Universities: Compulsory Redundancies
Debate between Viscount Hanworth and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I draw attention to my association with the University of Leicester, which is currently enacting a spate of compulsory redundancies among its academic staff.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, higher education providers are independent institutions, responsible for their own staffing issues, including how they structure themselves to deliver research and teaching priorities. Where it is necessary to reshape their activities, it is important that universities carefully consider the impact of job losses on staff and students and on the overall sustainability of teaching and research in this country. The Office for Students requires English higher education providers to maintain academic quality and standards.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
The Government have led universities to compete for students by embarking on capital expenditures to create attractive amenities. To address the resulting financial difficulties, they have begun to sack their academic staff at a time when large numbers of European nationals are leaving academic posts as a consequence of Brexit. The long periods of training, the job insecurities and the penurious salaries are preventing native British people joining the academic profession. This will lead to the demise of our university sector. What remedies, if any, do the Government propose?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, we are all proud of our world-leading higher education sector, which is a tribute to those who work in it and have done over many years. We have four of the world’s top 10 universities and 17 of the top 100. Many universities are able to combine academic excellence with commercial success, so I do not quite recognise the dichotomy that the noble Viscount paints. However, we recognise the challenges of the past year and a half, during the pandemic, which is why, alongside access to the business support schemes available to all businesses, we brought forward more than £2 billion of tuition fee payments, provided £280 million of grant funding for research and established a loan scheme to cover up to 80% of universities’ income losses from international students for the current academic year.
Covid-19: University Students
Debate between Viscount Hanworth and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, we have established walk-through testing sites and deployed mobile test sites so that almost all universities are within 1.5 miles of a testing site. This means that staff and students alike will have access to tests if they develop symptoms. As part of our ongoing work, we have also started a series of pilots on lateral flow tests and are working with the Department of Health and Social Care to target mass asymptomatic testing at universities. The ambition is to work with universities to build testing provision, including through the use of lateral flow devices.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, the advice of the SAGE committee in September was that unless teaching in colleges and universities was moved online, Covid outbreaks in them would be inevitable. Given what has transpired there is now the likelihood that, after Christmas, many students will remain at home. Can the Government assure these students that they will not be bound by contracts for accommodation that they do not need, and will they also indemnify universities against the claims of companies that have provided new-build student accommodation for rents that they have been guaranteed?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, throughout the pandemic we have been working closely with universities to make sure that they have plans in place locally, shared with local directors of public health, to manage the specific risks in their area. We have been keen to keep universities open so that students and young people are not putting their lives on hold or finding that their education is disrupted. We are therefore keen for face-to-face teaching to continue as much as possible. Universities have risen to the challenge by providing a blend of online teaching and of course by working closely with students on accommodation and other issues.
Coronavirus Bill
Debate between Viscount Hanworth and Lord Parkinson of Whitley BayWednesday 25th March 2020
(4 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Coronavirus Act 2020 View all Coronavirus Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 110-I Marshalled list for Committee - (24 Mar 2020)
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, my colleague and noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has provided a cue that enables me to talk briefly about Schedule 8 to the Bill, which would allow a patient to be detained in hospital—or sectioned, as the phrase is—under the provisions of the Mental Health Act, on the say-so of a single doctor. The Bill would also provide for a period of extension to be extended, if I understand correctly, by the decision of a single person.
To put these matters in context, we might look back to the late Victorian era, when a problematic member of a family could be incarcerated in an asylum at the insistence of that family. They could be left there for a lifetime, and forgotten by the family, who could thereby avoid the stigma of having mental illness in their midst.
That stigma has been alleviated, but it still exists. The sufferer of mental ill-health may be a fragile young person, whose aberrant behaviour has been in response to some dysfunctional family dynamics. To avoid the hazard of inappropriately sectioning a patient in such circumstances, it is now understood that a careful assessment is required, which must involve more than one expert and judgment. This is not a fail-safe procedure, and I have been told of its failure in some tragic circumstances. Sectioning a person under the Mental Health Act can injure a person for a lifetime. Therefore, I wish to sound a note of caution, if not alarm, at the provisions in Schedule 8 to the Bill.
This is one of only many hazards present in the Bill, and I wish to make a more general comment about such legislation. Some speakers in yesterday’s debate expressed astonishment and admiration at the speed with which the Bill has been assembled to meet an unexpected crisis. However, it must surely have been sitting on the shelf for a considerable length of time. It is the product of the kind of contingency planning that we can expect of any competent system of public administration. There is no lesser need for contingency planning to cope with the public health crisis than there is for detailed military planning. However, whereas military planning is bound to remain largely secret, there is no need for such secrecy in the plans to address a public health crisis. The contingency planning that underlines this Bill ought to be permanently in the public domain, and its clauses ought to have been considered in detail, in the absence of any need to invoke them.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I think the House might be keen for the noble Lord to conclude his remarks so that we can proceed at pace with this emergency legislation and hear other noble Lords’ contributions.