Immigration Bill
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)
My Lords, in support of the excellent and measured speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and of the other signatories to this amendment, I offer not a speech but a quotation. It runs as follows:
“One of the biggest categories of ‘immigrants’ is overseas students—176,000 last year, over a third of the total. They are not immigrants but they are defined as such because they are here for more than a year … There has recently been a crackdown on the undoubted abuse of visas by some private colleges but the consequence of tightening the rules has been to drive away bona fide students, especially from India, to the US, Canada and Australia. Universities, and Britain, are poorer as a result”.
These are the words of the member of the Cabinet who runs the department that is responsible for universities: Vince Cable. They are not private; they were in the Evening Standard about two weeks ago. I quote them not to make mischief for the coalition Government, because I believe that the country has benefited from the strength of coalition government, but to say that here at the heart of government, the individual responsible for universities and their impact on this country is clearly at odds with what is happening in legislation today. I think that he is right and that his words bear repeating, which is why I happily support the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and his colleagues.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I am particularly pleased to follow a reference to my right honourable friend Vince Cable, who has been very energetic in spelling out the value, if I can put it this way, as an import and as an export, of overseas students. I have been worried, and have said so publicly, about the use of the phrase “the brightest and the best” in immigration policy, but I have to say that I did not read my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby as wanting to cream off the brightest and the best; I do not think that was where she was going.
As has been said, we have a very good story to tell. We are curiously inept in some parts of the system at telling it. The word “perception” has been used, rightly, by a number of noble Lords. We should not get stuck on the overall immigration numbers without disaggregation, but I do not want to repeat all the arguments that I and other noble Lords have made.
I have just a couple of comments on this. I doubt that many people, even in this building, know that the Budget added to the funding of the Education is GREAT campaign, which seeks to attract international students to the UK, and that the number of Chevening scholarships supporting students from developing countries who come here to study is being tripled. I will let those two facts speak for themselves, and I hope they will add a little to the perception.
On tenancies I am very much with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and others. I want to make use of this Report stage to come back to some rather focused questions on those amendments.
As I understand it, the health levy or surcharge really is an integral part of the Bill. As the Minister will remind us, in absolute terms it is competitive, and I say that it is very good value insurance. Some anomalies and issues need to be followed up, and others have drawn attention to these. I am reassured by the fact that secondary legislation will, I hope, deal with the detail.
I welcome the student tenancy amendments which my noble friend the Minister proposes but, if I may, I will seek a little more assurance. I was concerned about the numbers and types of properties that students use as accommodation. Given the time, I will try to summarise on the hoof the understanding I have gained from Universities UK. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me. It is important to say that about a quarter of international students are likely to still be living in accommodation which is not within the categories specifically defined so far. The Minister has been very generous with his time in meetings and in correspondence, and he foreshadowed the amendment to the halls of residence test at the previous stage. I would have liked to have seen an exemption which focused on the people—the students—rather than on the property.
I am concerned about the term “nominated”, as are other noble Lords. I hope that my noble friend might be able to say that, although this term is used rather differently in other contexts, here it really amounts to “accredited”. I am sure that the Minister will spell out in his reply that there will be guidance, and there will be consultation on the guidance. Perhaps he might also state that, as well as the accommodation owned by a relevant institution, the halls of residence and the nomination for what we might understand to be a private tenancy, where a landlord is approached by a student and none of those three situations is in place, the landlord can in effect obtain the nomination from the university and come within that exemption.
I, too, am concerned about postgraduates and doctoral students, and I looked at the definitions brought into the Bill from the Local Government Finance Act 2012. I hope that my noble friend will be able to confirm that postgraduates and doctoral students fall within the definitions in that legislation. I hope he may also be able to set out the balance between studying and teaching within the work done by, let us say, a postgraduate student, many of whom also teach, that the Government will expect to see in order for the exemption to apply. I assume that research is regarded as study.
I hope—well, I assume—that the relevant orders following from the Bill will be made by the Home Secretary, because many Secretaries of State come within this whole picture. I have probably taken enough time, and the Minister is aware of my concerns. He looked slightly puzzled at my last comment, but I was thinking of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who makes the order about who is a student. It is a bit of a jigsaw.
Visas: Student Visa Policy
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for introducing this debate so carefully and for laying out the issues so accurately. I agree with everything that he said. It is not often that a politician hears that, but today one does. I want to take a different route, however, and I must give an account of my own links with universities. I have links with more than a dozen universities, which I would be happy to spell out on another occasion.
