Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Broers Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

My Lords, in supporting the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I cannot hope to match the eloquence of many of the contributions that we have already heard, especially those from the noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Puttnam.

I shall focus on two brief points relating to the enrichment of the overall student experience that foreign students bring to our universities. First, we surely want, especially in our leading universities, to attract the very best students doing the very best work, challenging each other and their teachers in the most formidable way. If we put obstacles in the way of attracting those best students coming from overseas, we are going to be the poorer for it. Secondly, students learn not just from their teachers but from each other. They learn from discussion, debate, association, collaboration and taking part in all sorts of activities with their student colleagues. Having overseas students as part of that mix enormously enriches their experience, opens their eyes, widens their horizons and makes the experience of being at a university much more powerful than it would otherwise be. So not only do we as a country lose out in terms of our soft power and our influence, standing and reputation around the world if we make it difficult for overseas students to come, but we also diminish the possibilities and the experience for our own indigenous students by so doing.

I know the Minister for Higher Education knows all that; he is on our side in this. By passing this amendment or something like it in due course in our discussions in this place, we will strengthen his hand in the battles he faces with the Home Office and the rest of the Government. I suspect that we will be united across all parts of this House in seeking to do this, as we try to ensure that this country lifts its head just a little higher in its relationships with the rest of the world.

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, many noble Lords have spoken very eloquently about this matter. I add my support to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and those that go with it. There is a simple pragmatic fact that we seem to have got wrong here: many of the brightest students are actually of huge immediate financial benefit to this country. In Cambridge we have raised vast sums of money from overseas. Very famous people overseas like to see students come to this country. We look ridiculous in this extraordinary situation, which has gone on for years.

To bring up an anecdote, I was vice-chancellor at Cambridge at the time of 9/11. After that event the Americans threw up barriers against students by placing immigration restrictions on them. The silver lining was ours; all of a sudden, the students we would normally have lost to some of the great American universities were all flooding to our door. It was a very fast process. The American universities reacted to it very fast and cured that problem—rather too quickly for us, in fact—but it was a good example of how rapidly you can create damage in this field. I hope the Government come to their senses on this issue.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Broers Excerpts

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

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord’s comments, because I have the greatest possible difficulty with this amendment, for a reason that nobody in the Committee has stated this afternoon. The amendment, as drafted, risks disqualifying—and hence turning some into sheep and some into goats—a whole group of bodies that have been given degree-awarding powers and the title of university since the legislation enabling that in 2004. I should declare an interest in that I am chancellor of BPP University, which is one of the biggest of the new, private universities. We were given degree-awarding powers in 2007 and, much to our great pleasure, were awarded the title of university in 2013.

What do I find when I read the proposed new clause? We would be supposed to provide a full range of subjects—but we do not and never did, although we have a full range of business subjects. Many of my colleagues in the 60 or 70 institutions that have gained degree-awarding powers are in the same place. This clause would just put us somewhere else. It gets rather worse as it goes on, with the second proposed new clause, at which point “UK universities” become separated from other, for-profit universities. We would somehow have ceased to be UK universities, but surely we are constituted under the 2004 legislation—so what would happen? Would we all be universities, with the title, or would we in some way not be, as UK universities become the sheep and the rest of us become the goats?

I have a real problem with this proposed new clause. The legislation was perfectly all right as originally drafted, when we were all higher education providers, but this clause would, for I think many of us, throw a real spanner into the works right at the beginning of the Bill. I would have to oppose the amendment were we to take a vote.

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I speak as a past vice-chancellor of Cambridge, but more importantly, I have associations with universities all around the world and other universities here in the UK. I support the proposed new clause but also support the need to give it further consideration. I will make just one point: it does not mention governance, and whether universities not only are autonomous but have the right to determine how they govern themselves. This has been a matter of some consideration over the years in various universities, and we debated it intensely in Cambridge at one time. Universities should be allowed to determine their own form of governance, and some words need to be included in a clause like this to say that. It would be a good idea not to go ahead immediately with the proposed new clause but to discuss it much further, particularly taking into account the independence of universities in determining how they govern themselves.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Stevenson for tabling this important amendment, and I join others in supporting it. I declare the interests that I declared in my contribution at Second Reading.

This is the first major Bill on higher education for a generation, and it will have far-reaching consequences. One of its aims, as we have heard, is to extend university title considerably. It is a matter of great concern to me that this legislation has so far made no attempt to define what a university is, its role in society more widely or, particularly, what we expect these new universities to do.

