Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Lipsey

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

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, the simple answer, which I think I made clear in Committee and just now, is that this is for students: the focus is on the students, and we want to keep it that way. We are very clear about that. That is not to say that we did not listen carefully in Committee to the views on this matter raised initially by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, but we are adamant that the main focus—yes, the focus can be a little broader—is on students. We are sure about that.

The newly appointed chair of the Office for Students, Sir Michael Barber, reflected in his evidence to the Education Committee that the Office for Students title is no accident. He emphasised that the student interest must be at the heart of the new office.

In respect of the alternative name proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, I cannot agree that,

“Office for Higher Education Standards”,

would be a suitable name. As we have seen during debates “standards” has a specific meaning within the sector and is only part of what the Office for Students will be responsible for. Noble Lords have frequently expressed strong views during debate that the standards used by the OfS should be those owned by the sector—a point that we have considered carefully, and amendments have been tabled to address this.

With great respect not only to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, but to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, it would be highly misleading to refer to standards in the name of the regulator, and I think other noble Lords in this short debate have acknowledged that. It would imply that they are the main emphasis of its remit. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I am very tempted to seek the opinion of the House because I think the Minister might find himself having to be his own Teller, given the unanimity in the debate so far. However, there is unanimity in the House that this title is wrong but there is not complete unanimity on all sides that the alternative title proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is the right one. I shall therefore take this away and think some more before Third Reading. I hope that the Minister might yet have a conversion in view of the powerful arguments levied against him and the weakness of those he put forward, and that he will propose a new title. If not, of course, we will have the option of dividing the House at Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Lipsey

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I answer my noble friend by saying that much of this has been addressed in all the consultations that have taken place. We believe that we have come up with the right approach. The consultation included a number of ways in which the ratings could be used and we have come up with this approach. One idea proposed a rating system with 10 criteria and another proposed four. We believe that this is the right approach, having consulted the sector.

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this very good debate. I also thank noble Lords who resisted taking part, because I will not be terribly late for my favourite event of the year, the Gold Medal Showcase at Trinity Laban, where our musicians compete at a level you would not believe if you were not in the room.

First, I want to refer back to the debate that I was having with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, where there was a contribution from my noble friend Lady Blackstone. It became practically academic at one point and I am reminded of Henry Kissinger’s remarks about why academics’ debates generate so much heat. The answer is because there is so little at stake. There is much more at stake in this one than in that one but, being of an academic disposition, as is the noble Lord, Lord Willets, I did want to refresh my memory of the ONS report. He pointed out that the quote I used included the word “raw”. He used that to suggest that it was not as critical as I thought. However, the ONS said it straight; it said that “the differences between institutions at the overall level are small and are not significant”. No doubt we can debate further in the common room afterwards.

This debate about the ONS and the RSS, seems to lend powerful force to some of the amendments in my grouping this afternoon. One of them calls for a statistical inquiry into the validity of the NSS and the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and I could spend happy hours giving evidence to the statistical inquiry. In the end, this is not a matter of opinion on whether it is a good survey, it is a matter of fact. Facts need to be established and we should not be moving into a lower world where expert opinion no longer counts. That is the route to the forms of degeneration we are seeing throughout the world.

If I might be allowed one more minute, I should like to address the remarks of the Minister. We have been listening to the Minister throughout this debate and I have found his remarks this evening very helpful. Indeed, he made two crucial and valuable points. First, he made it perfectly clear that the submissions made by institutions—I hope I am summarising correctly—and the general case that their teaching is good, is more important than the metric based on the NSS. This is of great importance and deals substantially with many of the fears that have been bugging me. It is very easy for numbers to trump words, because they seem concrete, real and true and words can seem less so, but what he has said—I am sure the panel will take it very seriously—is an extraordinarily important breakthrough.

I am also glad about what the Minister said—though he was a little elliptical—about the distribution of awards between gold, silver and bronze. It will be very helpful if the number of institutions that fall into the bronze category is smaller than has sometimes been suggested and is confined to those institutions where there are well-attested problems. We do not want a fifth of our universities categorised as bronze, shunned by students in later years and deprived of the extra resources they need to improve their performance. If a few outliers are so categorised, so be it. That may be necessary for a successful TEF, but it is important that the numbers be kept down and I took the Minister to hint that they were.

