Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (Cooperation and Information Sharing) Regulations 2018

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 General Committees

[The Chair]

Contrary to my normal practice—I am a small “c” conservative about this—I will reluctantly allow gentlemen to remove their jackets, if they wish.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (Cooperation and Information Sharing) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018, No. 607).

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Thank you for your radical innovation, although I will keep my jacket on out of respect for the Chair.

I welcome the opportunity for the Committee finally to discuss the regulations, because, as may be apparent in what I say, they have caused considerable concern in respect of student protections and in particular the way in which they rather blithely appear to allow the sharing of private data, particularly with private companies. That is not easily explained by the so-called explanatory memorandum, although I await enlightenment from the Minister, and the purposes for which the data may be used remain rather open and vague.

Last autumn, the then Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries, who is now the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, spoke about the importance of giving the public more control over their data under new UK data protection laws, with the introduction of the Data Protection Bill. However, the lack of transparency in the regulations does not indicate that that was even considered, at least in spirit, by the Department for Education, or indeed the Universities Minister, who is here to respond.

Just weeks after the Government made a fanfare about the new Data Protection Act 2018, which was supposed to give people more control over their data and how it is used, they are passing regulations into law that could ride roughshod over students’ data rights. The regulations were to have been rushed through Parliament in three weeks—including the Whitsun recess—under the negative procedure. In fact, this statutory instrument came into effect without scrutiny, which is not uncommon in this House, but on the whole ought to be avoided, particularly in such sensitive areas. Only when the Opposition tabled an early-day motion to pray against the regulations and the shadow Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) raised the matter at business questions did we finally get this debate.

It is disappointing that the Government tried to force the regulations through using the negative procedure, because as paragraph 7.1 of the explanatory memorandum confirms:

“The enabling legislation for HEFCE did not restrict cooperation or information sharing in the same way as the Act does for the OfS.”

Given that the Office for Students will operate a very different structure from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, why did we not have an automatic right to debate the regulations?

On 13 October 2016, at the 12th sitting of the Higher Education and Research Bill Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and I raised significant concerns about how students’ personal data might be handled under the new structures. In discussing what at the time were clauses 71 and 72, I said:

“these clauses would give the state access to all university applicants’ full data in perpetuity, for users who would only be defined as ‘researchers’ and without ‘research’ being defined at all; that might be capable of being changed under the direction of the Secretary of State. Therefore”—

this is the generic point that I wish to address in the context of the regulations—

“there are significant concerns that the safeguards need to be stronger to ensure that the clauses are not misused by others and that scope changes are not made in the future.”

I went on to say that, under those proposals,

“there is a possibility that the entire nation’s education data from the age of two to 19 could be joined to university data, which of course is then joined to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs”,

and so on.—[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 13 October 2016; c. 455.]

I also said during that sitting that this is a complex and difficult area, but if there are genuine, legitimate concerns, the precautionary principle should generally apply. I still hold to that principle. However, the Government are underpinning the regulations without that automatic assessment. They are passing the regulations seemingly without doing a data protection impact assessment or a human rights assessment, which would have considered privacy. Will the Minister confirm that the regulations will go through a privacy impact assessment and an assessment of their impact on human rights, and if not, why not?

Our questions over the regulations are particularly important in the current climate, in which the public have high concerns around personal data exploitation by large companies and publicly produced assets being passed into commercial hands. The lack of limitation in the type of data that may be shared under the regulations runs contrary to what 37,000 students told a UCAS survey in 2015. Applicants’ responses showed an overwhelming preference for remaining in direct control of their personal data, with 90% agreeing—more than 20 times the number who disagreed—that they should be asked in some shape or form before their personal data was provided. That number is likely to have increased in the time since the survey, given that concerns about data sharing have been spread more widely across the mainstream media. It is therefore no wonder that the vice-president of higher education at the National Union of Students, Amatey Doku, has expressed his concern that

“a decision for OfS to share students’ data with third parties was being snuck through parliament.”

We now have the opportunity to look at what is actually being said. In that context, part 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 removed horizontal data-sharing safeguards between Government Departments or bodies, meaning that, once students’ data has been provided, via the course provider, to Pearson or the OFS—both are named in the regulations—that data may be shared with any number of other bodies. How is a student or staff member supposed to be able to understand where their personal data has been processed? Under the general data protection regulation and the new Data Protection Act 2018, what is it within their rights to know? I would be grateful if the Minister could explain that relatively briefly and, if he cannot, perhaps he will write to members of the Committee.

It is to the Minister’s credit that he has made a great play of being the Minister for students since he came into post. He went on a listening tour of universities—

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is ongoing.

[Gordon Marsden]

I apologise. I look forward to further details of the Minister’s travels through the summer and into the autumn. However, the point is well made. The Minister has been on that listening tour and has said that he wants to engage with students about all their concerns, yet he has failed to engage with one of their concerns—student data protection, as I have just described —when arguably the effect of the regulations will be to leave that data open to exploitation. The Committee needs proper and clear assurances on that.

In view of those concerns, I tabled a series of written questions on the implications of the regulations last week, even before the Committee had been scheduled. The Minister replied that section 63 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, to which the regulations refer,

“does not place limitations on the type of information that may be provided, and therefore it could include personal data.”

That is extremely concerning and has the potential to be misused. The response went on to say:

“These regulations allow data sharing, they do not oblige it. In practice, the OfS considers that it is unlikely that personal data would routinely be shared with non-government bodies under these regulations. They are in place for circumstances where the OfS or the organisation has identified serious concerns (such as fraud or malpractice) by a provider or its students.”

The particular examples that were listed are reasonable, but frankly that is not enough to ensure that the general principle holds. It is not adequate to say, “As you were.” This is a new organisation that is still finding its feet and it is not operating to HEFCE criteria, as the explanatory memorandum explains and as the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), was at pains to emphasise throughout the passage of the Bill. Safer and stronger safeguards are needed.

I was also disappointed at the answer the Minister gave to a further question I asked about whether his Department had consulted universities, student bodies or UCAS on the powers relating to confidential data that are conferred under the regulations. Despite my being quite specific in that question, the Minister and his civil servants—who presumably drafted the answer—failed to answer it. They responded:

“Policy officials have worked closely with colleagues in the Office for Students (OfS) to determine what historical, and new, information sharing requirements may be required to ensure the OfS can do its job well, including protecting the interest of students and taxpayers. Officials and Ministers have regular meetings and interactions with universities and student bodies, and work closely with UCAS.”

Observant members of the Committee will note that there is no causal relationship between that last sentence and the previous one. I hope my concerns are unjustified and that I am being ungenerous on this occasion, but will the Minister let me know if his Department specifically consulted UCAS or the NUS on the issues in the statutory instrument before passing it?

When the Minister was made aware—if, indeed, he was made aware—of the strong concerns and sentiments about student data, he could have instructed his officials to redraft the statutory instrument to list the specific types of information that may be shared with each organisation listed. What specific guarantees is he prepared to give now—or in writing to the Committee, if he wishes—to assuage the strong legitimate concerns about this process? Surely the processes and purposes should be explicit, necessary and proportionate, and should have regard to the capacity of the organisation. For example, Pearson is a provider of higher national certificate and higher national diploma exams. It should be specified why the weights and measures body will receive information and what information it may receive. The Student Loans Company and HMRC are also named in the schedule as relevant persons to receive this data. Similarly, it should be set out explicitly why that is a necessity. Can the Minister assure us that the data will be used for narrowly administrative purposes, or will it be available for other uses?

As the responses to my written questions also noted, the collaboration agreements have not yet been published. Will the Minister tell us when they are likely to be published? There seem to be no plans to publish the data-sharing agreements, as was confirmed in the answer to written question 156351. Why is that the case? The crux of the matter is that it should be fundamental to transparency that if there are no commercial consequences of the statutory instrument—as I understand officials have tried to reassure people—the Government do not have the usual excuse or option of praying in aid commercial confidentiality to conceal the agreement.

As the organisers of the lobby group DefendDigitalMe said prior to this Committee, data-sharing agreements made in secret with the Department for Education do not have a recent good track record. The data-sharing agreements that were made secret in July 2015 were discovered only by civil society campaigners, who had to fight for their release for six months. They revealed the monthly arrangement that still continues—the sharing of children’s names, home addresses, gender and dates of birth for the purposes of immigration enforcement and specifically to support the hostile environment. I say that not to imply that the regulations will be used in any shape or form for those purposes, but it demonstrates why there should be a low level of trust in how Departments use such personal data.

Despite the Information Commissioner having told the DFE that collecting governors’ nationality data, which began in 2016, was excessive, that it should respect the data protection principles of necessity and proportionality, and that it should end that collection, it continues to do so. I am obliged, therefore, to ask the Minister whether he or his Department has spoken to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the requirements for the regulator in respect of the types of data that may be shared through the regulations. If he has not, will he do so very soon so that the implications for all students can be known?

To preserve public and professional trust, the use of personal data from the sector must be transparent and safe, and alert to the future. We must prevent third-party prescribed persons from being exploited by mission creep by Government Departments, without any reference to safeguards. The powers in the information duties of section 64 of the 2017 Act permit the bodies to share data with the Government, and explicitly with the Secretary of State for Education. Will data be passed from Pearson, for example, to other Departments, and if so, which ones? What are the boundaries of the information? That should surely be set out in legislation. If the safeguards are not on a statutory footing, there is limited value in any assurance, whether from this Minister or any other Minister, that the use of potentially named records will not be changed at the whim of policy or by a future Government.

It is unclear whether what the Department is doing is necessary to create a new and very broad legal basis for the purposes of data sharing—compared with, say, a contract—or whether it is seeking to legitimise existing data-sharing practices around the denial of funding, which may previously have avoided scrutiny.

The other concern raised with us by DefendDigitalMe, a non-partisan data privacy and digital rights group led by parents and teachers, is that the track record in the US of Pearson, one of the organisations to which this information will be supplied, has included selling student data as part of company assets. Such data could be used in predictive tools to exclude certain students from certain UK institutions and courses, or unduly to influence applicants’ decision making and choices, based on Pearson’s corporate values and view of the world. That might not be a view that I or the Minister share, but it is a legitimate concern to raise.