There has been so much change in the sector that I can see there is a need for regulatory reform, and I am in favour of it. I am in favour of raising the profile of teaching and of providing incentives for high-quality delivery. I am certainly not against change or challenge—universities have always changed in response to perceived social and economic needs—and new entrants to our higher education sector throughout its long history have ensured its diversity and the spread of excellence that we are so rightly proud of today.

We will have an opportunity to discuss university autonomy specifically and in detail in the next group but the threats to it contained in the Bill, and its proposals regarding university title, seem to undermine what we understand as the function and value of a university. They will endanger both the quality of our universities and the reputation of UK higher education overseas. So although I acknowledge the difficulties in providing a definition, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and others have suggested, I think we have to go down the path of having this clause at the front of the Bill. I believe it is an essential step in mitigating the risks that I perceive.

As others have said, the Minister could go some way to alleviating my anxieties by responding to some questions. Does he agree that offering an extensive range of high-quality academic subjects, delivered by excellent teaching and supported by scholarship and research, is what has given our universities world-leading status? Does he recognise that universities’ contribution to society, through the pursuit, dissemination and application of knowledge and expertise locally, nationally and internationally, is made possible by their status as autonomous institutions, free to act as critics of government and the conscience of society? Does he agree that UK universities must uphold the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech and ensure that they promote freedom of thought and expression? Will he tell us what his Government mean by a university and, if he cannot, will he allow the amendment, or something like it, to stand?

Attempts to articulate the meaning of a university have a distinguished history, from Humboldt and Newman in the 19th century through to the 1963 Robbins report and the Dearing inquiry in 1997. The proposed new clause echoes some of what Robbins said. He defined four objectives essential to any “properly balanced” higher education system. They included “instruction in skills”, balanced by the objective that universities must also promote the,

“general powers of the mind”,

to produce “cultivated men and women”. He said that teaching should not be separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth, since,

“the process of education is itself most vital when it partakes of the nature of discovery”.

Robbins’ final objective was,

“the transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship”.

Some of the wording may now sound arcane, but the principles are still profoundly right. Robbins recognised the importance of universities’ autonomy and the principle of academic freedom. He included in that the right of academics to be active citizens and to pronounce on political questions, making universities the home of public intellectuals and a creative and independent cultural force.

The Bologna declaration, signed by the heads of most European universities in 1988, further enshrined principles that the university is an autonomous institution with the distinctive mission of embodying and transmitting the culture of its society; that teaching and research must be inseparable; and that freedom in research and training is the fundamental principle of university life. For Dearing, the central vision was the need for the UK to develop as a learning society in which higher education would make a distinctive contribution through teaching at its highest level, through the pursuit of scholarship and research and, increasingly, through its contribution to lifelong learning.

Clearly, we attach a great deal to “the university”. Having the title “university” carries significant reputational implications because of all that is meant by the word. As UUK and others have warned, it is essential that new providers can demonstrate that they can provide high-quality education. Any new higher education provider awarding their own degrees or calling themselves a university must meet the same high requirements as existing universities. The bar to entry must be high in order to protect students and the global reputation of the sector. We need robust criteria for new entrants that reflect the role of universities in teaching, research and scholarship, as well as wider civic and social roles. I believe the new clause will help to achieve that.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Broers Excerpts

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

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I spent 20 years working in high-tech industry in the USA at the interface of research and product development. I then moved to Cambridge for 20 years, and during my final seven years as vice-chancellor did what I could to maintain the excellence of teaching and research across the full breadth of subjects studied at that great institution. But I also did what I could to build links with industry so that the university’s science output would have a better chance of being brought to the benefit of society. One of the most outstanding things I did was to appoint my noble friend Lord Mair to his professorship. He has gone on to do outstanding things, including delivering outstanding speeches in this House.

One of the things I now do is chair an international advisory committee for a large collaboration between Monash University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia that is also trying to increase the effectiveness of Australia’s science base. Turning scientific advances into useful products is an obsession with me, despite the fact that it can be extraordinarily difficult.

I will talk about Innovate UK, just as my noble friend Lord Mair and the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, did. In the UK we have a world-leading science base, and there is no real need to change the way we fund and administer our science—provided of course that we sustain funding at an internationally competitive level. Our weakness is in turning our scientific ideas into products and processes that benefit society and our economy. This is where action is needed. But even here it is not clear that we need to change the way we are doing things; we simply need to do more. It is also necessary to remember that product development is completely different from scientific research. It is driven by cost, by schedule and by the market, all of which are factors that would be destructive if applied to research. The means of assessing and funding are also completely different. Research and product development should maintain strong links but be kept separate.

