Schools: Climate Change Strike

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My noble friend asks a very valid question, and it is one that I have asked. Children have 15 weeks of holidays and half-terms in which to demonstrate without incurring disruption and extra workloads for their teachers. An average primary school lesson costs £1,600 and a secondary school lesson about £1,900, so school is where they should be.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, why do we not encourage children to strike every Friday—about terrorism next week, about overfishing of the oceans the week after and about social media the week after that? It would make the Government very popular if we gave children an extra day off school every week.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

As keen as I am to make our Government popular, that is not a route that I advocate.

Schools: Integrated Communities Strategy

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Viscount Ridley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what contribution schools can make to the policies outlined in their Integrated Communities Strategy green paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, schools play a critical role in promoting integration and widening opportunities for all communities. Many schools already do this successfully, creating inclusive environments where our children are able to learn the values that underpin our society. We want to ensure that this is the case for all schools and other types of education setting. This is why, as part of the Green Paper issued in March, we announced a strengthened package of support for schools and measures to deliver quality education across all settings.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that encouraging reply. Given that the Integrated Communities Strategy commits to supporting schools,

“to increase diversity to ensure they are more representative of their wider area”,

and in light of the evidence that religious selection by schools divides children along not just religious lines but ethnic and socioeconomic lines, with potentially worrying consequences for society, what are the Government doing to ensure the promotion in schools of the universal humanist values of the secular enlightenment and to break down barriers between children of different religious and cultural backgrounds?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, in addition to promoting the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law and individual liberty, all schools are required to promote mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs. As part of teaching a broad and balanced curriculum, all state-funded schools are required to provide religious education. Turning to integration, the Integrated Communities Strategy sets out a package of measures to help increase integration among children. It includes working with admissions authorities, where we are piloting five areas to increase diversity of pupil intakes, funding the schools linking programme, which is twinning schools of different faiths, and strengthening expectations for all new free schools on how they improve integration further.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

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

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I support the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and I thank him for his interest in the amendment that the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, and I tabled in Committee. I will return to that theme—although, he will be glad to know, not in the context of a new committee—in an amendment that I tabled for later in the proceedings.

I agree with the noble and learned Lord that it is important that this new regulator looks beyond the day-to-day and has some vision of how higher education in this country should be developing. I have recently been rereading Lord Robbins, and it does indeed feel like another world. The point that I want to underline, which is inherent in the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, is that unless somebody in government—and who else but the OfS?—is looking at emerging needs and taking appropriate steps, many important things simply will not happen. As my noble friend Lady O’Neill pointed out a little while ago, the reality is that, with just the money that you can get for an individual student, you cannot create a visionary new university or create thriving STEM faculties. They need money, they need planning and they need government support.

One of the things that we now know more about than we did even a couple of weeks ago is the nature of the new providers coming into the market. As one would expect, they are, overwhelmingly, small providers of business education. Some of them are doing very interesting and exciting things, but this underlines that we cannot, in the current context of funding and loans, simply rely on making it easier for new providers to come in and on promoting competition to meet the needs of this country and create the sort of visionary institutions and well-endowed STEM faculties that we need for the future of the country.

Like many other noble Lords, I want to take this opportunity to thank the Minister for the amount of listening he has done so far, but it would be very helpful if he could do a little more listening and just make it clear to this new and powerful body that it also has a role and a responsibility for looking towards the future.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I will not detain the House for long, because a lot has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay about Amendment 5, but will briefly express my support for this position. One of the prime purposes of the Bill is to open up the higher education sector to new entrants and to the fresh breath of air that they could possibly bring. We have heard, since the Bill started, not just of the many small providers, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, but also of Sir James Dyson’s expansion of his university. That is magnificent, but even he has admitted that it is very hard to start up a new university. How much harder would it be for those with fewer resources? There are huge barriers to entry in this field.

In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and I argued for a new committee to encourage new entrants to come forward. Even at the time, I expressed some reservations about adding to the number of committees in the world, and I am delighted that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay has come up with the simpler idea that this function should be added to the functions of the Office for Students. For a Bill designed to encourage new entrants in the university sector, there is surprisingly little in the Bill that actually addressed the encouragement of new entrants, and this is a modest and welcome suggestion.

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, put forward, as well as his argument. There is a problem with getting universities together, because they very proudly differentiate themselves from each other. One thing about British universities, where I have worked all my life, is that they do not want to permit student transfer between them. It is almost impossible for a student to do one year in one university and then go to another one, because the courses are not comparable and there is no system of scores or grade points. It will take a special effort to create a group spirit among English higher education providers, especially the old ones, although the new ones will be better. The suggestion made here about creating this collegium of former students or graduates may actually be very helpful now that we have the instruments to do that. Their experience may be able to tell us how to improve the interrelationship between universities, so we can present a united front regarding the quality of English higher education.

