Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, draw attention to academic interests in the register. Most importantly, I have the privilege of being the chancellor of the University of Essex, and before that I was the chancellor of Oxford Brookes University for some years. As little more than a maiden myself, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, on a thoroughly gracious maiden speech. I also thank the Minister from the other place, Mr Johnson, for his characteristic courtesy and fortitude in attending this debate for so long. I rather wish that a seat could be found for him, because I hate to see him standing uncomfortably for so long, rather like a man in the dock—I hope that it does not feel too much like that.

This debate—your Lordships are now only part of the way through the marathon—represents this House at its best. It has been a rigorous, if good-willed, debate thus far, and based on so much experience and expertise that I hope that the noble Lords opposite on the Government Benches will listen. I agree with so much of what has been said, but of course it has not yet been said by me. I will try not to be overly repetitive.

In my previous life, I tried to wean myself off the use of certain adjectives. One of them was “Orwellian” and another was “Kafkaesque”. I failed to find an adjective named after a woman writer. I will exercise similar self-restraint in your Lordships’ House. However, the temptations do come. Many of your Lordships will have inboxes like mine, which groan with the depth and breadth of concern in our world-class higher education sector about the Bill. It is quite an achievement for a policy to combine both unnecessary authoritarianism with dangerous degrees of deregulation. That is quite the feat that the Bill appears to achieve.

We go yet further down the road of marketising higher education, which has been the greatest gift in my own life. We treat students too much like customers, and not enough—as my noble friend Lord Stevenson said—like scholars. We prioritise competition in the sector over collaboration. We ignore perhaps too much, and at our cost, the social good that higher education provides at a local, regional, national and international level. The biggest concerns that run through this legislation are about independence and autonomy on the one hand and excellence, in all its richness, on the other.

The University of Essex is one of over 50 pre-1992 universities that are governed by royal charter. The royal charters are an enormous source of pride, protection and international prestige. I have heard nothing to explain why they should come under threat from this new all-powerful Office for Students—or indeed from the Secretary of State. The Privy Council seems a perfectly appropriate custodian in this country of who may or may not call themselves a university. I do not understand the need for the change. So noble Lords have their work cut out on the Bill, and there is much that they could do to greatly improve it: making sure that there are appropriate checks and balances on this Office for Students and the Secretary of State; ensuring that the Secretary of State sets standards; removing the power of the Office for Students to validate degrees; protecting the autonomy of the research councils, and so on.

I will add one further thought—perhaps your Lordships will consider it at an appropriate moment during the passage of the Bill. The Bill would be an appropriate place to provide that all refugees and asylum-seekers in this country ought to be treated as home students.