Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her response this afternoon and her agreement that an independent assessment would be undertaken. I endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lord Rosser. At the end of the day, whatever the worthy work of Skills for Care has been and whatever the recommendations made by the Migration Advisory Committee, we have a big problem with the social care sector in relation to the workforce challenges. The intention that, basically, most care workers cannot meet the criteria in the new health and care visa means that, from the beginning of next year, further pressure will be leant upon the sector.

Given that the sector is almost totally dependent either on government funding or on self-funders—who are already hugely overstretched because they sometimes pay more than £1,000 a week for their care—this will not be solved simply by saying that we can rely on the UK population. There will have to be an injection of resources; this is inescapable. In thanking the Minister, which I do very much, for her response this afternoon, I remind the House that the social care sector faces many huge challenges, and, in the end, the Government are going to have to come up with the necessary if we are going to get it out of the problems that it now faces.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

Does anyone in the Chamber wish to speak? We have not received any requests as yet. Does the Minister wish to reply to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt? No? Then I call the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (Consequential, Transitional, Transitory and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2018

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, these regulations relate to the establishment and operation of the Office for Students, the new regulator of higher education institutions. The OfS has replaced both HEFCE and the Office for Fair Access, which as a result of the regulations ceased to exist on 1 April this year, with the OfS taking on their statutory functions. I do not seek to challenge the passage of these regulations, but I welcome the opportunity to debate the establishment and future of the OfS at a time of major turbulence in our higher education system. We have seen the tripling of fees, the introduction of loans and the ending of maintenance grants promoted by a Government driven by a neoliberal ideology which places such faith in markets to the detriment of everything else.

What has been the outcome in practice? There is no competition in fees; students are leaving university with debts of around £50,000, a large majority of whom will not pay them in full; we have the most expensive undergraduate courses in the world; there has been a complete collapse in part-time provision; and a reduction in home-based postgraduate students. There is a huge uncovered gap in the public finances. The Education Policy Institute calculates that the contribution of student loans to net government debt is forecast to rise from around 4% of GDP today to over 11% in the 2040s.

Nor is it clear in what direction the OfS is going to take higher education. It is ironic that alongside the Government’s genuflection to free market ideology with the creation of the OfS, it brings with it the tools of what could be a heavy-handed regulator. It is an intention we have seen all too clearly in the character of the last Education Minister. One moment he was extolling the virtues of the market and new private providers; the next, threatening the same institutions with draconian punishments if they did not do what he, as the Minister, wanted. I fully accept that intervention in the pay of vice-chancellors might be justified in the public sector, but it sits rather uneasily in the competitive market that Mr Johnson was so keen on.

My key concern is whether Ministers, instead of promoting scholarships, encouraging research or a concern for truth, have as their goal turning the UK’s higher education system into a market-driven one at the expense of both quality and the public interest. This is not a broken system that needs shoring up and intervention; it is the second most successful higher education system in the world with four universities ranked in the top 10.

I imagine the Minister will refer to the regulatory framework for the OfS published in February this year. It certainly makes interesting reading and there are some positives. First, I am glad that it starts with an affirmation that our universities provide a world-class higher education sector. I am also glad that at page 15 it states that the regulatory approach is designed to be principles-based and that the imposition of a narrow, rules-based approach, with numerical performance targets or lists of detailed requirements, would risk leading to a compliance culture that would stifle innovation and prevent the sector flourishing. Spot on.

If the Minister wants to see a regulatory system that has all the wrong characteristics, look no further than the NHS, which seeks to combine the legal framework of a competitive market with intense micromanagement by Ministers and a plethora of regulatory bodies all pulling in different directions.

I welcome the statement, again on page 15, that once the regulatory framework is established its implementation will reduce bureaucracy and unnecessary regulation. My reservation is that in that framework I did not see what contribution the OfS would make to enhance the world-class status of our universities. Indeed, I could not see what the added value of the OfS was meant to be. I hope the Minister is able to explain that. The framework document seems to have an excessive belief in creating a market to drive competition, but nowhere have I seen evidence to suggest that this will enhance the sector overall.

The most depressing characteristic of the framework is that the language of the market is used so much. The use of the word “provider” is objectionable. No longer are Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Sheffield or whatever to be regarded as universities or higher education institutes—they are to be called providers. Why on earth are we not using “university” or “higher education institute”? If it is because the Government’s legal framework is designed to allow tin-pot little institutions to be suddenly called universities, I cannot think of a worse reason for introducing market ideology into a sector which has shown itself to outshine country after country. The one thing I would ask the Minister to do is expel the use of the word “provider”. It is a typical government approach to markets they do not understand, and which threatens to reduce the integrity of our university sector.

