Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Willetts and Baroness Brinton

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

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 14 and 16. I thank the Minister for the amendments tabled in his name. I have a couple of questions on them, but I reiterate the importance of the role of the Director for Fair Access and Participation. I think we can say that all parties and the Cross Benches in this Committee agree that widening access is a goal that we all want. In coalition we certainly pushed that quite heavily and there was some limited success—the bursaries, scholarships and supports for students from low socioeconomic background —which sadly now looks as if it is going downhill again. However, the figures on improving access for those least likely to apply to Oxbridge and to the Russell group universities had not significantly improved, and it must remain a priority for the Government and for the Office for Students to make sure that this changes as we move into the next phase of the Bill.

That is why when the White Paper came out I was really rather encouraged by the tone and the language, which talked about,

“an OfS executive board member with responsibility for fair access, the Director for Fair Access and Participation, whose role will be enshrined in law”.

It said that this person would take on responsibility and that it would be,

“a continuation of the current approach”.

There was real concern when the Bill was published to see that this role had been significantly downgraded. I am grateful that the omission has been rectified, but I just want to rehearse the reasons why it is so important that the Director for Fair Access and Participation is a senior role enshrined in law. This person must have the power to negotiate with institutions, which would undoubtedly be compromised if he or she could not approve or refuse access and participation plans. The person recruited needs to be someone with a high profile in the sector, who will have senior-level respect within our institutions. I know from working at a college for mature students—the previous debate was about distance learning, mature access and part-time—that all the institutions need to take this on board. It should not be the specific responsibility of one or two parts of the sector. The only way that the Director for Fair Access and Participation will be taken seriously is if he or she has credibility within the sector. That comes back, absolutely clearly, to the director having the power to approve or refuse access and participation plans. That is why our amendments refer to the director being “responsible”, echoing the language of the White Paper.

My questions for the Minister are as follows. What is the difference between being responsible for and the words used in the government amendments, which talk about “overseeing the performance”? For me, there is a distinction and I wish to understand exactly why that is there. In Amendment 27, it seems sensible that any OfS annual report should report on,

“the period or periods in that year during which those functions were not delegated to the Director, and … the reasons why they were not so delegated”,

but what might those reasons be? Clearly it could be if the director were away, off on sick leave or other things, but I want to be absolutely clear that this is not a backdoor power-snatching route by the Secretary of State or the director of the OfS.

With those details satisfied, I will stop carping on about the distinction between the two but we must make it clear that the role of the Office for Students is as important in widening participation because it remains a consistent priority. Anything less than that will tell the sector that access and participation is no longer a priority of the Government.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly comment on the very interesting interventions we have already had, which reflect the shared belief across all sides of the House in the importance of access and participation. Since the original Blair Government fees and loan system and the increases that we introduced, despite all the fears, we have seen a doubling of the proportion of people from the poorest backgrounds going to university, but there is still a lot more to do.

I did not completely agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made that this was about restoring the status quo as it has so far existed. I will try to explain why I do not think that that is quite the case. There have been proposals to get rid of OFFA and make it part of HEFCE. The report of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, in 2010 envisaged something rather like that. I was one of the many who did not want to see OFFA, with its distinct responsibilities, disappear into some wider body. However, there is a dilemma here and it is made more acute by the wider responsibilities that go with access and participation.

One thing that can easily confuse us is that “participation” is now being used in this Bill in a rather different sense from how it has been traditionally used, where “access” meant getting through to the most prestigious universities and “participation” meant getting through to higher education. My understanding is that in this Bill “participation” is used in the rather different sense of continuing engagement with the student experience so that, through their years at university, students from more disadvantaged backgrounds continue to get help. I know from my conversations with the excellent Les Ebdon that one of his frustrations was that his remit on access agreements was quite narrowly defined, and there were some initiatives that might have been very worth while but it was not totally clear that he could press for them.

I am not at all clear how this example would apply in the current legislation but if there is an internship programme—a very good way of getting into some job or profession—which requires that you live in London during the summer holidays at the end of your second year, is it legitimate to help meet the housing costs of a low-income student so that they can participate in that internship programme? Is that part of an access agreement or is it going beyond getting into university and something different? My understanding of this new role of access and participation is that it is an attempt to broaden responsibilities so that as well as focusing on getting into university, it is about the nature of the support that disadvantaged students get during their three years, or whatever, at university.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton]

Might I use an example to try to answer the question that the noble Lord raised? I have amendments later on in the Bill about the support for students with disabilities; they have issues about both access and participation. I would welcome a director who had responsibility for overseeing support for a specific group who have problems with participation, whether that is financial support or extra support because they have a disability and might need support in different ways, rather than those students being subsumed into a general participation pot.

[Lord Willetts]

It is certainly the case that mainstreaming can be a euphemism for a solitary and nasty death, delivered invisibly. A lot of programmes get mainstreamed and it is a euphemism for their disappearance. My view is that when the Office for Students has the kind of ambitious responsibilities for the student experience envisaged in the Bill, it is reasonable to expect participation—in the sense that it is used in these clauses —to be a responsibility for the OfS as a whole. I would argue that that is a better way of ensuring that the noble Baroness’s concerns are met than narrowing it down to one specific function within one part of OfS.