Transport: A1 Dual Carriageway

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I think I made clear earlier that that is the intention. We are going full steam ahead in dualling the road up to Ellingham. North of Ellingham, we are producing the overtaking lanes. I say again that we cannot do everything in one go and I stress again that we are on time. But there are other projects. In fact, there are 112 other projects around England that we are focusing on. Upgrading the nearby A66 is one of the important projects we are pushing ahead with.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend accept that the people of Northumberland will be very glad to hear that this project is on target? Will it be possible for him to indicate as early as possible which of the three routes that have been tested will be used for the stretch north of Morpeth? I declare an interest as a landowner over whose ground it will go.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I reassure my noble friend that the options for the routes are being looked at now. This is all part of the consultation process that is under way. It is indeed extremely good news not just for the locals in Northumberland, but for those wishing to travel through Northumberland up to the north.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

Amendment 434ZA, in my name and that of the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, is not exactly a probing amendment but it seeks to emphasise the importance of something that gets rather little attention in the Bill as it stands. In speeches and discussions we have heard a great deal about the importance of innovation, opening up the sector and preventing vested interests getting in the way. There has also been quite a lot of discussion on the Floor of the House about the need for diversity. However, there is remarkably little about diversity in the Bill. When I looked through it did not appear at all, although the Lords spiritual had a couple of amendments that explicitly talked about it. The point of this amendment is to make explicit that diversity is truly important and we stand to benefit from a far more diverse set of institutions. However, diversity will not happen by magic or automatically simply by virtue of making it easier for a certain number of new providers to enter the higher education sector.

It is very important that we think positively about diversity and not negatively in terms of possible barriers. Diversity does not happen automatically, and one reason that Governments exist is to tackle what are in effect major barriers to entry when those barriers mean that we do not serve the long-term or even the short-term interests of the country and of students.

Having more providers that offer business degrees may be very good for the quality of business degrees but it will not in itself do anything either about the need to think of very different ways of delivering higher education and lifelong learning or about the areas where we know that we have enormous skills shortages in this country, which will not be solved without active government.

Over the last 15 or 20 years, there has been a very large increase in the number of providers, although possibly there should be more. Alternative providers offer courses which are cheap, which you can afford to put on with the resources at hand and which do not put you at risk of going broke in week one. That is absolutely as it should be but, when you look at the profile and detail of what is being offered, as I have done, you find that it is accounting and business and business accounting—things that do not need huge up-front investment.

A similar pattern can be seen in, for example, the apprenticeship statistics. Again, there has been a regime of effectively inviting people to offer apprenticeships—not dissimilar to what we are talking about for higher education. The result has been overwhelmingly a growth in apprenticeships that do not require expensive equipment or involve high-risk activity, which means that you can cover your costs and more with relative ease.

Therefore, the purpose of the amendment is to argue that it is truly vital that the Government take a more active approach to encouraging new and different institutions. If they do not, then simply enacting the current regime as proposed will not solve the problem. New entrants will not on the whole do science or engineering. I am sure that lots of them would love to do exciting and expensive things, but the reality of being a new, small institution is that they do not.

I have mentioned the history of apprenticeships. Another example is the fight over saving archaeology A-level. I have considerable sympathy with the examination boards. Running things where you lose money heavily is quite hard to do. Unless you are large enough to spread those courses, by and large you just do not do them. These courses are very expensive and, without government support, they will be too risky and long-term for most people, but they are areas that are badly needed.

In a week in which an industrial strategy has just been launched, it would be appropriate for the discussions on the Higher Education and Research Bill also to take account of the fact that, in the past, Governments in other countries have felt the need to take a very active role in this area. They have felt the need to put long-term planning and substantial government money into the sector in a directed and planned way, because otherwise things would not happen. In this context, it seems to me that the Dyson Institute of Technology, which is clearly a wonderful initiative, makes the point. How many very rich individual entrepreneurs with the ability and money to take these decisions are there in this country? So far, there has been James Dyson. As a strategy for providing that part of the higher education sector, relying on the beneficence, good will and commitment of rich individuals is not very sensible. Obviously we cannot go back to the 1960s but it is worth looking at the commitment, vision and expenditure that were put in back then.

Therefore, the amendment asks for the Secretary of State—not the OfS—to have an obligation to take, on a regular basis, a strategic view of where in the country and in what disciplines we might need something more, something new, something different and something involving government commitment and government money. We suggest that the Government also look at how these institutions can be set up. We have gone on a lot this afternoon about validation. Going back to the 1960s, we had institutions that were developed over time. They launched forth, they had their own degree-awarding powers from day one and they had royal charters.

I think we are getting into a sort of mindset here in which there is the existing sector and then there will be new, brave little institutions, which may or may not need validation by other institutions and, if they do not, maybe the OfS will do it. That is too narrow and far too limited a view of what our universities and our higher education need to look like. I am sure that one possible response will be to say, “Oh, I’m sure the Office for Students will do it”. The Office for Students is already being asked to do an amazing number of things. I do not believe that this is a matter for a regulator; it is for the Secretary of State, on behalf of the nation and on a regular basis, to look at how, in new ways or “back to the future” ways, something can be done to create genuine diversity and genuine responsiveness to the needs of the economy and of society now and in the decades to come. I beg to move.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, which also stands in my name. I did not speak at Second Reading but I hope the Committee will indulge me. I attended nearly all of the Second Reading debate but, because I thought I would not be there at the end, I did not put my name down to speak.

