Higher Education

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, who speaks with such insight, enthusiasm and, I have to say, speed on this important topic.

Before I move on to the speech I had prepared, I want to say something in response to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, which was very interesting and made points that we often hear. I was reflecting on my experience. I was the first person in my family to go to university—not just my immediate family, but my entire extended family. I took 20 years to pay back the debt I accrued. I have never had a job that would show up in an employment survey as a graduate job, but I learned things that have stayed with me and supported me throughout my life: how to read, how to analyse, how to understand a set of data, how to be sceptical, and how to appreciate how much knowledge there is out there in the world that I do not know. I learned so many things that will serve me throughout my life. I only wish that my own two children would go to university and have the same experience, but I am having no luck in persuading them just yet.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for securing this debate. It really could not be more timely. He described a more arid future, as he put it, and the wasteful negativity that we have too often heard, I am afraid even from Ministers in the party opposite. As the need to grow our economy becomes ever more urgent, our universities are playing a crucial role. Universities could add even more value if they had a Government committed to working with them, not, as sometimes feels the case, against them. We have had a string of Bills, Ministers and appointments determined to involve universities in and, as I see it, co-opt them into culture wars. We have had the freedom of speech Act, the economic activity of public bodies Bill, the attitude to overseas students that we have heard referred to in this debate, and now the Science Minister using UK taxpayer money to settle legal battles after calling academics “extremists”. None of this helps harness the power of our higher education sector, which can do so much to help the UK move forward. Sadly, there has been no coherent strategy for this for years now.

I declare an interest as Chancellor of Teesside University, which is a northern powerhouse all on its own. It is global university based in Middlesbrough. It contributes just short of £148 million in GVA to the region each year, has over 2,000 apprentices on courses designed to fill regional skills gaps, and over 200 successful business start-ups, employing almost 800 people, have grown out of our Launchpad programme: we are doing our bit. Teesside University is not just a powerful engine of social mobility for individuals, which it absolutely is; it is an anchor institution for the region. Its mission is to transform lives and economies. It innovates, bringing new degrees that should be valued by anyone who claims to understand the modern UK economy, in areas such as games design. It is agile enough to try something new and stable enough to stick with it while it grows into one of the fastest, most exciting industries in the world—great jobs, global opportunities and a £7 billion a year industry. It is not just Teesside, although obviously we are the best at this; the same can be said for many other institutions up and down the country that are future-facing, innovative, entrepreneurial and delivering the 11 million extra graduates we will need to fill jobs in the UK by 2035.

When I was very much younger—about 25—I was at an event in Trimdon Labour Club where Tony Blair spoke. I am not going to do a Blair impression, though I can. He was talking about higher education, China and the UK as a global competitor. He said, “Look, the thing we all need to understand is that they are educating their population. They are no longer poor people riding around on bikes. The UK needs to lift its sights and invest in education if we are to compete on the world stage”. Those words are as true now as they were then, and have stuck with me ever since. We have a huge advantage in our long-established, high-quality higher education sector. What we need is a Government who recognise this strength and work with the sector to support and grow it. It is a sector that, like Teesside University, transforms lives and economies, harnesses the knowledge to tackle the world’s challenges, and will work in partnership with a Government who value it as the asset that it is.