I will start with a team list. It is an international team: from Hungary, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner; from Switzerland, Felix Bloch and Otto Frisch; from the Netherlands, George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit; and from Germany, Rudolf Peierls, Gregor Wentzel, Bernard Peters, Hans Bethe, James Franck, Charlotte Riefenstahl and Wolfgang Pauli. They were all members of Robert Oppenheimer’s team in the Manhattan project in Los Alamos. They were recruited to that team by Oppenheimer and they were recruited because they clung to Oppenheimer. They were bright physicists—some won Nobel prizes both before and after Los Alamos—and with them the centre for physics research, at a critical time in the history of the West, moved to the USA.
Oppenheimer met all these scientists in his early studies as a postgraduate in Europe in the late 1920s. All of them were willing to attach themselves to Oppenheimer. By then many of them were already working in the USA. What moved them around is the fact that science and physics are international. They worked together, driven by intellectual curiosity and by enthusiasm for their subject and not limited by national boundaries. They were willing, ready and able to move at a time of critical importance and they all were all key members—I am indebted to Ray Monk’s biography of Robert Oppenheimer for this—of Oppenheimer’s team that got access to this important research before Hitler could capitalise on it.
I ask now: where would we be today? That was a climate of opinion that encouraged this international movement, driven by curiosity and intellectual ability. Is that what the Government have in their current policy? As we are hearing all round in this debate, the answer is no. Interestingly—I include a footnote saying that I am indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for this quotation—Churchill said:
“We had better German scientists than the Germans”.
That made the difference and it was a critical difference. I put it to noble Lords that the lumbering system that has been set up does not serve us well. We have a lesson to learn from history.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Oxburgh
My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment. I think it is widely accepted that when the freedom of information legislation was originally conceived, little or no thought was given to the effect that it might have on universities. In the event, this is of less importance today because since that time there have been major changes in the role of universities, but it means that the new legislation should reflect those changes—and frankly, this has not happened. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the outcomes of post-legislative scrutiny are taken fully into account before the relevant parts of the Bill come into force. Unless they are, there is a risk of serious damage to our university system. It is damage that will not make tabloid headlines. It will be slow and incremental, but it will be certain.
Under current legislation, universities are regarded as “publicly owned companies” and carry the concomitant Freedom of Information Act disclosure obligations. This is in spite of the fact that they now receive more of their income from private sources than from the Government—a greater proportion, in some cases, than private companies. This comparison is relevant because, following the policies of successive Governments, universities are now expected to behave as private bodies, collaborating and/or competing with private industry in commercialising their research. They are also in competition for students with each other, with overseas universities and with private universities. Under the legislation as it stands, they cannot do any of this on equal terms because details of their plans, costings and research activities may have to be disclosed.
On the matter of university/industry collaboration, the present disclosure arrangements, to which my noble friend Lady O’Neill has referred, are deeply unattractive to business because of the belief, right or wrong, that the confidentiality of collaborative work may depend on discretionary exemptions that can be challenged. Such collaborations are difficult enough to set up in the first place, and uncertainty over the implications of FOI can cause the company simply to walk away.
One of the first questions that have to be addressed by scrutiny is whether the current definition of a publicly owned company is satisfactory. Another is whether there is a presumption in favour of disclosure of all the information held by such a body, or whether there is a class of competition-relevant information for which the presumption might be non-disclosure. This problem is not addressed by the current system of exemptions. It may be worth pointing out, and this relates to the cost question raised by my noble friend, that there is a recent example of a university incurring massive legal fees of over £250,000 in a case in which it believed that the release of data requested would put its staff at risk from animal rights activists.
Another serious question is whether there should there be any qualification of the right of access to public body information. At present, anyone anywhere in the world can exercise that right. Should the right be restricted to UK citizens and bodies? To offer an example, a British university was conducting a study for Cancer Research UK into the factors that influenced the behaviour of young people smoking tobacco. An FOI request for the data was received from a foreign tobacco company. It is clear that the funders of the research would not have wished the data to be released to the company and, to pick up an earlier point, might well not have funded the work at the university had they regarded this as a possibility.
A final area that requires attention and clarification is the conflict that can arise between the requirements of FOI legislation and obligations under other laws. There are examples of conflicts with the Data Protection Act, the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act and environmental information regulations. The purpose of our amendment is therefore to ensure that full weight is given to the outcome of the scrutiny and that Parliament has the opportunity to confirm that it is satisfied with the Government’s response.
