Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Young of Cookham

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall respond to the injunction from the Front Bench and speak for less than two minutes. I had not planned to intervene in this debate, but I was provoked by my noble friend Lord Reay, with whom I find myself in respectful disagreement, and further provoked by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

Listening to my noble friend’s speech took me back 42 years. It was like Groundhog Day, because in March 1980 I had to sit through a speech lasting more than one hour by Ivan Lawrence on fluoridation. I was lucky because in 1985 he set a new record by speaking from 5.12 am until 9.35 am. I was refreshing my memory about what I said in response to the debate 42 years ago in just two paragraphs—I should explain that I was the Minister responsible at the time, when I said:

“I think I should first explain that fluoride occurs naturally in most water supplies, sometimes at a satisfactory level for the prevention of dental decay. Fluoridation consists merely of the adjustment to the optimum level for dental protection—one part per million in temperate climes—of the fluoride content of those water supplies that are deficient in it naturally. When water containing the optimum level of fluoride is consumed during the years of tooth formation, the protection conferred in childhood continues during adult life.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/1980; col. 792.]


I wound up:

“Finally, as my right hon. Friend indicated last January”—


that was January 1980—

“it remains the Government's view—like that of their predecessors for many years—that extensive trials throughout the world have shown that fluoridation safely and effectively reduces the prevalence of dental caries—one of the commonest diseases and one which has lifetime consequences for general and dental health.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/1980; col. 799.]

Since that time, government policy has not been delivered, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, explained. Initially it was the area health authorities that did not do it, and now it is local authorities. It is now imperative that government policy is delivered, and that is why I wholeheartedly support these clauses in the Bill.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly on Amendments 224 and 261 and share my views on fluoridisation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Reay, that it is a pity we did not have a proper full debate on this matter.

There is a real problem among young children, particularly those in deprived communities, who have increasing levels of bad teeth—dental decay. You would think that as a result of that situation we would be trying to do something more practical about it, yet we see dental inspections in schools decreasing. When I was first a head teacher, the dental services would come in twice a year to inspect children’s teeth and would give a little note to the parents so they could go to their dentist. The second problem we face is that, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, you cannot find an NHS dentist, particularly in a deprived area, for love nor money. That is a problem for families that cannot afford to use a private dentist, even if one was available.

When I was leader of the council in Liverpool, all political parties together—I have to tell my colleagues—decided against fluoridation, so we took the view that perhaps there was a different way of doing it. We were setting up the network of children’s centres in the early 2000s. We therefore made dental health in the nought to five age group one of the highest priorities in the city council’s strategic plan. We also issued additional guidance to our primary schools, asking them to make encouraging better dental health a higher priority. As a result, 10 years later in 2013, the British Dental Association’s 10-yearly survey showed that a reduction of 28% in caries had been achieved in Liverpool’s schools. The targeted approach achieved an outcome double that identified in the York review as the average caries reduction from fluoridation. We will also have helped many children to develop lifelong good personal dental hygiene habits, which is a crucial part of the strategy.

Whether we have fluoridation or not, we need to be absolutely sure that the journey we are going on is correct. In the meantime, we should look at other ways. We should also look at what our colleagues in Scotland have been doing with their Childsmile project, which has been shown to be safer, less wasteful and more effective, and better value for money. I hope that at some stage we will revisit this issue and have a much longer and more considered debate.

Meetings with Ministers

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, for national security reasons the Government do not comment on the specific security measures in place for the Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers, including checks undertaken on individuals meeting them. As part of the Government’s transparency agenda, official ministerial meetings with external organisations are published each quarter. This provides scrutiny on the Government’s business.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. At the Conservative black and white party, somebody paid £55,000 to spend a day with the Prime Minister and somebody paid £30,000 to have dinner with the Defence Secretary. What is the difference between the cash-for-questions scandal and cash for access? Is it not time that the Ministerial Code was strengthened to disallow such practices?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, sadly I was not privileged to attend this important function but the noble Lord will know that fundraising events with party supporters are not new. I happen to have in front of me a copy of PR Week from 18 April 2011, when we were in coalition—doesn’t it seem a long time ago? It reported:

“The Liberal Democrats are offering lobbyists the opportunity to attend ‘exclusive dinners’ with Nick Clegg in return for an annual payment of £25,000 … In confidential documents obtained by PRWeek, Clegg calls for wealthy figures to get involved—regardless of their political persuasion. ‘You don’t have to be a Liberal Democrat to take part,’ he says. ‘In today’s politics, all are welcome’”.