I share some of the doubts that have been expressed about the Bill in other parts, but I am enthusiastic about one of its principal aims, which is what the amendment seeks to reinforce. I refer to the encouragement of diversity and innovation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has eloquently explained, and the encouragement of new entrants, not just passively but actively—letting 1,000 flowers bloom but planting 1,000 flowers as well.

I am a great believer in competition, so it is important that we do our best to bring forward new ways of doing higher education, as well as new types of courses and new locations for them, especially in vocationally relevant areas—areas that are in demand with employers and where the signal is not being transmitted well enough to students. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, it is not just a matter of opening the gate and seeing a flock of new entrants come through; starting a new university is a huge investment and there are enormous barriers to entry. You need premises, people, programmes and quite a lot of pennies. So, before taking the plunge, as the noble Baroness said, entrepreneurs will need to be given signals that the state prioritises supporting certain courses and certain disciplines. As has been said, the industrial strategy makes the case for singling out and encouraging certain things that we think will be important in the future.

The example that I would give is data science. I know somebody who, as a sideline, retrains the holders of physics PhDs as data scientists, because that makes them much more valuable to employers in the private sector. There is a huge demand for data science in business, and that is the kind of thing that perhaps it would not be immediately obvious to existing universities to supply, or indeed obvious to new entrants, who might be hard pressed for cash and so on. I think that with the right kind of encouragement from government, advised by independent expertise, the sector could benefit from this sort of duty on the Secretary of State to consider where new ideas should come from.

I am no fan of committees for committees’ sake, so I am not wedded to the exact form of the amendment. In that sense, I see it as somewhat probing—raising the issue and seeing whether the Government are interested in responding in a positive way to this suggestion.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, the nearest I have to declare as an interest is that my wife is a professor of neuroscience at Newcastle University and in receipt of EU funding, but the views expressed today are my own. I think that I am the first member of the Lords Science and Technology Select Committee to speak in the debate so far. I commend the report into these matters produced under the able chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Selborne. It contains a huge amount of interesting detail.

In his opening remarks the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said that we must not slip back in terms of being a scientific superstar. Indeed, we must go further than that and leap forward. This has to be an opportunity as well as a risk. He said that the UK is a leading scientific nation and he is quite right. In per capita terms we have twice as many universities in the world top 200 as the US and Germany. We were awarded five Nobel prizes this year, more than anyone else. Admittedly all of the winners are living in America, but that rather makes the point that science is a global activity and not a regional one. If you go into a science lab today, you are likely to find a group of people as diverse as in the changing room of a Premier League team, and probably more so.

I want to concentrate my remarks on three issues: the questions of talent, of finance and of regulation. It is vital that universities should be able to attract talent from around the world. In this respect it is key that the Government should recognise and say explicitly that there is a very big difference between public opinion about skilled migration and unskilled migration. At the moment I do not think that they have made that distinction clear enough. The polling evidence is very clear. The public actually approve of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and doctors and so on coming into the country just as strongly as they disapprove of less skilled migration. At this quite early stage there is nothing to stop the Government from publishing plans about what kind of expedited talent visas they would make available to people all around the world to come here. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, made this point, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, and I agree with them.

South Africa, for example, has a critical skills programme which automatically fast-tracks people who come from the 500 top institutions in the world. I do not know whether that is the right way of doing it, but it is at least the kind of thing we need to be talking about, because this is a golden opportunity to relax high-skilled migration barriers and to discriminate on the basis of talent rather than nationality, which is surely what we should be doing.

On finance, Horizon 2020 has been mentioned on a number of occasions. I would correct something that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said: we do not have to be in the EEA to be a member of Horizon 2020. Fifteen countries are members of Horizon 2020 that are not in the European Union. Two of them, Tunisia and Israel, are not even in Europe. There are others if you count the Caucasus; I do not know whether that counts as the continent of Europe. The point is, although they are so-called associate members, the press release that announces their joining this programme says that they will be on exactly the same terms as members of the European Union. Indeed, the country with the most project co-ordinators per capita leading projects in Horizon 2020 is not an EU country—it is Iceland. There should be no bar to us participating fully in Horizon 2020, as long as we contribute. Universities need to do a better job reassuring their employees about this.

On regulation, as the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said, we are underfunding science and research in this country, but that is largely because private, rather than public, funding is lower in this country. In that respect, the degree to which European regulation, such as the clinical trials directive, which the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, mentioned, has held back sectors such as biotechnology in particular is really quite striking. The regius professor of medicine at Oxford, Sir John Bell, has gone on record making this very clear. There has been application of the precautionary principle in the Commission and the Parliament of the European Union that goes much further than elsewhere in the world, which has meant that we have, in effect, held innovation to a higher standard than existing technologies. Indeed, we have emphasised the risks of innovation more than the benefits.

There are huge technological opportunities for universities and research in the world, in particular online with international campuses and things like that. We must grasp opportunities to explore these possibilities in a post-Brexit world.