Some of the points that I have made have already been made and submitted in evidence to the scrutiny group by Universities UK and the Russell Group in their submissions to the scrutiny process. I strongly support all the points made by my noble friend in her speech.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, the speeches that we have heard from two very senior practitioners in relevant fields make a powerful case. I shall not run through their arguments again, nor the ones that I put forward during the previous stage of the Bill. I simply underline the fact that if people of this calibre are expressing concerns and those concerns could be dealt with by using the government procedure of post-legislative scrutiny to inform practice, that is a very reasonable request and I hope that the Minister will feel free to accede to it.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I, too, spoke about this danger at an earlier stage of the Bill, and I think the amendment is sensible. Sometimes there are unintended consequences when we make rules, but in this case, because people have seen that there are almost certainly going to be some adverse consequences for UK research establishments, it is sensible to delay implementing this part of the Bill until we have thought about it a little harder and seen some results from other places.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, the amendment is in my name as well as that of my noble friend Lady O'Neill of Bengarve. She has already given her apologies to the Front Bench. Having sat through two long days on Report, she finds that her commitments can no longer be put off and are subject to the vagaries of how we put our business together in this House. I am sure that noble Lords would have had a much more precise, analytic and forensic speech from her than from me, but I will try to raise the points that I believe she wished to put and express the concerns that I share with her. Those concerns are shared by the wider university community in the UK. I believe that they are grateful to the Minister for the time that he has taken to meet them and to talk to them about some of these issues.
That being so, there is a shift in atmosphere from the previous amendment because I wish to focus on the implications of the Bill for research and research data sets held significantly by universities and public research institutions.
Research is an international and very competitive business. There is a risk that some of the provisions of the Bill may undermine the competitiveness of much of our excellent research in this country. That is unintentional, but I hope that I can demonstrate that there are some difficulties that need to be resolved.
The specific Amendment 55A is a modest suggestion that any licence for reuse of data sets may have conditions attached to it following the comments of those whose data sets they are. That is a modest way of protecting the interests of our researchers and the research community and, more broadly, UK plc.
The impact of the Bill as it stands will be such as to fall on both individual researchers and on institutions. In the case of individual researchers, it will change behaviour. If you change the rules about how research data are to be treated, you will change the behaviour of researchers. They are pretty clever people, so you need to watch out. Beyond that, there are more serious implications.
It may well be that the provisions of the Bill result in activities that are inimical to and, indeed, unintentionally unjust to individual researchers. The data set, for example, may well have been built up over a long period and involve substantial career commitment by individuals. If you spend your time on large data sets in particular, that is a major—or indeed a lifetime—commitment. The data sets may well have been built up involving the distinctive, significant and, on occasion, unique skills of the individual researcher. I am not quite convinced that the Bill has taken that sufficiently into account. It will certainly be inimical to career development and commitment—and, indeed, in terms of the opportunity costs—in respect of the work of individual researchers. They take time, they do this rather than that, and they use the skills they have, which may well be unique and very distinctive.
In the case of institutions, there clearly may well be problems where a home or sponsoring institution has invested significant resources in the data sets or in building them. As head of more than one such institution, I know that huge resources are invested to build appropriate data sets, in terms of time, space—which is very important and expensive—individual members of staff and money. These are the commitments the institution makes, and there is a risk that they would be set back dramatically despite the effort and the commitment involved. Equally—this point has been made in previous discussion but it is still there—the institutions may well have commercial interests in the research and data sets in question. Beyond that, we fund universities in such a way that the research assessment exercise depends very significantly on the uniqueness and distinctiveness of research. If the data sets that are the foundation for these are too easily available, that sets at nought the efforts of those who worked on them; and makes it easy for those who did not to pillage those data sets. Academics on the whole are nice people, but when it comes to this kind of competitiveness, all rules are set aside.
There is one consequence that I am sure is unintended and which relates to the previous amendment—although not perhaps in a congenial way. I declare, unusually, a future interest, which I may have if this legislation goes through. As I understand it, one of the ways of avoiding the data sets moving out too quickly and in an unregulated, uncontrolled fashion is to have co-ownership with some private sector activity, firm or company. My interest would be that I might set up such a company, the sole purpose of which would be co-ownership of data sets with universities and research interests. I could become very rich—but being the chap I am, I would dedicate all the money to a charity to support research in universities. That is one possible way of beginning to avoid the implications of the legislation as I understand it. This is partly jocular but it is more than that. Ingenious people are out there and will find solutions to retain data sets that they, for good reason, believe are important. This is not miserable secretiveness, this is how research operates. This is how the competition deals with those who are involved in research.
