Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bragg Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, I declared my interest at Second Reading. I am the most junior member of the club of chancellors mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Myners, as the newly appointed chancellor of the University of Reading. I have a number of concerns about the Bill and without making a Second Reading speech again, I shall look to the Government to strengthen protections against interference with autonomy.

These are not theoretical objections. In this House, we are all in danger of falling into our anecdotage, but I will give just one. I was once the holder of a similar office to the Minister who is so courteously handling this Bill. My Secretary of State was my late friend and former colleague Sir Keith Joseph. The Secretary of State became incensed by the economics teaching at the Open University, so his junior Ministers, Rhodes Boyson and myself, were given the books to read. This had rather extraordinary results. The Open University’s reply to what Sir Keith saw as unfortunate bias in its teaching was made much worse by its defence that there was a book by Mr Peter Walker that in its view provided balance, which did not necessarily help Sir Keith. This was slightly comic and Sir Keith was a man of immense courtesy and deep understanding of the autonomy of the institution, and nothing much further came of it. But in crude hands and in different worlds it could have done. I shall therefore be looking through the course of this Bill to various things that will help us to strengthen autonomy.

My interest in this first clause is whether a definition helps us. Do we need a definition to say what it is we are helping to provide special protection for? I am made a little nervous by my noble friend Lord Willetts’s comments because the reason that things have not been defined in Bills over the years is the danger of a definition excluding things by accident. Very often when we draw a line we find that we have produced a new boundary and that it is better to leave some things a little greyer. In the 19th century, universities probably meant places where there were multiplicities of departments, but we know of very good liberal arts universities in the United States that do not teach science and are perfectly properly described as universities. Other examples were given by my noble friend Lord Willetts.

I am nervous about the clause as it is defined at the moment, but am interested in the Minister’s response. If he can say that he will take it away and think of this problem of definition, I would be happy with that. As drafted, it is not perfect. It would be odd for any small and perhaps specialised university of great distinction in certain areas that the behemoth of the regulator could demand that it was failing because it was not helping overseas markets or something or other, so there is a danger here. I want definitions to be defended. I do not think that we have it quite in this clause, but my support or not for the clause will somewhat depend on the spirit in which the Minister replies and whether he will agree to take this away and work at it to see if something a little more workable can be discovered.

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and his colleagues in what promises to be a full-scale and important debate on higher education. It is indeed odd, and even extraordinary, that universities are not mentioned in the Bill. I declare an interest, having been chancellor of Leeds University for the last 16 years.

En passant, I note the spectacularly impressive number of academics of the highest achievement who have expressed serious reservations and opposition to much of the Bill. Surely, in this House more than any other, we believe that the voices of experts, especially of such calibre—many of whom are in this House now—ought to be listened to and recognised as the best wisdom available on the subject.

The Government seem intent on a pincer movement, first introducing free-market rules that could best be described as downmarket options. New colleges called new providers—George Orwell would have loved that—will be able to acquire degree-awarding powers without having to build up a track record by teaching another university’s degree first. None of that boring old research and listening preparation nonsense for this Government, it seems.

The current university system could be called a fine example of the marketplace at its best—there is much talk of the marketplace. There is heavy, open competition for entrance to universities, and heavy competition for lectureships and professorships. When universities put in for grants and funds they realise they are competing with many other universities—sometimes all over the world—and they work out the most competitive as well as the most scholastically satisfactory proposal. This is a marketplace of the mind, but none the less a marketplace and an increasingly key one for the future. Our universities embrace and revel in it.

One of the reasons for this effective balance between learning and earning lies in the autonomy and individuality of our universities. They are not one size fits all, beholden to the state or looking forward to launching themselves on the FTSE 100. They are, to use a phrase of Alan Bennett’s, just “keeping on keeping on” at a high level in different but effective ways, with fertile variations, with their primary purpose: scholarship. As we know, the consequences of scholarship can increasingly be very profitable, wide-ranging across the whole of society and, from the evidence we have, increasingly essential to the success of a 21st-century economy, which, in so many other areas, has found this country wanting. But the heart of it is learning, and the heart of that is the curiosity to pursue knowledge for the sake of more knowledge. Key to that is a certain looseness and confidence in individual and often idiosyncratic needs—private space, in short, for what our greatest scientists and writers in the humanities have always needed to generate their best work. This cannot be legislated for: it is an individual-to-individual decision. This heavy-handed state control is the enemy to that free-ranging condition.