I come now to the OfS and its independence. It has to be seen as an independent institution if it is to have credibility and inspire confidence among the public, students and universities. It has had a poor start. It was clearly complicit in the shambolic and over-political approach taken by Ministers to the board appointment process. It was not a good start by its chairman. The appointment of Mr Toby Young and his subsequent resignation was followed by an investigation by the Public Appointments Commissioner. He identified a number of problems, including all-male appointment panels, failure to provide information to the commissioner in good time and—this is the key point—risking the independence of the board by a too partisan approach to appointments. He found that the governance code was not followed, itself a breach of the ministerial code.

This is important because the composition of the board remains highly controversial even now. There is no active further education sector representative on the board, there is no one from the NUS and there is no voice for staff. The appointments process has been symptomatic of a Government who are clearly trying to use the OfS to pursue a deeply ideological agenda. At the moment the chairman seems to show no signs of resisting the Government’s intervention in the activities of this body.

On access and participation, which is the subject of this statutory instrument because of the changes it makes, the recent end-of-cycle report from UCAS offered concerning statistics, stating that young people from the most advantaged backgrounds are still 5.5 times more likely to enter a university with the highest entrance requirement than their disadvantaged peers. Les Ebdon, the outgoing director of Fair Access, said in response last month that,

“people with the potential to excel are missing out on opportunities”.

This is an unforgiveable waste of talent.

Within the new OfS structure we are to have a Director for Fair Access and Participation, but will that person have enough clout within the OfS to make a real impact on this problem? Will that person have a direct line to Ministers, and not simply report to members of the OfS board and the chief executive? Importantly, can I take it that that person will be directly available to parliamentarians?

The term Office for Students—which is slightly Orwellian—suggests that it is focused on outcomes for students. That we will see. However, a recent Treasury Select Committee report noted that without adequate information, an efficiently functioning market will struggle to develop. Prospective students face the unenviable task of determining whether to participate in higher education based on increasing quantities of university marketing material coupled with a lack of proven, reliable metrics for judging the quality of courses. Can the Minister say what the intentions of the regulator are in this regard?

I refer the Minister to Universities UK’s submission to the current review of post-18 funding, which made some very good points. First, it says that while students understand the general long-term benefit of entering higher education, they are much less certain of how that translates into benefits that relate to them personally and how benefits vary according to the choices they make; secondly, that government, in partnership with universities, should provide more targeted information to prospective students on the cost and benefits of higher education; and thirdly, that universities could develop their value-for-money statements to better explain how pricing decisions for undergraduate courses are arrived at. Those should explain how the university uses income from tuition fees and other sources of income to fund the student experience and other activities, such as research.

Finally, I come to private providers. In the Government’s desperation to promote new private providers, they are already playing fast and loose with the term “university”, handing it over without proper scrutiny or oversight. Every time the title “university” is given to a new provider, without ensuring that it provides a good education, that not only risks students and taxpayers being ripped off, but potentially damages the integrity and reputation of the whole system. The initial conditions of registration are designed so that providers do not need a track record in delivering higher education; nor do they need evidence of financial performance.

Those of us with some experience in the education sector know what happens when you do not have sufficiently strong entrance qualifications. I fear that we are going to see a train crash here. I come back to my original question about why the Government are putting the international reputation of our universities at risk. The health of those institutions is of crucial importance to the UK. Clearly, we need to do nothing that would put that position at risk. The OfS has a clear role in mitigating that risk, but it must respect the institutional autonomy of universities and resist the temptation to micromanage every corner of university life. Obviously, I wish it well, but I believe that its performance needs to be kept under close scrutiny. This debate is a good start. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, statutory instruments are never the most exciting things to debate because there is very little we can do to them. However, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for raising this, because it gives us an opportunity to raise concerns about the benighted Higher Education and Research Act and to ask the Government to clarify their position.

The noble Lord has expressed concern about many of the issues, which I share. The report of the Commissioner for Public Appointments into the OfS revealed a blatant cronyism in the appointments process, which was influenced heavily by the Prime Minister’s own special advisers. Apparently, special advisers at No. 10 blocked several nominees for the “student experience” role on the OfS board because they had been previously involved with student unions or had expressed opposition to the Prevent strategy. The report concludes that,

“the decision on whether or not to appoint one candidate in particular was heavily influenced, not by the panel but by special advisers”.

It concluded that there was a “clear disparity” in the treatment of different candidates, and parts of the process,

“had serious shortcomings in terms of the fairness and transparency aspects”,

of the code governing public appointments. That was a complete failure of process that ignored due diligence procedures.