Finally, I believe there is a difficulty in identifying what data sets will fall under this Bill as currently formulated, if it becomes law. What will count? I give the House one example, just as a test. In the description, decoding and understanding of the structure of DNA, Crick and Watson did excellent and magnificent work in Cambridge which was properly recognised with a Nobel Prize. Yet the missing piece in the jigsaw was here in London, with Professor Maurice Wilkins and Dame Rosalind Franklin at King's College London. She is now at last being recognised for her part in this. The data sets of material that she had built up using techniques of electron microscopy were, when they were available to Crick and Watson on a shared basis, what put the final piece of the jigsaw in place. The picture became clear to them and they could move ahead.
I do not think that these data sets would be ruled out under the definitions given in the Bill, because they are simply printings that you could look at. They are not analysed or pre-digested and there is no interpretation given. If they had been requested belligerently by Crick and Watson, they could have saved themselves the price of a rail ticket to London. Your Lordships can see the implications. What counts as a data set, when Rosalind Franklin had created this data set that made all the difference to what has changed the course of life for all of us? I believe there are questions about the definition of a data set because the Bill is really meant to deal with other issues initially but, as it so happens, it is now being applied to research and research data sets in some of the best institutions in this country. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 56, but in so doing I start by expressing my support for the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. I will also be incorporating some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, would have made had she been able to be in her place, but for exactly the same reason as the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill—the unfortunate and substantial delay in getting to this—other commitments have meant that she needs to be elsewhere in the Palace of Westminster.
I also want to thank the Minister for the helpful meetings with him and his officials on the complex subjects of universities, the publication of their research and the implications for the practical working of the Freedom of Information Act. In Committee, I outlined a number of problems that universities face that are not analogous to the use of FOI in non-research areas of higher education institutions, not least because of the size, duration and complexity of many research contracts. Universities are mindful of their duties to respond to FOI requests elsewhere, and in the main they absolutely do. Also, the universities that we have talked to about the problems facing research and FOI are clear that this is not special pleading for the sector as a whole over freedom of information. Nor do they support any institution that does not comply with FOI requests in the mainstream.
The issues here are quite specific. They are about whether the exemptions currently outlined in the Information Commissioner's guidance to the higher education sector can be effectively applied, given the nature of research and whether, in the case of commercial partners, it might give rise to suspicion by those partners that their own confidential data might be seen by others following an FOI request. In Committee, the Minister asked for evidence of where the current exemptions do not apply. Here, from the Information Commissioner's guidance to higher education institutions—which, for brevity, I shall refer to as HEI—are a handful of examples that researchers and their universities have told us really need clarification.
The guidance on Section 22 refers to information intended for future publication. The information is exempt if it is intended for future publication and it is reasonable to withhold the information until that point, subject to the public interest test. While this will certainly apply to research data which an HEI intends to publish, provided that withholding the information is reasonable, it will not apply if there is no intention to publish the results at the time the request is made, which, as the ICO guidance makes clear, is the relevant time for him.
In general, HEIs would expect the data supporting research conclusions to be published, or at least to be available to others, when the conclusions themselves are published. However, in the case of longitudinal studies, the decision to publish may not be made until a late stage in the study, not least because it is not clear what will be reported, or how. Moreover, usually the material is published in the form of a peer-reviewed article, which is often only the tip of a much larger iceberg of data that are not published. I am mindful here of the specific example that my noble friend Lady Sharp gave us at an earlier stage of these proceedings about the very complex data set that she managed for decades, which would certainly fall into that last category.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, before I speak to my amendment in this group, may I first say that I hope my noble friend will treat the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, and my noble friend Lady Brinton with seriousness? It is clear that in an internationally competitive environment it is very important that people have confidence in the proper protection of research databases.
I disagree with both amendments. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, would blow a hole below the waterline of this clause and would certainly destroy all my attempts to get other information out of universities. The amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, misses important points on the other side. It is terribly important that data become available once results have been published. Many of these programmes go on for a long time. Because we intend to use the data in a whole series of publications over the next 20 years, we will never let them go. However, it must be possible for people outside a research group to criticise the results as they are being produced or false conclusions will be dropped into science and never properly got at. To pick one example, given by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, the inspiration of Crick and Watson had to be combined with the meticulous work of Franklin. Without that combination and the data being made public, the discovery would not have been made.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
On a point of order, it was information shared between research colleagues in two different institutions. In an atmosphere that is perhaps not quite as common today, it was willingly shared.
