Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 4 I will speak in support of the related amendments in this group. I declare my interest as chair of the board of governors of Sheffield Hallam University.

The purpose of these amendments is to place a duty on the Secretary of State and the OfS to have regard to the need to protect institutional autonomy when carrying out their functions. The definition of “institutional autonomy” for this purpose is set out in Amendment 11. What might have been a very long and contested debate can be reduced considerably by the fact that the amendment also has the Minister’s name on it, thus indicating the Government’s support. Taken with the changes around encouraging collaboration between universities where this is in the interests of the students, and indeed quality and standards being clarified, which will come later, and other amendments tabled or supported by the Government, this is a significant amount of welcome progress.

The importance of upholding institutional autonomy was one of the strongest themes at Second Reading. Those who took part will recall that the responsible Minister of State, Jo Johnson, stayed for virtually all of it. At the time, I commended him for being a listening Minister but wondered whether he would be a responsive one. Both he and the Minister in this House, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, have clearly demonstrated that on these issues they are responsive. Inevitably, other important issues remain that we will need to debate and may divide on, but for the moment, I express my sincere thanks and congratulations to the Ministers on their positive recognition of our concerns on these issues. I beg to move.

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, as one who spoke at Second Reading, I associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has said. He, I and many others had meetings with the Minister and were received courteously—as one would expect—but more importantly, we were received by a listening Minister. I am very grateful to my noble friend, who I am sure has added to the voice of this House when speaking to the department. A number of major improvements have been made to the Bill. As chancellor of Reading University, I have discussed these with the senior management there. Without speaking for the management in any way, I can report that many in the university sector are delighted with the Minister’s response. I am delighted to support the amendment.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I have Amendment 5 in this group. Your Lordships may remember that in Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and my noble friend Lord Ridley tabled an amendment to deal with the matter that my amendment seeks to deal with, but they sought to do so by reference to a new committee that was to be set up to have that power. It is obvious that we are in a changing world and therefore that there may well emerge needs for new providers to do something different to that which is presently provided in the higher education sector.

Since we are to have the Office for Students—that is still its name—it is perfectly appropriate that the duty of looking out for “emerging needs” should fall on that regulator. We would not need further committees; the existing regulator would be able to do this as a natural operation in the course of viewing the sector, as it has to do all the time as part of its regulation. It is also clear that setting up a new provider in this area is not without problems. A certain degree of capital expenditure is probably necessary and there would certainly be other costs as well, running costs in particular. It is therefore right, as was said originally and as I say again, that the regulator should take appropriate steps to encourage the meeting of those needs. The main support for this provision came from the noble Baroness and my noble friend but I thought this would be a neat way of achieving exactly what they wanted, without the elaboration of a further committee. In due course, I shall move this amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, in supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, perhaps I could give the Committee the benefit of the experience that I have had in the past four years. I have just completed a four-year term as the Prime Minister’s trade and cultural envoy to south-east Asia. In that role, I got to know very well the Education Ministers of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos—all really excellent people who had a tremendous respect for the education system in this country. Over that period of four years, I failed ever to explain our visa policy. I would go further: they were really offended by it. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are not known for the export of terrorism. They are rapidly developing countries and in the case of Vietnam, an important rapidly developing country that sees itself as a world player and which we are prioritising in our post-Brexit determination for a bilateral trade agreement. Try to imagine what it is like to sit in the Cabinet of those countries and be told, “Your students are being grouped as potential terrorists”. It is offensive and it damages us. It is foolish and damages our universities and international reputation. I was deeply ashamed of the arguments that I was forced to put up, all of which were spurious and none of which were defensible.

