Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

In moving Amendment 2, in my name, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 48 in the name of my noble friend Lord Storey. At the start of Report stage, I thank the Government for tabling an extensive raft of amendments. It raises questions: why, during remorseless Committee sittings, did the Government not give some indication of their intentions and avoid fruitless hours of debate? Given all these amendments, why was the Bill so ill thought through in the first place? Where was the pre-legislative scrutiny, the consultation, or even the careful drafting, which would have enabled a more productive use of time and expertise in this Chamber?

However, let me not be churlish: better a sinner that repenteth. Amendment 2 picks up issues raised throughout consideration of this Bill. All sides of the House have argued that it is important not to neglect the considerable part played in higher education by those who are not following full-time, three-year courses. Part-time study, we know, has been in decline since 2008 by a combination of factors: for instance, restrictions placed on equivalent or lower level qualifications—ELQs; and the introduction of higher tuition fees in 2012 for part-time undergraduate courses. Part-time adult and distance learning provides diverse opportunities for many people unable or unwilling to access full-time undergraduate programmes, enabling them to progress their learning and to take opportunities for development that would not otherwise be available to them. Given that this valuable provision is so easily overlooked, it is important that there should be a voice and specific representation on the OfS board. This is a very simple amendment which I hope the Minister will be able to accept.

In the same spirit, I have added my name to government Amendment 8 which also reinforces recognition of part-time study, distance learning or accelerated courses. I am grateful to the Government for that. I have added my name to Amendment 48 in this group, tabled by my noble friend Lord Storey. We join those who want to see an end to the stigma surrounding mental health, where our colleague Norman Lamb has been a great champion. This amendment is important not only for those who might develop mental health problems during their time at university but for those who have experienced mental health problems in the past.

It is not just students; university staff, too, can experience stress and mental health problems. As responsible employers, universities should have support services in place for staff and their duty of care to students should also include mental health support. This amendment would make it clear that such provision should be available. Many universities already offer this and make it clear to students and staff that provision is available, but this amendment would ensure that all universities make students and staff aware of the provision. I beg to move.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

I speak to Amendment 7 in this group, which seeks to put an additional general duty on what we are still calling the Office for Students. This general duty is to ensure that all English higher education providers—a term of art that we have now learned—have the same duties to make reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities. In Committee, we had very great confusion on this point. Some noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches hoped, and perhaps some still do, that the public sector equality duty could apply directly to English higher education providers—but it cannot, because not all of them will be public sector bodies; in fact, it may be that very few of them are public sector bodies. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said that he thought that the public sector equality provision did not apply because universities were charities. However, it is part of the point of the legislation to secure a diversity of types of providers, and they will not all be charities. In fact, many of them may be for profit.

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Tabled by

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

7: Clause 3, page 2, line 17, at end insert—
“( ) the need to ensure that all English higher education providers have the same duties to make reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities,”

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for using the words “reasonable adjustments” in this context, and I shall look carefully at what he has said in Hansard. Reasonable adjustment is a well-understood phrase; it is rather different from a duty,

“to promote equality of opportunity in connection with access … and participation”.

Some years ago, I was responsible for a partially sighted student who had access and participation on an equal basis, but she needed to get everything that she had to read to do a degree in French recorded from the French equivalent of RNIB. There was about a three-month lead period, and it was essential that she got additional support to get the materials that she had to study available regularly and in time. That is the sort of thing that constitutes a reasonable adjustment; it is more than equal rights to participation and access. With that said, I shall not move the amendment.

Amendment 7 not moved.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

I wish to clarify an issue. When the Minister introduced this group of amendments, he said that he would ask for Amendments 15, 16 and 17 to be spoken to before he replied. Does that mean that we cannot speak to the rest of the amendments? I have other amendments in this group.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with getting the age statistics right. That is a crucial example because it is objective and not highly sensitive, at least in my view. However, most of the other protected characteristics are not susceptible of statistically robust estimation. People do not always want to declare whether they are pregnant or to declare their ethnicity. I discovered that young people of mixed background did not wish to take sides between their parents, as they put it. People do not always wish to declare their sexual orientation, particularly when they are very young. The result is that one has an enormous number of “no information” entries in these statistics. To use this information in a statistically responsible way is not a simple matter. However, I exempt age. I would, until recently, have exempted gender because I think most people will give a simple answer on that. However, I fear that the information one actually records is not always robust.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this has been a very good and interesting debate. I think that there are some questions to which the Government will want to respond and I will not overegg the pudding at this stage. However, the question of why we are not including protected characteristics, as mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is interesting. Amendments 16 and 18 are helpful in this regard. I take the points made by the noble Baroness, who is expert in these matters. However, if we as a country do not start to set out these requirements in terms of a whole range of protected characteristics, we will be the loser in the long run. It may be just be a question of how we do that.

This group of amendments also contains important first steps towards a more engaged transfer and credit transfer arrangement for students in relation to the higher education sector, which I welcome. However, I again wonder why the Government have not thought to take into account Amendments 47, 128 and 129. It seems to me that they would help progress in this regard, which is something we all support.