Lord Lucas
I understand and I remember from reading biographies that that was the case. None the less, the data were shared. To take an example from my time on the Front Bench as spokesman for agriculture during the problem of BSE, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had been meticulously researching what was happening with this plague and had years of data. We had good people internally who were researching it. We did not know what was happening and we kept the data to ourselves. Three weeks after we released the data, we were told what was happening, which was transmission by food. That was right. Making data public, beyond a research group, is a very important thing to do at the right time. I should not like to see something in legislation that prevents that and allows people to hog data that should be public so that they can be properly criticised and understood.
My amendment is not on the same subject; it concerns technical bits of drafting in the same clause. I very much welcome the determination to provide greater access to data sets. It is something that I have struggled with, particularly with universities. All the universities that send me data stick copyright notices on them, which I studiously ignore. They have yet to sue me for it, probably because they have better things to do. Alternatively, I proposed as a remedy to one university that, if it insisted on its copyright notice, I would automatically generate an FOI exemption for every one of my users who wanted to access the data. The university thought that a number of 10,000 users a day was getting a bit large.
It is important that we understand that, when information is released under FOI, it can be passed on and made public; and that the generating institution does not retain some sort of control over it merely on a whim. I can understand why that might be the case if the material comprises something done under a publication scheme and is paid for, but otherwise it is very important that the information can be circulated whether in news media or in publications such as mine —the Good Schools Guide—or in many other applications.
I do not see why the proposals in the Bill do not go further and why they are restricted to data sets. It is common for all kinds of information released under FOI to be accompanied by a copyright. However, it is often obvious from the information that it has no conceivable commercial value to the public authority. A requester may have obtained a policy that he or she wants to publish on a website which demonstrates alleged shortcomings in an institution; for example, it may show that a decision has been taken without proper consideration of the consequences. The requester may want to write to Members of this House about the information that has been disclosed. Why should they be prevented from doing so by a copyright notice? It seems to me that the principles we are setting out in this clause should go further.
My second concern is about the definition of “data set”, which I believe is unjustifiably narrow. The Cabinet Office carried out an open data consultation which sets out admirably ambitious objectives for the greater use of data sets. Many collections of data currently gathered by public bodies which may be essential to revealing the inner workings of government do not seem to fall within the legal definition of a data set as set out in Clause 102(2). Any electronic collection of data which is the result of analysis or interpretation cannot be a data set because of new subsection (5)(b)(i) of the definition. The obligation to release it in reusable form will not apply to it, nor will the requirements to release it subject to the minimal restrictions embodied in a specific licence. The Information Commissioner will not be able to require that this collection of data must be published under an authority’s publication scheme. It seems that only raw data untouched by human hand are to be affected by this clause. That may suit people like me who spend their day with programs interpreting data, but most people want access to something which has been prepared for human consumption and has been set out in a way that members of a local authority are intended to understand rather than the geeks in their data department. I do not understand why the Government are seeking to exclude from this clause data which have been made human readable, as it were.
Paragraph (c) of the definition states that a data set remains one only so long as all or most of the information in it,
“remains presented in a way that (except for the purpose of forming part of the collection) has not been organised, adapted or otherwise materially altered since it was obtained”.
I am puzzled by that definition. A publication of data from a database may start off in the form of a spreadsheet consisting of three columns but is reorganised to consist of seven columns. Has enough been done to prevent the data set being published? How is anyone to know that? How is anyone to interpret that? How is any user to know that something is publishable? It seems to me that we are setting ourselves up for endless arguments. I am particularly concerned that authorities may find that, by reorganising data, they are able to conceal it from publication. It does not seem to me that that is the Government’s intention. I very much hope that they will explain to me their understanding of how this subsection may not be used in that way.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very careful reply, the care he has taken over the various points made and his willingness to have further discussions. I have no doubt that that offer will be taken up.
However, I have two or three points. First, I have no doubt that the commitment to freedom of information is as strong among those who proposed these amendments as it is with the Government. In fact, one of my prouder moments, many years ago, was when I was given an award by the society that campaigned for what became the Freedom of Information Act because of the way I conducted a particular government inquiry. I am committed to the importance for public services and within the public sector of freedom of information.