People in third-party organisations and in the Government change and move on. What is left standing, however, is the legisation. How the information is used will depend not on what is said, but on what the legislation says. This knowledge could potentially give unprecedented commercial access to confidential student data, and with it knowledge of the potential access routes into education, course content, and completion and destination data. If that happens, it could constitute preferential treatment and give enormous commercial and competitive advantage over other companies. How will the Government prevent that in practice, having passed this statutory instrument, now and in the future? Why have other bodies not been afforded the same privilege?

Pearson has suggested that it will share personal data with the OFS when its stakeholders have identified red flags or serious concerns, such as fraud or malpractice by a provider or its students. That data sharing is from Pearson to the OFS. Why is a data-sharing agreement necessary and proportionate for that purpose?

I also have severe concerns about sharing data with the Student Loans Company, after its well-publicised problems in the past year. While I appreciate that there is a need for it in certain extreme circumstances where there is potential fraudulent activity, there are significant worries about its capability appropriately to handle this data. I think it is legitimate for us to raise continuing concerns about its capacity to handle further responsibility in the context of this statutory instrument.

The Minister will be well aware that the Student Loans Company has recently been subjected to a scathing report by the National Audit Office on its organisational and management failings. As far as I am aware, the Student Loans Company, despite the allegations about the management and leadership of the previous chief executive, whose contract was terminated, still does not have a permanent chief executive. Will the Minister update us on the recruitment process?

The lack of proper co-operation between the SLC and HMRC has also led to significant overpayments of debts by students. That is part of an ongoing trend in which the amount being overpaid by graduates increases year on year. The Student Loans Company also left a number of student nurses in a difficult financial situation earlier this year. I make all these points, Mr Gray, because they reflect strongly on whether the safeguards in the statutory instrument are appropriate to all the various organisations. What guarantees can the Minister give the Committee about this process?

We do not intend to oppose the regulations, because we understand that there are aspects of them that simply cannot be brought to a halt, but we have grave misgivings about the way in which they have been presented and the rather cavalier way in which assurances have been given. We look to the Minister to come back with significant assurances, either today or subsequently. My final question to him is whether there is any proposal to review the effectiveness or otherwise of the regulations. I would have preferred it if there had been a sunset clause in the regulations, but we do not have the ability to insert one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

I thank the Minister for giving those details and the courteous way in which he addressed my concerns. He says, perfectly reasonably, that the regulations will allow the OFS to do its job well and to give firmer, greater protections. The Opposition would not argue with that in any shape or form. However, the devil is in the detail and there is still a question mark over how effective the OFS will be in progressing these matters. Only time will tell. To say that the OFS is “not obliged” to share leaves a very grey area. After all, on the whole, legislation is supposed to be based on the principle of what might go wrong, rather than that of what might go right, and it should at least give clear, strong safeguards. There is some way to go in that respect.

It was good to hear the Minister’s assurance that information sharing will be subject to data protection laws and, indeed, the general data protection agreements with which we have all been grappling in recent weeks. They came into effect in May, whereas the Act to which the statutory instrument applies was set in place 18 months ago or more, so it remains perfectly legitimate to scrutinise the extent to which that Act is consonant with those provisions.

I hope that the Minister’s comments about HND and HNC qualifications with Pearson will be of some comfort to those concerned. He said there has been no specific contact with the OFS and UCAS, which I still think is an omission. He also said that it is for the OFS to discuss such matters with the Information Commissioner as and when it embarks on the process, but that would be a little late in the day. Given the importance of the issue and the way in which it will develop, not least with the expansion of the digital transmission of data, I would have thought it important that his departmental officials should, at least at some point, have had conversations with the Information Commissioner. I may take that up separately with the Information Commissioner.

I still believe that the privacy impact assessment should have assessed human rights and that the issue will require considerable scrutiny. Of course, that will have to be applied by other Committees of the House, not this one. With those words, I confirm that we will not oppose the measure.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (Cooperation and Information Sharing) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018, No. 607).

Erasmus Plus Programme

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) on securing this debate and in showing that he—like the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), whose speech I greatly enjoyed—has an honourable place in the progress and expansion of Erasmus benefits. I think that everything he said struck a chord with Members from across the House. One point that my hon. Friend made, unlike the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman)—I enjoyed his speech, but he seemed to have a rather curious view of the concept of parliamentary scrutiny—was on detail and I want to emphasise that point to the Minister. The devil, as the Minister will know, is in the detail. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the superb way in which he put forward his case. I congratulate the hon. Members for Chelmsford, for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) and for Bexhill and Battle on the positive points they made—in particular, the personal observations made by the hon. Member for Redditch—and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) on the pertinent remarks she has just made.

There are continuing misconceptions that Erasmus+ is just a higher education programme. In fact, it is open to education, training, youth and sports organisations across all sectors of lifelong learning, including school, further and higher education for both the adult and youth sectors. It took on that wider field in 2014, making it all the more important that we should fight for it to be continued in a post-Brexit world. Erasmus+ is unique in that it provides additional funding for both disadvantaged and disabled students. It allows low-income UK students, who may not otherwise be able to afford to go abroad without financial assistance, the opportunity to study. It provides them with a fee waiver and a grant for living expenses.

Social mobility, widening participation and encouraging social inclusion are key elements of the programme. As the Russell Group observed in its latest briefing on Erasmus, most Russell Group universities are able to offer supplementary grants specifically for disadvantaged students to undertake an Erasmus+ placement. MillionPlus says that modern universities educate the vast majority of students from areas of the country with the lowest participation in higher education. Schemes such as Erasmus are therefore particularly important. It makes the point that EU students in the UK, as well as UK students in Europe, are an enormous benefit to this country and may be even more significant post Brexit, as the UK reshapes its relationships with these nations. The National Union of Students also made the point in its briefing that

“the opportunity for transnational education, including… Erasmus+…benefits…students…UK education… local communities and the UK economy.”

The Confederation of British Industry has produced clear evidence that the UK workforce requires more graduates with international cultural awareness and, as Members have said today, foreign language skills. The need for these skills will become even more important after we leave the European Union, so it is vital that we do not take those opportunities away from the future workforce. There is also very strong evidence that student exchange programmes can have a beneficial impact, particularly on black and minority ethnic students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Erasmus+ also offers young people the opportunity to develop the enabling skills that translate into the workforce and every aspect of their life. The UK is currently rated one of the world’s leading soft powers. It is no surprise, therefore, that the UK has been in the top three EU countries in terms of numbers participating and EU students coming here.

I do not think we should ever underestimate the importance of that soft power. Last month, I was in Georgia—not Georgia, US, but Georgia, Caucasus—for the 100th anniversary of its independence. I went to universities and met a group of Chevening students from Georgia. As Members will know, Chevening students come here and participate in not dissimilar ways to Erasmus+. Their affection for the UK was palpable. Only last week, one of those same Chevening scholars—alumni, I should say—who had been at that meeting with the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and me in Tbilisi, led a trade delegation to this House for us to expand our trade with Georgia. That is an example of where that soft power can work.

Such programmes offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students to challenge themselves and develop as individuals, and that is why they play such a beneficial role in boosting the skills of the UK workforce. We will need that to develop the workforce of tomorrow. Research commissioned by the Local Government Association reveals that the skills gap is worsening. It states that by 2024, there will be more than 4 million too few high-skilled people to take up the available jobs, 2 million too many with intermediate skills, and more than 6 million too many low-skilled people. That is why the Government cannot afford to dither and allow participation in Erasmus+ to lapse.

The importance of Erasmus+ was recognised, as we have heard, through the EU Commission’s proposals for the new expanded programme. Doubling the funding does indeed enable the EU to support 12 million people and triple the number of participants. It also makes it easier for people from disadvantaged backgrounds to have an Erasmus experience by promoting more accessible formats, virtual exchanges and shorter learning periods abroad.

It is important to note—my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown touched on this today and in a previous Adjournment debate—that this funding includes some €3.1 billion for youth programmes and €550 million for sport. The implications for the new Erasmus programme are that it would offer even more possibilities—for example, for students at further education colleges, such as my Blackpool and The Fylde College, for apprentices and for others retraining with FE and skills providers, as well as opportunities for adults to retrain and reskill. These also help to address the issues of social mobility, which this Government consistently claim is at the forefront of their policies and indeed, is part of their post-18 education review.

However, actions speak louder than words. Despite these issues being raised consistently in calls from the sector and the Labour party for the past two years for guarantees on our continued involvement, it is still very unclear what the UK’s participation in the scheme will be following the end of the current period in 2020. The British Academy, in its review of the Brexit process, says:

“Continuing full participation in the Erasmus+ programme on the basis of an arrangement that would enable the UK to fulfil all the obligations of the Erasmus+ programme as a non-EU Programme Country”

is essential.

I pay tribute to the British Council, which has supplied a number of the statistics that have been shared across the Chamber today and has played a crucial part in administrating and promoting the Erasmus programme. It has also had a vital role in presenting evidence of the beneficial outcomes to Government. Anyone who saw the excellent Erasmus+ Shaping Futures exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall in February, which helped to lay out the clear advantages through personal case histories, will know what I mean.

Alongside an array of higher and further education stakeholders, we have consistently pressed the Government on this issue, during the negotiations on the phase 1 agreement and during the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. We tabled amendments to the Bill, both here and in the other place.

[Vicky Ford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

Very briefly.

[Vicky Ford]

The hon. Gentleman speaks forcefully about the need to retain Erasmus+, and also, I presume, ongoing co-operation in science. Does he not agree, however, that if we are to continue to participate in Horizon Europe, which will cost the British taxpayer many billions of pounds, we must have more than just third-country status. We must also have a say in how the programmes are structured.

[Gordon Marsden]

That is a very good point, although it might be better directed at the Minister rather than the shadow Minister. I agree that we need a rigorous debate on the subject.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, it was not until November, in a letter to my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), that the Government made a commitment to continuing participation in the Erasmus+ scheme until the end of the current EU funding cycle, and spelt out some of the details. That letter did not in any way answer our questions about our participation in the new expanded Erasmus+, which will be so beneficial to social mobility, and which will begin in 2021.

