Higher Education and Research Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Carol Monaghan and Amanda Milling

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Amanda Milling]

Q Good afternoon, Minister. On Tuesday, Professor Gaskell said that Universities UK had advocated a well-regulated register of higher education providers. Do you feel that the Bill will enable that?

Joseph Johnson: Yes—one of the centrepieces of the Bill is the creation of the register. For the first time we are going to have a unified list of institutions that are recognised, that meet a defined quality standard and that are able to assure students that the institution that they are going to has been through a quality threshold. This is a really important unifying mechanism that creates coherence in what is currently a very fragmented regulatory architecture, where HEFCE regulates a number of publicly funded institutions, BIS directly regulates alternative providers and there is a third huge universe of providers who are outside of both regimes altogether.

For the first time we will have a register, which Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of UCAS, said on Tuesday would be of huge benefit to people applying to university and wanting to have some kind of assurance that the institution they were thinking of going to had been through some basic sanitary and hygiene checks.

[Carol Monaghan]

Q Having heard from the witnesses over the past couple of sittings, can you tell me what the current position is on representation of devolved Administrations on the board of UKRI?

Joseph Johnson: UKRI is a body that will represent science and research across the United Kingdom. That is in the name. We want to ensure that excellence is well represented on the board, that there is a proper understanding of the systems that are operating in all parts of the UK.

We want to ensure that there is a proper ability for the devolved Administrations to have their specific needs well understood by the board of UKRI. As you know, in the research council system there is no ex officio membership for the devolved Administrations on the boards of those bodies. We have a reserved settlement in which science and innovation are presently reserved to the United Kingdom Government. We would not want to unpick our devolution settlement in this bit of legislation on its own.

Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Carol Monaghan and Amanda Milling

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

[Carol Monaghan]

Q You have answered my second question, namely: is there a requirement to have devolved Administrations represented on the board of UKRI?

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: That is an interesting one. If you are going to have a manageable board of 12 individuals—and I note that the Russell Group is proposing that the chair of each of the research councils sits on it, with which Cambridge would not agree—there would be little opportunity for additional input. If you have all four devolved Administrations represented, it tends to load the committee with particular areas. So the choice of members of that committee will be absolutely vital. These will have to be individuals who are broadly respected across the devolved Administrations, the different elements of research across industry and the different players, so that they are genuinely seen to be acting in the interests of UK research and our international positioning, first and foremost.

Professor Quintin McKellar: It is a really good point. The research councils have evolved into the shape they are in over a period of time and that has helped to deliver extraordinary success for the UK. What we would not want to see is any of the particular areas of research activity weakened as a consequence of one of the research councils or the remit of one of the research councils disappearing. As you have heard, that would be debated long and hard before it actually happened. The fact that there is legislative power in the Bill to remove the title of one of the research councils presents a challenge, but one that can be dealt with.

Sir Alan Langlands: I was the vice-chancellor of a Scottish university for nine years. It was absolutely critical that we were part of the UK-wide discussion and that we had access to UK-based charities and the UK research councils. Even given the dynamics of devolution and the fact that essentially we are dealing with four different financial systems and four different policy frameworks, the one thing that has stuck together through all this has been the UK science and research community. The research councils, HEFCE and, indeed, BIS have played a hugely important part in that. It is very precious: the Scottish universities and the universities in Northern Ireland and Wales make a huge contribution to UK research output. Damaging that would be something we do at our peril.

[Amanda Milling]

Q Good morning. I want to go back to the creation of the single regulatory system. I want to understand how important you think it is, and why—the benefits, but also any points you want to raise in the context of the system.

Sir Alan Langlands: I think it is important, because for some time, through the growth of student numbers, the introduction of higher fees, the creation of the Office for Fair Access and the changing arrangements in relation to quality assurance, everything has been very untidy. Having sat at HEFCE for four and a half years, I would say that it was very difficult when something went wrong—sometimes things did go quite badly wrong in higher education—to find a locus for intervention. There needs to be a bit of sorting out. I think the Government have struck a reasonable balance, and putting students at the centre is sensible, but we need to be careful not to go too far, because the whole system is based on institutional autonomy. We already have a hugely diverse higher education system in this country, and one set of rules does not apply to every institution around the country; many of them have very specialist needs. My sense is that, yes, it is the correct thing to do, but we must be very careful, and I am particularly concerned about some of the changes that might begin to eat away at institutional autonomy.

I have three specifics to mention quickly. The first is clause 2; I really do not understand why the Secretary of State’s guidance need

“in particular, be framed by reference to particular courses”.

Equally, in clauses 13 and 23, which deal with quality and standards, I am not sure that the current definition of “standards” in the Bill sits comfortably with the requirements and the dynamic of an autonomous institution. I would like to see that softened a bit; the Russell Group and others have suggested amendments to that part of the Bill. I hope we are talking about threshold standards, because there are some very clear benchmarks already in place for each subject. It is often a complex area, and we cannot move ourselves into a national curriculum mindset. There still has to be flexibility and innovation in how universities design their own programmes. We also often have to take account of external regulators in the development of professional programmes: regulatory bodies for engineering, for example, or the General Medical Council for the way we design medical education. There are many parts to this jigsaw, and universities are very good at it, in the main. The notion that another body, removed from the action, would somehow second-guess universities on standards and on the quality of their degrees needs attention.