Secondly, I will read with care what the Minister said about licences. One question that I will want to have answered—it may well be in Hansard—is about what degree of input a researcher, a research institute or a university will have into the drawing up of the licence that is applied to a particular publication. I am not yet clear whether Rosalind Franklin’s photographs would have fallen under the definition of a data set. If they had fallen under that definition, I do not think the cause of science or human life would have been advanced by having them accessible to whoever wanted to use the Freedom of Information Act to drag them up at that stage.
My third point is on the costs of responding. I chaired a group that advised a research project in Scotland called Generation Scotland. I shall not go into the details, but it was shot through with personal information. I can reassure the Minister that the cost of redacting any of that would be immense. Indeed, such is the sensitivity at a personal level of some of the information that the body responsible for managing it allows no one individual access to the whole data set. It is a double-lock situation, and that is absolutely right. That is not against the public interest; it is in the public interest and that of the 15,000 families in Scotland that have contributed very sensitive information for that research.
I welcome the comments and look forward to more detail on the timing of the commencement of Clause 102. In closing, I simply re-emphasise the point made by my noble friend Lord Oxburgh. We are talking about information for the public. In this case, the public is the entire world. The public is every competitor we have in the research business and in the commercial business that will spin out from it. That is still the real concern.
With the intention of discussing this with my noble friend Lady O’Neill, at this stage, I withdraw the amendment.
Health: Animal Testing
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Henley
My Lords, I would not want to be drawn down into the whole discussion about embryo research at this stage but I note what my noble and learned friend has to say. At the moment, the Home Office licenses research into animals in these matters and it does that job very well. As I made clear in earlier answers, the important thing is that we check up and license the persons, the places and the projects involved.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, following the direction of questioning from my noble friend Lord Willis, what encouragement are the Government giving to public bodies in receipt of public funds for medical research to engage in educating the public on these matters? That is very important.
Lord Henley
The noble Lord’s question says it in itself: the important thing is to get the message over to the public that it is very necessary that we do animal research where it is appropriate and that we make the proper leaps forward as are necessary. The Government will do their bit but we hope that everyone in the world of academe, the universities and elsewhere, will do their bit to make it clear that we will do what is necessary and that necessary research is being done.
Education Bill
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Peston
My Lords, I am very puzzled by what the Government want to do. I thought they wanted people to “stand on their own two feet”—I think that is an exact quote from the Chancellor. The effect of raising the real cost of repaying loans must act for some people as a disincentive to going into the labour force. Otherwise, in my favourite remark, economics makes no sense at all—you may think economics makes no sense at all, but that is another matter. That is one bit that puzzles me. What do the Government think they are doing? Should they not be pursuing exactly the opposite policy and trying to encourage people where they can to re-enter the labour force?
The second thing, which goes back to the earlier amendment that we did not debate at great length but will on Report, is the gender bias question. Is it part of the Government’s view that they want women not to take out loans and go into higher education so they do not have this burden and therefore it does not act as a disincentive to marriage and family life? After all, if they go into higher education and carry this implicit cost with them, their ability to find a suitable partner, who may have to bear this cost at some point, might go down.
I thought the Government favoured families instead of the reverse. Equally, maybe it is much more subtle than that. Where there are lone parents, for example, who are graduates, maybe we do not want them to stand on their own two feet and take a job and hire a babysitter. Maybe we want them to stay at home, driving themselves round the bend trying to cope with the children, and so forth. My general point from all that, is that I can see no rationality in what the Government are doing, other than: “If we can get some more money from any route that we can find we will take it”. That is not a rational way to produce economic policy.
If I can revert to my 1960s Treasury experience, one of my thoughts listening to my noble friend’s speech was about when I wrote a hotshot paper on student loan schemes—nothing to do with fees, but about maintenance. One question that never occurred to me in what must have been a really bad paper—in those days you did not take home your work so I have no idea precisely what I wrote—was the rate of interest. It never came up in my mind. I just took it for granted that it would be the Treasury bill rate.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has made a powerful and cogent case, and I look forward with more than usual interest to the Minister’s response because there are some issues of real principle. I would add two points. One is that much of the odium for charging fees is falling on universities. I still remember sufficiently far back when that would have fallen on me, and it looks like there is an extra 3 per cent of odium being added. That is not a good principle.