The clamp of the Government’s decision to create a new body—a central control unit—the Office for Students, is anathema to freedom, of which we need more, not less. It would impose another layer of regulation. Goodness knows, universities in this country, like schools, hospitals and the Government themselves, are all but disappearing under the tangleweed of overregulation. Who will run these new bodies, which will interfere so radically in the affairs of the variety of universities? How will they be trained? Where will they come from? How will they know more than those already working hard inside the universities who are the best people? They are already there inside the universities. All of these universities, from the ancient to the relatively new, have built up through expertise and expediency individual and ingenious ways to ride the tide of the times. There is danger of strangulation by bureaucracy.

As they take an increasingly important place in our society as one of the few success stories of the last few decades, universities are being asked to do more, which they are doing. They have now become the forum for disputes about free speech, and it is in universities where unacceptable and destructive racist attitudes must be and will continue to be challenged, I trust. In cities thoughtlessly stripped of traditional industries it is universities that have often provided the new hub of hope in the place.

No doubt others will itemise ways universities can be improved, and I look forward to hearing that. though, we must declare and itemise their current strengths. Universities must be high on the agenda—as high as they are on the ladder of learning in this country. I look forward to the Minister confirming that he will go along with the amendment.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the amendment is very important for one reason. Having taken part in Second Reading, I declare my interests once again as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School, and honorary fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge—I could go on.

This is a once-in-many-decades opportunity to improve the higher education sector in this country. One could argue that we have the best universities in the world, along with the United States, in spite of underfunding. The key issue is that we underfund our universities. If we put in the funding equivalence of the United States of America, or of the European Union, or the OECD average it in itself would improve our universities hugely. But, as an entrepreneur building businesses, I live by the mantra not of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but of restless innovation, of the world belonging to the discontent.

To that extent, I applaud the Bill’s objective to try to improve our universities. I also recognise the Minister, Jo Johnson, for his commitment to this, for listening through the entire Second Reading, and for being here with us today. I know he and his department will listen, as, I hope, will the Minister.

I therefore agree with the noble Lords, Lord Waldegrave and Lord Willetts, that the use of “must” in this clause does not make sense in many circumstances. For example, in India, 1.5 million students apply to get into the Indian Institutes of Technology. The first cut is 130,000. Ten thousand of them make it. Some of the brightest people in the world have come out of that funnel and run some of the biggest organisations in the world today. It has nothing to do with engineering, but it is a specialist engineering science institution. Caltech is always ranked among the top universities in the world. It is a pure science institution. One cannot therefore prescribe that all universities must do everything, but the spirit of this amendment is absolutely right: that universities on the whole must strive for variety.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Lord Bragg Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for securing this very important debate and for his excellent speech. I declare an interest: I have been chancellor of the University of Leeds for the past 16 years. During that time I have seen it transformed, along with so many other British universities. It has become part of the outstanding global success of our universities, as outlined so graphically by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, which punch way above their weight and lead the world—this is not a “Rule, Britannia!” cliché—in many areas of research.

I will quote the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation from evidence he gave to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee in its report published in April this year. My noble friend Lady Blackstone has already quoted the first sentence. I think we would like to hear the rest. Mr Johnson said:

“Britain’s success as a science powerhouse hinges on our ability to collaborate with the best minds from across Europe and the world. This report is further evidence that the UK’s influential position would be diminished if we cut ourselves off from the rich sources of EU funding, the access to valuable shared research facilities and the flow of talented researchers that provide so many opportunities to our world-leading institutions”.

He was right. We would all be grateful if the Minister passed this on to the current Prime Minister. The result of the referendum has ruptured that. There are widespread fears that the dire predicted consequences are already beginning to roll in.