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Lucas. This is probably the first shot in a considerable battle in which I hope this House will engage. There is a certain irony which I cannot pass over in complete silence. I was the junior Minister who, in 1981, had to take the full force of opposition from the Liberal Party, the Labour Party, members of my own party and every right-thinking person in what the President-elect of the United States would call the liberal intelligentsia for allowing universities to charge economic fees for their overseas students. Not a single overseas student would come, we were told. This was the end of the civilisation as we knew it. As a matter of fact, of course, not only did the students come in ever-greater numbers but we had provided a wonderful independent source of income for our universities, and thereby saved them at a time when the Treasury and other people were always trying to cut the money. Without those flows of money, our universities would be in very serious trouble. There would not be graduate departments of engineering in many of our great London-based colleges without overseas students, and it is an absolute absurdity not to separate students.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

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

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, as a former director of the London School of Economics, I think it is perhaps appropriate for me to speak next. I have to say that I do not wholly disagree with all of what the noble Lord, Lord Myners, said. I disagree on the fundamental point of principle, but the criticism he offered was entirely appropriate. In contrast to him, I strongly support this amendment. In the Second Reading debate, I was highly critical of aspects of this Bill. My objections were not motivated by some sort of stick-in-the-mud desire to resist change and innovation. On the contrary, in some ways the Bill is, in my eyes, too conservative—with a little ‘c’, of course.

I accept and endorse the need for an overall legislative framework for higher education. We need to clear up inconsistencies and ambiguities in the existing system and, far more importantly, embrace the deep transformations beginning to affect both teaching and research. At the same time, however, as other speakers have rightly said, we must be careful not to undermine the very qualities that have propelled higher education in this country to the very top globally.

In amending the Bill—and there is no doubt in my mind that substantial emendation is necessary—we must ensure that we avoid the huge problems created in the US around deregulated for-profit institutions. They have a place but they are not the future. As in almost every other sphere, higher education is likely to be transformed in a radical way by the digital revolution—and, in my view, in very short order. This is a revolution of unparalleled pace and scope. Much more potent models for exploring what is to come include edX, linked to Harvard and MIT, and Udacity, which had its origins at Stamford. We should be investing in analogues, and some of that has to be public investment.

As the amendment makes clear, a university is not just a knowledge provider but an active creator of knowledge and ideas—even the noble Lord, Lord Myners, stressed that point. That relates to what teachers do, because research and teaching are part and parcel of a combined enterprise in a university. Disciplined research and the active protection of academic freedom are crucial to this task. In my eyes, it would be a major step forward to have these principles spelled out in binding fashion, as this amendment does. The amendment, in fact, looks to have a great deal of support across the House, and I hope that it will not be treated in partisan terms. Perhaps the Minister will be moved to accept it without driving the matter to a vote. Many other pieces of what could turn out to be a very difficult jigsaw puzzle for the Government would fall into place were he to do so.

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, I declared my interest at Second Reading. I am the most junior member of the club of chancellors mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Myners, as the newly appointed chancellor of the University of Reading. I have a number of concerns about the Bill and without making a Second Reading speech again, I shall look to the Government to strengthen protections against interference with autonomy.

These are not theoretical objections. In this House, we are all in danger of falling into our anecdotage, but I will give just one. I was once the holder of a similar office to the Minister who is so courteously handling this Bill. My Secretary of State was my late friend and former colleague Sir Keith Joseph. The Secretary of State became incensed by the economics teaching at the Open University, so his junior Ministers, Rhodes Boyson and myself, were given the books to read. This had rather extraordinary results. The Open University’s reply to what Sir Keith saw as unfortunate bias in its teaching was made much worse by its defence that there was a book by Mr Peter Walker that in its view provided balance, which did not necessarily help Sir Keith. This was slightly comic and Sir Keith was a man of immense courtesy and deep understanding of the autonomy of the institution, and nothing much further came of it. But in crude hands and in different worlds it could have done. I shall therefore be looking through the course of this Bill to various things that will help us to strengthen autonomy.

My interest in this first clause is whether a definition helps us. Do we need a definition to say what it is we are helping to provide special protection for? I am made a little nervous by my noble friend Lord Willetts’s comments because the reason that things have not been defined in Bills over the years is the danger of a definition excluding things by accident. Very often when we draw a line we find that we have produced a new boundary and that it is better to leave some things a little greyer. In the 19th century, universities probably meant places where there were multiplicities of departments, but we know of very good liberal arts universities in the United States that do not teach science and are perfectly properly described as universities. Other examples were given by my noble friend Lord Willetts.

