Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Giddens

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, before I address this group of amendments, I wish to respond to the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to whom I listened carefully. We have worked well together in the dim and distant past on one or two major Bills. I echo his thoughts in saying that that worked well. I hope that we will continue to work well together during the passage of this Bill. However, I remind him that this is only day 2 in Committee. I also remind him and the Committee that my aim at this stage of the Bill—I hope that I have expressed this—is to listen very closely and carefully to all the views expressed and to reflect on them. I hope the Committee will take the general spirit of what I am saying in the right way, to the extent that I have already written some letters of clarification following Monday’s debate, which have already been passed to noble Lords. I hope that we can continue in that spirit. I hope that reassures the noble Lord that the Government are taking seriously the points that have been raised. I address the amendments in this group in that spirit of listening.

I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss the vital role of the new Director for Fair Access and Participation, and, importantly, how he will operate within the Office for Students. I share noble Lords’ desire to ensure that this role is appropriately defined in legislation, given the fundamental importance of improving widening access and participation in higher education. I pick up an interesting point that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised about access statistics. It is interesting to note that the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education is up from 13.6% in 2009-10 to 19.5% this year, which is a record high. In our latest guidance to the Director of Fair Access dated February last year, we acknowledge that selective institutions, including Oxbridge and the Russell group, already do much to widen access. However, we are convinced that more could, and should, be done, and have asked the Director of Fair Access to push hard to see that more progress is made.

While it has always been our clear intention that the OfS would give responsibility for activities in this area to the Director for Fair Access and Participation, we listened to persuasive arguments that this should be set out more clearly in legislation. We have now tabled a number of amendments to make this clearer on the face of the Bill. To confirm the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, these government amendments seek to clarify that the director will be responsible for overseeing the OfS’s performance on access and participation and reporting on that performance to the OfS board. In other words, it is the role of the DFAP to ensure that these obligations are met. In addition, our amendments confirm that the director is responsible for performing the access and participation functions, plus any other functions which are formally delegated by the OfS. Amendment 16 makes it clear that the director will report to the OfS board on performance in this vital area.

In addition, we are ensuring that the legislation makes it clear that if, for any reason, the OfS does not delegate the access and participation functions, it must set out in its annual report both the reasons why and the length of time that these functions were not delegated. This signifies that we envisage this function not being delegated to the DFAP to be very much the exception and not the rule.

My noble friend Lord Willetts mentioned Professor Les Ebdon, the current Director of Fair Access, who has welcomed these amendments, saying:

“These changes will be crucial in helping the Government to find a high calibre Director for Fair Access and Participation, who can challenge universities and colleges to make further, faster progress towards their targets, while acting as a high profile champion for fair access issues”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made the point that the director must be a senior person with a high profile in the sector and a senior level of respect and credibility, and she is right. We will launch a recruitment process for the director shortly. We agree that it must indeed be a senior figure who commands respect in the sector. I also assure noble Lords that there are arrangements to call providers to account where they are considered to be failing to meet their access and participation plans. Sanctions include the power for the OfS to refuse to renew an access and participation plan, to impose monetary penalties and, in extreme cases, to suspend or deregister providers.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Blackstone, raised issues about the DFAP’s reporting requirements. I reassure the Committee that the work of the DFAP will not be separate from the work of the OfS, so its work will be reported to Parliament as part of the OfS’s overall accountability requirements. It would not be consistent with integrating the role into the OfS to require separate reporting from a single member of the OfS when the organisation would be governed collectively by all members. Clause 36 allows the Secretary of State to direct the Office for Students to provide reports on issues relating to equality of opportunity in access and participation.

I listened carefully to the interesting remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about bright pupils from low-income backgrounds who may become great scientists. I am happy to write to him on that, and we also agree that this is an important issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, asked what advice the Government are taking from providers that have a good record on access and participation. Again, I reassure her that the Green Paper that preceded the Bill received over 600 responses, including from institutions with good track records on access and participation. This has been supplemented with follow-up meetings, and ongoing engagement with the sector directly and through HEFCE and OFFA.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked what we would do to support care leavers to enter higher education—again, another good point. Care leavers are a target group in the Director of Fair Access’s guidance to universities in writing their access agreements. Support for care leavers and access agreements has grown considerably over the years, and around 80% of access agreements include specific action to support care leavers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked about a student’s progression both during and after their time at university. It is right that the access and participation statements cover the whole student life cycle for students from disadvantaged backgrounds; that is our intention in extending the coverage of access and participation plans from just access. Access is meaningful only if entrants go on to complete their studies—which is rather obvious—and progress to a good job or to further study.

With those responses in mind, I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 14, and I will move the government amendments.

[Lord Giddens]

Will anybody be responsible for monitoring wider trends in labour markets in the context of higher education and integrating that with issues of access? If you do not do that, access is relatively meaningless. You cannot simply leave it to the Treasury. Which office will do that? Where is the forward planning in all this?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I understand that the Director for Fair Access and Participation will have the right to find these statistics, which will assist him in his role. I cannot envisage a situation where he would not wish to be aware of the bigger picture to carry out his role effectively.