I will confine most of my remarks to what is happening at the University of Leeds. Like my noble friend Lord Liddle, I will give a close-up of a particular university. Leeds is part of the Russell Group, it is a very important research university and it is not given to hyperbole. European funding accounted for 15% of Leeds’s research income in 2014-15. Leeds is ranked 11th in the UK for involvement in the Horizon 2020 project for research and innovation funding. The university does particularly well in the generous Marie Curie individual fellowships and European Research Council grants. These are based on researcher mobility, which is essential to a world university. Tougher laws on immigration will compromise or even remove these schemes. In the weeks immediately after the referendum, there were six known cases of the university being removed from Horizon 2020 applications with a combined value of about €8 million, for reasons that have already been expressed.

Under the Erasmus scheme, for every EU student coming to the UK, a UK student can go and experience career-changing development and opportunities abroad. The university receives €1.7 million a year to facilitate this. This could be lost, which would be a great blow to Leeds’s ambition to be internationally engaged, with a workforce of international reputation. The university currently has 286 partnerships in Europe through Erasmus. They would be under threat.

Leeds currently employs around 700 staff from the EU. It urges the UK Government to guarantee that those currently working at UK universities can continue to do so in the long term. There are already considerable worries about the potential impact of immigration status on its ability to attract further academic talent from Europe. First-class science is based on talent and resources. Talent comes where resources exist. Already the university has experienced a couple of cases where senior academics have withdrawn their interest in working at the university due to the uncertainty and/or climate caused by the Brexit vote and the challenge to resources on that account. These numbers may seem modest but they are only the beginning, and from only one university. Perhaps noble Lords see it merely as a trickle, but it could more clearly be seen as a worrying early warning that in the not too distant future the dam will burst.

Leeds has around 1,200 EU students on degree programmes, 250 research students and 400 students on exchange programmes. At the moment there is absolutely no long-term certainty for any of them. The income from EU students alone in 2015-16 was over £8 million. This is to say nothing of the great advantages that we at Leeds have from, for example, the many Chinese students who come to Leeds and go back to China with firm loyalties and friendships. This is just the beginning of what could be a sad slide into a decline in one of our greatest present and potential assets. As the British Academy said:

“A long-term commitment to the UK’s research base is crucial in stabilising the UK research environment and its global competitiveness”.

Those 16 million of us who voted to remain are rather fed up with being dismissed and even derided as if we are bad sports. Democracy should respect minorities and we are a large minority. Part of that minority is the world of universities, which over the past few decades has seen a quite wonderful growth in reach and excellence, to the benefit of all UK citizens. We live in an age of accelerating, increasingly specialised knowledge. The world will go with those who have most of that and can retail it and add to it most accurately. I ask the Minister to outline a future strategy for British universities.

Grammar Schools

Lord Bragg Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope it is not out of order to say that I simply cannot understand why a Government faced with the greatest constitutional, economic and intellectual upheaval for more than 70 years should want to spend so much time and energy on the future of grammar schools. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Andrews on an excellent opening speech, in which she picked apart the Government’s case.

The evidence is all about us that some of our few grammar schools are doing well and some are doing less well, but many maintained comprehensives and schools like them have largely replaced them and brought multidimensional benefits. I agree very firmly with my noble friend Lord Puttnam that what the Government are seeking to put into operation could be incendiary.

It might be useful to speak from personal experience, as several other noble Lords have done. I went to a grammar school in Wigton in the north-west of England. By the 11-plus I was separated from many of my best friends, who went to the secondary modern. The stigma of success of getting into the grammar school when they did not was not unlike, although not at all equal to, the feeling of failure that several of those who did not pass the 11-plus had and retain. Unnecessary discrimination set in and proved to be a pattern in life.

In 1957, the Nelson Thomlinson Grammar School that I attended sent one person to Oxford. Later it became a comprehensive school with a much smaller catchment area and an unboundaried diversity of intake, yet last year, if this is any measure, seven students from that comprehensive school went to Oxford or Cambridge and one went to Yale.

