Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my declaration of interests in the register. It is not my intention to repeat the excellent contributions that have already been made, but I want to put on record my commendation for Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor of what some unwisely call the university in which I am involved “the other university in Sheffield”. Chris Husbands’ work is of an excellent quality and I hope that we will be able to build on it in the years to come.

However, I will repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said in relation to what happens after the general election and ensuring that nothing is done, particularly in relation to the evaluation and the ratings, that damages in any way the enormous contribution of the higher education sector in this country both to the well-being of students and to our economy and our standing in the world. There can be no doubt after the considerable debates that we have had that there is a deep commitment on the part of the Minister in this House to improving teaching and to recognising the critical role of the teaching excellence framework in ensuring that comparator with the research excellence framework.

It is worth putting on the record at this very late stage that there is still a major tendency to value what will pull in major grants for research, even when the research may be of doubtful value, rather than to balance the commitment to high-quality teaching and learning with the REF. That is why I have expressed to Jo Johnson, the Minister in the Commons, what I repeat today, which is my support for the endeavour to put teaching very much at the top of the agenda.

I commend the Government on having listened. This Bill has been an exemplar of how we can work across the political divide both in this House and beyond. I will refer now to speculation in the more reliable media. I hope that no one will be punished in any way for having been prepared to listen and to debate. The idea that a Minister should not be able to express a view internally within the Government is a disgrace. I do not wish to bring in party-political matters, but I know that some MPs are thought to call the Prime Minister “Mummy”. I remember Mummy telling me that she had heard me once, heard me twice and did not want to hear me again—but you cannot conduct government on that basis. Therefore, whatever happens on 8 June, I hope that we will move forward on the understanding that a spirit of co-operation creates better legislation that is more easily implementable and receives a wider welcome than would otherwise be the case, and thus achieves its objective.

I thank the noble Viscount the Minister for repeating the words of Jo Johnson in relation to the move as rapidly as possible to subject rather than institutional comparators. This is an important part of what we were debating on what was Amendment 72, which morphed into Amendment 23 and is back with us in a different form today.

I also want to say, as a new Member of this House, how impressed I have been by the Cross-Bench contributions. I will echo the commendations made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, rather than go through them again. Ministers and civil servants on this Bill have shown that they are of the highest possible calibre by being prepared to listen and respond, and I thank them for that.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may associate these Benches with the eloquent words we have already heard. It is inevitable that there will be a measure of disappointment that not all of your Lordships’ wisdom has been accepted unequivocally by the other House, but I think we can all agree that we have made immense strides in this Bill, and we are deeply appreciative of the way in which Ministers have listened and come forward with proposals. Perhaps I may pick up one thing about which we are particularly pleased, which is that there will be a delay in implementing this while a review is carried out. Some really key measures set out in the Bill need more reflection to see whether they are actually the right path to tread, so we appreciate the fact that the delay has been built in. Again, we appreciate the measures that the Government have taken to come towards us on these issues.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, first, I should declare an interest as a full-time Academic Council member of King’s College, London. I had not expected to speak in this part of the debate and I am afraid that I will be speaking again later. But, since I am on my feet, I would like to say that I agree with all noble Lords who have expressed their appreciation of how the Government have listened to opinions and to the House generally. I, too, feel that we have come a long way. In this context, I will bring back a couple of points that were made in the earlier debates by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and by me in the context of amendments that we had tabled. Since the noble Duke is unable to be here today, I will make them briefly on behalf of us both.

Along with almost all noble Lords here, we strongly welcome the delay in implementing the link with fees—here I endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lord Kerslake. I am delighted to hear that we are moving quickly towards a position where we will have subject-level rather than institution-level assessments. However, one reason we became so concerned about the TEF is that putting a label on an institution is potentially very damaging to it.

One thing that has been rather an eye-opener for me is the extent to which—perhaps inevitably and as someone who teaches public management I should not be surprised—the “sector” is, in the view of the Government, the organised universities and Universities UK, and how few good mechanisms there are for the Bill team and the department to get the voices of students, as opposed to occasionally that of the National Union of Students. Students have been desperately concerned about this, because they are in a world where they pay fees and where the reputation of their institutions is so important. They have been worried about and deeply opposed to anything that puts a single label on them. This single national ranking caused many of us concern.

I will say a couple of things that I hope the incoming Secretary of State will bear in mind. First, as others have alluded to, we have a pilot going on and a system of grades that is out there. I fully understand that that is under way and there are enormous lessons to be learned from it. However, I hope very much that, after the election, whoever the Government may be will think hard about how they use that information, how they publish it, and whether they are in any sense obliged to come forward with the type of single-rank national league table that has caused so much anxiety to students. That is of great concern and it is hard to see how it serves the purpose, also expressed in the current Conservative manifesto, of preserving the reputation of our great university sector.

