Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Rock Excerpts

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

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, it is always an honour to speak and to add my voice to that of other noble Lords in this important debate. I too add my congratulations to my noble friend Lady Sugg on her outstanding maiden speech.

I share this Government’s commitment to ensuring that our universities continue to be world-class. Four UK universities currently feature in the top 10 rankings and 30 UK universities are in the world’s top 200. In other words, as so many other noble Lords have said, we punch above our weight when it comes to higher education and research. But now more than ever we must continue to do so, which means not resting on our laurels and not assuming that the status quo will always prevail. This is why I support the aims of the Bill: more competition can be good and new entrants to the market can improve outcomes for all, by driving up standards across the board.

Our economy needs more graduates. Nearly half of vacancies between now and 2024 are expected to be in the occupations most likely to employ graduates. As a non-executive director of a leading and innovative UK technology company that employs a considerable number of engineers, I recognise this demand only too well. We must therefore ensure that graduates are of the highest quality, which means demanding and delivering the highest quality of teaching. As has been mentioned, in the 2016 Student Academic Experience Survey just 37% of respondents felt they were receiving good value for money from university teaching. This needs to be improved and I support the shift to quality, not quantity. It is, after all, a long-established principle for research funding.

Importantly and in the interests of time, I will speak to UK Research and Innovation, and in particular to developing commercial partnerships between universities and business. I support the amalgamation of the seven research councils into one, as recommended by the Nurse review. I particularly draw attention to the role of Innovate UK, which will sit within the newly created single strategic body, UK Research and Innovation. Innovate UK can play an important role in bridging the divide between academia and business. For example in November, Promethean Particles Ltd spun out of Nottingham University and is already operating a full-scale nano-production facility with customers in Spain and Italy. I raise this example because its finance, while co-ordinated by Innovate UK, was actually provided by the EU. This is not a point about Brexit but one that should concentrate minds when it comes to making sure that we continue to back Innovate UK. I am glad to see that under the Bill it will retain its commercial focus but, by sitting within UKRI, I hope it will be encouraged and allowed to identify commercial partnerships, and to ensure that research outcomes are well suited to commercial needs.

There is of course a balance to be struck between research for research’s sake and ensuring that it delivers commercial outcomes. But what is clear is that having established the UK as a world leader in higher education, we can do a better job of commercialising the research output from our truly great universities. If we think of Stanford, we think of Silicon Valley. We have built up excellence in higher education, and now in our ever-burgeoning tech sector. I hope that from Innovate UK’s new vantage point, it will do more to co-ordinate these two vital elements.