draw these brief remarks to a close, however, by welcoming a point in the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, because it is the only way I should conclude a short speech when we are apparently saying farewell to his Front-Bench service. I agree that we need from time to time to look at how the system is working. We do not need to change the structure—we do not need another big review; another Dearing or Brown—but of course there is a social choice in this system. The social choice is the balance between private repayment by graduates, and the public—the generality of taxpayers—taking the burden of writing off repayments that will not be made by graduates who, for example, do not earn enough to reach the threshold. That is a public-private balance which, in a way, reflects that of public and private benefit from higher education.

It is legitimate from time to time to have a debate about what is the right balance between graduate repayment through PAYE and the likely level at which, eventually, graduates’ loans will be written off because they cannot afford to repay them. Incidentally, that would be impossible if we fixed the term in the way the party opposite want, but I think that every five years—once during the lifetime of a Parliament—such a structured review would be worth while.

I end by welcoming that aspect of the noble Lord’s proposal. This need not be done every year: the information is available. Once again, I thank him personally for the lively and well-informed contributions he has made to our debates on higher education and other matters in the recent past.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Government for the series of meetings and echo what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has said.

I was a little disappointed with the letter sent to us on 30 March. The noble Baroness, Lady Vere of Norbiton, promised on 27 March, at col. 391 of Hansard, to write about the question of signing of contracts, but the letter does not tell us whether or not this is taking place.

We had a significant debate on the question of transition to new technical qualifications but there is no mention of that in the letter. There is in the new guidance issued for the Institute for Apprenticeships, but that merely says:

“We expect the institute to take into account the Department for Education’s development of technical education routes to allow for a smooth transition”.


However, the noble Lord promised that there would be more detailed guidance on the question of transition, so I expected at least a reference to it.

I do not wish to prolong the process but it was disappointing that the House of Commons paper 206 gave apprenticeships a bit of a panning. I do not concur with everything it says but some of the points it makes are valid and worthy of the Minister’s attention, in particular the distribution of the levy and how we will target apprenticeships in areas where there is a drastic skills shortage—in engineering, construction and IT. I would welcome comment from the Minister on that.

Apart from those few caveats, I, too, welcome the way in which the Bill has been handled.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, from the Liberal Democrat Benches I add our thanks to the Minister, the noble Baronesses, Lady Vere and Lady Buscombe, and the Bill team for their engagement, briefings and meetings in the course of the Bill’s passage.

We were grateful that the Government accepted the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, early on, which promised more movement than we subsequently achieved, but we hope that those amendments agreed by the House will be confirmed by the Commons when the Bill returns to it, particularly that of my noble friend Lord Storey on careers advice in FE colleges. We also welcome the movement on private providers and I thank the Minister for the meeting yesterday on that.

Perhaps as a result of the Bill we might hear more about the EBacc including more creative and technical subjects, to promote practical skills in the school timetable. It is surely in order that skills should be raised as early as possible in the schools programme, to open opportunities at an early stage to young people whose enthusiasms lie that way.

As the Minister is aware, we still have considerable concerns that some of the measures in the Bill will damage the chances for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to be as effective as it needs to be. Among them is the issue of copyright, which will impede the awarding bodies in giving the wholehearted co-operation they might wish to give. I am grateful that we have a meeting with officials and others to discuss this in greater detail and hope that the Government might find a way forward before the Bill becomes law which does not prevent some of the most expert champions of practical, technical education from playing their full part.

There are other issues, such as single awarding bodies, consortia and certification which we would wish to continue to discuss and monitor. There is a deal of complexity in the model that the Government are proposing, and complexity does not help to promote the skills agenda.

In wishing the institute every success in its ambitious aims, we would also wish to check that it has the framework and the resources to raise the profile and standards of technical work-based achievement. We hope that it will continue to consult and take advice from those who have many years of experience in this sector—employers, awarding bodies, trainers and lecturers—who have ensured brilliant achievements by many people in skills areas. We only have to think of the UK’s successes in world skills competitions, for instance, and of some of our great entrepreneurs and leaders who began their careers through a skills-based route to see that we are not starting from scratch.