We know that Toby Young was, until March, CEO of the New Schools Network, which received several sizeable grants to provide advice to sponsors setting up a free school. Ministers say that that support is now under review, and the Liberal Democrats have been calling for a reassessment of whether the award of those contracts followed due process. His appointment to the board was rescinded, but it should never have been allowed to get that far, both on his credentials and on the offensive views he had expressed.

I absolutely concur with the noble Lord that, given the large number of HE students who take their courses in FE colleges, it is really disappointing that the board did not appoint anyone from the FE sector. It is a highly valuable and important part of our education system, which is all too frequently overlooked and underfunded. Having a representative on the board we see as not only desirable but essential.

The appointments process has undermined confidence in the board of the OfS. Universities no longer see it as independent of Ministers and its fitness to regulate the sector must be called into question. The OfS must operate in a way that is proportionate, risk- based and truly independent of government. It must also have regard to its statutory duty to uphold institutional autonomy. The Minister will well remember the concerns voiced in this House over universities’ autonomy.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for her full reply on all this, but I am left as confused as at the start. There is this curious thing that the institute can grant a licence back to the awarding body that actually created the materials in the first place or can give them to multiple awarding organisations. I find that a curious concept given that awarding organisations have to have a commercial structure and to make ends meet, and the materials with which they trade are very often their assessment materials. The Minister has made great play of the fact that there is flexibility in the Bill. But the trouble is that, by the time the Bill goes through with these measures enshrined that copyright is transferred to the institute, there is not much flexibility there if copyright is once lost to the institute.

There were a number of other things that I will read in detail in the Minister’s reply. I will not go through the different points that I have scribbled down because they merit a lot of thought. I also pick up the request made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that we will need some serious conversations about this because it will come back at Third Reading for a vote unless we can get some clearer reassurance.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Can we be clear that this can be brought back at Third Reading and that we can have a debate on principles? That would be very important in bringing this to a conclusion tonight. It is essential that we know that we can bring this back at Third Reading.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes. It will definitely come back at Third Reading.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

There is no guarantee at all because the clerks are tight about what they will allow. The Government have to agree that they will allow us to bring it back. That is why I made the point.

[Lord Nash]

I should make it clear that if the noble Baroness and the noble Lord wish to test the temperature of the House, they should do so now.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, Amendment 20 is designed to ensure that 16 to 19 year-olds in danger of an endless cycle of resitting maths and English GCSEs have the right to a full technical course in those fields. The background to this is the decision of the Government that, from August 2014, all students aged 16 to 18 who are starting or have already started a new programme of 150 hours or more and do not hold a GCSE at grades A to C in maths and English, or the new GCSE grades 9 to 4 equivalent, are required to study those subjects as part of their study programmes in each academic year. In 2015, this was changed so that the requirement applies also to all those with a grade D in those subjects—I am not quite sure who I am addressing at the moment on this; usually one addresses hot air, but there we are.

One can understand why the Government went down this route, but the problem is that figures released in August 2016 by the Joint Council for Qualifications show that almost 122,500 learners aged 17 or above did not get at least a grade C in maths, while 93,000 failed to secure at least a grade C in English. I looked at the comment of Mark Dawe of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, who said:

“this is evidence … that hitting students over the head with the same form of learning and assessment is not the way forward. Functional skills, designed to develop core maths and English skills but with the learning contextualised and relevant, is proven to engage and motivate these learners, particularly those who have been turned off these subjects by their school experience”.

Anyone who has come across teachers who have to teach and meet these students, resit after resit, will know that it can become a totally depressing exercise for everyone involved.

This was discussed in the other place and I note the comments of the Secretary of State, Justine Greening. She said:

“We have been clear that we do not want children to be left behind by not getting a GCSE in maths or English when they could have achieved one, so we want those who score a D to take resits. For others, however, there is the option to study for functional skills qualifications, and it is important for employers that we make sure those functional skills qualifications work effectively”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/11/16; col. 41.]


I understand that the Minister, Mr Halfon, has pointed out that the Secretary of State has directional powers over the institute to achieve this.

No one doubts the need to ensure that relevant literacy and numerical skills courses are available to young people aged 16 to 18 that clearly support further technical education and apprenticeships. Clearly they are an opportunity to get employment. There is, however, a real concern that at the moment too many young people are having to go through a very dispiriting process of repeating studies that they have already failed, and which many of them will continue to fail.

