Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, the case for the amendment has been explained clearly and persuasively by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and its other supporters; I, too, support it.

The amendment reflects a strong cross-party conviction, in both this House and the other place, that the underregistration of young people for electoral purposes is a most serious and pressing problem that needs to be tackled resolutely in a number of ways. The amendment embodies one of them.

Its objective was recommended strongly in last year’s report entitled Getting the ‘Missing Millions’ on to the Electoral Register, prepared by Bite The Ballot and others for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation. That authoritative study makes it clear that university registration procedures could easily be adapted to incorporate provision enabling students to opt in for electoral registration, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, explained.

The Government should associate themselves firmly with the cross-party proposals to increase electoral registration of our young people. They need to demonstrate a clear commitment to working in a bipartisan spirit so that our democracy can be strengthened by bringing those missing from the register on to it. By supporting this amendment, the Government would make a significant contribution to the bipartisan progress that we need so badly.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the University of Cambridge. Before I entered your Lordships’ House, I had responsibility on Cambridge City Council for democratic services when the individual electoral registration pilots were going through. Before individual electoral registration, the university, or at least the colleges, had an extremely efficient relationship with the city council to register all undergraduate and graduate students. The shift to individual electoral registration has many benefits, but we lost that link. Colleges could no longer simply offer the data to the city council. The amendment would bring back something that worked effectively in the past but do so in line with current legislation. It would enable the Government to ensure that we really could register young people. At the time of the EU Referendum Bill, the Government repeatedly said that everything that linked back to the franchise needed to be dealt with in a representation of the people Act. I ask the Minister to consider whether on this occasion an amendment could be made that ensured that as many young people as possible could be on the electoral register.

[Lord Storey]

I was drawn to an Answer from the Minister to a Question on the effectiveness of the Sheffield pilot project on electoral registration. I think all of us in this Chamber—certainly those Members who have put their names to this important amendment, whom I thank—believe that it is important in our democracy that as many people as possible take part in elections. The best place to start that lifelong commitment to voting is at a young age. Sadly, we see many young people, perhaps as a result of all sorts of factors, not registering to vote and not getting into the habit of voting. Some of us had hoped that the immensely successful Belfast model, where electoral registration officers go into schools, give citizenship lessons and ask people to register to vote there and then, might be adopted in the rest of the UK, but that has not been the case. Government should surely seize every opportunity to ensure that more young people take part in elections and are registered to vote.

As has been said, we saw with the introduction of individual electoral registration a huge slump in the number of people who are registered. The Minister said in his Answer:

“The Government part-funded the University of Sheffield pilot, integrating electoral registration with the process of student enrolment, and has encouraged other providers of Higher and Further Education to implement a similar system”.


The Bill is a wonderful way, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Young, to encourage other higher and further education providers to implement a similar system. He went on:

“An indicative assessment shows this project had successful outcomes. For example, in the 2015/2016 academic year, the university had 76% of eligible students registered to vote compared with figures as low as 13% for similar sized universities. The Government will further evaluate the University of Sheffield pilot to understand—in detail—the impact of the pilot and its critical success factors. We understand a number of institutions have already introduced a similar approach, or are actively considering doing so”.


To be fair to the Minister, he said that there were differences between different higher education providers and the scheme might not be appropriate for all. I do not want to censor what he said. But his Answer contains a way forward. I would have thought that young people going away from home, being in a different environment, saying on day one, “Now is the time to register to vote”, is the way forward. I hope we might include it in the Bill.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, funding is clearly crucial for higher education institutions. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for bringing this debate this afternoon. Like many other speakers, I declare an interest, or even interests. I had noted two, and then the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, caused me to think of a third one.

My interests on this occasion are directly relevant to what I will talk about in the few minutes available. The first is that I am employed by the University of Cambridge, which benefits significantly from membership of the European Union and access to funding from Horizon 2020 and associated programmes. Secondly, while my own Department of Politics and International Studies does not apply to so many programmes, the European centre that I direct has had funding from the European Union to create collaborative networks. I am now the third speaker to talk about networks, and a hugely important theme is that we are talking not just about funding—networks are important, people are important, collaboration is important—so, if we look merely at the financial aspects of research funding, we miss an important part of what Her Majesty’s Government need to think about in negotiating the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. My third interest is as a member of the advisory board of the Institute for European Studies at the Free University in Brussels, the ULB. I mention that because, when I was asked to be on that advisory board, I stopped to think, “Do I have time to do it?” and “Do I want to do it?”, but I did not think, “Will it be difficult for me to get to Brussels? Will I have to fill in bits of paper and get visas to travel?”. I can see the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, shaking his head, but there are key issues to think about that go beyond funding, which relate back to how the United Kingdom will play out its role in collaborative research in the future.

Funding is part of that, and the Government have already been clear that they are willing to support funding that would be lost under Horizon 2020 and replace it up to 2020. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, already suggested, “up to 2020” does not give much certainty at all. Applications are going in now where, anecdotally, we are told again and again that British people or people who are based in UK universities are being discouraged from being the lead applicants for EU funding. That needs to be thought about. Will the United Kingdom seek to be part of the European research area, and ideally part of Erasmus, once we leave the European Union? Can the Government commit to saving the best opportunities and closest co-operation for the United Kingdom by being part of the European research area post Brexit?

