Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Wolf of Dulwich Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, happy new year, and a particular welcome to our respected guest standing at the Bar, who for those of your Lordships who were not present at Second Reading set a new record for MPs standing listening to debates. I gather he is here again to do a repeat performance. We should welcome his interest and his commitment to this issue, which I know is shared by so many Members of the House. I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden, Lady Wolf and Lady Brown, for joining me and supporting Amendment 1. I look forward to hearing their comments and those of other noble Lords across the Committee who have indicated to me that they support the amendment.

I declared my interests in higher education during the excellent Second Reading debate we held in the Chamber last month. Even if I had not been to a university, never worked in the university sector or not had my children educated in UK universities, I would have wanted to engage with the Bill because our excellent university sector—currently the second most successful higher education system in the world, with four universities ranked in the top 10—faces substantial challenges in the years ahead. It could, of course, be improved and it could, of course, be more innovative, and we support both those aims, but it also needs to be supported and protected, particularly if we go ahead with a hard Brexit, as now seems inevitable.

The abiding sense I have from our Second Reading debate is that the Bill fails to understand the purposes of higher education. I suggest that without defining these important institutions, there is a danger that the new regulatory architecture, the new bodies and the revised research organisation will do real and permanent damage. Universities across the world have multiple and complex roles in society, and there is no doubt that we all gain from that. They come in all sizes, and that too is good. They are at their best when they are autonomous, independent institutions which have the freedom to develop a range of missions and practices, while at the same time being public institutions, serving the knowledge economy and the knowledge society as well as being tools of economic progress and social mobility. They use the precious safe harbour of academic freedom to seek truth wherever it is to be found and publish it for all to see and discuss. They transmit and project values of openness, tolerance, inquiry and a respect for diversity that are the key to civilisation in an increasingly globalised world.

The purpose of the amendment is simple. The Bill before us does not define a university, and we think it will be improved if it does so. Our amendment does not simply itemise some of the core functions of a university, though it does that too, but also scopes out a university’s role, with its implicit ideals of responsibility, engagement and public service. A characteristic of all these functions is the expectation that universities take the long-term view and nurture a long-term stake in their local communities and wider society; that they embed scholarship and original and independent inquiry into their activities; and that they demonstrate a sustained commitment to serving the public good through taking up a role as critic and as the conscience of society.

I am confident that there is support for this approach across the House, based on the real sense of disappointment at the lack of ambition that the Bill currently exhibits. I hope the Government will feel able to accept the amendment. I say to the Minister that if he were minded to do so, not only would he improve the Bill but he would be signalling a willingness to listen to all the expertise, experience and wisdom that this House possesses and give us hope that he wished to use that for the benefit of this important sector and of the country as a whole. If he does not feel able to accept the amendment as it stands, perhaps he could offer to take it back and bring it back in an improved version on Report. If he did this, we would of course be very willing to work with him on how to improve the text—we have no pride of ownership.

I have to warn him, though, that if he does not want to engage as I have outlined, he will have to explain to this House what it is he cannot accept about specifying that universities have a secure and valued place in our society, and why he has difficulty in confirming that our universities should have statutory rights to institutional autonomy, academic freedom and freedom of speech. He will have to explain why he disagrees with his right honourable friend the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, who is standing at the Bar, who said in response to questions in Committee in the other place:

“At its most literal, a university can be described as a provider of predominantly higher education that has got degree-awarding powers and has been given the right to use the university title. That is the most limited and literal sense. If we want a broader definition, we can say that a university is also expected to be an institution that brings together a body of scholars to form a cohesive and self-critical academic community that provides excellent learning opportunities for people, the majority of whom are studying to degree level or above. We expect teaching at such an institution to be informed by a combination of research, scholarship and professional practice. To distinguish it from what we conventionally understand the school’s role to be, we can say that a university is a place where students are developing higher analytical capacities—critical thinking, curiosity about the world and higher levels of abstract capacity in their thinking. In brief, that is my answer to what a university is”.—[Official Report, Commons, Higher Education and Research Bill Committee, 15/09/16; col. 271.]

I confess to a little plagiarism in drafting my amendment, which I acknowledge is clearly based on that Minister’s approach, which is the correct one. I beg to move.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, the Bill we are debating today is an enormously important one. I declare an interest as a full-time academic at King’s College London.

The Government are creating the environment in which universities will operate and thrive or decline over many years, probably decades, and are changing it profoundly. Because a country’s universities and the nature of those universities are so central to what a country is—to its values, politics, culture, research and innovation—the Bill is truly important to the whole nation. Yet, curiously, the Bill has nothing to say about universities, as you will find if you have a quick search of the document. It says quite a lot about the university title, and at one point it refers to unauthorised degrees at,

“a university, college or other body”,

by grant, but that is it. Otherwise it refers consistently to “providers”.

Clearly, the Government do not think that the term “university” is meaningless. If it were, neither the Government nor higher education providers nor universities would be so occupied with the university title.

When I dug around a bit, I found that previous legislation also has extraordinarily little to say on the subject. The 1992 higher education Act refers simply to use of the name “university” in the title of an institution, and informs us hopefully that, if the power to change the name is exercisable with the consent of the Privy Council, it may be exercised, with that consent,

“whether or not the institution would apart from this section be a university”.

