Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Willetts and Earl of Kinnoull

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con) [V]]

I will refer to this amendment briefly as well, although it overlaps to some extent with the debate that we have just had. I begin by declaring some specific interests. I am on the board of UKRI, the public agency responsible for funding social science research and administrative data, and I am the president of a think tank, the Resolution Foundation, which has an interest in using and accessing research data.

The background to this is the battle on LEO data, which has already been referred to. I assure the Minister that I am very proud of having fought long and hard to get the LEO data made available—incidentally, in the course of it, overcoming objections rather similar to the ones she just made to my previous amendment. After battles with HMRC, we got LEO data, and it has improved the debate on universities—although, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said in our previous debate, we should never think that earnings data are the be-all and end-all.

After long and difficult battles with HMRC, that data was made available to a small group of accredited researchers, and is now analysed closely by, above all, the Institute for Fiscal Studies. However, a lot of weight is placed on the LEO data, and there are other datasets about learner outcomes, not all of which are covered by the Digital Economy Act. I am worried that the debate on graduate outcomes is in the hands of a very small number of researchers with access to the LEO data. Researchers as a whole find it difficult to access data not covered by the Digital Economy Act. For example, health data is not covered by it. It would be very interesting to know—there is a lively debate about this—the extent to which going to university boosts health outcomes and life expectancy, for example.

Of course there must be rigorous standards for the researchers accessing such data: confidentiality, anonymity and a whole host of other requirements all need to be in place. However, we would have a better-quality and more wide-ranging debate about higher education if there were a wide range of perspectives informed by a wider range of empirical data about what is actually happening. After I successfully fought for the LEO data, I never expected that it would become the be-all and end-all. I see it as part of a much wider set of data types and a much wider range of researchers, properly regulated, analysing what happens in education.

The parallel with the previous amendment is that data matters. This Government are bold on science and technology. They understand the importance of data in good public policy. The DfE is not the worst offender when it comes to providing researchers with access to data, but there are certainly clear constraints at the moment on that access, going way beyond the necessary requirements of confidentiality and anonymity. I hope that, in the light of that, the Minister will consider undertaking that there should be a greater range of researchers with greater access to key learner data, so that we can all debate it with more information at our disposal. That is why I move the amendment.

[The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare, Lord Adonis and Lord Lucas, have withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie.