Higher Education and Research Bill

Duke of Wellington Excerpts

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

[The Duke of Wellington (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chairman for nine years of King’s College London. This has been a good debate, with many good points made. I particularly agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and the noble Lords, Lord Waldegrave, Lord Giddens and Lord Patten, said. They were all excellent contributions to a debate on a Bill about which I have several concerns. However, at this late stage of the evening, my duty is to confine myself to three points.

First, on regulation, in the other place on 19 July the Secretary of State for Education said that this Bill would,

“contribute to this Government’s deregulatory agenda”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/7/16; col. 707]

However, I cannot see how it does that. In fact, it has all the appearance of doing the very opposite, because surely it is creating a new super-regulator. Indeed, in a letter sent to colleagues by Jo Johnson—someone said he had left, but he has still got the stamina to listen to this debate in the Gallery, for which we should all thank him—he said:

“HEFCE’s ability to regulate effectively by attaching conditions to grants is weakened. We are therefore setting up a new market regulator”.

It seems that even the Government intend that this should be a greater degree of regulation.

Secondly, on autonomy, which has been mentioned by several noble Lords, removing the Privy Council, the question of removing royal charters and the extensive powers of the Office for Students all suggest that there will be less autonomy. In the excellent Universities UK briefing, the subtle point is made that,

“over-regulation of ‘autonomous’ institutions through overly bureaucratic accountability mechanisms”,

reduces autonomy. That must be right, and I think that Ministers should look at it.

Finally, on the teaching excellence framework, I have real concerns, as do other noble Lords. It is the metrics that are the problem, as I understand it. A system that is likely to produce the result that neither Oxford not Cambridge will be guaranteed to be gold and the four London colleges—UCL, Imperial, King’s and the London School of Economics—will all be bronze, surely cannot be what was intended. To attempt to raise the quality by reducing the reputation and classification of the leading universities in this country seems to me misguided. We all agree that standards in university teaching must continue to rise—that goes without saying—and we all want to see more students from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university.

One of the great strengths of this House is to scrutinise and improve the details of government Bills. I really hope that, as this Bill passes through the House, it will be substantially amended so that our universities are allowed to remain among the best in the world.