I think it is important that no one is too pious on this subject.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Young of Cookham

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his extensive work on this issue. I am grateful for his contribution to the round-table discussions with the QAA and his continued engagement on this matter. He touched on the problem of foreign students. The evidence presented in the QAA’s report on plagiarism indicates that cheating may be more prevalent among international students. However, we recognise that plagiarism is a wider issue, so our approach is to look at the sector as a whole. We will be working with the QAA and other sector bodies to develop a co-ordinated response across all students and providers.

As my noble friend Lady Goldie said in Committee, plagiarism in any form, including the use of custom essay-writing services, or essay mills, is not acceptable and the Government take this issue very seriously. Having said that, I am afraid that I am going to plagiarise much of the speech which my noble friend made in Committee when she dealt with this amendment. My noble friend announced that the Minister, my honourable friend Jo Johnson, would be launching a co-ordinated sector-led initiative to tackle this issue, working with the QAA, UUK, NUS and HEFCE. In response to the question just posed by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, this initiative has now been launched.

The Minister has asked sector bodies to develop guidance with tough new penalties as well as information for students to help combat the use of these websites as well as other forms of plagiarism. This new guidance for providers should ensure that a robust approach with tough penalties can be embedded across the sector. In developing the guidance, the Minister has asked sector bodies to bear in mind that, for any enforcement to be effective, the penalties imposed must relate to both the gravity of the offence and the likelihood of an offence being discovered. The new sector guidance and student information is expected to be in place for the beginning of the 2017-18 academic year.

As part of this initiative, the QAA has also been tasked with taking action against the online advertising of these services and to work with international agencies to deal with the problem. The QAA has already started to progress these actions, including making a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, asking it to investigate the essay mills sector on a project basis.

We believe this sector-led, non-legislative initiative is the best approach to tackling this issue in the first instance. We will, of course, monitor the effectiveness of this approach and we remain open to legislation in the future should the steps we are taking prove insufficient. If legislation does become necessary, it would be crucial that we get the wording of the offence right. In the amendment tabled, it is unclear who would be responsible for prosecuting and how they would demonstrate intent to give an unfair advantage. As currently written, there is also a risk that the offence could capture legitimate services, such as study guides, under the same umbrella as cheating services.

The effectiveness of a legislative offence operating as a deterrent will depend on our ability to execute successful prosecutions and we would need to take care to get it right. This was acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in Committee, who said that,

“this should not be rushed and we should get it spot on”.—[Official Report, 25/1/17; col. 766.]

We do not believe that legislative action is the best response at this time, and I have outlined the steps that are being taken. Against that background, I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s reply and for the opportunity to talk over the issues with the Minister for Universities. The Minister is right to say that this should not be rushed. It is interesting that this issue started from a very small complaint and has become such an important matter that we now want to deal with. It shows that when we collectively share our thoughts and ideas we can get a result—I hope.

I was quite shocked to see in the QAA’s briefing that a 3,000-word dissertation in law can be done for just £6,750. I am delighted that the Government take this seriously. There is a need for a co-ordinated response. The penalties will be important. It is important that students know what is happening, and I suppose that if students do not wish to have penalties levied against them, the companies will wither on the vine. I look forward to seeing how this develops over the next few years. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that if this joint co-ordinated initiative does not prove effective, the Government will be open to legislation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Storey and Lord Young of Cookham

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this issue but I want briefly to say something very important. If any of us had children who we sent off to higher education, we would expect that institution to give them the support and development they needed. There are private colleges that have their courses validated by individual universities. Of course, those private colleges could, under certain circumstances, get into difficulties and cease trading. What happens then to the students and to their student loans? As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, rightly said, we are seeing this already in further education, where training providers are going into liquidation. They are all right—they have gone into liquidation—but the poor student is left high and dry. I hope that when the Minister replies he might give assurances on this matter.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, which has raised the important issue of student protection in the case of suspension of registration or indeed deregistration. I think that there is no disagreement that student protection is important, and that is why in this Bill we have gone further than ever before by including an express provision that will enable the OfS to ensure appropriate protections for students through a key condition of provider registration. The noble Lord and others have made some helpful suggestions regarding the likely content of student protection plans, which we agree need to be robust and comprehensive in their coverage. These plans are likely to include a diverse range of measures to protect students, as well as a diverse range of possible triggers for a student protection plan, including suspension of registration.

