Higher Education

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

The simple fact is that universities and students need these regulations to be implemented. I am not sure that the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) mentioned the contents of this statutory instrument once in her remarks. They are transitional. The regulations are entirely sensible and intended to fill the regulatory gap that has been left following the abolition of the Higher Education Funding Council for England earlier this month. They enable the Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation to take on the statutory functions of the Higher Education Funding Council for England and of the Director of Fair Access to Higher Education between now and July next year, after which the new regulatory system will be functioning.

Given that the hon. Lady spent her opening speech talking about the details of the OfS, it is fairly obvious that Labour Members’ opposition to these proposals has nothing to do with this statutory instrument at all. They have been vocal about their reservations on the OfS, and that is fine, but voting down this measure will not change that. It will simply wreck the regulation of universities for the next 15 months, and it will be the students who suffer as a result. This is about the transition. It is a dry SI about the process; it is not about what we are transitioning to, a decision which has already been taken. Labour’s opposition to this SI is therefore totally misjudged. It is almost as though Labour Members saw the words “higher education” in the title of a piece of legislation and thought, “We can bash the Tories on this subject.”

If the regulations are annulled, students will ultimately lose out. They would no longer have vital protections to address concerns about governance, quality or financial sustainability in their education. They could face increased fees, because it is only these regulations that ensure that a cap on student fees remains in place.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

My understanding is that the Office for Students is supposed to protect students’ interests. One of the things that students are most worried about is that, whereas the Bank of England charges bankers 0.5% on loans, the Student Loans Company will charge them over 6% next year. Does the OfS have the power to cut that interest rate in the interests of students?

[Ben Bradley]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but she totally misunderstands this legislation, which is not about the Office for Students or its powers. The Government have launched a review of higher education funding to find out whether what she suggests is something that we can or should do. That will be important going forward, but it is not what this SI is about.

The Opposition have talked repeatedly about standing up for students, continually claiming to be the voice of students and discussing their plans to abolish tuition fees, and yet here they are risking the cap on fees by opposing the regulations. Let us not forget that the Opposition do not have the strongest record on keeping education promises. Before the election, the leader of the Opposition said that he would “deal with” existing student debt. Afterwards, however, he told Andrew Marr that he did not make that commitment, that he would not write the debt off, and that he was unaware of the size of the debt. He made promises without knowing the full facts and ultimately realised that he could not deliver them.

The Opposition talk about tuition fees preventing people from going to university, but the truth is that more disadvantaged 18-year-olds are going to university under this Government than ever before. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds were 50% more likely to attend university in 2017 than they were in 2009 under Labour, and our results on this kind of social mobility compare favourably with other countries, such as Scotland where higher education is free.

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[Helen Goodman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ben Bradley]

I am going to crack on and finish because I am nearly done.

Moving on from fees, without this agreement there is a risk that universities will not receive crucial grant funding. These transitional regulations enable the OfS to allocate £1.3 billion of teaching grants. Without this legislation, there would be no means to give out those grants and no provision to offer access agreements to support disadvantaged students in the next academic year.

I understand that the Opposition have reservations about how the OfS board has been set up and about appointments to it, but this is not the place to raise such issues. Those decisions have already been made, and their actions risk—[Interruption.]

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[Alex Sobel]

I was here in July when we debated the statutory instrument on the fee cap, so SIs do come to the Floor of the House. The Office for Students needs to operate properly and enshrine academic freedom. That is what we need, and that is what the motion would achieve.

[Helen Goodman]

A bit of learning and growing by Government Members would be helpful. Does my hon. Friend agree that we cannot amend SIs? We can only vote them down, and then the Government must table another one. We did not invent that process for this occasion.

[Alex Sobel]

My hon. Friend has been here far longer than me and it is good to know that lots of Members are learning about the statutory instrument process as we speak. I knew we could not amend an SI in the same way as we can amend primary legislation, but I am sure this is not going to be the end on this SI if the motion is defeated tonight. The Government may come back with a better offer, given the opportunity.

In conclusion, I just want to touch on the previous appointment to the regulator. On the marketisation of education, the Government chose to appoint their chief cheerleader in this transformation, Toby Young, a figure so abhorrent to the sector that he barely lasted a week. That is where we are with the governance of the OfS. Today, we have our opportunity to start the fightback to get ourselves an Office for Students that is fit for purpose and to curb the Government’s enthusiasm for a consumer higher education market. We can start the journey back to universities as places where people want to go to grow and learn, and where people are not simply going to a sausage factory for this Government’s failed policies.

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[Mr Gyimah]

The remit of the OfS is already very broad. I passed the letter on to it for comment, as an independent regulator, and it is right for it to respond to the hon. Gentleman. I agree, however, that there is an issue around student wellbeing that needs tackling, whether via the OfS or via another route. It is something that we should be alive to. The Chairman of the Education Committee and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) mentioned the role of further education, in particular. I assure them that the Secretary of State’s first set of strategic guidance to the OfS set a very clear expectation that apprenticeships must be taken into account whenever the OfS exercises its functions, and that apprentices must be represented within its widening access and participation activity. I note the points that have been made about the composition of the board.

However, the key point is that there is no going back. HERA has established the new Office for Students, which regulates in a very different way by imposing terms and conditions on providers that want to be on its register, and only registered providers can benefit from their students having access to student support. The OfS is already operational, and there is no going back. HEFCE has already been abolished, as has the Office for Fair Access. Both ceased to exist on 1 April, and annulling these regulations does not change that. That ship has already sailed, and neither of these bodies can be resurrected without primary legislation. The OfS now has important responsibilities for access and participation and is already pushing higher education providers to make greater progress through their access and participation plans for 2019-20.

[Helen Goodman]

The Minister and I have corresponded about the impact of the recent strike on students and the fact that universities do not really have a financial incentive to settle the strikes because they get the tuition fees in and save money on the lecturers’ pay. A further question I have about the OfS’s remit is whether it will have the power to order the institutions to pay the students compensation.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady makes a perfect case for the OfS. The reason why the OfS could not have intervened in the recent strikes is that it did not exist statutorily at that point, but were the OfS to be in place, that is exactly the sort of issue it could take on and champion on behalf of students. That is why we have brought this legislation forward.

Let me absolutely clear about the effect on students and providers alike if this motion is carried. First, students’ fees will be uncapped. While the amount of fees that students can be charged is set out in separate legislation, these transitional regulations ensure that until the new regime goes fully live on 1 August 2019, a cap remains on student fees. Without these regulations, students’ fees would be completely uncapped. That would happen immediately, and it would be the Opposition’s fault.

Overnight, there would be no legal barrier to prevent students from being charged the same fees that providers charge to international students. What would that mean for students? In 2017, international students paid between £10,000 and £35,000 annually for lecture-based undergraduate degrees, and for undergraduate medical degrees some providers charge up to £38,000 per year. Simply put, a vote to annul these regulations is a vote to allow tuition fees to be increased without any upper limit.

Without fee caps, we lose access plans, because it is the incentive of being able to charge students up to the current higher fee cap that drives providers towards agreeing access plans. Without fee caps, that incentive is removed. Many Members in the debate have commented on the importance of access, especially to our elite universities, but a vote to annul these regulations is a vote to remove the key tools currently used to boost access and participation. We need an orderly transition to the new regulator.