There is nothing more on what a university is. The Minister has kindly confirmed, in replies to Written Questions that the term is not defined in legislation but is a “sensitive” word under company law, which means that you need permission from the Secretary of State and a non-objection letter before you can use it in a business or company title.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I should probably have declared my interests in my Second Reading speech—but they are in the register and I declare them now.

I will start with a theme that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and other noble Lords brought up: autonomy. I shall not, given how long the debate has gone on, repeat the points that the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, my noble friend Lord Winston and other noble Lords made. In particular, my noble friend Lady Warwick made a substantive speech which I hope will command the attention of the House. I remind the House of the mechanisms that we utilised in the past to try to ensure that university autonomy was sustained whatever the Government of the day, however unpopular or controversial the issues that might be raised, and however much public sentiment might not approve of them.

All through the history of modern universities, this country has inserted buffer arrangements between the state and higher education—and that is not an accident. It was an absolutely deliberate intention to make sure that the great qualities of universities could be sustained, irrespective of the calamities—the world wars and the other huge movements in tectonic plates. There was the UGC, later HEFCE, and even, when the polytechnics were going through the process of becoming universities, the work of the CNAA, which was designed to make sure that the older universities played a part in ensuring that the quality of the newer universities would be sufficiently adequate or better than sufficiently adequate to take their place as universities among the entire group—a system which worked well in England, Scotland and, as far as I am aware, in Wales. However, in every single case, and in particular in relation to teaching, the processes were both thorough on the part of those buffer bodies and also a protection of the autonomy and independence of universities so that they could pursue matters with genuine academic freedom.

In the field of research, the work that was originally done on quality assurance was never made prescriptive in a way that interfered with the autonomy of universities but expressed a desire to see great excellence being achieved in those places where it was possible and a broader spread of excellence in those places which perhaps could not do some of the work in particle physics or whatever it might be. I can remember—it is one of the interests I have declared—the negotiations with the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, about the character of the research excellence framework that he wished to see. Even the annual letter from the Secretary of State, first to HEFCE and then through the more recent period, was a general outline of what the expectations of the country were. It was never a set of orders to which universities must subscribe, which would lead, were they not to do so, to them being closed, cut back or denigrated. These were genuine protections. I am not trying to repeat a Second Reading point but these were the values to which this country signed up in 1997 in the UNESCO normative treaty on academic freedom and the independence of institutions, which this Bill would tear up.

I think that very careful thought about this amendment, which I intend to support, would be repaid, and the Minister will have to give very convincing reasons why, even in Committee, we should not consider it. Some of the arguments that have been put forward in your Lordships’ House this afternoon do not bear much examination. For example, as my noble friend Lady Cohen said, it is not the case that universities must all provide the full range of subjects. The wording is “an extensive range”.

I put it to the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, for whom I have great admiration, that it is not the case that many of the more specialist institutions are so narrow that they do not do a wide range of things, as those of us who have had the privilege of being Ministers covering higher education will know. Imperial College London was mentioned a while ago. The college is rich in every science, including all the social sciences, and it has absolutely magnificent ratings in all those areas. Even the conservatoire music colleges have usually extended their range. SOAS is certainly another example—and there are many. For the avoidance of doubt, there may be an opportunity in what the Minister says to achieve greater specificity regarding what we mean, but in my view that is the bottom line.

In conclusion, I am absolutely astounded by our squeamishness in worrying about whether we can define a university. There have no doubt been massive debates right across time about whether we can do that. I remember recently reading an account of whether Bob Dylan really had created literature, and there was a huge debate about what literature might be. There are always debates about these broader concepts. However, broadly speaking, when you go around the world and talk to people about coming to a university in the United Kingdom, they know very well what you mean. It is not an accident that so many people apply to come to the United Kingdom to study in our universities and they do not all complain that the terminology is fusty and old. I can imagine a focus group saying, “If only we didn’t call them universities. Let’s call them ‘higher education providers’ and floods of people will suddenly appear. The marketing will be transformed”. People come because of their expectations.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that there may very well be people who are dissatisfied, or whose children are dissatisfied—but, broadly speaking, when you look at the number of people who want to come here and who understand perfectly well what we offer, you do not see a system that has broken down, although of course it could do with some reform. I have looked high and low to see what crisis the Bill is intended to resolve and I do not believe that it can be found. If it could, I can tell your Lordships that three areas for which I used to have responsibility—the Chevening, Marshall and Commonwealth scholarships—would be devoid of people wanting them. On the contrary, every single one of them is fought for.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I apologise for taking more of the Committee’s time but I feel that we are losing sight of one of the major reasons why my name is attached to this amendment. I believe very strongly that we have to consider, up front, a definition of a university in the Bill. It is a question not of whether we do or do not have a definition but of who controls that definition. Absolutely rightly, the Bill distinguishes between degree-awarding powers and the title of “university”. So it should and so it must, because we are now in a world where many institutions which are not and will never wish to be universities give degrees. Further education colleges are a very obvious and important sector.

We are also, I am delighted to say, moving into a world with degree apprenticeships. The question is whether the definition of a university is perhaps not super-precise but clear and perfectly workable, like almost every other definition in legislation all over this land, or whether we leave the decisions about what a university is to the bureaucrats of the Office for Students, who will make those decisions but will never actually have to make them public.

So I come back to the purpose of this amendment and why we feel it is so important. If we do not have a definition in the legislation, there will be a definition but we will none of us have any control over it and we will never know what it is.