I am pleased to say that we have made progress in product development in the UK in recent years—the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, cited an example. I refer both to development funded by the taxpayer and development funded by industry. The Technology Strategy Board, now Innovate UK, has been successful in stimulating research and development, especially development, through the introduction of catapults and innovation centres and through a variety of funding competitions. All of this has been accomplished with relatively modest resources that have grown slowly to £560 million, which is less than one-fifth of the amount received by the research councils, which is £3 billion. Up until now, Innovate UK has been an independent corporate entity funded directly by BIS and now by BEIS. It has been free to set its own strategy and to decide how to use its money, which has allowed it successfully to maintain the distinct business-facing focus referred to in the Bill.

The question is whether the Bill will sustain IUK’s independence and allow it to expand its activities so that more ideas are brought to market. Bringing IUK into UKRI will enhance links with universities, which is good, but may endanger its funding. It seems that the responsibility for its funding is going to be transferred from BEIS to UKRI. If the funding comes as a block grant, the Haldane principle will presumably prevent the fraction that should go to IUK being predetermined, and IUK will have to compete for it with the other eight members of UKRI for its share—and yet its requirements are quite different. This is clearly unsatisfactory.

The problem would be overcome if the funding to UKRI were divided into two tranches, one for research and one to IUK for business-facing innovation. It would also be essential for IUK to have its own accounting officer. Strategically, IUK would of course still be a member of UKRI, to ensure that our industrial strategy was joined up from research through to product delivery, which would clearly be extremely valuable.

Another problem is that the Bill states that IUK will no longer be able to fund research. At present, 20% of IUK’s funding goes to academics to pursue research in support of industrially led projects, which seems to me sensible and necessary. The best way to deal with this issue is to remove Clause 90(2), which imposes this constraint. If it is to remain, then it would seem necessary to include a reciprocal restraint on the research councils preventing them from developing a distinct business focus and thereby confusing their role with that of IUK.

In conclusion, I regret that it appears on balance that, without amendment, the Bill is more likely to impair our ability to transfer more of our science to the market than to enhance it—despite the very strong and excellent leadership being provided by Sir John Kingman and the support of Jo Johnson.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Lord Broers Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Soley, on obtaining this debate. I have a number of interests. I chair the international visiting committee of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and the trustees of the China executive leadership programme at the Cambridge Judge Business School. I am on the court of the University of Lincoln, I am a long-term trustee of the American University of Sharjah and I hold a professorship at Monash University. I am a fellow of the Royal Society and a past president of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Like many Members of this House, it has taken me some time to adjust to Brexit, to stop being consumed by regret and to start looking for the opportunities of even a hard Brexit. I think there are possibilities in the support and funding of innovation and science. What I shall say assumes the worst: that we are no longer going to be able to participate as a full member of EU programmes.

When I returned from the USA 30 years ago, I relied on EEC funding for my research and worked with the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center in Leuven. This is an amazingly successful organisation, founded as a collaboration between Flemish universities and the Flemish Government, that has become perhaps the leading research and innovation laboratory in the world of microelectronics with 2,500 employees and an annual revenue of €415 million. It is a notable example of what has been achieved with the aid of European funding and shows that it is possible to live with the huge bureaucracy that inevitably surrounds a programme open to more than 20 countries. However, there are problems with the bureaucracy, especially for small organisations, and this is where there should be opportunities for the UK, should the most unfortunate circumstances arise and we are no longer able to remain within the EU programme. It should be possible more efficiently to focus our funding, especially on innovation, which is what I want to concentrate on in this short speech.

I want to talk about how we should handle the money that we have in effect been spending on Horizon 2020 and the SME instrument, where 20 UK SMEs have been successful in the latest round. I have not been able to find out how much we have been receiving specifically through these programmes but it is certainly significant. Overall in the seventh European framework programme, the UK came second only to Germany in terms of grants and held 15% and, in total budget share, 17%, equating to €7 billion.

In the official words of the EU framework programme for research and development, Horizon 2020,

“promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market”.

Horizon 2020 is therefore not a curiosity-driven research programme; it is a programme designed to take ideas from the lab to the market, and this is where it particularly resonates with the needs of the UK. I do not need to repeat that, while we have a world-leading science base, we are not leading in taking our great ideas to market. There are, of course, notable exceptions, but overall we have fallen behind our competitors and are still exploring the most effective ways to link our university research with the needs of the commercial world. Some of the catapults are doing this effectively, as are other initiatives, but we are still learning.