In response to the concerns that have been expressed in the debate, I can say that draft guidance will be prepared for consultation with the sector and with students as part of the regulatory framework consultation later this year. We would expect it to include information on how and when a provider should refer students to its student protection plan, for example during suspension of registration. It would be wrong to pre-empt the consultation by including these measures in the Bill itself, but I would seek to reassure noble Lords that the measures I have just referred to could include, for example, provision to teach out a course for existing students; offering students an alternative course at the same institution; making arrangements for affected students to switch to a different provider without having to start their course from scratch; and—in response to an issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson—measures to compensate students who are affected financially. I hope that these examples provide some reassurance to noble Lords that we do have in mind the contingency arrangements they have outlined in the debate.

Clause 17 places a clear duty on the OfS to notify, through its maintenance of the register, when a provider has been suspended, and a similar duty is imposed on the OfS by Clauses 19 and 23 whenever providers are deregistered. The OfS already has the power, given in Clause 7, to require a provider’s governing body to make sure that students are promptly informed about its actions.

However, widespread publicity of preliminary compliance measures may not always be appropriate in every case. Before the OfS can impose a sanction of suspension and deregistration it must notify a provider of its intent to do so, unless an urgent suspension is being imposed, and then allow the provider the opportunity either to argue its case or to put matters right. As I am sure noble Lords will agree, the desired outcome for the benefit of students and the provider alike is that the provider takes the actions necessary to ensure that it complies with the conditions of registration that have been placed upon it, which would mean that no further action would be required.

There are also important matters of confidentiality at play here, which is a key concern that has previously been raised by Universities UK and a number of noble Lords in the debates in Committee. Higher education providers would not wish the OfS to announce that it was carrying out an investigation into a provider as this could lead to unnecessary reputational damage if the OfS subsequently decided not to take action. We must also be careful not to unsettle or panic students unnecessarily. Disclosing details of possible sanctions when the OfS has yet to decide to take action would not in our view generally be appropriate or helpful to students. It is the inclusion of the words “intention to” that I find real difficulty with in Amendment 56.

On Amendment 57, I have listened to the thoughtful debates we have had today, and indeed I read the debates in the other place, on the issue of student transfer. We tabled Amendment 100 on this important issue which we have already discussed. Our amendment will require the OfS to monitor and report on the provision of student transfer arrangements by registered higher education providers. It will empower the OfS to facilitate, encourage or promote awareness of these arrangements. In doing so, the Government are creating the conditions to allow the necessary flexibility for students to make the right choices for themselves and to have control over those decisions, whatever the reason for their transfer. The amendment that has been proposed and to which noble Lords have spoken would result in the OfS trying to make arrangements for students to be placed on other courses if their current course closed. However, the decision about what courses to offer falls within the institutional autonomy of each provider.

While I recognise the importance of students being able to transfer, particularly where their institution ceases to offer their planned learning, it is not and nor should it be in the OfS’s gift to determine whether institutions accept students from elsewhere. This has never been a role undertaken by the OfS’s predecessor, HEFCE, and there is no intention for it to be taken on by the OfS. It must surely be preferable for the sector to be in control of transfer processes, including where appropriate as part of the student protection plans, and for the OfS to play a greater role in facilitating and encouraging the availability and take-up of such arrangements.

In response to my noble friend Lord Norton, who was concerned that students would not know what protections they have, we have listened to concerns on this issue. That is why we brought forward an amendment in the other place to require plans to be published and therefore brought to students’ attention. This balanced approach is what our amendment sought to achieve. Against that background, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 55.