Students’ Return to Universities
Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Taylor of Goss Moor
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
As I said, the Office for Students task force is meeting today, and I am sure that will be one of the points raised and fed back so that we hear directly from students. We are making sure that we provide hardship funding for those who need it and IT equipment, targeted in particular at groups such as care leavers who can most benefit from them. I will certainly keep an eye on the situation, as I know the noble Baroness will.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD) [V]
I declare an interest as a visiting professor lecturing at Plymouth University, and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, on planning matters. So I will be doing that virtually this year.
I emphasise to the Minister my support for what they are doing. Keeping universities open is absolutely critical, because many students, if they were not able to complete their degree now, would never be able to go back to it, and there would not be the capacity in the university system to double-enter future students with current students for that to happen. So it is vital that universities are kept open. For that, many are struggling with the resourcing needed for the extra costs currently involved. Will the Minister continue to work closely with universities to meet their needs—accepting that some funding has already been provided?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I completely agree with the noble Lord about the importance of keeping universities open and thank him for the part that he is personally playing in that. As Sir Michael Barber said today in his article, we cannot
“put a generation of young people’s lives on hold.”
We have to have the right mitigations to make sure that they are doing it safely, but we have to keep universities open for business, and the Government will continue to engage with the sector, as we are doing through the HE task force.