Innovation, or in oldspeak “product development”, is a quite different activity from curiosity-driven research. It is driven by schedule, cost and an understanding of potential markets—in other words, by the impact it has in the commercial world. Such criteria are destructive when applied to curiosity-driven or, as some refer to it, pure research. Pure research is devoted to gaining a better understanding of the world around us and is driven by curiosity and the desire to explore. Constraints arising from the need to meet schedules and cost targets are in general destructive to the pursuit of pure research. The two activities require separate strategies and funding mechanisms, and this is why I do not think the proposal to move Innovate UK into the same organisation as the research councils is a good idea. However, we will have this discussion when considering the Higher Education and Research Bill, and in any case I understand that every effort will be made to provide independence to Innovate UK. It is here that I have a proposal.

My proposal, should we have to leave the EU programmes, is to ring-fence the money that we are at the moment in effect contributing to Horizon 2020 and the SME instrument and allocate it to Innovate UK, which would distribute it to industry and the universities through programmes optimised for the UK. Innovate UK programmes, such as the catapults, of course include university researchers but are driven by the need to take ideas from the science base to the market, which is where I started. Will the Minister reassure us that whatever happens as we proceed with Brexit, adequate emphasis will be placed on taking our great ideas from the lab to the market as well as on supporting our science base?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, we are beginning to experience some serious time slippage in the debate. I invite the co-operation of noble Lords in remembering the time slot of five minutes for Back-Benchers. We are at the mid-point for Back-Benchers. It would be helpful if when the clock shows four minutes, noble Lords consider their final questions and frame their remarks for the Minister, otherwise we will impact on the ability of remaining speakers to contribute to this debate. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Smith.

Education: English Baccalaureate Certificate

Lord Broers Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft]

My Lords—

[Lord Broers]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

I think it is the Conservatives’ turn this time.

[Lord Nash]

This is something we have considered and will consider further. The core EBacc subjects are set but we will be announcing our views shortly on the assessment method for what other subjects should be taken into account.

[Lord Broers]

My Lords, I come at this from a slightly different angle. Can the Minister assure us that those students who go on to A-levels are no longer in effect forced to specialise either on the arts and humanities or on maths and the sciences, and that they will be required to carry a broader curriculum through their schooling?

[Lord Nash]

There is no requirement for that in this country but we are keen that all children have a broad curriculum through to 16, and that those who have not managed to make the C grade in English and maths who are going on to further education continue with their English and maths.

Education: Development of Excellence

Lord Broers Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Broers]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, on calling this debate and on her outstanding opening speech. I find myself unusually in full support of the Government’s proposals—at least those of Mr Gove that I read about in the Times yesterday about post-16 education. I have long called for an end to the extreme specialisation required by the A-level system as it is used in the majority of cases. This has left many scientists and engineers with little practice in expressing themselves literally or orally, and their intellects without the key benefits that learning at least a second language provides. On the other side of CP Snow’s cultural divide, it has left those who opt for the arts and humanities insufficiently numerate and without a knowledge of how the increasingly technological world around them functions.

We have been alone in the developed world in allowing—even encouraging—such specialisation. It has meant that our students possess more advanced knowledge in their specialisation than, for example, American students when they leave school, but find much later that they lack the complementary skills needed to be effective in the real world—either to be able to persuade others of their position or to understand the complexities of the modern world. They then have to acquire these skills when their minds are less agile. Our society has almost encouraged this. Many still hold to the vision of the back-room scientist or engineer, who is extremely clever but lacks the overall vision or ability to lead. We still hear our leaders and politicians almost boasting about their lack of technical understanding and their inability to distinguish between megawatts and gigawatts.

I brought this up many times since joining this House. Six years ago, in the opening paragraph of the summary of recommendations of the report of the Science and Technology Select Committee on science teaching in schools—an inquiry that I chaired—we called on the Government to replace A-levels over the long term with a broader-based syllabus for post-16 students. The Labour Government’s response was to encourage people to expand the availability of the international baccalaureate diploma, but in reality little happened. The proposals of Mr Gove, therefore, are very welcome, although I know that they will receive some resistance from those academics who take a narrow view and are interested only in students excelling in their specialities and do not want them distracted by other topics. This issue extends into higher education and it has long been my position that more universities should follow MIT in having a compulsory humanities, arts and social science component in their science and engineering degrees. Things seem at last to be on the move, and I strongly support the proposals for a broader-based syllabus for post-16 students.