I was lucky to be very well taught by teachers of the calibre of Mr James, the history teacher, and Mr Blacker, who taught English, but current students are every bit as well-taught. I was on the board of governors for a while and still keep in close and active contact with the school and especially with the sixth-formers. The skill and dedication of the teachers, and therefore of the pupils, is outstanding. The range of activity outstrips what we did back then. For instance, the young enterprise team reached the national finals in London last year; the school runs serious scientific research projects with the local factory, Innovia Films; it was the first comprehensive in Cumbria to be judged outstanding by Ofsted; and it has bred a highly successful rock band, the Hardwicke Circus, which is going professional and includes four head boys, one of whom is still at the school.

We have to face up to the fact that for many young people in this country, state schools have changed for the better. Nostalgia is rarely very rational, generational memories are notoriously unreliable and we seem to have trouble admitting that some aspects of our life have improved, especially among the young, and that the new generation is very often surpassing us.

That success is now following through. Again, it might be useful to point out that Oxford, recently declared the most successful university in the world, has steadily increased its figures from the maintained sector to almost 60%—not enough, but going in the right direction. If we want to improve the education of all young people in this country, we should do as my noble friend Lady Andrews suggested and look at the great London experience, whereby resources and talent were piled in, transforming what is probably the most complex and large education region in the land into an outstanding education success story.

If we want to—and I think we absolutely need to—improve the technical and skills base of our society after years of neglect and mismanagement from Governments, then the need is not for more grammar schools but for more technical colleges properly linked to strategic re-industrialisation. If we want better education, we should put more money into state schools to help them do more science, and put in more facilities for languages, sports, drama and art. If we want to build a new skilled nation, we should put money into technical colleges. If we want to engineer social mobility, the elephant in the room is obvious: we could have a radical reappraisal of that beta-blocker of social mobility, the public school. What benefits could flow from that—what great consequences and positive aspects for our future.

I am very grateful to the teachers at Wigton’s Nelson Thomlinson grammar school, but I am even more proud and pleased that it has transformed itself into such a democratic, decent, diverse and generous comprehensive, which, given a fair wind, will grasp and answer the needs and ambition of our unequal and troubled modern society, which needs all hands on deck and everyone feeling that they have an equal chance to help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I might have expected the noble Baroness to raise that point, but first, it may not be right that a new selective school is set up there anyway. We need to lower the temperature on this. If it is the case, the whole point is that the selective schools will be used, where appropriate, to help raise the standards in non-selective schools. It is upping the ante and raising up to the higher level.

[Lord Bragg]

The Minister seems to take for granted that grammar schools will raise the standards at comprehensive schools when again and again pupils from comprehensive schools are outgunning those from grammar schools wherever you look. He is just wrong about that. I am awfully sorry to say that—no, I am not all that sorry: he is wrong about that.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Again, I note the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, which are clearly opposed to what we are planning, but I can only repeat that it is right to question and look at these issues to see how selection can play a greater part in our education system, as a holistic approach.

We will expect selective schools to play their part, either by supporting other less well-performing schools or sponsoring new schools in areas where they are needed, as well as removing the barriers that prevent disadvantaged students accessing selective education. I took note of the many comments made, notably by my noble friend Lord James, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and indeed by the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, about the 11-plus, the main point being that certainly in the past—a long time ago—the 11-plus meant that children were classed as failures. I must repeat that we are not talking about introducing the 11-plus. We are proposing that more selective schools are introduced in a diverse schools system.

A flexible approach to new selection is the priority. For example, we are proposing to encourage new selective schools to consider admission at later ages and how they could respond more flexibly to children’s differing rates of development, and according to their talents. This could include moving pupils between schools, encouraging this to happen at different ages, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said, such as 14 and 16, as well as 11, or pupils joining the selective school for specific subjects or specialisms.

Selective schools are good schools. Some 99% of selective schools are good or outstanding and 80% are outstanding. They are popular with parents. As I have already mentioned, there are also a number of non-selective schools that are similarly highly rated, but this is a complex picture and about giving parents the choice of the high-quality education that they want for their children—a choice between good selective education and good non-selective education. It is only right we should examine how we can open up this choice to more families.