The other thing, on which I do not have any particular inspiration but about which I would love the incoming Government to think, is how to widen out their contacts with not just the organised sector and Universities UK but the academics and students who are really what the sector is about. We have great universities not because we have activist managerial vice-chancellors but because they are autonomous in large measure internally as well as vis-à-vis the state. That has been of real concern to me. Since we are going to have an Office for Students, it would be very good if, post the election, we could make it genuinely an office for students.

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[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I am very grateful to the Government for tabling Commons Amendments 15A and 15B and put on record my specific thanks to the Ministers—the honourable Jo Johnson and Chris Skidmore—along with their officials, for their time and willingness to find a compromise following the adoption by the House of my amendment on Report. This issue has been the subject of powerful advocacy by my honourable friend Paul Blomfield MP, who has done much work on the registration of students to vote, and by organisations such as Bite The Ballot and by the APPG on Democratic Participation.

The voice and views of the Association of Electoral Administrators was extremely helpful in supporting my case, and I have to say that the chief executive John Turner expressed some surprise that the Minister suggested on Report that the association did not take a positive view. UUK has been helpful to me personally, although it is divided on the issue. I trust that it will now do everything possible to ensure that all universities comply with this new obligation at the earliest opportunity.

I well understand that we all have the same aim: to enable the greatest number of students to register to vote and thus shape the future of this country so that it works for young people. It will probably not be possible for ministerial guidance to be published before the enrolment of students this autumn, so I hope that the Minister in office, whoever it is, will draw the attention of higher education institutions to the numerous examples of best practice that exist, including those cited by the Minister today. I am very proud of what Bath has done in these endeavours. I am grateful to the Minister for suggesting what will be in the guidance, which is very welcome, but could he say when the guidance is likely to be published and when the Government, if they are a Conservative Government, might expect higher education institutions to comply with the new obligation? Although we might not have another general election for perhaps five years, there will be local government elections in England in May 2018 and my fervent hope is that all HE institutions will have a system in place by then.

I reiterate my thanks and look forward to working with the next Government to ensure that the maximum number of students register to vote so that not only their voices are heard but their views are expressed in the ballot box, thus enabling them to exert maximum influence, as they should, in the democratic life of this country.

As I will not speak again on this Bill, I wish to say that I too think the way in which all Benches have co-operated and collaborated on it has been extraordinary and very welcome. To be partisan for a moment, great thanks go to my noble friend Lord Stevenson and the support he has received from Molly Critchley. I understand that my noble friend is shortly to step down from the Front Bench. He has done the most superb job, not just for the Labour Benches but for the House as a whole, and I look forward to working with him on the Back Benches.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Having been a staunch supporter of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and indeed of trying to engage young people in the importance of voting in elections—I think this is a valuable step in enabling them to get involved at university level—I am grateful for the amendment that has come in from the Government. As we are trying to involve young people in voting, would it not be wonderful if we could now think of lowering the voting age to 16 to enable more of them to do so?

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment in this Motion regarding the appeals system is greatly improved, as my noble and learned friend Lord Judge has said. I am delighted that this has happened because it is of vital importance in relation to the very serious matters that the Office for Students has the power to deal with. I thank the Ministers who have been involved. I include in this particular thanks to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, for reasons that I shall explain in a moment, and the Minister in the Commons for the very kind way in which various reactions of mine to this extremely important Bill have been handled.

I want to mention a particular matter that does not arise especially under this Motion but, from my point of view, is rather important. When the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, raised the issue of the new power to search the headquarters of higher education providers, she indicated that it was something that the higher education providers anticipated with a degree of apprehension. In response to that, my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie read out from Schedule 5 the statutory requirements before such a warrant could be granted. I have listened to a lot of the Bill without particularly talking myself, but on that occasion it occurred to me that one of the assurances the academic community was entitled to get was that those restrictions, which are quite powerful and important, would definitely be the subject of consideration by the magistrate. I suggested that the magistrate should sign a document to that effect. I got a letter almost immediately, which is still on the website, to say that such a thing was unheard of.

It is 20 years since I handed over with confidence my responsibilities for this part of what is now the Ministry of Justice to my successor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, so it is a very long time since I dealt with this particular matter directly. Still, when I got that response, I thought, “Well, in that case the thing to do is to alter the words of the warrant to make it clear that the warrant’s signature carries that with it”. That was objected to for all sorts of reasons, as your Lordships may remember, and some of them were addressed by my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham on Report. I felt rather strongly about it, as he recognised, and he kindly said the Government would consider it further before Report, giving me an opportunity, which otherwise I would not have had, to raise the matter on Report.

I was still very insistent on this, because I could not see any objection to it. I am particularly obliged to the Minister in the Commons, Mr Johnson, for arranging at the last minute for me to have a chance to deal directly with the Ministry of Justice, from which the objections to my amendments were coming. That afternoon, I was able to meet the official in that part of the Ministry of Justice for which, as I said, long ago I had responsibility. He eventually told me that in fact, the procedure for dealing with warrants had now been altered by order of the Lord Chief Justice, particularly in criminal cases so that, at the end of the application for the warrant—strangely enough—there is a place for the magistrate to indicate whether he or she agrees that the warrant should be granted and, if so, what the reasons are for that decision. He said that he thought that this was probably general practice in relation to warrants in the magistrates’ court—because this is not a criminal warrant under the Bill. My noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie said that that was the position when the Motion was moved on Third Reading.

