Higher Education and Research Bill

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I support the proposition. When we discussed the matter in Committee, the Minister said that he saw no reason why there should not be a wider range of penalties at the disposal of the Office for Students. It would be very helpful to have that confirmed in the Bill, otherwise there is the possibility of challenge of the OfS exceeding its powers if it moved to restrict the number of students in a way that would seem on many occasions entirely appropriate.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, expressed these concerns in Committee, and I listened carefully to her very short speech just now. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson, also spoke in Committee on the subject. This is the concern that the OfS would not have appropriate powers to restrict student enrolment at a registered higher education provider in the event of a breach of registration conditions, and would instead be compelled to either impose a monetary penalty or deregister the provider, both of which would have a negative impact on a provider’s enrolled students. It is our intention that such sanctions would be imposed only in exceptional circumstances. The OfS will operate a risk-based regulatory system, whereby any regulatory action is to be proportionate to the nature of the breach of a registration condition. The OfS will have an escalating suite of actions open to it, ranging from compliance measures, such as agreeing a support strategy with a provider or directing that certain actions should be taken, through to imposing specific ongoing registration conditions, and finally to sanctions.

The imposition of a student number control is precisely the sort of regulatory action that the OfS can use under the powers already contained in Clause 7, which allows the OfS to impose “specific ongoing conditions”. Imposing a student number control would not be to the detriment of students already studying with a provider and would help to ensure that new students who were subsequently enrolled would enjoy high-quality, suitably resourced teaching and learning. It is clearly not our intention that the OfS de-register institutions or impose monetary penalties, apart from in exceptional circumstances that merit such an intervention. We anticipate that such action would rarely be in the best interests of the student, the provider or the taxpayer. We have considered whether it would be appropriate to provide a specific power in the Bill for the OfS to impose student number controls. On balance, however, we believe it is unnecessary, as the Bill already provides the OfS with the powers necessary to limit student numbers where appropriate. With that explanation, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

58: Clause 24, page 15, line 27, at end insert—
“( ) Where there are one or more sector-recognised standards, an assessment under this section of the standards applied—(a) must relate only to the standards applied in respect of matters for which there are sector-recognised standards, and(b) must assess those standards against sector-recognised standards only.”