Contrary to the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, the evidence shows that grammar schools provide good results for those who attend them. Looking at the raw exam results, almost all pupils in selective schools—96.7%—gain five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and mathematics, compared with 56.7% at non-selective schools.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bragg Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak on the arts and broadcasting. Over the past 70 years there has been what could be called a combined effort to structure the arts in this country—from the Labour Party, the Arts Council and the Open University to the Conservatives, Channel 4 and the independent sector, and the lottery. Labour increased investment, provided free museums and supported libraries. Rather bewilderingly, over the past few years this has fallen away. I would like to look over the longer term to show how the arts have grown to great strength, most unexpectedly, in this country.

The growth of the arts is connected with the rebirth of great cities such as Glasgow, Cardiff, Leeds and others, which discovered that their identities and economies, which had been all but erased by the wipe-out of the 1980s, could be rekindled by a hub of activity the nucleus of which was the arts. Surprisingly, the arts moved to the centre of urban development. By then, we were growing a forest of festivals: 350 literary festivals, some attracting more than 200,000 visitors in a fortnight; music festivals of several varieties; and arts, dance, documentary film and ethnic festivals. There is nothing on this scale anywhere else.

The arts are efficient. They are crucially relevant to this country and to our larger economy in the world. The arts, broadly speaking, provide more than 2 million mostly highly specialised jobs and deliver an economic sector—about 7% at the moment—which has grown every year since the 1950s. Why not encourage this? Why cut a flourishing sector? It makes no sense when £1 of government money invested—not as subsidy—in the National Theatre, for instance, can facilitate the return of £16 into the economy. This example can be multiplied throughout the arts.

We are good at the arts. This comes not from innate national genius, alas. It comes from early nourishment, talent and opportunity. That is why our well-drilled drama, music, dance, film and art colleges are so vital. They are why we are so good but need to be well resourced. That is why we have to bring the arts as strongly as possible into schools, where they are not an add-on but a must-have. It has been proved again and again—how often does it have to be proved?—that schools which have choirs, orchestras and drama groups do better across the whole curriculum, in discipline and in examination results. The good start young and the arts provoke the imagination. We need to stimulate the imagination. All of us have it and none of us knows where it is, but we know what it does. It came before language and changed our species forever. It has altered our lives radically again and again, and is doing so now at an astonishing speed. Applying imagination is how we will take control of the future.

On broadcasting, I shall speak about two areas in what is now an extraordinary forest, or jungle, of hyperactivity around the planet. First, Sky Arts, for which I work as an independent, is the only TV channel in the country exclusively devoted to investing in, and making and presenting, the arts. It commissions plays by our finest playwrights, starring our best actors; it sets up national events such as the portrait-painting competition; it invests in classic arts programmes. It has also set up an academy for young artists, but it is no fig leaf. Sky is a commercial company and sees the arts as an integral part of the audiences who it wants to reach, which is a great recognition for the arts.

Then there is the BBC, for which I also work as an independent. This wonderful British invention, which has sealed itself into the country’s character and provided education, information and entertainment, often brilliantly and life-changingly, since it was given its Magna Carta by the Caledonian colossus, John Reith, in the 1920s, is in danger. It is incomparable and its Britishness is stamped right through that Caledonian rock but it is now faced with threats to its future authority. The licence fee could be the first casualty at the charter renewal next year. I hated the fact that people could be sent to jail for not paying it, but the consequences of abolishing that criminal charge could be substantial non-payment—with no sanction, there is no need to pay. There is also an increasing number of people who do not watch television on a television set, and therefore are outside the jurisdiction of the licence fee.

In my view, the BBC is the sum of its programmes, which are primarily directed towards us in the United Kingdom. It has got that right in area after area so often through the decades, and it still does. The BBC does many programmes that no other broadcaster would attempt. It never ceases to struggle to keep its—and our—independence, and now it needs positive support from those who it has served so widely and well for so long: that is, from us. Under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Hall, it has the will and the talent to put its case forcefully. I am sure that many in your Lordships’ House are eager to hear it. The BBC is too good to lose. It is unique to us. The BBC is not so much the family silver as the family itself.

Chris Smith—now the noble Lord, Lord Smith—coined the phrase “the creative economy”. It clumps a bit but it is a good and memorable phrase. We should be proud of it, look after it and build on it. It is the best thing we have got.