Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

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

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. I support the amendment. We get the opportunity to legislate on higher education once every couple of decades. It is therefore really important that we get it right. It seems really sensible to put into the Bill a definition of what we are talking about. That is especially important because one thing the Bill does is give a fast-track procedure for new universities to be created. We ought therefore to be framing as part of that legislation a definition of what a new university should be committed to.

I have to say that I am taken by one or two of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about the precise wording of parts of the amendment. I think he has fastened on the one point where the amendment is weak; that is, in allying the word “must” with the extensive range of subjects. Actually, it is right to put “must” in the Bill in relation to the commitment of a university to academic freedom. If Oxford University were to abandon the principles of academic freedom, it would rightly be up in front of the court of public opinion or a court of law.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

On this specific point, I have read the amendment carefully and it does not say that a university must provide a range; it says that “universities must”. This is a very important and somewhat subtle point which needs to be taken seriously.

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

I take the point from the noble Lord, Lord Judd. However, I think that it would be important for the avoidance of doubt to ensure that there can be no doubt about the ability of a very focused university, concentrating on a particular range of subjects or type of subject, none the less to stand tall and clear as an accepted university. Laying aside the point about “must” and “extensive range”, the whole thrust of this amendment and the principles behind it are absolutely in the right direction. For heaven’s sake, let us put this into the Bill and then set about making one or two adjustments at a subsequent stage of our discussions to get it specifically right. The broad principles enshrined in the amendment are absolutely the right ones that we need to focus on. I make two observations in relation to that.

First, academic freedom and autonomy is not a luxury for a university; it is part and parcel of what a university is. It is rightly said that a university does not teach people what to think but how to think, and that happens through debate, discourse, discussion, research and the contestability of ideas. It arises from a clash of minds and, above all, from no one in a university being told by anyone—government or anyone else—what to think. Secondly, in the ghastly jargon of the age, we are, I fear, living in a post-truth society. Universities, par excellence, are about truth and evidence. They are about making sure that we pay attention to knowledge and reality. I particularly like the phrase in Amendment 1 about,

“the pursuit, dissemination, and application of knowledge”,

because a university absolutely has to do that: pursue knowledge and research, attend to it and discuss it, test it, then disseminate and apply it. It has a duty to its students, to itself as a research community and to wider society. This amendment gets it broadly right. It does not have every single word right, but let us put it in the Bill and then make it even better when we come to further stages of discussion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

Following on from the noble Lord’s comments, if the Minister is minded to reject the amendment and go and think about it, could he think in particular about the many institutions that sometimes appear in different parts of the world under the title of university, which may not be universities that this Bill is designed to promote or protect, nor institutions where we would want many of our young people to seek their education? I have in mind not merely the well-known Hamburger University, which has a rather limited set of subjects on the menu, but also those universities that are in fact annexes or derivatives of respectable universities which set themselves up in other parts of the world and which would be most attracted to setting themselves up in a place where students have access to funding for their tuition. Those places offer a very narrow, minimal and perhaps not very demanding set of subjects.

The Minister told us at Second Reading that the big problem currently is that the legislation is needed to update the regulation of universities. I accept the point, but it would be much more helpful to know which specific mischiefs the Government hope to remedy with this piece of legislation. There are specific mischiefs—the noble Lord, Lord Myners, mentioned one of them; there are places where too little teaching is done. But I am very certain that, if the Bill goes through unamended, there will be many more universities, so-called, where very little teaching is done. It is quite ordinary for institutions to compete not to be the best or to have the best offerings but to make the greatest profit and to do it in the most cheap, cheerful and economical way. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, as we move through a technological revolution, of which MOOCs will be a serious part, we need to think very hard about what is not a university. That may be rather easier than defining what is a university.

[Lord Judd]

First, I declare an interest. I am an emeritus governor of the LSE and a life member of court of Newcastle University as well as being a fellow and life member of court of Lancaster University.

My experience in those quarters has left me in no doubt that this new clause is definitely needed, and this has been an interesting debate about what its exact shape should be. It should be looked at in relation to Amendment 65, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and Amendments 165 and 166 in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson. They make the crucial point that this legislation should state that the Secretary of State has an inescapable responsibility to uphold academic freedom and freedom of thought. That first principle should be there, right at the beginning of the Bill. I am very glad that my noble friend has tabled those amendments, but it would have been better if their proposals had been included in this new clause.

There are some pressing issues which make this more urgent than ever, and colleagues in the House have spoken about them. The post-truth society is being talked about: there is a desperate need to rebuild and regenerate a commitment of some weight to the search for truth and excellence. That is crucial. I have sometimes reflected that the real test of a good university is the strength of its departments of ethics and philosophy. There is not much ethics these days in most universities. More than this, there is a terrible confusion growing in society about the difference between education and training. If we are to operate our society effectively, of course we need very good training. Some will be vocational training which is sometimes terribly impressive in its quality and its leadership. We also need increasingly to be able to see issues in a multidisciplinary context. It is trite, but it can be said that these days it is a matter of knowing more and more about less and less. We have to have somewhere where things are being brought together and views challenged from different perspectives.

This new clause is very important; we need to make sure that all these ideas are taken on board, as I am sure my noble friend would be the first to agree. His opening speech was very conciliatory and invited suggestions about how the situation could be improved. I hope he meant that because it is important—I am glad and relieved to see him nod his head.

This has been an excellent debate and it would be very unwise not to take these ideas fully on board. Coming back to my first point, we must not, with all our preoccupations, miss the opportunity to leave future Secretaries of State in any doubt about their personal, direct, ministerial responsibility to uphold the principles of academic freedom and autonomy in every way that they can.