I therefore pressed the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s Question Time, asking whether she would ensure that Erasmus+ was

“now a top-line item for her Ministers”

in the continuing negotiations. I was disappointed by her answer, which was non-committal. She merely said:

“there are certain programmes that we wish to remain part of when we leave the European Union, and Erasmus is one of those we have cited that we may wish to remain part of, but of course we are in a negotiation with the European Union”.—[Official Report, 16 May 2018; Vol. 641, c. 277.]

On that occasion, Mrs May said “may”, but as parliamentary draftsmen will know, “may” is not the same as “would” or “want”.

We continue to believe that it is imperative for future involvement in this programme to be on the agenda, and to be explicit in the Brexit guidelines. The Government must ensure that Ministers in the Departments for Education, for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and for Culture, Media and Sport are involved in the negotiations, and ensure that it is clear that Erasmus+ is a key part of that agenda. I do not doubt for a minute the commitment of the Universities Minister, but I want to see him, if not actually at the table, as close to it as possible, and whispering in the ears of the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.

Erasmus+ is every bit as important to the future of our country, and to our young and our older people, as Horizon, or the money from EU structural funds that will be lost to higher and further education, on which the prosperity fund—a slightly Orwellian title—has yet to comment. As the Russell Group has said, maintaining our membership of the programme is likely to be less costly than an attempt by universities to replicate it, either on a bilateral basis or through the European University Association. It would be very difficult to replicate via a national scheme.

Since the phase 1 negotiations the Government have had opportunities to express a stronger commitment to Erasmus+. I have met members of the European Commission twice, and have raised the implications of Brexit for our higher and further education and skills. Everyone to whom I have spoken has agreed that it is a benefit to both the EU and the UK. It is not just a glorified twinning experience. If the Government are in any way serious about our being a global Britain, they need to address this issue with the effort that it deserves; otherwise they will not be forgiven, either by the millennial generation or by their families and friends who have seen the life-changing opportunities that Erasmus+ has brought them.

Freedom of Speech: Universities

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry, and it is a great privilege and honour to follow the introduction of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who so eloquently presented the conclusions of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I also pay tribute to the Committee members present—the hon. Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), who spoke so thoughtfully.

I am here because I am the Opposition spokesperson and therefore have to respond to the debate, but I hope that I also bring other things to it. Having long been a member of Select Committees in the past—particularly education Committees—I appreciate the importance of the evidence-driven process, rather than obiter dicta being floated out sometimes, to be massaged and expanded by the mainstream media. All politicians want to get our message across, and some of us succumb rather too rapidly to that temptation.

I also come to the debate bearing many of the tenets that I was taught, including the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Historians are told to look at those things, but students of many other humanities disciplines depend on them, too. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for reminding us of the importance of the Enlightenment; the Scottish Enlightenment, in particular, played a part in that process. The classic statement of Enlightenment libertarianism—I will not quote it completely accurately—was by Voltaire and went something like, “I might hugely disagree with your opinions, but I will defend to the death your right to express them.”

Those are important principles. It is very good that the Joint Committee’s report, although it did not give us a great historical exegesis, went right back to some of those first principles and, importantly, to the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, which forms a useful context for its proposals.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham was absolutely right, and not in any way immodest, to say that the members of her Committee have a hugely broad area of experience. Inevitably, not all Select Committees can have that. From that point of view, it is incumbent on us all, whether in government or in opposition, to carefully examine what has been said. For my part, I think the members of the Committee have delivered an admirable synthesis, in fairly crisp and straightforward terms. With all those lawyers, it would have been very easy to get bogged down in lots of legal terms. The test is whether someone outside the legal world could pick up that document and find it useful, helpful and understandable. I think they could.

My right hon. and learned Friend talked about context. Context is important. We are all tempted, from time to time, to go off into flights of philosophical fancy and great principles, but we need to come back to context from time to time. She drew briefly on her time at university. I was at university slightly later than she was. I was at Oxford, which is always a little behind everybody else on some of its revolutionary activities. In fact, when I arrived in 1973, I found that we were in the process of occupying university buildings to get a student union—something that had been discussed and argued about some five years earlier in other universities—but I will let that pass.

Context is important. This year, we mark the 50th anniversary of two sets of activities—one involving students, the other involving free speech—that importantly changed our world. One of them, of course, was the wide-scale student protests in the 1960s. Baroness Bakewell, a Member of the upper House, only the other week presented a marvellous programme on television about the context of the French évènements in that respect, and how they changed French society. In that same year, 1968, Enoch Powell gave his infamous “rivers of blood” speech. Both those events still have resonance for us today when discussing what the bounds to student protests and to free speech should be. Those are important layers of context.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham was absolutely right to say that context changes the things that students, or the general public, want to talk about. Without disrespect to the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), who is no longer in his place, I am suspicious of the idea that we can tell universities, “You should be talking about this, that and the other.” Students will talk about what students want to talk about. There may be more bread and butter discussed today at some points than there would have been when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham and I were at university, but the crucial thing is that there should be spaces in which a broad number have that ability to talk. I am suspicious of the idea that we—particularly those of us who are perhaps rather more removed from their student days than others—should pontificate about what student unions should do, or choose to do. I think that way sometimes madness lies.

The report rightly talked about the potential dead hand of bureaucracy and inhibition. Sometimes, with the best will in the world, institutions and stakeholders get excited by the project and go ahead to develop things that sound thoughtful, but end up in an horrendous organigram, such as the one that my right hon. and learned Friend showed us. None of us is immune from that, but we need from time to time to cut away at it and, indeed, to make fun of it. When we were talking about bureaucracy I was reminded, as an historian, of the famous phrase in Philip II’s empire, “If death came from Madrid, I would be immortal.” That sense of bureaucracies or powers bringing those things to themselves and thinking that they have all the answers can produce that sort of position. It is reasonably clear where the boundary lies of breaching the right to free speech, and the example that my right hon. and learned Friend gave in that respect is a very important one.

I will touch briefly on the comments by the hon. Members for Congleton and for Brentwood and Ongar. The hon. Member for Congleton laid out well some of the ridiculousness of the hokey cokey of regulations. The particular account she gave of the curtains reminded me of the famous phrase in “Measure for Measure”,

“man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority”.

It happened to be a man in that case, and presumably it was on the occasion that the hon. Lady mentioned. Sometimes people get off on that sort of thing. While I welcome the Charity Commission’s response to the report, I do not think it is immune to that either. The examples that the hon. Lady gave reminded me—to take a medieval parallel—of scholastics trying to decide how many angels could dance on a pin.

The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar talked about rights and about the law. I am sympathetic to that, but we must all remember that the law itself is not an immutable concept. The laws, from time to time, disadvantage citizens in our society and need to be challenged. Some 50 years ago, gay people in this country were mildly celebrating the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Principles are not always the same. If we look up at the screen today, what is being debated in the other Chamber? Homophobia, transphobia and biphobia. We might have different views on the importance of those relevant to other things, but context changes things.

It is important that we have those things in mind. We have heard today that there is not a pervasive problem of freedom of speech at our universities, and that some of the press accounts of widespread suppression of free speech have been out of kilter with reality. The Committee members did not find the wholesale censorship of debate that media coverage had suggested. That is not to say that the report does not draw attention to a number of important factors limiting free speech, and there is inevitably real confusion about how regulations apply to student unions. That is why it was important that the Committee undertook its student union survey, which showed that 25 out of 33 student union officers said that restriction of free speech was not a problem at their university.

[Fiona Bruce]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

I will not, I am afraid. I have little enough time to speak, so I will continue.

The chief executive of Universities UK recently said:

“Tens of thousands of speaking events are put on every year across the country, the majority pass without incident.”

It was a little curious that the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), repeatedly expressed concerns about some of the impacts of student-led activities, such as no-platforming and safe spaces, in—in my view—a slightly lurid fashion. There is a clear line between frank speech and what whips up and can specifically promote hate, or be abusive. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham touched on that.

It is also important that we consider the role of Government and other organisations in this process. The National Union of Students has a no-platform policy for a handful of racist, anti-Semitic and extremist organisations, some of which the Government themselves have banned. Is the Minister opposed to that policy? How clear does he need to be about which of those groups he wants to see on campus?

Earlier this month, as we have heard, the Minister set out some proposals and thoughts. I think he felt a little constrained about what he could say because of the views of his predecessor. Bringing together that group, as he did, is potentially a productive mechanism. Can he spell out some of the conclusions of the summit and, as importantly, who is to be held accountable for taking them forward? The Government must not try to micromanage free speech on our university campuses; some of the problems raised by this report need addressing, but they will not necessarily be addressed by micromanagement from Government.

Finally, I come to the implications. Academics of both right and left persuasions have always and often been arresting and controversial figures, so it is important that the broader questions about academic autonomy and freedom are recognised by the Government. Throughout the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, the Opposition were clear that the new Office for Students should not be a micromanagement process for this. In terms of this activity, what does the Minister believe his responsibilities are, as opposed to those of the Office for Students, in terms of drawing up guidelines? If they are too widely drawn, they will produce some of the problems we have heard about today.

This is an excellent report, and I commend it. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham talked about the fact that the Committee had saved the Government a lot of time; I would also say money and possibly civil service time. Although I know very well that civil servants are loth to take anything simply as is, I suggest that the report could be a very important blueprint for solving some of the inevitable tensions and dilemmas in this area.

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) on securing the debate and thank everyone who has contributed to it.

Like the Joint Committee, I approached this issue with a fairly open mind. That said, I have a bent, so far as free speech is concerned. As president of the debating society at university, I was totally happy to countenance inviting a senior member of the British National party to come and speak, even though I found, and still find, his views abhorrent, because I felt that the only way to deal with them was to challenge him. I invited Tariq Aziz, who was then the Iraqi Foreign Minister, but he was no-platformed by the Home Office at the time, so my members had to make do with Mark Owen from Take That instead.

I came to this with an open mind, but I clearly started from a position that free speech should be encouraged. We live in an open society and open debate is particularly important. If our democracy is to flourish, someone having views that are offensive to someone else is not sufficient reason to prevent them expressing those views—but expressing them does not mean that they should go unchallenged. Rather than trying to stop that person expressing such views, what we want is open debate.

