Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Storey

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 Young of Cookham and Lord Storey

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.