Higher Education Students: Statutory Duty of Care

Andrew Western Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert. I thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for compellingly introducing the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee.

I first became aware of today’s debate by chance, just a few hours after meeting with my constituents, the parents of Naseeb Chuhan, who took his own life at the end of his first year at Leeds Beckett University in June 2016. They have campaigned tirelessly ever since to secure a statutory legal duty of care for students in higher education. I can appreciate that this is a complex matter—my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) set out some of the reasons why—but it is on their behalf that I want to support the aspirations of the petition, and to do so by sharing a little of Naseeb’s story.

There were clear signs that Naseeb was struggling. At the time of his death he had eight outstanding pieces of university work, yet it appears that no welfare checks were made to follow up on his missing work or his attendance issues. The day before his death, he visited the university wellbeing service, where he was honest and up-front about how he was feeling. Naseeb’s parents have looked into that interaction and are clear that, in their view, the service failed to adequately identify, assess and respond to risk.

Following Naseeb’s death, his parents sought to make a complaint about the university’s handling of his case and its lack of effective pastoral care and support for him. They discovered that complaints by parents are not routinely accepted by universities without the consent of the student concerned. In fact, this is discretionary, despite consent being impossible in such tragic circumstances as the student has already passed away. That is an absurd position for grieving parents to be in and is a result of the lack of regulation in this area. There simply must be a statutory duty of care placed on universities to support their students properly with any mental health issues that they face—a duty of care that already exists for universities regarding their staff and for under-18s in higher education.

Naseeb’s parents have since produced a report, which I have circulated to a number of parliamentary colleagues, calling for a series of changes in the light of Naseeb’s death. Specifically regarding universities and student wellbeing services, the report makes the following recommendations: university and student wellbeing services should be accountable, with an independent complaints procedure accessible by parents automatically if a student dies; universities should monitor and follow up student attendance and performance to check on the wellbeing of anybody who is struggling with these issues; university staff should be trained in suicide risk and prevention, along with mental health; students should have a clear pathway if in academic crisis; universities should work with coroners and keep records about student suicide; student wellbeing services should have training on suicide and keep appropriate records.

Those recommendations should not be too much to ask for. They are reasonable and proportionate and would almost certainly fall within the requirements of a statutory legal duty of care of universities to their students, which I why I am so supportive of the petition that we are here to debate.

I note the Government’s response to the petition, but I must say that, much like my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), I find myself considerably frustrated by the response that was submitted along with the details of the petition and today’s debate. The response appears to fall somewhere between the “nothing to see here” approach—that this would be a disproportionate response as suicide rates among students are relatively low—and the “why regulate when this happens anyway?” argument.

If it happens anyway, what is the problem with regulating existing practice? Of course, in Naseeb’s case—and, from talking to other parents in similar situations, I suspect in the case of many students—this is not what happens in practice. It is for that reason that I hope the Minister will listen to today’s debate and respond positively to the arguments made. For that reason also, I thank everybody who signed the petition, and pay tribute to Naseeb’s parents for their campaigning in the face of such devastating personal tragedy.