I also approached the debate very conscious that, today, a word or a couple of words in a sentence that someone utters can completely characterise and define their position. It is easy, as universities go through these issues, to get to a point where they might think that someone is an unacceptable speaker because of how their views have been represented. They react to how the views have been presented, rather than listening to the argument. For all those reasons, it is important to be cautious in how we approach the issue.

When I appeared before the Joint Committee, four or five weeks into this job, I carefully calibrated how I expressed my position: I not only expressed concern about a creeping culture of censorship, but suggested that measuring whether we have free speech on campus by events that happen is not in itself sufficient. We do not know about the events that do not happen or, more importantly, about the events that happen but in a different way from how they would have happened had they been able to go ahead freely.

As Universities Minister, I have been going around universities speaking directly to students. I found it slightly amusing that, before I spoke at one university—the Universities Minister doing a Q&A with students—they had to read out the safe space policy. I just had to smile. I visited another university to discuss a number of issues, including free speech, and it was suggested to my team that, if we really wanted negative headlines, we should go ahead. I said, “Why don’t you invite lots of students from other universities nearby? You have the Universities Minister, and it would be good for them to be involved.” They said that they couldn’t invite them because they thought they would cause trouble. They were going to manage the invitation list. A video had to be played at the start of the event. As I spoke to my team about it, I ended up asking myself whether it was really worth doing the event at all. That is how censorship happens. I could see that I was second-guessing myself and what I was going to say. I am the Universities Minister. I hope that I might have some controversial views, but hopefully none that are sufficient for me to be turned away from speaking at any of our universities.

It is based on that experience, and the number of letters that I now receive from students across the country, that I have come to the view that the Committee is actually on to something here, in two important respects. The first is the bureaucracy and rules around free speech, whether from equalities law, the Charity Commission, which regulates student unions, or a university’s own policies, or a particular student union’s own policies. At best, it is so confusing that a well-intentioned person could somehow end up seeing censorship as the way to promote free speech, which is a contradiction in terms. At worst, it is very easy for wreckers to use that bureaucracy to frustrate views that they do not agree with and do not think belong on campus.

The Committee is not only on to something really significant here, but its work, which is even-handed and level-headed in its approach, provides a very good basis on which to proceed. It is a cross-party Committee and it has members from both Houses; it is not the Government party trying to use free speech as a wedge—that is the last thing I want to do. Free speech on campus should not be seen as a proxy for some of the wider culture wars in our society. If anything, it should be about helping universities with what they are best placed to do: fostering open debate and the free exchange of ideas. There are often clashes, but those clashes should be seen as positive, rather than something we want to rail against or stop.

I very much welcome the Committee’s report and its recommendations. I have been a Minister for a number of years now. When Ministers receive Select Committee reports, we often spend our time scratching our heads and thinking how to respond by doing the least we can and then moving on. However, this report provides a very strong basis for the Government to do what we can to promote free speech. That is why I held a summit, attended by the National Union of Students, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Office for Students and the Charity Commission, so that we could all work together to resolve this issue in a way that works for all our universities.

The Committee has thankfully come up with not only a set of recommendations, but its own guidance. We are looking to produce uniform and simplified guidance, and the Committee’s work means that we can proceed in haste to produce that for the start of the next academic year.

[Gordon Marsden]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister while he is in full flow. On the summit, which was advertised and which we are told went well, it would be helpful to both Members and the Joint Committee if he could provide a synopsis of what was actually agreed and who was tasked with doing some of those things.

[Mr Gyimah]

Absolutely. I will write to the Committee and I am willing to share that correspondence with the hon. Gentleman. It will include how the Government plan to proceed with the recommendations and the outcome of the summit. The Equality and Human Rights Commission holds the pen on the new guidance and regulations, so it will drive it, rather than Ministers or officials in Whitehall.

The Committee is on to something in highlighting overlapping and confusing regulations that frustrate, rather than promote, free speech. It mentioned the role of the Office for Students. Because the debate is almost out of time, I will set that out clearly in my follow-up correspondence.

I will mention something that I do not think the Committee touched on: the issue of culture. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) touched on the risk of a political monoculture developing on our campuses, so that, by default, certain ideas are seen as unacceptable. If free speech is to work, the same standards should be applied to all ideas, rather than believing that certain ideas should not be held because they are unpopular or unfashionable. Nigel Farage should be as welcome on campus as Jon Lansman, for example.

I also think that protest has a place. We want active debate, but we also want active and peaceful protest. However, protest becomes unacceptable when it is a deliberate attempt to prevent an event from taking place because the protestors disagree with the ideas that will be aired there. This is very difficult to solve, and it is one area that the Committee did not look at, but we really need to tackle it in order to ensure that our universities truly are bastions of free speech.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Freedom of Speech in Universities, HC 589.

Unpaid Trial Work Periods (Prohibition) Bill

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I am overcome with Members’ generosity.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is being extremely gracious. I congratulate him—as I am sure do most Members in this House—on bringing this Bill before us today. We have just had National Apprenticeship Week. Not least of the evils of the present situation, is that, first, it prevents the sort of serial offenders that he is describing from doing something decent such as offering an apprenticeship, and secondly, it hides them from exposure for not taking such things forward in the first place.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point and we are better informed for it. There cannot be a Member of the House who did not celebrate National Apprenticeship Week. On the back of that, if nothing else, this matter certainly merits Parliament’s attention this afternoon.

Funding Higher Education

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

You might get a cheque in the post.

[Mr Streeter]

It would be a little bit late, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for the thought.

Repayment of loans is a shared responsibility between the Student Loans Company and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. The Student Loans Company receives all its funding from the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. Therefore, the system is based on the student owing however much money he or she needed to borrow to get through university and gradually paying it back during their working lifetime. Perhaps not surprisingly, 93% of all students in England take up student loans.

The total amount of debt that an average student who completes a three-year undergraduate course will owe has now risen to around £50,000, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That sum will include just under £6,000 in interest accrued during the period of study, at a rate of up to 6.1%. A student who has taken out a loan will begin repaying 9% of their income when they are earning higher than the repayment threshold, and any unpaid debts are written off after 30 years. Broadly, that is the system.

The Government announced in October 2017 that the repayment threshold on student debts would be raised from £21,000 to £25,000, commencing from April 2018. At the same time, the fee cap was frozen at £9,250.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) on securing the debate. He spoke thoughtfully. We are both of the Kinnock generation, so I understand some of his points. He talked about his experiences in schools and people going to university. We must recognise the heart of the debate is not just the people who speak about what they might be deterred from, but the people who keep silent. The people who keep silent, whether they are older or younger learners, are being put off by the current financial structure that the Government have put in place.

The hon. Gentleman made a number of interesting suggestions about graduate tax and cutting the interest rates from 6.1%. There is consensus on that across the piece. We would have more sympathy with the Government if they had not been so intensely relaxed, and indeed complacent, when the interest rates were introduced. It was very clear that the previous Universities Minister—no doubt because he was a keen remainer—did not take into account in any shape or form the implications of Brexit in that respect. Two months before the referendum, inflation stood at 0.4%, but it is now 3.1% and rising. That is one of the reasons why the interest rate is 6.1%.

I welcome the thoughtful comments made by the hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer). He made very sensible points about governance in higher education. He rightly touched on the impact on post-1992 universities if fee aversion hits the disadvantaged students they cater for, and talked about his experiences with the two universities he is associated with—the University of Northampton and the University of Derby. I support all that, but I remind him and the House that fee aversion is an issue not simply for students but for the taxpayer. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) made exactly that point in response to last week’s statement. The Government have tried to make a virtue out of necessity by saying, “Oh, you don’t really need to repay all this money,” but we are irresponsibly laying burdens on future generations and on the tax system now. The Government should not be complacent about that in any way.

[Mr Gyimah]

I look forward to hearing the hon. Gentleman outline the Labour party’s policy. His concern is burden on the taxpayer, but there would be an even bigger burden on the taxpayer if higher education were made free—that is my understanding of the Labour party’s policy—unless places were rationed.

[Gordon Marsden]

There were several completely unproven assertions in what the Minister just said. He would do better to stick to this debate, which is about his policies rather than—

[Mr Gyimah]

rose—

[Gordon Marsden]

No, I am not going to take another intervention. The Minister will have plenty of time to say what he wants to say.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) rightly talked about the sustainability of the sector and some of the key issues in terms of Brexit. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), who is no longer in the Chamber, absolutely rightly drew us back to further education and nursing bursaries, and the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) spoke about issues post-Brexit.

The point is very straightforward: since coming to office in 2010, Conservative-led Governments have repeatedly raised tuition fees. They trebled fees to £9,000 and subsequently increased them to £9,250. That agenda has hit students—particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds—harder and harder since 2012. The cutting, one by one, of all the concessions that David Willetts introduced to temper the impact has been just as damaging. Those concessions were dismantled deliberately. The National Union of Students lists them in its briefing for the debate: the Government abolished maintenance grants, NHS bursaries, the disabled students allowance and the education maintenance allowance, and ended Aimhigher.

The Minister has inherited that. He is not responsible for it, but he would be wise to show due humility about its incremental impact on the people concerned. If he reads the “Fairer Fees” report published by the Sutton Trust late last year, he will see, as Members have already said, that the average debt for students in England is higher than the European average and twice the US average. As a result, the Government have racked up an unenviable record of nudging people away from, rather than towards, aspiration in higher education and chipping off many of the rungs of the ladder of social mobility that were designed to protect them.

The July report by London Economics for the University and College Union suggested that thousands of graduates would suffer a mid-life tax crisis, analysis undertaken last year by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows the level of debt, and only this week the Sutton Trust gave us figures that show disadvantaged students across the UK are more than three times more likely to live at home while attending university. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West made that point, too.

The Prime Minister finally admitted last week, after months of us, the Sutton Trust and an impressive range of stakeholders all saying the same, that the current funding system leaves the most disadvantaged students with the highest debt, yet behind the warm words and soft soap that were ladled out by the Prime Minister in Derby and by her Education Secretary in the Commons, it seems that no new money is available and there is the potential for HE funding cuts. In her speech, the Prime Minister tried to talk the talk on social mobility and aspiration, but she did little to walk the walk and address either the FE sector, in which 10% of HE is delivered, or the problems with 16-to-18 provision that many colleges are suffering, including the one in which she chose to make her speech. It will take more than a brush-by in Derby one afternoon in February to remedy those issues.