I am nervous about the clause as it is defined at the moment, but am interested in the Minister’s response. If he can say that he will take it away and think of this problem of definition, I would be happy with that. As drafted, it is not perfect. It would be odd for any small and perhaps specialised university of great distinction in certain areas that the behemoth of the regulator could demand that it was failing because it was not helping overseas markets or something or other, so there is a danger here. I want definitions to be defended. I do not think that we have it quite in this clause, but my support or not for the clause will somewhat depend on the spirit in which the Minister replies and whether he will agree to take this away and work at it to see if something a little more workable can be discovered.

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and his colleagues in what promises to be a full-scale and important debate on higher education. It is indeed odd, and even extraordinary, that universities are not mentioned in the Bill. I declare an interest, having been chancellor of Leeds University for the last 16 years.

En passant, I note the spectacularly impressive number of academics of the highest achievement who have expressed serious reservations and opposition to much of the Bill. Surely, in this House more than any other, we believe that the voices of experts, especially of such calibre—many of whom are in this House now—ought to be listened to and recognised as the best wisdom available on the subject.

The Government seem intent on a pincer movement, first introducing free-market rules that could best be described as downmarket options. New colleges called new providers—George Orwell would have loved that—will be able to acquire degree-awarding powers without having to build up a track record by teaching another university’s degree first. None of that boring old research and listening preparation nonsense for this Government, it seems.

The current university system could be called a fine example of the marketplace at its best—there is much talk of the marketplace. There is heavy, open competition for entrance to universities, and heavy competition for lectureships and professorships. When universities put in for grants and funds they realise they are competing with many other universities—sometimes all over the world—and they work out the most competitive as well as the most scholastically satisfactory proposal. This is a marketplace of the mind, but none the less a marketplace and an increasingly key one for the future. Our universities embrace and revel in it.

One of the reasons for this effective balance between learning and earning lies in the autonomy and individuality of our universities. They are not one size fits all, beholden to the state or looking forward to launching themselves on the FTSE 100. They are, to use a phrase of Alan Bennett’s, just “keeping on keeping on” at a high level in different but effective ways, with fertile variations, with their primary purpose: scholarship. As we know, the consequences of scholarship can increasingly be very profitable, wide-ranging across the whole of society and, from the evidence we have, increasingly essential to the success of a 21st-century economy, which, in so many other areas, has found this country wanting. But the heart of it is learning, and the heart of that is the curiosity to pursue knowledge for the sake of more knowledge. Key to that is a certain looseness and confidence in individual and often idiosyncratic needs—private space, in short, for what our greatest scientists and writers in the humanities have always needed to generate their best work. This cannot be legislated for: it is an individual-to-individual decision. This heavy-handed state control is the enemy to that free-ranging condition.

The clamp of the Government’s decision to create a new body—a central control unit—the Office for Students, is anathema to freedom, of which we need more, not less. It would impose another layer of regulation. Goodness knows, universities in this country, like schools, hospitals and the Government themselves, are all but disappearing under the tangleweed of overregulation. Who will run these new bodies, which will interfere so radically in the affairs of the variety of universities? How will they be trained? Where will they come from? How will they know more than those already working hard inside the universities who are the best people? They are already there inside the universities. All of these universities, from the ancient to the relatively new, have built up through expertise and expediency individual and ingenious ways to ride the tide of the times. There is danger of strangulation by bureaucracy.

As they take an increasingly important place in our society as one of the few success stories of the last few decades, universities are being asked to do more, which they are doing. They have now become the forum for disputes about free speech, and it is in universities where unacceptable and destructive racist attitudes must be and will continue to be challenged, I trust. In cities thoughtlessly stripped of traditional industries it is universities that have often provided the new hub of hope in the place.

No doubt others will itemise ways universities can be improved, and I look forward to hearing that. though, we must declare and itemise their current strengths. Universities must be high on the agenda—as high as they are on the ladder of learning in this country. I look forward to the Minister confirming that he will go along with the amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the fellow of one Oxford college, the honorary fellow of another, and the chancellor-elect, to be installed on Friday, of the University of Reading.

The Minister in the Public Bill Committee described the Bill as a somewhat minor Bill—a tidying-up Bill. It is not. It is a juggernaut of a Bill. Arguably, it is the formal end of the delicate structure of autonomy under royal charters, which goes a long way back in our history. It is an irony that the Government should be doing that; remember that not long ago they presented IPSO—the Independent Press Standards Organisation —as well protected by its royal charter.