However, there is a mounting skills gap. In the interests of the country, the community and the individual learners, we have to hope that this Bill and the institute fulfil the high expectations placed upon them.

Once again, I express the thanks of these Benches for the way in which scrutiny has been conducted.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I have not written a speech but, if I had, it would have been more or less word for word what the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has just said. That is probably an embarrassment to her, but there we are.

The Bill is not the heaviest we have dealt with or will deal with, but it has dealt with important matters. We have all recorded our disappointment that so much of it was to do with the insolvency angle, some of which has caused difficulties to further education colleges, bank loans and, potentially, pensions, but they will have to be dealt with down the line.

The fact that the Institute for Apprenticeships was established a few days ago is a welcome sign. I agree with my noble friend Lord Young that it was disappointing that the letter dated 30 March from the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, did not go into enough detail on what we were looking for in our amendment last week on the institute. However, it will develop and will become the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education in a year’s time and we look forward to that.

I will say a word to the Minister which reflects the report to which my noble friend Lord Young referred. The business last week of the House of Commons sub-committee on education is worth reading. I do not agree with all of it but it highlighted the point—which was also raised by these Benches and other noble Lords over the past few weeks—that it is essential that the 3 million target does not allow quantity to trump quality. It is the quality of the apprenticeships that are provided in the years to come that will decide whether or not this is a success. We have to keep banging that drum. I know from what he has said that the Minister believes that as well. We will have to make sure that it happens.

I thank all those involved in the Bill. The Public Bill Office, as ever, has been extremely helpful. The Minister and the noble Baronesses, Lady Vere and Lady Buscombe, have been, if not accommodating in Committee, helpful in the briefings that we have had. The Minister’s officials and the meetings they set up have been useful in giving a better understanding of the Bill, its intentions, and how we might work with it or frame amendments to try and change it. I finish by thanking my colleagues, my noble friends Lord Stevenson and Lord Hunt. The Minister has a vast array and army of officials behind him but we have only one person—Dan Stevens, the legislative and political adviser for our team. He has been a tireless worker on what was his first Bill and I can pay him no greater compliment than to say that you would not know it.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I gather from the Public Bill Office that the Bill may have broken all records for the number of amendments tabled during its passage. That is an indication of the interest it generated across the House, which allowed the House to play a full and important role, as just mentioned by the Minister, as we scrutinised every clause and, indeed, virtually every line.

The Minister was kind to say that he felt that the Bill had been improved in this process. Ministers do not always feel that way about Bills that have been torn to pieces and not always put back together in the form that they originally liked. He is right that there were things we could do with the Bill to make it, within the context of its overall shape and form, slightly better and more accommodating of the needs of the sector it was intending to regulate. As the Minister says, there is further to go and perhaps it will change again, but we have certainly made a lot of progress. My noble friend Lord Watson said earlier on another Bill that the work we had done here is what we do best. It is something your Lordships’ House should continue to do.

I add my thanks to those expressed by the Minister, starting with him and his colleagues—the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Prior, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, who all contributed to various areas within the Bill—for their unfailing courtesy and willingness to meet and, of course, to write. We have the epistolary Minister in front of us, who writes letters almost as easily as he breathes. We benefited a lot from those because they were very detailed and gave us a lot of information. We also appreciate, as has been mentioned, the substantial involvement of the Minister for Universities and Science in the other place, who, unusually, is not here today but has been seen around as we have discussed the Bill.

I also thank the Bill team. They were very good at organising meetings and often anticipated what we needed. But they also produced some very helpful factsheets, which have not been mentioned but I found very useful. These were necessary, because for those not involved in higher education it was a bit difficult to get down into the detail of the Bill. The factsheets were very useful in exemplifying what was meant by the various regulatory frameworks and what the architecture would do in practice, and we found them very helpful.