The terms of reference published by the Department state that the review cannot make recommendations on tax policy and must make recommendations in keeping with the Government’s fiscal policies. Will the Minister confirm that that means there will be no new money for the policies in the review? Does it mean that savings will have to be found elsewhere in the FE budget if changes are to be made? My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central challenged him and, to give him credit, he made a commitment that access and widening participation funding will not be diminished as a result of the review. I warn him that the Treasury has a long reach and he will need a stout shield to resist it in this area and others.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, unless the Government are at least prepared to put more money into the sector, it is difficult to understand how we will get a sustainable system for funding universities? The Minister needs to be clear about that.

[Gordon Marsden]

I absolutely agree. As the Minister is eager to explore our policies, I remind him that Labour’s policies and our message of progression were taken on board so strongly by would-be and existing students, their families and their parents during the recent election because we had a cohesive narrative. Whether we were talking about adult learning, college learning or traditional cohorts of young people going into higher education, we said that we wanted to lift barriers and financial burdens to make a step change in social mobility. The Conservatives did not put that message across, and suffered accordingly. Given the restrictions on the review, they will miss another opportunity.

The Conservatives continue to falter on the reintroduction of maintenance grants, to which we have been committed for nearly two years. The Prime Minister engaged with that tortuously last week. Our position is echoed by the education sector, Universities UK, MillionPlus, the Chair of the Education Committee, the Treasury Committee and even the vice-chancellor of the private University of Buckingham, Sir Anthony Seldon. UUK has said that there are ways in which the current system can be improved, such as by reintroducing maintenance grants, as has MillionPlus, but it is likely that colleges and universities will be expected to cover any extra costs. The Prime Minister implied that in her speech last week when she said the Government will have to look at how

“learners receive maintenance support, both from Government and universities and colleges.”

We have some idea of how that extra funding might be delivered under her policies: by robbing Peter to pay Paul. We saw the same sleight of hand from the Secretary of State in The Sunday Times, on the BBC and in his statement last week, when he talked about cutting the cost of tuition fees.

The bottom line is that those who already have a lot will be given more. Wealthy students and graduates will benefit the most, because they can pay off debt the earliest. Over the next 10 years, there will be 13 million vacancies but only 7 million school leavers to fill them, yet great swathes of our university extramural departments, institutions such as the Open University and Birkbeck, and new providers, have been swept away or at least crippled by the tripling of fees since 2012.

There is a social dimension. One in five undergraduate entrants in England from low-participation neighbourhoods chooses or has no option but to study part time. The Government need to address that. However, when the Prime Minister talked about lifelong learning last week, there were no words of contrition for what the Government have done: tripling fees, scrapping maintenance grants and introducing adult learning loans, half of which have been handed back unused to the Treasury.

What we need to know from the Minister—apart from why, curiously, there has been no reference to 16-to-18 education—is what he is going to do to reassure people. No direct grant has been available for university courses in the arts and humanities, social sciences, computer science, design, architecture or economics since 2014-15. Will there be anything in the review to support those? The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have talked about two-year courses easing financial burdens on students, but where is the commitment to the continuous professional development that will be necessary in HE if those are to go forward correctly?

Finally, what are the principles behind the timing of the report? Of course, the report will not be independent but will have input—that is all it is—from the panel. However, that input may be quite weak. Why will there be no consideration of that? What will the Minister do to reassure us all that it is not just a PR exercise?

Henry Ford famously said that a customer can have any colour so long as it is black. If the Minister and his Government do not take proper regard of the various elements described in the debate, they will be just as guilty of that as Henry Ford.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

Well, the suggestion from the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden), was that somehow we have pursued policies that are damaging higher education and the aspiration and prospects of our young people as far as the university sector is concerned. On the contrary, we have pursued policies that have put no cap on aspiration.

[Gordon Marsden]

rose—

[Mr Gyimah]

I will take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention in a second.

I will end this myth-busting section by focusing on Scotland, where controls on student numbers continue to restrict the aspiration of young people. The Sutton Trust recently stated that Scottish 18-year-olds from the most advantaged areas are still more than four times more likely to go straight to university than those from the least advantaged areas, compared with 2.4 times in England. Audit Scotland has stated:

“It has become more difficult in recent years for Scottish students to gain a place at a Scottish university as applications have increased more than the number of offers made by universities.”

That is not an example I want to copy here in England.

[Mr Gyimah]

Audit Scotland clearly does not share the hon. Lady’s view.

[Gordon Marsden]

The Minister speaks about rites of passage. Those are fine words, but fine words butter no parsnips. The truth of the matter is, he should be focusing on not just the number of people from disadvantaged backgrounds getting to university but what stops them staying there. He should also focus on the groups who never even think about getting there because of what his predecessors’ tuition fees policies have done, particularly for mature and part-time students.

Draft Higher Education (Access and Participation Plans) (England) Regulations 2018

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

If it is not too late, Mr Davies, I wish you and the whole Committee a happy new year. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the Minister on his first outing. He and I are not complete strangers to facing each other across the Dispatch Box. Before he took up his current position, he had a relatively brief spell in the Department for Education, where he covered careers advice. I remember that we had one or two exchanges on the Floor of the House on that issue.

I welcome the Minister warmly to his new position. I appreciate how difficult it is to master the elements of a brief only a couple of days after coming in on the back of what was a, shall we say, interesting reshuffle. I therefore will understand if he is not able to answer immediately the various questions that I put to him, but we would obviously want to have some detailed responses after the Committee.

This is a very important debate to kick off, if that is not too much of a colloquialism. We know the scope of the consultation that the Government put out before Christmas on the Office for Students. That consultation was relatively brief, considering the implications of the run-up to Christmas being part of the timeframe, so it would be interesting to learn just what the level of response was. We expressed some concern about whether the period would be adequate. The submissions will undoubtedly include access and participation, which we are discussing with these regulations, and I hope the Minister and his officials will respond to them generously.

The regulations are part and parcel of what I imagine will be—the Minister and I might groan at this—a succession of statutory instruments or delegated legislation that will have to come before Committees such as this in the next two to three months so that the Government can meet their objective of getting all the necessary secondary legislation through before the Act can be formally implemented. Will he confirm that things will happen in the usual fashion, with the Act coming into force in full in April once the SIs have gone through?

The regulations are an important part of the process, not least because of the lengthy and useful debate we had in Committee. The Minister has already mentioned his predecessor the hon. Member for Orpington, to whom I pay tribute for the civility with which he answered the detailed questions we asked him on all these areas, including access and participation. The record will show that on the whole we did not press matters to Divisions on the basis—this is important for the new Minister to recognise—of the former Minister’s assurances about various things not needing to go into statute because they were implicit in the OFS guidelines and would be carried through. Through this whole process, we will look carefully to ensure that officials and ultimately the new Minister honour the letter and spirit of what his predecessor said in those rather detailed exchanges we had in Committee and on Report.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

As was previously outlined, clarity on responsibility is important. In particular, it is important that the director for fair access and participation, rather than any other individual, is responsible for deciding on an access plan and approving it.

[Gordon Marsden]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It speaks to a central part of the legislation that we need to consider, particularly in the context of access and participation. I will not go further on that for the moment because I will come on to it in due course. The former Minister said that there has to be a new architecture under the Bill because in many respects the OFS has a different role from that of HEFCE. Therefore, these issues are important. I thank my hon. Friend for raising them at this early stage, and I will come to them in my remarks.

The regulations are important to activate and generate what the Government want to do on access and participation, and what the OFS needs to do. I am afraid that that is where I part company slightly with the Minister. He said in his introduction that good progress had been made, although, as Ministers always should, he wisely used the great caveat, “There is more to do”. There is indeed more to do; although improvement has been made in some areas, far more must be done by both institutions and Government to ensure that higher education is accessible to all and that we can support students through their studies. The recent end-of-cycle report from UCAS offered some concerning statistics, stating that young people from the most advantaged backgrounds are still 5.5 times more likely to enter university with the highest entrance requirement than their disadvantaged peers. The OFS will need to press on that challenge, as little progress has been made in narrowing the gap between those most and least likely to enter higher education since 2014.

It is also a challenge in certain regions. In London, for example, 18-year-olds are now 25% more likely to enter HE than those across England as a whole, and 43% more likely than 18-year-olds from the south-west, for example. That is not just an issue for the OFS or higher education institutions, of course; it is not even necessarily an issue entirely for the Minister or me, given our remits. As the Sutton Trust has said, many of the issues go far back into primary and secondary education as well. However, they are important. As Les Ebdon, the director of fair access to higher education, said last month,

“people with the potential to excel are missing out on opportunities. This is an unforgivable waste of talent”.

The statistics often focus on increasing the number of 18-year-olds going to university, and the Government, when they first introduced the Bill and the White Paper, took that approach. During the progress of the Bill, we were glad to see them wake up a little more to issues such as part-time and mature students, and the one in 10 people in further education who take HE courses. As my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley mentioned earlier, there are still severe concerns about the situation of part-time and mature students. Since 2010-11, part-time participation has fallen by 61% and the number of mature students has declined by 39%. That is a concern for our overall economic performance. Over the next 10 years, there will probably be about 13 million vacancies, but only 7 million school leavers to fill them. If we do not empower people and give them chances, our productivity, our economy and all sorts of things will suffer.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is crucial for us to address access for part-time and mature students, so we can equalise chances as well as improving our economic performance in future? It is important that we plan to address that aspect.

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend, of course, comes from a region with a proud tradition of skills, and an equally proud tradition of widening access for older people who have been displaced from their original jobs and must find new ones. That is why it is crucial that the access and participation agreements taken forward—we will come in a moment to the mechanisms for taking them forward—are given a strong basis in the process. The Minister said in his earlier remarks to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley about part-time and mature students that the plans can take cognizance of that, but the word should not be “can”; it should be “should”. “Should” was the word that we used to the Minister’s predecessor when we tabled our amendments in Committee. We withdrew those amendments on the understanding that the Government would give the OFS a strong steer on that issue. I ask him to make that point today. As I said in Committee in October 2016, the

“importance of part-time and mature students”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 11 October 2016; c. 358.]

must be recognised in access and participation plans. As Birkbeck said in its evidence to the Committee on access and participation:

“The vast majority of our students are aged over 21. Most choose evening study because they work full-time…Provision for part-time and mature learners is important for social mobility.”