More to the point, I have supported the principle of student fees on the basis that students pay for what they get in educational terms, not for an additional premium for whatever accounting reasons seem necessary to the Government at the time.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I wanted in part to make a contribution so that anyone reading the proceedings of this Committee did not feel there were one or two isolated voices concerned about these proposals. The strength with which the arguments were made by my noble friend Lord Stevenson in particular do not need many words to be added and I know that the Committee is keen to move on.
I would fully endorse what my noble friend said and emphasise two points. One is this move around RPI and CPI. The Chancellor was perfectly clear in his Budget of 2011 that the Government were moving to use CPI in respect of benefits and pensions uprating and it is certainly something that has been around for some time. I remember appearing before the STRB and arguing the use of CPI over RPI. I was very glad to have Ed Balls alongside me making the technical aspect of that argument when giving evidence on behalf of the Government against, I think, the teaching unions, who wanted RPI. I would be really interested in the Minister’s response about why we have gone with something different in this case. The second point is the final point that my noble friend Lord Stevenson made around the Students Loans Company. I ask for a direct answer whether in conversations about the Student Loan Company, it has been a condition of being able to sell it off that a commercial rate of interest is chargeable. A direct answer would be helpful.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
I wish to support Amendment 148. I am afraid that I cannot support Amendment 145G, for reasons that I think are fairly obvious. If you have students in this position and you want a degree of equity they should be contributing pro rata to their colleagues in full-time education. However, I congratulate the Government on moving on this issue and moving part-time students into the arena of those who will be given loans against fees.
The arguments already put in favour of Amendment 148 are strong and powerful. I suspect there has been some oversight here; there is a much broader discussion to be had about the place and funding of part-time students, but that will come perhaps after the consultation on the White Paper is finished and it is brought back here. For the moment, we need as near an equitable position as we can and four and a half years as the period at which repayment is required seems to me a reasonable compromise for the moment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
I would also very much like to support Amendment 148. As has already been said, not only does it address the important move of part-timers into access to loans, which is crucial, but for me it also sets out in parts 1 and 2 the right way in which it can be sorted out so that students can have completed their studies. I am also aware from my own experience and from what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has said that there will be a huge number of women in this situation. For those reasons too it is very important that they have this new opportunity to study at a later stage in life; to catch up after what was often bad or lack of the right information about the courses they might have thought of studying when they were younger.
So I hope very much that the Government will see the sense in Amendment 148 and will be able to accept it in its entirety. It certainly takes me back to the many occasions when I have discussed this, particularly with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. I will not go any further than that, but I hope the amendment can be supported.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I am not rising to the bait of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, other than to add a fact that he may find interesting and so may the Committee. The Scottish Government’s budget presented roughly two weeks ago requires the universities to raise roughly £60 million in fees from students from the rest of the United Kingdom. On my own estimate, two years ago the cost of students from the European Union was £85 million a year. These are frightening figures and they raise a quite separate issue, but this is not the place to do it. I want to speak to the two amendments.
I appreciate the spirit of Amendment 147A: the spirit is openness and reassuring students that the money they pay for their education is actually being used for their education. That is absolutely right; as well as funding universities, that was the whole point of fees introduction. I support the principle, but I think the mechanism and the detail in subsection (2) would frighten the wits out of anyone running a university to provide that degree of information for every student.
I feel more strongly in support of Amendment 146. I simply want to add the fact that this is already in practice in a very select group of cases. The select group is of students who are taking a second degree, having already had the benefit of the first degree. The obvious case is veterinary studies, which was well represented in the university of which we have been speaking. The university found it possible to admit additional full-paying students on non state-funded places. Therefore, it seems the principle has been operating and has been conceded. In which case, there is a way of pushing it forward as in Clause 146.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, these are two slightly different amendments, raising different points, which are slightly oddly grouped together. However, they raise good points and I look forward to hearing what the Minister will say about them. On the first point, following the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and stepping sideways around the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes—a difficult task I know—architecture is another subject where you would have the benefit of having done a first qualification and then come back in and done further study, for which again these would not count.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
On a point of information, it is not because veterinary studies required an earlier qualification, it is because many students want to take it, whose parents can afford to pay the extra fee. They take it, if they are admitted, whatever their background.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
Which is the point I was about to make. The sheer serendipity of being able to do this does not make it right. Earlier points on other amendments, which were about the need of the whole country to work out how we pay for higher education, and to make sure that those who benefit from it also contribute back, do not get caught by this amendment. However, it may be worth further discussion, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.
