Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Ben Howlett Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We do not have a university in my constituency, but we do have a gold medal winner.

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

Q One of the key areas of regulation proposed in the Bill obviously relates to participation, and for a long time social mobility has been lacking in many areas of the regulatory system.

I want to unpick a bit, following on from the last question, your views on the Government’s ambitions for improving participation and also the regulatory framework around improving participation.

Professor Simon Gaskell: I speak as head of an institution where two thirds of our students are from ethnic minorities and 89% are from state schools, so I can speak with some authority on this. That of course is a set of achievements of which we are very proud and that have been achieved in the current framework—regulatory and otherwise.

My personal view is that widening participation is not enough. We need to do much more and indeed we are doing more at Queen Mary to ensure that students not only get into university and succeed academically while they are at university but, despite a lack of social capital in many cases, succeed after university. There is a lot to be done and we are doing it in universities. I do not think it needs legislation to enforce it.

We have had encouragement through the Office for Fair Access, which has been entirely aligned with our aspirations as an institution. Other institutions have perhaps needed more encouragement in that direction. Fundamentally, I think some universities at least, including my own, are leading the way in recognising what needs to be done in social mobility. Widening participation is not enough.

Pam Tatlow: We support the Government’s ambitions 101% and we would add that experience to that of board members to be taken into account.

We think clause 9, which deals with some of the participation figures and information, does not go far enough and, in fact, it should discuss some of the protected characteristics. It does not talk about age: one in three higher education students enter university for the first time when they are over 21, often entering modern universities. That must be reflected in the diversity of the sector. We are proud of that and should do more about it and, therefore, I think more could be done on clause 9.

Professor Joy Carter: Widening the market to alternative providers is often good for widening participation students, because many alternative providers focus on WP students and offer products and prices that are particularly attractive to them. That is good.

My concern about the marketplace and the effect on WP is about the work at primary school and the work of individual institutions at primary school. There is a lot of research that says young people are made or broken at that age and lots of universities already do fantastic work with primary-age children. In the new world allowed by the Bill, how much of that will continue?

Paul Kirkham: Obviously we support this ambition. Independent providers are, traditionally, very good at this in the main. Where you have a fee cap of £6,000 you have two choices: either you deliver a different kind of experience or you have to charge cash, up front, to students, which is not exactly a widening participation exercise. In many cases, we are disadvantaged in the work we can do when we would like to do it given that we have that fee cap of £6,000, but we understand the reasons why that is there.

[Carol Monaghan]

Q The OFS as the regulating body will be funded by subscriptions from higher education institutions. New providers or new entrants, by their nature, will be a higher risk than the more established institutions. Is it right that all institutions pay the same amount of subscriptions or should there be some sort of sliding scale?

Professor Simon Gaskell: Some thought needs to be given to this because you are right, not every institution will require the same degree of scrutiny. You could argue that the most established and most reliable institutions should pay least. To be fair, there is some offset against that, building on my earlier point: we are all concerned with the reputation of the sector and we all have an interest in the sector. I would not suggest an exact proportionality, but some system that takes note that the greatest demands on the OFS will come from the providers who represent the greatest risk seems to me a reasonable principle.

Pam Tatlow: I understand there will be a consultation if this remains in the Bill, but the more general point is that this is a direct switch from funding from what is now the Department for Education to universities and the average would be about £62,000. If you look at the White Paper, it shows that over several years, the bulk of funding for the OFS will come from providers.

Paul Kirkham: To be clear, not all independent providers are new and pose that kind of risk. Many have decades, if not hundreds of years, of experience in provision. My second point is that it should be equitable in terms of the cost. Many of the incumbent universities’ perceived lower risks have been achieved through decades of taxpayer support and I think it would be grossly unfair if a sliding scale were applied on the basis of some form of perceived risk.

Gordon McKenzie: As well as risk, it is also important to take account of a university or a provider’s size and resources.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. Does any other member of the panel wish to respond to those points? I am conscious that we have to get a number of questions in.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: Briefly, the data have a range of granularity and are invariably collected in this sector with a major contextual element. The sector as a whole is keen that where the data are provided, the pure context, which varies from institution to institution, is provided alongside, with a responsibility on the researchers to take into account all the elements. This is not a simple set of numbers merely to make headlines out of; it is something to be very carefully considered.

Sir Alan Langlands: In 2012 I chaired the administrative data taskforce for the Government. The proposals within that were accepted by Government, principally by BIS and the Cabinet Office. If the data, which largely derive from UCAS, are handled properly and within the framework set out in that report, and if UCAS’s suggested amendments to the Bill are made, I think people would be content with that.

Professor Quintin McKellar: Very quickly, I would say that as long as the individual is protected, that is fine. I think, though, that the other point to bear in mind is that the effort of collection ought to be proportionate. In other words, it should be value for money, if I can put it like that, to collect the data.

[Ben Howlett]

Q I want to find out what your views are on the creation of UKRI, and your thoughts on whether it will bring a greater sense of oversight and more strategic direction as well. Professor McKellar, perhaps you can start off.

Professor Quintin McKellar: I am very comfortable with the creation of UKRI. It seems that bringing together the major funders for what you might call blue- sky research with those that have responsibility for innovation and knowledge transfer is a good thing. What we must reassure ourselves of is that those two different activities are and continue to be funded in an appropriate way. We would want neither the blue-sky research—I am using “blue sky” in a generic sense—nor what might be classified as the business-facing research that is undertaken to be sacrificed at the expense of the other. Provided that we can get those reassurances, putting the whole thing together potentially provides administrative savings and seems a relatively straightforward and sensible way to go.

[Ben Howlett]

Q Do you agree with that assessment, Professor?

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: Yes, overall I would, but one has to remember that of the research funders in the UK, UKRI merely looks after the Government component side of the funding. For instance, 30% of funding sits with the charitable sector. What is important with UKRI, which is fine as is currently laid out, is that the support and the safeguards proposed in relationship to Research England are also very good. It has to be a body that takes into account the whole of the United Kingdom in its purview. It also has to work closely with other funders and other organisations that have a say in this important area, and it has to relate to individual researchers and research communities. It is a very important body, but it has to be born of the community to be able to provide the right guidance and advice that Ministers can call on in making decisions about policy and public direction. It has a role and I think it is a good structure that is proposed.

[Ben Howlett]

Q Does the legislation as it currently reads enable that to take place?

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: In the main, I would read it that it probably does. I would want to see a much tougher line in terms of the postgraduate student and the research environment in which postgraduate students find themselves, because I do not see where in OFS that expertise sits. It sits in UKRI, whose constituent members will after all be funding those postgraduate courses, so it has to have a role in assuring itself that the environment in which that investment is to be made is an appropriate environment for the UK as a whole.

[The Chair]

Does any other member of the panel wish to comment? Sir Alan.

Sir Alan Langlands: Going back to an earlier point, I think that this depends on very strong personal relationships. The relationships not just between UKRI and the charities, but with industry contacts, other parts of central Government, the Government’s chief scientist, and now, critically, with the EU and other overseas research organisations, are absolutely critical. That comes down to personal relationships.

I can remember a time when all of those different players were falling out with each other. We have now lived through a time, in England and across the UK as a whole, where the science and research community at a national level has really got its act together. We must sustain that into the future, so those relationships will be absolutely critical. To reinforce that point, now, given Brexit, UKRI has a hugely important part to play in promoting and looking after the interests of UK science and research around the world.