Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

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

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to all those who have spoken in this informed and erudite debate. We have heard expertise from all around the Chamber, with views across the spectrum. I join in the congratulations and welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg. I wish to start by thanking the Ministers, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe; the Higher Education Minister, Jo Johnson; Sir John Kingman; the Bill team; and the copious number of outside organisations for their helpful briefings. My pile of briefings has risen so that I can barely see across my desk. We shall aim to take account of them all.

As we have heard, despite the time and patience of the Government, this House still has very significant concerns with the scope and nature of the changes proposed in the Bill. We recognise the need for updated legislation and we welcome parts of the Bill, but we question the wisdom of imposing such major revisions on a world-beating sector, which is also having to grapple with unwelcome outcomes from Brexit. There are real-life concerns over the status of EU nationals, staff and students, where the Government’s stance is less then helpful, as we have heard.

We hope to use the Bill to argue yet again for measures to take international students out of the immigration figures, as we heard so eloquently from the noble Lords, Lord Patten, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Hannay, and others. It is damaging, counterproductive and unreal to categorise time-limited students as immigrants, much valued as they are, but it is closely followed by the need to reduce immigration numbers. Brexit concerns also hover over research funding, where funds and collaboration from the EU play a significant part in the success of projects.

As the 67th speaker, and therefore the post-graveyard slot, it is unlikely I shall have anything new to share with the House, but I will draw together some, but not necessarily all, of the issues where these Benches will seek clarity and amendments. Along with so many of your Lordships, we believe that the autonomy of universities—or “higher education providers”—is a factor that has contributed to their undoubted international success. Anything that erodes that autonomy is unlikely to have a positive effect, so we shall be challenging the extraordinary powers of the Office for Students to create and disband providers and to remove their royal charters. We shall be looking for strengthened checks and balances to match the unprecedented responsibilities of the OfS.

The Bill makes it easier for more profit-making organisations to move into the market primarily for financial gain, which could see a repeat of scandals at private colleges in the US. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, apparently if you are seven feet six you are guaranteed a good degree. This is not a well-known academic criterion. There may be benefit in competition—which is already happening, so the legislation is catching up—but proper safeguards are needed to ensure that high standards and quality are maintained. The thresholds for university status must be robust.

We wish to see better defined provision for adult and part-time learners. We have heard support for lifelong learning and part-timers from the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell, Lady Rebuck and Lady Dean, and others, and for better provision for students with disability, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Addington. We shall explore whether universities should have an explicit duty of care towards students and staff, with particular regard for mental health problems, which can so very easily be ignored. Pastoral resources should be essential to a good university, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned.

Where in the Bill is the encouragement of degree apprentices and vocational degrees, which provide essential skills that will help to meet the skills shortages? I suggest to the noble Lords, Lord Hennessy and Lord Sawyer, that we need plumbers as well as poets.

There is little to encourage disadvantaged learners in the Bill. We need to build on the success of programmes such as Aimhigher and the Office for Fair Access, which have had really good results in opening access, but we need to do more to open opportunities to those whose horizons would otherwise be limited. We shall be scrutinising the Bill for more open systems while safeguarding standards for all providers, so that a degree from a British university retains the credibility and respect which universities have earned for their students over the centuries. This can be done while promoting diversity of learners, of staff, and of programmes of study, even the very small specialist subjects. The aim should be for the whole university experience to be a positive one that broadens minds and encourages aspiration in a community of scholars.

As the Bill covers the well-being of universities, we support calls for the repeal of the statutory Prevent duty in universities. We further urge a wider review of the Government’s Prevent strategy. Freedom of speech is essential for academic thinking to remain cutting-edge, for uncomfortable ideas to be explored and challenged —we heard on that from the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, but we also heard of the incident mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, which is totally unacceptable. There are legal safeguards, but universities should provide a safe space to challenge extreme views, to confront through reason and not to ban.

As has been said, although the teaching excellence framework does not feature directly in this Bill, its impact does. We, too, deplore the branding of universities into gold, silver and bronze, thus displaying to the world our national assessment of weaknesses on the most dubious of metrics. Measuring things takes time, resource and money, all of which could be more profitably put to use in promoting academic excellence. The proposed metrics are particularly detrimental to the arts. The quality of teaching cannot be so simplistically measured and, dare I say, speaking as a former teacher, some students are more readily open to learning than others, which may say more about the students than the teachers. As was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, students perhaps regard themselves as customers. They may not be customers, but we certainly hope that they will be voters. Therefore, we support the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for student voter registration.

It is true that, for decades, university teaching has been regarded as secondary to university research. Anything the Bill can do to raise the standards and status of teaching would of course be welcome, but we shall look carefully at whether the measures in the Bill may have unintended consequences and not achieve the desired effect. Universities have well-respected teaching departments, which could certainly be used to raise standards of proficiency within their own organisations as well as within schools and colleges. We would seek ways in the Bill to encourage rather than to brand. We know that there are high levels of job insecurity, particularly among more junior academic staff. We have heard today of zero-hours contracts, of academics needing multiple jobs just to make a living and of pressures which can do nothing to improve the quality of their teaching. Higher levels of job security and access to supportive teacher training would do far more to raise standards than harmful and simplistic branding.

What about the “precious symbiosis” of teaching and research—what a lovely phrase? Teaching and research go hand in glove. It is perhaps unfortunate that teaching and research are now found in different government departments, which will surely make it more difficult to integrate the two.

On UKRI, we recognise that there is room to improve the commercial profit from the UK’s pioneering research, which Innovate UK was set up to foster. While fully supporting that aspect of research, we shall look carefully at the remit of UKRI to ensure that the proposals do not undermine pure research, which may have no immediate financial returns but may prove in time of immense value to national life. Concerns have been expressed about the limitations on the commercial work of Innovate UK if it is to share its governance with the research councils, but we welcome the enhanced funding which UKRI has attracted from the Government and which appears to show the Government’s support for this establishment. We look forward to hearing more about how the Government intend to ensure that both these valuable aspects of research will flourish under UKRI.

I hope that we can insert post-legislative scrutiny into the Bill to ensure that any unintended consequences do not persist far into the future. I assure the Government that we on these Benches will work constructively on the Bill. I hope that the detailed scrutiny which is the role of this House will enable beneficial amendments and assurances so that our higher education and research continue to earn worldwide respect. Meanwhile, I look forward to the Minister’s reply to this exhaustive, and exhausting, Second Reading.