There is one more thing that I would have liked him to say—and I do not mean in my fantasy world, where everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and I said was made real. I would have liked him to say that, in view of the concerns about the soundness of the TEF, we are going to postpone—not end—the link between the TEF and fees, but there are some weeks between now and Report. There is some time for bodies such as the ONS to reflect on our debate this evening and perhaps give us further advice on their opinions of the metrics. There is also some time for Ministers to understand that, when they show flexibility on how this policy should be implemented, it is not weakness; it is strength, because it will lead to a stronger TEF that works in a way that every noble Lord who has spoken wants it to work. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Lipsey

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, before I start, the Committee might be relieved to hear that my contribution will be somewhat shorter than previous contributions were. I start off, though, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for his contribution to this short debate. I know how personally committed he is to ensuring that our higher education system is delivering for current and future students, and I value his insight.

This Bill sets out a series of higher education reforms which will improve quality and choice for students, encourage competition and allow for consistent and fair oversight of the sector. To keep pace with the significant change we have seen in the system over the past 25 years, where it is now students who fund their studies, we need a higher education regulator that is focused on protecting students’ interests, promoting fair access and ensuring value for money for their investment in higher education. I hope that noble Lords will recognise that the creation of the Office for Students is key to these principles. The OfS will, for the first time, have a statutory duty focused on the interests of students when using the range of powers given to it by the Bill. As Professor Quintin McKellar, vice-chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire, said in his evidence in the other place,

“the Government’s idea to have an office for students that would primarily be interested in student wellbeing and the student experience is a good thing”.—[Official Report, Commons, Higher Education and Research Bill Committee, 6/9/16; col. 22.]

It is our view that changing the name of the organisation to the “Office for Higher Education” rather implies that the market regulator is an organisation that will answer to higher education providers alone rather than one which is focused on the needs of students. That goes against what we are trying to achieve through these reforms. Our intention to put the student interest at the heart of our regulatory approach to higher education goes beyond just putting it in the title of the body. The Government are committed to a strong student voice on the board of the OfS, and that is why we put forward an amendment in the other place to ensure that at least one of the ordinary members must have experience of representing or promoting the interests of students.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, mentioned that she thought that students were opposed to these reforms that we are bringing forward. I would like to put a bit more balance to that, because there is a wide range of student views about the reforms. There is some strong support for elements of the reforms as well as, I admit, some more publicised criticism—for example, supporting improvement in teaching quality and introducing alternative funding products for students. As I have already mentioned, we made that change at Report stage to make sure that there is greater student representation on the OfS.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised a point about the role of the CMA. To reassure him, we will set out more detail later in Committee about the relationship between the OfS and the CMA.

As a regulator, the OfS will build some level of relationship with every registered provider, and one of its duties will be to monitor and report on the financial sustainability of certain registered providers. However, this does not change the fact that the new market regulator should have students at its heart, and we therefore believe that the name of the organisation needs to reflect that. For this reason, and with some regret in withdrawing from potentially receiving the bottle of champagne, I respectfully ask the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, but I have to say that if we are going to go on like this, it is going to be very hard pounding. I have great respect for the Minister, and I know he has the interests of education at heart. All he had to say was that the Government are prepared to consider alternative titles before we come back to this on Report and if we can find one better than OfS, they will be happy to consider it and we would all have gone home—if we can get a taxi—happy. Instead, he defended this with some arguments that I do not feel the force of.

The Minister said that if it was called the “Office for Higher Education” it would mean that it was acting in the interests of higher education providers only. Does Ofgas operate just in the interests of gas providers? Of course it does not. These regulators do not work in that way. “Office for Higher Education” is a wholly neutral term and means that it will be active in the interests of all those involved in every way in higher education and will not be just a representative of a particular group.

Incidentally, the Minister said the OfS would be representing a particular group and would be representing students because it is about fairer access. The whole point is that, at the time when people are trying to access universities, they are not students at all, or at least they are only school pupils. That is a very good object for a body of this kind, but is not one that can be said to be in the interests of students.

I really would ask the Minister to think again between now and Report. If he is not able to do so, we will take the winner of the champagne and put it to a vote on Report. I hope the House will support me, because if things like this become controversial, in a political sense, across the Floor of the House, I am afraid we are going to find the Bill very hard to digest. However, I beg to leave to withdraw the amendment.