Will the Minister confirm that HE institutions should take part-time and mature learners into account in their access and participation plans?

The other issue that the regulations will hopefully begin to address is support for students throughout their time at university: not just getting them there in the first place, but ensuring that they have the necessary support and guidance to complete their courses. If institutions are taken over by another institution, that initial commitment to support could—I am not saying it will, but it could—be in jeopardy. This is not a hypothetical issue. There are increasing examples of universities and HE institutions being taken over by other outside bodies, and the latest was BPP earlier this year. What assurances can the Minister give about what would happen to access and participation plans should an institution transfer ownership?

Figures published by the Office for Fair Access showed a worrying increase in the numbers of disadvantaged young students dropping out of university after the first year of their course, and the regulations need to address that issue. Black students, for example, were more than 50% more likely to drop out of university than their white and Asian counterparts. More than one in 10 black students drop out of university in England, according to a report by two charitable universities trusts, the UPP Foundation and the Social Market Foundation. Is the Minister in a position to say how that will be taken into account in deciding on the access and participation plans that are presented to the Office for Students by institutions? As I have already said, the same is true about the drop-out rates for mature students.

I want to move on to the detailed contents of the regulations. The explanatory memorandum describes the current arrangements on access agreements succinctly:

“Currently the DFA is responsible for approving access agreements from HEFCE funded institutions and further education colleges…whilst HEFCE has responsibility for regulating and distributing funding to eligible providers for higher education activities. The OfS will have functions replacing those of both of these bodies.”

That is the crux of the matter, which I hope the Minister will clarify. While powers are still being transferred to the OFS from OFFA and HEFCE, it is unclear how this new balance of power will work in reality. Will the access and participation plans envisaged and detailed in this statutory instrument be not only proposed and overseen—I think that was the phrase used—but approved by the director for fair access, and what role will the OFS leadership play in that? It is my understanding that the current director of fair access will formally step down on 1 April and be replaced—we wish him Godspeed and all well in his new appointment—by Chris Millward. Is Chris Millward already working with Les Ebdon on some of these issues, either formally or informally, and will there be a swift transition or a period of handover after 1 April?

As I said in the fourth sitting of the Bill Committee in 2016, meeting

“the Government’s goal of doubling the rate of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds…will require an acceleration of the process and a director who can continue to offer those robust challenges. If the director does not retain”

in these regulations or in the Act as a whole that authority,

“or if that power can be delegated to others and decisions overturned, there is a real risk”—

I am not suggesting that this would be intentional—

“that the director’s position will be seen as weakened. Believe me, having sat on the Education Committee, I do not think that lawyers and judicial reviews or internal rows in Departments”,

which sometimes detract

“from the work of that Department, are something to be recommended.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 8 September 2016; c. 134.]

The director of fair access himself, in evidence to the Public Bill Committee on the Higher Education and Research Bill, raised those concerns:

“I am concerned that there should be clarity in those clauses to make it clear that the responsibility, particularly for deciding on an access plan and approving it, should rest with the director for fair access and participation. There should be absolute clarity about the responsibility.”

In relation to these regulations, do we have that clarity that the responsibility for deciding on an access plan and approving it rests with the director for fair access and participation?

When it comes to authority, the director of fair access said:

“that should be exclusively delegated to the director for access and participation, so that there is clarity about that particular role—and indeed, a greater power there—and the progress that we have made in recent years through OFFA can be sustained”.—[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 57-58, Q87.]

What assurance can the Minister give us that the new director for fair access and participation will be able to sustain the work of OFFA in terms of resources and his actual position in the OFS when he takes on these powers? Will he have powers under the Act and the regulations that allow him to be in the driving seat on these issues? The former universities Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington, said during the Committee that it was the intention to give the director for fair access responsibility for that:

“We envisage that in practice that will mean that the other OFS members will agree a broad remit with the future director…on those activities.”—[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 8 September 2016; c. 136.]

[Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the light of the letter published by the Commissioner for Public Appointments regarding the appointment of Toby Young, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to ensure that there is a thorough review of the whole process of appointments to the board?

[Gordon Marsden]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. The detailed elements of the review, which has been announced this morning, are not the direct subject of this Committee, so I will not, whatever my personal thoughts, dilate in detail on what Peter Riddell said in his letter in The Times today; hon. Members may want to go and read it. However, what does matter is that the issue of how people are appointed to the board—and, once they have been appointed, of what detailed involvement and decision-making powers they might have over access and participation agreements—is highly germane to the discussion we are having today. I would expect the Minister, in responding, to bear those sensitivities in mind, given the present situation, which has just been announced.

Will the Minister reassure hon. Members that this responsibility will be integrated in the way that I have described when these issues are taken into account? I remind him—well, I am not reminding him, because he was not on the Committee at the time—of what I said to his predecessor in September 2016:

“To ensure that the targets set by universities and colleges are sufficiently challenging will always involve tough negotiations. For the director to have had that independence to engage in negotiation free from conflicts of interest has been crucial in securing high levels of commitment by institutions”.

However, if

“the director…can be bypassed and overruled by the chief executive”,

by individual members of the board or by a collection of members of the board,

“we believe, as do others, that that would significantly undermine his or her ability to negotiate directly with vice-chancellors and to offer a robust challenge.”

That is why, in response, the Minister’s colleague, the hon. Member for Orpington, said:

“Through our reforms, we are keen to ensure that promoting the success of disadvantaged students will be a central part of the OFS’s remit…OFS members will agree a broad remit with the future director”.—[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 8 September 2016; c. 132-36.]

What role does the Minister envisage the board members will play in the process?

That is important and particularly concerning, given the recent controversy over the divisive and damaging appointment of Toby Young as a member of the OFS. Although one of the requirements of the OFS is to promote widening access and diversity in the sector, the move to appoint Toby Young contradicted that, so what confidence can we now have in the OFS to promote access issues if in future it had on board, as it briefly had, someone who had shown contempt for precisely the groups of people that the OFS and the director for fair access will take forward? It is not just a matter of our sins of commission; it is also about potential sins of omission. It is about having people on the board with positive experience of disadvantage that will feed into the decision process outlined in today’s regulations. The DFA will need to exercise those thoughts in conjunction with those people.

The Government’s announcement of the final six board members was a huge missed opportunity to make sure that this body will be broad-based and reflect the diversity of the sector it must regulate. We have already referred to the principles of public life, which will be very important. There are, however, still no active further education sector representatives, nor any National Union of Students, university or college staff, on this body. That must be remedied rapidly, not least if we are to have confidence that, as the regulations are taken forward—we hope the Minister will assure us that the director for fair access will be the lead person in that respect—they will have input from people on the board who know about the issues that these plans are supposed to address.

As I say, there is among not just us but many people in the HE sector a continuing, nagging concern, which I raised back in 2016, that under these reforms the director could be seen as subordinate to the head of the OFS. That body will have significant funding from universities—we wait to hear how much—which might make it less inclined to challenge institutions on access. That is why we are making this point so strongly.

It might be worth reflecting on what happened with the 2016-17 access agreements, which were positive for both the Government and the director. The director’s negotiations on that occasion led to improved targets at 94 institutions, and 28 of those increased their predicted spend, securing an estimated additional £11.4 million for fair access and participation. That is why we asked for the powers in question to be clearly stated in the Bill, and why we now seek assurances that the director will have a direct line to the Secretary of State and not simply report to members of the OFS board and the OFS chief executive, although of course he may wish to consult them substantially.

Those are some of the key issues that we really need to address. The devil is always in the detail. When we considered the Bill in Committee, the detail was quite opaque, and remains so even with today’s regulations. Having been present at the launch of a major new institution myself many years ago and seen it from a public affairs perspective, I know that not everything can be set in stone from day one and things will have to adapt as we go along. However, that makes it all the more important that the overall direction of travel—particularly in relation to these access and participation regulations—and the autonomy and driving power of the director for fair access are made absolutely clear. If they are not, and situations arise in which he is in conflict with, or has pressure put on him by, people on the board, it will be the people we all want to support by means of the access and participation arrangements and instruments being introduced today who will be the poorer.

[Mr Gyimah]

I remember the exchanges I had with the hon. Member for Blackpool South on careers, and he has approached the scrutiny of these regulations with the assiduousness that I came to know when I was in the Department for Education before.

The hon. Gentleman asked a number of important and valid questions, starting with one about the consultation that was held just before Christmas. There were more than 300 responses, and it will come as no surprise to him that we will reflect closely on those.

The hon. Gentleman asked a substantive question about the process of implementing the 2017 Act. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are a number of pieces of secondary legislation. There are 15 in total, six of which need to be enforced by 1 April to enable the OFS to operate during its transitional period and open its register to providers. The remaining nine will be required by August 2019. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that prior to the Christmas recess, we laid regulations for part 1 of the transition, for access and participation, for the mandatory fee limit condition and for the publication of the register. The remaining two, on part 2 of the transition and the transparency duty, are scheduled to be laid much later in the year. I hope that that gives him some clarity about the trajectory.

The hon. Gentleman asked a number of questions about the director for fair access and participation, including whether he would be approving the plans. The answer is yes. It is our expectation that the director will approve plans on behalf of the OFS, and we expect that function to be delegated to him.

In addition, the hon. Gentleman rightly asked about the power that the director will have. The Act ensures that the director will be responsible for overseeing the OFS’s performance on access and participation and reporting to the other OFS board members. It is right that the director takes advantage of the expertise of the board, rather than acting on their own. The purpose of a broad and diverse board for a statutory body that has quite a wide remit is that board members have lots of different types of experience to bring to bear.

The hon. Gentleman asked a number of questions on mature and part-time students, which is an important issue. Financial support is available for those who want to study part time. We are consulting on proposals to enable greater provision of accelerated degrees, to make that more attractive. We will be coming to that over the following months.