On Amendment 147A, as has already been said, this is presumably the first of a number of points to be discussed as we get more to the market that the students will be dominating in future places, because in order to do that they will need this sort of information. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that this is a tad more difficult and complex than any standard university secretary would be able to respond to. However, it gets the right message across, which is that there is not very much information available for students to judge what sort of university they are going to. The courses are beyond their experience by their very definition, but as for the way in which they are taught and the amount of student contact, there is already enough circulating to make this an interesting area, which we will track with interest.
There has been a report in the papers today that comments from students that have been surveyed about what they thought about university courses in relation to fee levels of £9,000 were distinctly unflattering. If that is the way this is going, then this sort of amendment may well be something we need to discuss later.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the recently published Higher Education White Paper places students at the very heart of the higher education system. Our goal is a system that offers students better information and opportunity, is more responsive to student choice and helps to improve social mobility. We will ensure funding follows the student, is progressive and fair, and better responds to their situation and choices.
The amendment of my noble friend, Amendment 146, seeks to allow home and EU students to opt out of their eligibility for student support. First, let me make it clear that there is no requirement for students who have already been offered a place in higher education to draw down their entitlement to student support. At the moment, we have to control student numbers overall because we must control the costs to the public purse.
This amendment would mean that students who could afford to pay up front the full cost of their courses would then be at an advantage because they could pay. In effect, it has bypassed our student number controls. On the face of it this may appear attractive, but there would be a strong perception that wealthier students or their families would be able to buy a university place.
The Prime Minister has made the Government’s position absolutely clear on this. University access is about the ability to learn and not the ability to pay. There is no question of people being able to buy their way into university, however attractive that proposal looks. The Government are interested in expanding employer or charity sponsored places outside the quota system and are committed to freeing up the controls on student numbers in general.
In the Higher Education White Paper, we have committed to increasing such opportunities, provided that they do not create a cost liability for Government and that they meet three key principles: there should be fair access for all students applying, regardless of their ability to pay; the places must be genuinely additional; and there must be no reduction in academic standards in recruitment. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is looking at options to incentivise more sponsorship and will include this in its consultation this winter. This is a sensitive issue and we will consider carefully the outcomes of both these consultations before introducing further changes to the system.
On Amendment 147, I absolutely agree with my noble friend Lord Lucas that students need accessible, accurate and reliable information that clearly shows what they expect from their courses, helping them to make informed choices. We are doing a great deal of work in this area. It is our intention that by September 2012 all higher education institutions will publish key information sets for each course on their website. These sets will provide the information that students request the most, together with information about course charges.
The White Paper encourages good practice in institutions to allow students to become more discerning in understanding how their tuition charge is spent. It recommends that institutions provide the sort of material that local councils offer their residents to demonstrate where council tax is being spent. We have therefore asked the Higher Education Public Information Steering Group to consider whether this sort of data should form part of the future wider set of information we ask institutions to provide for prospective students.
I hope that I have reassured noble Lords, but before I conclude I would like to respond to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. He mentioned that students taking their second first degrees would be outside the student number controls and would be able to pay for their courses. He is correct, but the Government, like the previous one, is regulating students’ first degrees. I hope that answers the noble Lord.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
May I just ask what the point of the regulation is? Is it to save money, because the students in question will not cover the full cost of the fees; or is it because the Government have a pre-set notion on, for example, how many vets we need and how many should be eligible to take a veterinary studies degree?
Baroness Verma
I think the bottom line is, of course, that it is all down to affordability. We need to be clear on that. Universities have a finite budget too.
I will not fall into the eloquent spider’s web of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I shall just say to him that Scotland has a devolved Administration and therefore sets its own agenda. Steering neatly away from that, I take this opportunity to thank all noble Lords for their contributions on this Bill today, given that this was my first outing in higher education. It has been quite a baptism, but I am hoping that when I come in on higher education matters in the future, I will be there from the beginning and will understand a little more clearly the temperaments of noble Lords.
This is the final group of amendments, but I understand very clearly that there will still be questions that remain outstanding. Therefore I am happy to meet noble Lords, be it after this meeting in Room 16 on the Principal Floor, or in future. I have very much an open-door approach to the way I do my business in the House.
I give this opportunity to all noble Lords to come and speak to us. We want to make sure that the legislation, when it goes from this House, is in its best form, and noble Lords are there to ensure that with me. The Welfare Reform Bill is about to commence, so on that note I will sit down and allow the noble Lord to withdraw.