Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Lord Vallance of Tummel

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Tummel]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which as a higher education institution would be directly affected by the amendment if it were agreed. I will not take up much of your Lordships’ time, but I feel that I should draw attention to the chaotic practical consequences that the amendment would have on the Scottish universities and other higher education institutions, which have been levying modest fixed fees on students resident elsewhere in the UK, without controversy, since 2001, in part to manage the flow of students into Scotland.

The decision made here in London to introduce market-based, variable fees up to £9,000 per annum in English, Welsh and Northern Irish universities, changed the game radically. It demanded a response if there were not to be a veritable tsunami of applications from students south of the border for far less expensive places at Scottish universities, with clear consequences for potential students resident in Scotland, and for funding by the Scottish Government. That Government’s decision, on which I pass no judgment one way or the other, was to withdraw funding for students resident elsewhere in the UK, and to allow the Scottish universities to apply the same market-based, variable-fee regime for such students as they would have enjoyed, if that is the right word, had they stayed at home.

Some, including Universities Scotland—the representative body for all the higher education institutions—would say that that was entirely reasonable in a UK context. However, it is also anomalous, particularly as regards the rest of the European Union. However, anomalies of one kind or another are almost inevitable in areas where competence has been devolved to Scotland. Various practical problems stemming from the legitimate pursuit of widely different policies on either side of the border will have to be addressed. In the case of higher education, the EU requirement to give preferential treatment to students resident elsewhere in Europe, as against those from other foreign countries, simply compounds the anomaly.

The substantive issue is how best to deal with such anomalies. The amendment, although on the face of it eminently reasonable in seeking to give European Union benchmarks pride of place, would not only unnecessarily and indefinitely constrain the scope for manoeuvre here in the United Kingdom but would create a major and immediate practical problem for Scottish Universities, for the simple reason that the new fee regime has already been implemented, as we have already learnt.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Surely Amendment 59 deals with the problem that the noble Lord outlined.

[Lord Vallance of Tummel]

I am coming to that. For the next academic year and for the years beyond, places have already been offered to and readily accepted by students who are resident south of the border. Bursary and scholarship arrangements have been substantially modified to help them. Indeed, the financial basis and plans of Scottish universities for the years ahead are dependent on those arrangements, which, as of today, are quite legitimate under the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998. I appreciate the willingness of my noble friend Lord Forsyth to delay implementation, but the question is for how long. A year is simply not long enough.