Equal access to some of the most selective institutions is of concern. However, there has been a lot of progress, with 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas 50% more likely to enter HE in 2017 than in 2009. When I said that there is still a lot of work to do—to put it another way, there are no grounds for complacency—that was not just a standard ministerial caveat. From my own life experience, I know how important that is, and it will be a personal crusade of mine in this brief to continue to look at ways of improving fair access.

[Gordon Marsden]

I thank the Minister for giving that assurance. I entirely understand, support and celebrate his personal commitment in that area. He said that the director for fair access would be responsible for reporting to the board and would approve plans. What is the Minister’s view on the director’s ability to actually carry through the plans? Is it understood that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, those plans will be approved?

[Mr Gyimah]

The director, as I understand it, has executive responsibility for this area, so I would expect them to carry out those plans but, obviously, to report to the board. That structure is not unique to this organisation; it is widely used in many organisations in both the private and public sectors.

In terms of the substance behind going further on access to the most selective institutions, we have introduced the transparency condition, under which providers must publish data on their access record. We have also strengthened, as we have discussed, the access and participation plans.

Chris Millward, who is taking over as the director for fair access and participation, has already taken on in practice some of the responsibilities of that role, and we anticipate a smooth transition.

University Tuition Fees

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) for introducing the debate, with crispness but with insight. The truth of the matter is that a lot of water has run under the bridge since the e-petition was initiated. Members will have seen in the Library briefing that it was put together before the general election was called. Debate on it was therefore postponed. As I say, a lot of water has run under the bridge—under our bridge, and the Minister’s also perhaps—since then, but the reality that prompted 166,000 people to add their names to the petition remains the same. The current system of fees at record highs, and potentially rising in the years ahead, is unsustainable.

This has been a good-natured, thoughtful debate, with some excellent contributions from both sides of the House. This is the first time I have heard the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), and I pay tribute to his speech. There are always different ways of looking at how things have gone. He cited the figures on participation in education that are handed out by Tory Whips at every Education questions, and they are true, in certain areas and in certain cohorts of young people. However, we have to think not simply about young people but about people of all ages, because that is a key issue we will face in the next 10 years. Indeed, among young people themselves, there are disturbing signs regarding completion, which I will mention later, making the picture perhaps not quite as rosy as the hon. Gentleman suggests.

We have had some excellent contributions from Labour Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) not only reminded himself and me of our mortality in this place, but also the Chair, which may or may not be a good thing to do. The truth of the matter is exactly as he said. People forget, of course, that the decisions taken in 1998 were the result of the Dearing report. The report had a consensus in this House, because of the issues it needed to address, but even then, there were many concerns about maintenance grants, as my hon. Friend rightly said.

Maynard Keynes famously said:

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

That is one reason why the Labour party is now committed to what we said we would do in our manifesto. The loss to the Exchequer, in my view and, I think, that of many, of the funding processes is becoming unsustainable.

The huge amount of erudition and reference with which my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) spoke did not affect the fact that he stressed, absolutely rightly, that the current Government in particular—the previous Government under David Cameron were also guilty of this—have an obsession with an ideological viewpoint which, as I have said before, could have come from the pages of Ayn Rand, in the sense that they regard higher education principally as a private consumable, although from time to time they throw bits of food off the table to the public good. That is one issue with which Opposition Members and progressive Government Members take strong issue. It must be remembered that Bahram Bekhradnia, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West mentioned—the Chilean example he gave was a fascinating one—was not only a distinguished director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, which the Minister and I frequently use to bounce ideas off, but a director for 10 years, so he knew what he was talking about.

I was pleased with and interested in the contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda). He made points about the negative—if I can put it this way—nudge impact on groups of people, and he talked particularly about the south-east. From a northern perspective, one reason we were not happy with the freezing of the threshold was that it brought more and more graduates in the north and the midlands into the repayment trap too early. We should see in this whole process the problems of repayment.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), whom I was pleased to work with on the Higher Education and Research Bill, made a number of interesting points, some of which I agreed with, some of which I did not. She talked about the impact of fees on English students, but the Government’s fee policies affect, and the tuition fees e-petition concerns, not just English students but tens of thousands of students enrolled in higher education in further education colleges, like mine in Blackpool. The issue also affects thousands of Scottish students in England and thousands of students from Northern Ireland. The Minister might want to pause for thought, because the Democratic Unionist party has been less than keen on tuition fees. That was why the DUP absented itself from our tuition fees debate in the main Chamber on 13 September and why the Government had to flee the field on that occasion and were forced to allow our Opposition motion to pass unopposed. The Minister should have a care not to rub his DUP colleagues up the wrong way, otherwise there might be an addition to that £1 billion down payment for their support.

The tuition fee changes that the Government put through before the general election saw the basic rate for tuition fees rise from £6,000 to £6,250 a year. The higher rate moved from £9,000 to £9,250. According to the Sutton Trust’s recent report, “Fairer Fees”, the average debt for students is £46,000. Student fees in the UK are 10 times higher than the European average and twice as high as in the US. In June this year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies sounded further alarms about the Government’s direction of travel. It said:

“Replacing maintenance grants with loans…results in students from low-income families graduating with the highest debt levels, in excess of £57,000.”

It also said that

“changes since 2012 have increased the repayments of almost all graduates, increasing the burden of student loans the most for low and middle earners”.

I have made reference to this elsewhere in the House, but the University and College Union commissioned a report from London Economics that was published on 20 July. It suggested that thousands of graduates will suffer a midlife tax crisis from the repayment of accrued interest on student loans. With a ninefold increase in inflation from 0.3% in April 2016—before the Brexit referendum—that will now get radically worse. None of these things exactly hangs out a welcome sign to young people who have got a place or hope to go to university, and that is significant.

The Sutton Trust has issued Members with a factsheet on student debt, but it has also done research that shows that in 2017, financial worries about HE were particularly pronounced, and they increased in families with low levels of affluence. Some 66% of those families were worried, as compared with 46% in high-affluence households. It is no wonder that the results of the survey of student experience by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Higher Education Academy show that just 35% believe that their higher education experience represented good or very good value for money.

I have talked about the issues around the drop-out rate. Two recent reports from the Office for Fair Access and the Social Market Foundation point to growing drop-out rates, particularly among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I have already referred to the Sutton Trust survey. It showed the poorest statistics in eight years for school students wanting to plan for higher education.

I will raise a point that the Government seem to neglect. I have talked before about the fact that we can nudge people away from things as well as towards them. The issue is not just a question of the increasing pressure on those who have taken out loans and how that affects their social mobility; it is also a question of how that puts off people who might want to go to higher education in the first place. By its very nature, that is much less quantifiable, but it is a real factor that needs to be discussed.

What is clearly part of the equation is the impact on part-time and mature students. The main casualties of the increases in tuition fees since 2012 from £3,000 to £9,000 have been mature students and part-time learners. In England, there has been a 60% drop in the number of part-time students since 2010-11. The Minister has said on several occasions that he thinks the argument is far more complex than that, but many people, including me, think that the statistics tell their own story. We simply cannot afford to have that haemorrhaging in the involvement of those groups.

The skills figures are stark: only 13% of the 9.5 million people in the UK who are considering higher education in the next five years are school leavers. The majority are working adults. There is a social dimension to the issue. That is underlined by the fact that one in five undergraduate entrants in England from low-participation neighbourhoods choose—or for financial reasons perhaps have no other option—to study part time. Those are the sorts of people being affected. Even the Minister’s distinguished predecessor Lord Willetts has now admitted that the decisions the Government made in 2012 to treble tuition fees—at that time, the fees were buttressed by various safety mechanisms for social mobility, but those were then stripped away by subsequent Governments—weaken that argument about social mobility still further.

Those are not good bases on which this or any Government should defend the current system. Indeed, there is a palpable and growing realisation that the Government’s settlement for higher education is divisive and financially unstable, especially in regard to tuition fees. Keith Burnett, the vice-chancellor of Sheffield University, put it sharply in a Times Higher Education article in June:

“With total debt forecast to hit £200 billion in six years and to pass £1 trillion by 2045, it will dwarf credit card debt”.

On the basis of the Government’s disappointing general election results—it is important we recognise that it was not just students who turned against them in a big way; it was young people in general, because the student issue and how the Government were dealing with it was seen as emblematic of their attitude towards young people in general—it is not surprising that there has been lively discussion in government about what should be done. The First Secretary of State acknowledged that student debt was a huge issue. The Leader of the House spoke about it, although she did not come forward to discuss matters properly. One of the leading members of the Government—if one is to believe what one hears, he is very much a darling of Tory activists—the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), is on record as saying in 2010 that he opposed the plans to increase fees to as much as £9,000 a year. He said

“that is something I don’t believe we can allow to continue. I have always been against tuition fees. In 2005 our policy was abolition and I was one of the drivers behind that.”

That is the reality of where we stand today. The Government have conceded that the situation with fees is unsatisfactory. If they thought the current system was working well and would be sustainable in the long term, they would not have tinkered with it at the Conservative conference, where they capped the fee rise to £9,250 and increased the repayment threshold of student loans. As one of the central announcements in her conference speech, the Prime Minister committed to a review of HE funding and student finance, but the Minister has yet to reveal the details of that review. At the conference and subsequently, he seemed singularly unhappy about associating himself with the review. The Chancellor failed to mention it in the Budget, so will the Minister let us know the terms of reference for the review? Will it be a full consultation? When will it be brought back?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I know that the further education sector is very close to my hon. Friend’s heart. I just left the reception of the London region of the Association of Colleges where there was great dismay that the Government have been almost silent on the future arrangements for the further education sector. That is similar to the absence of any clarity on where the Government are generally going in this whole area that my hon. Friend is outlining.

[Gordon Marsden]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the situation in further education colleges, because a number of FE colleges, including in my constituency, took the leap of faith in the late 2000s—very much encouraged by the then Labour Government—and set up higher education departments. Those higher education departments must be allowed to flourish, but it seems they are bearing not only the burdens that I am talking about generally, but particular burdens because of the nature of the young people they take in. It is a double whammy, because they take in young people from poorer backgrounds, who are precisely the sort of people most likely to be put off by rising fees. They also take in older people who wish to reskill and retrain, and they too are precisely the sort of people likely to be put off. We know that because we see what is happening with the advanced learning loans that the Government introduced progressively, largely but not entirely for further education, where 60% of the money put out in those advanced learning loans—the figure has barely changed—year by year has remained the same. That is a crisis for FE colleges, but it is also a particular crisis for HE in FE colleges.