My Front-Bench team was superb. I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Watson and Lord Mendelsohn, who covered large areas of the Bill and obtained many of the concessions now in it. Our legislative assistant, Molly Critchley—we have only one—was extraordinary and superb and kept us going with grids and other materials so necessary for an effective Opposition, as well as dealing with the Public Bill Office and all those amendments. We are very grateful for its work as well in that respect.

One of the greatest pleasures of the Bill has been the experience of working closely with the other groups in the House. We quickly discovered that our views on the Bill were shared by the Liberal Democrats and a substantial number of Cross-Benchers, and indeed some Members on the Government Benches. We found that by meeting regularly and sharing intelligence about what Ministers were saying in bilateral meetings, we could make better progress than perhaps would otherwise have been the case. As I approach the end of my current spell of active Front-Bench responsibilities in your Lordships’ House, the close working relationship we built up over the Bill is one of the memories I will cherish the most.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I add the thanks of the Liberal Democrat Benches to the Ministers—the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, the noble Lords, Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie—who have given such detailed contributions throughout some very tough debates on the Bill. I echo the appreciation expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to the Bill team for their engagement, briefings and meetings—and, indeed, their patience—in the course of the Bill.

We are most grateful that the Government have accepted and introduced so many amendments to the Bill, and we live in hope that the amendments agreed by this House will be confirmed by the Commons when the Bill returns to them. These include amendments on the issue of international students, on which the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, has a compelling article in today’s Guardian; to the teaching excellence framework; on safeguards for the quality of new providers; and on encouraging students to vote. We look forward to hearing the progress of my noble friend Lord Addington’s proposals for guidance for disabled students, and we hope that the Bill more generally will offer more opportunity to adult and part-time students.

Across the House we have all understood the need for teaching in universities to be accorded the same regard as research, but have sought ways which would encourage, rather than brand, institutions. We have seen it as imperative to maintain the worldwide respect of the UK’s higher education, while addressing any areas of shortcoming. I hope that the amended Bill will ensure that both teaching and research continue to flourish and offer learners—young, adult and, indeed, old—opportunities to develop and progress. We wish the ill-named Office for Students and the better-named UKRI every success, in the interests of the country, international collaboration and the individuals who work and achieve within our higher education sector.

I thank my noble friend Lord Storey for his tireless support and invaluable contributions on this and the Technical and Further Education Bill, and Elizabeth Plummer in our Whips’ Office, who provided us with immensely useful briefings. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, we have certainly benefited from close co-operation with the Labour Benches and the Cross Benches, as well as those on the Government Benches who shared some of our concerns. Collaboratively, we have left the Bill much better than how it reached us. Once again, I express the thanks of these Benches for the way in which scrutiny has been conducted, and the hope that the final Bill may reflect the wide- ranging expertise and contributions of your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

My Lords, I, too, will say a few words of thanks on my behalf and on behalf of my noble friends Lady Wolf and Lord Kerslake, who apologise that they are unable to be here today. As we have heard, the Cross Benches have played a significant role in scrutinising and revising the Bill, leading on four major amendments that were approved on Report, and championing many of the important changes that the Government have delivered through their amendments.

I thank the Government for listening and engaging with so many noble Lords from across the House. I particularly thank the Ministers—the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, the noble Lord, Lord Prior, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie—for their numerous responses. I have been hugely impressed by their stamina under enormous pressure and very long hours, and their numerous meetings and letters, which have been very helpful in developing a shared understanding of how to regulate and support a successful higher education system.

Most of all, I acknowledge the Bill team, with whom we have had some great, fun, controversial and heated meetings. They are really hard-working and committed civil servants. They have worked some very long and unsocial hours to support the passage of the Bill through your Lordships’ House and they deserve huge credit for that. All these efforts have contributed to what I am very pleased to hear we all agree—and I know the sector agrees—is now a much stronger Bill.