Higher Education (Basic Amount) (England) Regulations 2010

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

My Lords, I disclose an interest as the Chancellor of the university of which Jesus College is a distinguished part. However, on this occasion, I am afraid that I do not agree with Jesus, and for reasons which have made me for 20 years a passionate believer in a bigger contribution by students to their education. I say with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that his speech was a triumph of hope over experience because for years, under Governments of both political persuasions, and one that I recall of no political persuasion whatever, we have spent substantially less on higher education as a proportion of GDP than almost all our competitors, and certainly less than the OECD average. The latest OECD comparisons, published in 2010, show that in 2007—the latest authorised figures—we spent 1.2 per cent to 1.3 per cent of our GDP on higher education. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, that British taxpayers spent less on it than did American taxpayers. We also spent less than the OECD average, and considerably less than the United States, which spent 3.1 per cent of GDP on higher education—and that was before the cuts of £1 billion which were introduced by the former Lord President. I am sorry that he is not in his place today to explain to us exactly what he intended when he asked the noble Lord, Lord Browne, to undertake his review of tuition fees.

There are only four ways in which you can get money for higher education. You can get it through research income, endowments—we know very well that only three universities in Europe would get into the top 150 in the United States in terms of the size of their endowments—the taxpayer or tuition fees. We know from the experience of the past 10, 20, 30 or 40 years that the taxpayer will not provide the money, so the only revenue stream that is left is the student. I totally agree not with the spiritual authority of the right reverend Prelate, but with almost as great a spiritual authority—I agree with what Mr Blair had to say about the social equity of students making a contribution to what will make such an impact on their lifetime earnings. It seems to me a wholly defensible proposition.

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that what the former Prime Minister Tony Blair said was that it should be a contribution? He used the words himself. He did not say, and never did, that students should pay the whole of the cost of their higher education.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

No, as I shall explain in a moment, they will not be doing that in the case of the university that I know best. I remind the noble Baroness that the former Prime Minister wanted to introduce fees in 2004, not of £3,000 but of £5,000. He could not get that through the House of Commons largely because of the views of his honourable friends in the Parliamentary Labour Party, so let us not rewrite history. I suggest that the noble Baroness should refresh her memory by reading Mr Blair’s autobiography.

My Liberal Democrat noble friends have been teased about changing their mind. As my noble friend Lady Sharp pointed out, there are very strong reasons for their change of mind. It was slightly ironic that in his flirtation with the Liberal Democrats yesterday, the leader of the Labour Party, in a less than bravura performance, offered them the opportunity of talks with Liam Byrne. That must have set their pulses racing with excitement. But what makes it particularly ironic is that it is the same Mr Byrne who, as my noble friend Lady Shephard pointed out, gave the game away and told us after the election that there was no money left—zilch. I am not sure that it is the right moment to follow the right reverend Prelate in questioning why public debt is so terrific but private debt is such a bad thing. At some stage we could seek the authority of the New Testament on that proposition, but perhaps this is not the right moment.

When we consider changes to what one has promised the electorate, I seem to recall what happened in January 2004, after the then Labour Government had changed their position. When asked,

“Is the party open to the charge that it has broken a manifesto commitment?”,

Mr Alan Johnson replied yes. When asked:

“Is that crime of a century for a government to do?”,

he replied no. If one is to believe what is said about the public accounts under Labour, Mr Johnson did not have the excuse then of the bank having been broken.

I want to make a couple of points about the proposals themselves, not going any further into the seam of intellectual integrity which has underpinned the Labour Party’s position. I have a couple of questions. First, I think that all of us want to see an increase in the endowments for our universities, which are well behind our American competitors in that regard, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, pointed out. Can we be sure that the Government will look at how they can encourage philanthropic donations in the future, not just to charities in general but to our university sector in particular because it is of considerable significance?

[Lord Giddens]

Does the noble Lord agree that it would take many years for a substantial proportion of universities here to build up enough endowment to create a needs-blind admissions system?

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

Yes, it would take time, even for those universities which do not have as many foreign students as his university does.

[Lord Winston]

Will the noble Lord also address how Sheffield Hallam University, of which I have the privilege to be chancellor, will secure endowments? Many good universities contribute hugely to the local economy and educate people who would never normally have gone to university in the past. They will not now be able to raise the volume of endowments or charitable funds that the noble Lord has mentioned.

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

The noble Lord may be aware that in this country about 2 per cent, perhaps rather less, of alumnae give to their old universities. That is far less than the figure one would find at even the least well endowed university in the United States. We have to change our attitudes to supporting our old universities.

The other question that I want to ask is about the cap. I ask this not least in the interests of the Opposition, who will, I am sure, want to consider which policy they change next. Are the caps of £6,000 and £9,000 set in stone, or can we be assured that they will be revisited in due course? I ask that, not least because of my concerns about the position of the Leader of the Opposition, who said, when asked what the Labour Party’s position was, that he was not going to fall into the trap of making a promise to scrap what we have put forward, because it was a promise that he might not be able to keep.

If what the Government are proposing—which, as the IFS has said, is more progressive than the existing system—is so noxious and is worse than anything since Herod’s slaughter of the firstborn, I should like to hear from the Opposition that they will either reject or accept the proposal, because their present position is, quite simply, irresponsible.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, I declare two non-pecuniary interests. The first is as a governor of the University of Chichester, which I should not say has for many years had the highest level of student satisfaction—although I did say that. My second interest is as a Bishop with an obviously direct interest in anything which might impact negatively upon the teaching of theology, particularly for those who are to be ordained. In fact, it is neither of those matters that I want to comment on; nor do I wish to rise to the challenge made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about belief and faith; nor do I want to comment even on what the noble Lord, Lord Patten, said about looking for New Testament comments on debt.

The noble Lord probably would not regard this as coming from a higher authority than the New Testament but, by one of those interesting quirks of history, it is almost exactly 150 years to the day—it is actually tomorrow, 15 December—that Palmerston wrote to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gladstone, warning him in relation to economic policies that the debt of citizens was by no means the same thing as the debt of states. That was a remarkably prescient comment.

What we have here is, at least in part, an attempt to deal with national debt by transferring it to individuals. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, talked about something corrosive. The socially corrosive effects of this measure go far beyond the particular educational instincts that are at its heart. My point is therefore not really about education or the impact of this measure upon our higher education institutions, but about the potentially socially corrosive effect of high levels of individual debt in relation to national debt, which is a different matter altogether.