Our plans would uprate the funding to universities in line with inflation, whereas the Government’s plans basically impose a real-terms cut in funding. Of course, rising fees might have been easier to swallow if they had been put back into the system, but, again, as MillionPlus has said, and as has been referred to today, there has been no increase in direct grant available from Government for university courses in the arts, humanities, social sciences, architecture and economics to name a few of the subjects affected since 2014-15. That means universities are now required to fund programmes that previously were supported by Government, and there has been a decline in capital investment and an 80% cut in the teaching grant. Will the Minister confirm how much funding in real terms universities will lose in each of the next five years as a result of their current position and their decision to freeze fees?

Now that the Government have increased the student loan repayment threshold, whatever else it might mean for the benefit or otherwise of the students concerned, it means that they are going to miss their own RAB target by around 15%, so will the Minister confirm whether they will revise the target?

The University and College Union got it right when it responded to the Chancellor’s Budget statement. It said:

“The glaring omission from today’s speech was any support for current higher education students, or further detail on the Prime Minister’s promised review of university funding in England.”

That is why we have persistently, in both the HE and FE Bills that came through before the general election, argued the case for much greater focus on some of the groups who will be affected by that. That should go to the heart of the way in which student loans are handed out at the moment. The Minister knows that the Student Loans Company has recently been the subject of controversy, but the issue, which I will not dwell on today, of overpayments and how that has affected many students brings us back to the point that the Government and the Student Loans Company are operating a system that is beginning quite significantly to fail. If the nature of the Student Loans Company board or the Office for Students board were perhaps slightly broader than they are at the moment, more light might be shed on this area.

We appreciate the fact that the Chancellor has listened to our call for proper information sharing between HMRC and the Student Loans Company. Even though it has been postponed until 2019, I hope that that will have a major impact on the current situation. A great deal of thought needs to be given to any major changes in student finance, but the direction of travel matters. We are clear about our direction of travel. We would build bridges for people and not put barriers in their way via a series of measures that stress private good as opposed to public good and which keep people in silos.

Student Loans Company

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on the management and operation of the Student Loans Company.

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Joseph Johnson)]

The Student Loans Company’s performance has improved year on year for the past six years. SLC services account for about 1.8 million applications per year. It responds to about 4.5 million phone calls from borrowers and has more than 6 million repaying or due-to-repay customers, with loans totalling over £100 billion. In addition, it has delivered a range of new products for the Government on time and successfully, including postgraduate loans and simplified advanced learner loans.

This year, the SLC has processed more than 1.4 million applications for student funding, and so far this academic year it has paid out approximately £2.5 billion in maintenance funding and £2 billion in tuition fee payments to providers. Customer satisfaction remains high, at about 85%, and, for borrowers in repayment, at about 72%. It receives complaints from just 0.1% of its 4.7 million customers. The SLC is, of course, constantly looking to learn lessons from this low level of complaints and to use these complaints to improve the quality of its services.

The Department for Education is also working closely with the SLC on a range of initiatives that will further improve the user experience for the SLC’s borrowers and in respect of staff engagement. Proposals currently being developed include greater digitisation of the student loan application and repayment processes and investment in more efficient SLC systems.

Following two independent investigations into allegations about aspects of his management and leadership, the SLC has terminated Steve Lamey’s contract as chief executive officer of the SLC. The SLC and its shareholders expect the highest standards of management and leadership and, having taken into account the findings of the investigations, have concluded that these were not being upheld by Mr Lamey during his time in his role. The SLC board acted swiftly and has appointed the current chief executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency and of the Institute for Apprenticeships, Peter Lauener, as interim CEO, with effect from 27 November. He will remain in post at SLC until a permanent appointment is made.

Mr Lauener was formerly chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and the Education and Skills Funding Agency. He has had a long and successful career in a number of senior leadership positions in the Department and its partner organisations, and I have every confidence that he will provide the drive and stability the SLC requires at this time, as we recruit a permanent chief executive.

[Gordon Marsden]

This announcement was snuck out over the November recess on the same day as the Secretary of State for International Development resigned. Since last Monday, two articles in The Times have raised severe questions about the process. Why, in the Minister’s letter to me on 17 October, sent six weeks after I wrote to him about the SLC, did he refer to the suspension of the chief executive as a neutral act that did not imply wrongdoing, when he was actually made fully aware of the allegations against Steve Lamey in June, as his written reply has told me?

Will the Minister publish the findings of the performance review of the SLC, issued two months before the suspension, in which, as The Times says, Steve Lamey was rated “outstanding”? Was the Minister aware at the time that Mr Jenkins’s report on Mr Lamey had concluded that he was

“making a real and positive difference”

to the Student Loans Company, and was a popular and effective leader who staff found supportive, before the decision was made to sack him? Will he also publish the findings of the internal investigation, in which 52 of 58 allegations against Mr Lamey were dismissed, so that all Members can understand the issues at the SLC?

Who appointed the chair and the other three board members of the SLC, and what were the criteria and processes for those appointments? Can the Minister confirm that Simon Devonshire, the board member who heard and dismissed Mr Lamey’s appeal, and David Gravells are also members of the same venture capital trust?

The lack of proper co-operation between the SLC and HMRC has led to significant overpayment of debts. Can the Minister tell us how many overpayments amounting to more than £10,000 have been made since 2015-16? I have just been told that the Government have tacitly admitted their failure in this regard by saying that from 2019 onwards, HMRC and the SLC will co-operate on these matters. However, that does not address the fact that Mr Lamey and the HMRC’s permanent secretary have blamed each other for the issue. Mr Lamey has claimed that he asked for real-time updates that HMRC would not share. Who is telling the truth?

The BBC’s “Panorama” has raised questions about private providers of courses in which students have fraudulently enrolled in order to claim loans. How much has been paid to students of private higher education providers who were subsequently determined to be ineligible in the last five full financial years, and what mechanisms are there to enable the misused taxpayer money to be reclaimed? In the light of all that, will the Government now suspend the sale of a further chunk of the student loan book?

The Minister recently admitted that changes in interest rate thresholds on student debt would cost £175 million by 2020. Can he tell us where the money will come from? Given that tens of thousands of graduates are footing the bill for SLC failures, what confidence can Parliament have in the competence of this Minister, who is the key shareholder in the Student Loans Company?

[Joseph Johnson]

I would encourage the hon. Gentleman not to denigrate the hard work of the dedicated public servants at the Student Loans Company, who are undertaking a vital task in securing the finance that young people and learners in this country need to pursue higher education and who, as I have said, are doing so in a successful way: fewer than 0.1% of the SLC’s 4.7 million customers complain each year. They are delivering an important service, and the hon. Gentleman should support them rather than running them down.

The hon. Gentleman asked about a number of matters. He asked about the investigations that led to the dismissal of Mr Lamey from his position as chief executive of the SLC. The concerns were brought to the board’s attention in May, and to the attention of the Department for Education.

[Gordon Marsden]

When did you learn about it?

[Joseph Johnson]

We learnt about it in May.

[Gordon Marsden]

But when did you learn about it?

[Joseph Johnson]

I learnt about it in May, as I have just said. The two investigations were immediately set in motion to get to the bottom of the allegations received by the SLC board. One was led by the Government Internal Audit Agency, and the other by Sir Paul Jenkins, former Treasury Solicitor and head of the Government’s legal services. They concluded that Mr Lamey had not shown the leadership which would be expected of someone in that role, and accordingly the board decided that he should no longer continue in the role. As a consequence of the SLC’s decision, the Department decided to relieve him of his responsibilities as accounting officer of the SLC.

The hon. Gentleman asked about ineligible payments, some of which were highlighted by the “Panorama” programme that was broadcast a few days ago. I am sure he will be interested to know that the level of ineligible payments made to alternative providers has been falling sharply in recent years. In fact, it has fallen by over 80% since 2012-13, from about 4% of all payments to 0.5% of all payments in 2015-16. This rate is low; of course we want to eliminate fraud wherever we can identify it, but this is a low rate of ineligible payments to these providers. Indeed, the rate is now no higher than the average across the HEFCE-funded higher education system. So if I were the hon. Gentleman, I would not use this as a means of running down the newer entrants to our higher education system—which he often does from the Dispatch Box—because it cannot be used to support that sort of attack. This reduction in the level of ineligible payments is the direct consequence of the controls that previously the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and now the Department for Education have been putting in place to ensure that public money is not abused.

We take the issue of overpayments extremely seriously, and the hon. Gentleman mentioned some of the steps we are taking. We want close and effective co-operation between HMRC and the SLC so we avoid the risk, to the extent that we possibly can, of students overpaying when they repay. I understand that the Chancellor will be considering this issue further in the Budget later this week, so the hon. Gentleman might want to wait to see the contents of the Budget for further details. We are committed to improving the interface between HMRC and the SLC. We ensure that all borrowers, as they enter the last two years of their repayments, are given the opportunity to move directly to a direct debit system of repayment, so that they eliminate almost all the risk of overpayment.

Higher Education Funding

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding the House that we now have record numbers of disadvantaged pupils going to university.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It’s not true.

[Alex Burghart]

Is it not unacceptable that the shadow Education Secretary went on Question Time the other night and claimed the opposite?

BAE Systems Military Air & Information Sites: Job Losses

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight the vital role of apprentices. I think we are all proud of the fact that we now have over 3 million apprenticeship starts. Until we know—this will become clear through the consultation process—the details of any redundancies and the types of jobs that are being laid off, it is too early to comment, but she raises a very important point and I will take it under consideration.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The job cuts at Warton and Samlesbury are twice what they were in November 2015, so it is not surprising that people in Blackpool and Fylde will be concerned. The supply chain has been mentioned. What specifically will the Minister and the Department do with buyers to ensure apprenticeships in supply chains are also supported, and that the Lancashire local enterprise partnership is given the support and resources it needs to support both BAE and the supply chain?

[Claire Perry]

We stand by ready to understand any potential impact, once the scale of any job reductions is known, and to support the Lancashire local enterprise partnership and other companies in the area to process, cope and adapt to any changes.