This is a disappointing Bill from a Conservative Government. Edmund Burke and Dizzy talked about the pillars of the constitution, which included the universities, this House, the Church and the monarchy. We do not need to pay too much attention to a squib by the young Dizzy but there is a truth in it: overcentralisation is dangerous.

The Bill is surprising, because post referendum all hands should surely be to the pump: the unintended consequences of Brexit will be severe in the university and research areas. I agree that the new money is highly welcome, and I know that some sponsors of the Bill had an honourable part in winning it. But there is an enormous amount still to do on freedom of academic movement, protection of networks, and so on. We have hardly started. It is notable that all recent British Nobel prize winners are working abroad. That may not matter so long as the young researchers from abroad, who may one day win Nobel prizes and be claimed for British science, are coming here. You cannot take those networks for granted. All the great university policymakers in the departments will be swamped with work on the Bill when they should be doing something more important.

It is surprising also because it goes in the opposite direction to a good deal of past policy. We have given power to the students, who take the money with them; their choices will shape and are shaping the university system, together with the money brought by overseas students—if the Home Office does not manage to see them off. What those students need, both at home and abroad, is better information about comparative teaching quality—separate, incidentally, from standards—and they need more information on pastoral outcomes and so on. What they do not need is a centralised behemoth of a regulator. That is a completely different policy.

In the very year when one of our universities has been graded the very best in the world—with, as noble Lords have said, many others not far behind—we in Britain choose not to celebrate our sector but to move it towards the sort of state governance structures that produce depressingly second-rate systems in, for example, France or Italy. The success of our autonomous universities should be the model, and surely it is perverse to challenge it just as its success is recognised worldwide.

We in this House have to be realistic. The juggernaut is trundling along but we can do some useful things, adding brakes here and there as well as warning lights, alarms and sirens—and we should do so. We should seek amendments to protect academic autonomy much further. Not long ago, a particularly silly Minister—whose name, luckily, I have forgotten—announced that in his view the teaching of dead languages was a waste of time. The Bill does not allow even so clever a Minister as my honourable friend the Member for Orpington to rewrite the honour moderations course at Oxford—but are we sure that it stops him saying that there is no need, on a strategic level, for the teaching of ancient Greek? I am not quite sure that the Bill provides us with that protection.

Then there is autonomy in the wider sense. Does the Bill stop universities having the fleetness of foot to make the kinds of decisions that I am proud to say Reading University has made, with a campus in Malaysia and a science park in the Thames Valley? It has all sorts of new courses and developments, which I am sure many other universities can match. However, it needs fleet-footed decision-making and very good governance by very good people who are attracted to the autonomy of an institution where they will make a difference. Are we sure that the Bill will encourage that?

I want to talk about UKRI, but I have only a minute to defend what my noble friend Lord Willetts called my legacy. I looked at the single research council—and please do not tell me that this is not a single research council with sub-committees; it soon will be. I tried to persuade my friend, the great scientist Sir Paul Nurse, not to go down this road, as all those who have looked at this subject for the past 60 years have not gone down that road. I am afraid that this behemoth will not, as my noble friend Lord Willetts said, be more efficient as a lobbyist for science; it will become a huge structure, and from it I fear that in 20 years’ time we will not see an increase in the productivity of British science but just an increase in that other great gift of Britain to the world—bureaucracy. Often, big is not best in science. Just look at the falling research productivity of the great pharmaceutical companies compared with the little challenger biotech companies for proof of that.

I repeat that I doubt whether we can stop this juggernaut. I rather wish that we could and go back to a more pluralist system. Again and again, it is untidiness and pluralism in research that produces creativity. You want some nooks and crannies; you do not want an overall strategy. That gives you lovely things such as Concorde, the AGR reactor and the System X telephone exchange; it does not give you what you need. We may not be able to stop it but we can make it a bit less dangerous. For example, let us at least try to put the Haldane principle on the face of the Bill. There is such a wealth of experience in this House and such a highly intelligent and well-educated Minister sponsoring the Bill that I think he will listen to our words of caution.