I therefore express my gratitude to the Minister and the Bill team from the Department for Education for their kind treatment of me in connection with this and other matters. It is important that where a Ministry other than that directly responsible for a Bill gives advice to block an amendment from someone who, after all, was thought of as a government supporter, it should be blocked in a way that depends on Ministers’ expertise. With respect to Mr Johnson’s great variety of eminence, he would not be particularly interested in the magistrates’ courts procedure for warrants, so it is really nothing to do with him. Similarly, for my noble friends Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Younger of Leckie, it is a damaging way of damaging your colleagues without much apparent responsibility. I therefore qualify my thanks for the work that has been done behind the scenes here, modified by that matter, for which the Ministers responsible for the Bill have the right for me to make it clear that it was nothing to do with them; it was from a source for which they have only the responsibility of being in the one Government.

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[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I will not attempt to emulate the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, by making a Fourth Reading speech, but I will make a couple of brief points. I strongly supported the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, when he introduced his amendment and have spoken many times on this subject in your Lordships’ House. I deeply regret that the Government have not felt able to accept the amendment and commend it to the other place. I echo everything that has been said about the understanding and capacity for listening both of my noble friend Lord Younger, the Minister in your Lordships’ House, and of Mr Jo Johnson, but it is a pity that an opportunity has been lost. I am sure that we will return to this subject, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, possibly in a future immigration Bill.

Although I welcome what the Minister said today and what is in the Commons amendment before us, it does not go far enough. There will be real interest in how the Government are able to produce good statistics. It is 35 years ago almost to the day when a famous BBC reporter in the Falklands said, “I counted them all out, and I counted them all back”. We must start doing that with students, and indeed with all immigrants. However, we must not do anything that damages our reputation—however gently—as a place where students at undergraduate and postgraduate level from all over the world can feel welcome. The more we can do to achieve that welcome the better, and we must do everything we possibly can to make sure that there are no implicit deterrents. I am sorry that after a very good morning where the Government have made some very real concessions, for which we are all extremely grateful, the concession on this particular subject is not as great as it should be. I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will take note of that and that we will come back before too long with a reinforced Government Front Bench and a new determination to accept the logic of the Hannay amendment.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, from these Benches we strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just said. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, reminded us of the heady days of coalition when I was his opposite number in this House. I remember the debates that went on between the Secretary of State for BIS and the Home Secretary on this topic: the noble Lord could never get any movement on seeing the illogicality.

What baffles many of us is that the Government reiterate that there is no cap on genuine international students, but then they say, “But we will count them as migrants and we are determined to reduce the number of migrants”. It is incomprehensible that the Government cannot see how very unwelcoming it is to put those things together in sequence. We find it completely baffling that we are not getting any movement on this. We recognise that this issue is probably outside the departmental brief of the Minister, but I echo what has been said already: we hope that very soon there will be movement on this. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, always speaks with great passion and eloquence on this topic, backed with evidence and facts.

This is probably the last time that I shall speak on the Bill, so I reiterate the very sincere thanks to the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, and Minister Jo Johnson, to the Bill team and to other colleagues who have been so helpful to us on what has turned out to be a very long and drawn-out discussion on the Bill. The amendments that have come through today have already improved it again. As I said before, it would obviously have been lovely if all our amendments had been accepted, but we recognise that we have actually done a very good job in making this Bill a whole lot better than it was before.

I echo the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who led a collaboration of the engaged on these issues, made up of Members from these Benches, his Benches, the Cross Benches and occasionally some noble Lords on the Conservative Benches, to try to ensure that we could get the very best possible out of this Bill. I also thank my noble friend Lord Storey, who has been a tower of strength throughout. We have made this Bill much better than when it reached us and I am grateful to the Minister for helping that to happen.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, in relation to what the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said about the Prime Minister’s remarks on calling the election, I am relying only on my memory but I do not think that she said “the unelected House of Lords”. She referred to unelected Lords who had made it clear that everything they could do to stop Brexit would be done—it was something like that. I do not think that she was referring to the House of Lords as a whole, because apart from anything else it would not fit the description.

I also support what my noble friend Lord Willetts said. He knows much more about the atmosphere in Whitehall now than I do, and he said he hoped that the research promoted in this might well have a good effect in that direction.

Finally, I agree with what has been said about the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. I hope that he will enjoy the freedom of not being on the Front Bench. I want to thank all his colleagues on the Front Bench and those on the Front Bench of the liberal party and on the Cross Benches for their help with some of my efforts. I have enjoyed their co-operation and for that I am very grateful.