At the moment, the United Kingdom benefits from having significant numbers of EEA nationals as students and academic staff. At the moment, 20% of Cambridge’s post-doctoral fellows come from other EU and EEA countries. But there is no certainty for these people. At present, we have no idea what the Government propose on visas and free movement. If the Government do not propose to be part of the European Economic Area or something similar, can the Minister indicate what sort of arrangements they are looking for that will enable EU nationals to have confidence about coming to take up jobs in the United Kingdom? The link back to funding is that, at present, the United Kingdom receives more funding from the EU than any other member state, and a significant number of the ERC grants go to EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom. If the United Kingdom is outside of those networks, the pull factor for leading European scientists disappears. Those people need certainty. If the United Kingdom is to remain world-leading, it needs to demonstrate that it is open for business. Maybe the plan is to have a visa-free regime for free movement of academics or maybe the plan is to expand tier 2 visas, but at present we have no idea.

While I understand that the Minister is not going to give a running commentary, can he at least give some assurance that the Government are thinking about these questions and that the UK is open for global business, including in higher education and research?

Lifelong Learning

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my colleague and noble friend, Lady Garden of Frognal, for securing this debate. I declare an interest as an academic employed at the University of Cambridge. It might sound a little surprising, having just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Rees, that somebody from an elite university must none the less declare an interest in lifelong learning, but even at the University of Cambridge there is the possibility to engage in lifelong learning. I will come back to that in a moment.

First, I pay tribute to my own mother. I am the sort of student who went straight through school, university, a master’s and then a doctorate; my mother left school at 16 with O-levels and always felt that she had not achieved her potential. When she got to 48, she stopped and thought, “What do I really want to do?”. At that time you needed to apply to university before you were 50 in order to get a grant, so she gave up work and went to university aged 48. I am not sure about your Lordships, but the last thing on earth I would want to do now is stop work and start an undergraduate degree. It would be far more nerve-wracking at 48 than it was at 18 for many of us. For those people who stop in their tracks during their working life and say, “Now is the time to go into higher or further education”, it is hugely important that those opportunities are there.

That was a personal anecdote, but there are so many people for whom university is not the right thing to do at 18. Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Rees, indicated, there is a tendency now to assume that it is almost a rite of passage: people stay at school until they are 18 and then they go to university. They may or may not benefit from going to university at 18. Some people do; others do not. They may find that at 18 they want to go out and earn money, travel the world or do other things. The last thing on earth they should be doing is going to university just for the sake of saying, “I’m going to university”. That would be true whether or not they were incurring £9,000 a year or more of debt in tuition fees. It is a question of what is right for people at certain times in their lives.

For many people, going back in their 20s or 30s can be far more beneficial for their self-confidence and the skills they need to engage in the workforce. There are opportunities through further education colleges to gain the sorts of skills and re-entry qualifications that might enable people to do foundation courses and then go into higher education. It would be enormously beneficial if the Government would think about ways of encouraging people back into education at certain levels, rather than assuming that if you have not done it at 18, you have stopped.

I said I had an interest to declare. That is because my day job at the University of Cambridge for many years has been teaching master’s and undergraduate students who are at Cambridge full-time, but there are two other aspects that I think are of interest. One is a temporary thing that is worth mentioning, partly because it brings back the memory of Lord Garden. In Cambridge we have a link to the military and every year our master’s programme in international relations has five or six students who are funded by the MoD. One of our alumni was the late Lord Garden, who came as a mid-career member of the military. Each year we have people from the Army, the Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Marines. They add hugely to the quality of the courses because they bring a different perspective, and that is true of people coming back into higher education.

If you come to university at 18 and everyone in your cohort is 18, you have an understanding of learning and you carry on as a cohort, but people who come back into higher education at a later stage bring a range of life experiences that are beneficial to the whole group—and the lecturers. Again, if all you do is go to university and become a teacher in higher education, you do not necessarily have the breadth of understanding that is brought in by people who come in from the outside world. Teachers as well as other students can benefit from people coming in mid-career.

But that is a very niche thing. From the end of September, I will be teaching a part-time master’s programme, which begins to speak to the sort of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Rees, was talking about. Our part-time master’s programme in international relations brings in people who may have come straight from university—or they may be high-flying bankers or businesspeople, or they might be people who have decided to take a career break or mothers who want to come back into education and then the workforce. The course, including admissions, is structured on the basis of taking into consideration not just GCSEs and A-levels but what people have been doing in the intervening five, 10 or 20 years. What you have done in the workplace or your other life experiences can be taken into consideration when it comes to admissions. For people who may not have thought about coming back into higher education—or who may have switched off—there is an opportunity to do that even at somewhere like the University of Cambridge.

In addition, there are courses run by the department for continuing education that allow people who have left education, and not thought about skills for many years, to come and do them at weekends. They get a sense of what it is like to study again and ask themselves whether someone at the age of 25, 35 or 55 could come back into education.

Those opportunities exist in many universities. Over the years, we have seen an expansion of university education right across the United Kingdom: Bedford, Chester and the Highlands, for example, all have universities. The opportunity for people in local communities to go in and work, so as to gain experience through some taster or access courses provided by universities, could be a way back into higher education. It could also be a way of learning skills which link back to the local employment environment.

Such things are hugely important, but for too long the focus has been on academic education that goes through to A-levels at 18 and straight to university. It is hugely important that we think of education as something that people can come back to at whatever stage is appropriate to them. From their personal experiences, what matters to them for their self-fulfilment? Also, what will matter in terms of jobs? Increasingly, people are not taking on jobs for life; they may need to change careers or reskill. We should think increasingly about how people can move through further and higher education, and other types of study, so that at every stage of life they are fulfilled and equipped to take on the sort of jobs that a 21st-century economy offers.

What opportunities does the Minister envisage for 21st-century lifelong learning? How far can the Government encourage people to think about going into further or higher education at a time which suits them? How does that fit into wider understandings of apprenticeships and the other training that the coalition Government, and this Government, have been dealing with very well over the last six years?