I hope that the Minister will be able to assure me that the Government are looking again at this area, in parallel to Sir Adrian Smith’s study into the feasibility of compulsory maths being continued for all pupils to the age of 18—the two very much run together. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 21, 24 and 25 in my name in this group. I pass on apologies from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. She has had to leave for an emergency meeting and has said that she will bring her Amendment 23A on Report.

Amendments 21 and 25 deal with issues of copyright. The Minister addressed issues of copyright in the previous group and I have been left somewhat confused. Issues of copyright were not referred to in the skills plan. It appears that the Government wish to retain copyright and intellectual property rights of qualifications, thus enabling them, if they should so choose, to transfer delivery of qualifications from one awarding body to another. It is not clear why the Government should wish to do this. It is hard to think of another market in which a supplier would freely cede ownership of copyright of its product for no material benefit. The model offers no incentive for any provider of regulated qualifications to enter into a market or take the responsibility for developing and supporting a qualification for which the copyright ownership has been transferred to a third party.

The issue of copyright is complex. The policy intention here seems to be one of control and safeguarding delivery of a consistent qualification should the Government wish to remove a supplier from the market. Surely adding further complexity to intellectual property ownership is not the best way to meet this policy objective. There is no detail on how the process might work. A lack of clarity in this area, especially if export earnings were put at risk, could be a further disincentive to awarding bodies to engage.

If the proposal is that the qualification should be wholly owned and developed by government, we would counsel some detailed research into previous forays by central Government into the vocational qualifications market space, including individual learning accounts or as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has mentioned, the 14 to 19 diploma. I bear the scars of the development of GNVQ, which nearly bankrupted BTEC when the Government came up with a new design of the qualifications, and it was not at all clear that any promotional material had gone into convincing the public, pupils, teachers and learners that this was a good qualification. GNVQs did some good things, but they had such rotten publicity that they never had the chance really to get off the ground. A great deal of time and money were spent in trying to promote those. If we are to learn anything from the past, surely it is that qualification and assessment ownership, and design and development work, are better left to professional bodies with specialist expertise in qualification and assessment rather than being controlled centrally by civil servants or quangos or, dare I say, even by politicians.

Government ownership of qualifications is not a feature of other qualifications, or of undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications offered by the higher education sector. No evidence base has been provided to support the proposal to move to nationalisation of qualifications, nor any assessment of the intended benefits, costs or risks of any such model. If an awarding organisation did not wish to hand over its intellectual property, it would be in a position where the institute would not approve its qualification for use in the funded market. This effectively closes the 16 to 19 market to awarding organisations which do not wish to relinquish their intellectual property.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Before the noble Baroness responds, I have two points. The Minister quoted from the Sainsbury review the definition of “technical” education. Why has that not found itself in the Bill? If the Sainsbury definition is going to set the boundaries of the 15 pathways, would it not have been helpful to pin it down some more? The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, is absolutely right to say that it would have been helpful to have that in the Bill.

My second point comes back to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. Sadly, in this country, “technical” does not have the status that we want it to have. You cannot legislate for that, but as we go through this it would have been interesting to hear from the Government how, in general, they think we are going to raise the status of the word “technical”, so that when young people in particular consider a technical education, they see it as something to aspire to.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I am sorry that this has become more complicated to involve occupational maps and routes. I thought it was a very simple explanation: that there are different emphases in different vocational routes, for the want of a better word. Actually, included in the routes there are such things as “hair and beauty”. There are technical elements to that, but there is a tremendous amount of personal skills and creativity also. Also included are “creative and design” and “catering and hospitality”. There are technical aspects in just about all of these, but that is not their prime activity or focus. The people who go into those sorts of fields are not doing so because they love doing technical things but because they like working with people and creating things, and doing things that are not primarily technical.

I am sorry if the word “technical” has now been downgraded, but we really are running rings round this. We apparently do not like and have abandoned the word “vocational” because it is considered downmarket. The word “technical” was supposed to raise the profile and be a lot better, but now, suddenly, here are the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Aberdare, saying that “technical” is a pretty rubbish word too. I always quite liked “work-based”, which is one of the terms that we used, as well as “practical”. There are other terms that might not be deemed quite so lower class as “technical”.

As I said, my amendment was intended simply to try to protect all those people working in fields where they think of themselves primarily not as technical but as creative, with personal skills and so on, which is what the Government are trying to include in the Bill. I accept that the Institute for Apprenticeships has to encompass all those routes too. I am sorry but I may have to bring this back on Report. We will perhaps have a discussion before then to see whether the noble Lord can think of a really upmarket word to take in all the different aspects of practical skills that we are looking for.