SEND and Alternative Provision

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I hold very near my heart the plight of parents who are struggling with the system. They know that their child gets only one shot at education; it is very stressful for them, and it can be heartbreaking when they feel that specialist support is not there. We will streamline the EHCP process and try to make it easier—we want them to spend more time with their children rather than doing paperwork. We are also trying to ensure that everything in the system is available so that they can get the specialist support they need.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

How closely is the Department for Education working with the Department of Health and Social Care? In Westminster Hall on 6 February, as my hon. Friend may be aware, there was a very constructive debate about ADHD at which it emerged that a bottleneck is being caused by a lack of psychiatrists to make the initial diagnosis. Will she say a little more about the resources that may be made available on the health side for her educational project?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We have been conducting some of the biggest surveys of the fabric of school buildings in this country, which is why we are able to identify risks in our schools. Whenever we are informed about a risk to a school, we take immediate action, which can mean that certain buildings in a school are no longer used. We then send in surveyors, specialists and experts, and remedial action is put in place. We take these issues extremely seriously.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Is there a danger that the Government’s proposed legislation on freedom of speech in universities could be weakened or undermined by a requirement first to exhaust internal processes of appeal, which can be protracted?

[Claire Coutinho]

We have sent the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill back to the Lords with the tort unamended. We will continue to look at everything we can do to make sure that the Bill is as strong as possible.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Evennett]

My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point. I think we would all agree that what we need is upgrading and progress, rather than pie-in-the-sky ideas. We must get practical.

The other thing I want to highlight is that colleges in local areas should provide for local needs, boosting the skills that are necessary in that area. The skills needed in my area of south-east London are probably different from those needed in Worcester or in other parts of the country. The Bill creates a new duty for further education colleges, sixth-form colleges and designated institutions to ensure that the provision of further education is fully aligned with local needs and requirements. This is another way to ensure we have the employment and opportunities for young people and not so young people to make a real contribution to their community, and to strengthen the accountability and performance of local colleges and the businesses involved in helping the programme forward.

There is a lot to be pleased about in this small Bill, and I look forward to debating it in Committee if I am privileged enough to be put on it by the Whips, though I do not usually blot my copybook. We will discuss certain bits of the Bill and we will all have ideas for how to tweak it, but we must be grateful to the Government for putting forward an excellent, necessary and most welcome Bill that will support the introduction of a lifelong loan entitlement from 2025 and promote a culture of upskilling and retraining.

The Bill will help to open up higher and further education by introducing new methods and limiting the fees that can be charged based on credits. That is really positive, good news. Students will therefore be charged a proportionate amount depending on the number of credits studied, encouraging more people to study by taking advantage of the flexibility that the scheme will offer. We have seen flexibility in work because of covid and changing work patterns. Many people have found that to their liking, and many businesses have as well. Flexibility must be the word for our era, because it gives opportunity to so many more people.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I obviously welcome that the fees charged will be limited, but I presume that the colleges will be able to choose the packages that they offer, so is there a danger that they will be less inclined to offer modules if they cannot charge extremely exorbitant rates for them?

[Sir David Evennett]

I know that my right hon. Friend has a touch of cynicism. I am an optimist, and I believe that the colleges will want to take up the opportunity, because that will show the success of what they are doing. They are part of the local community, so they need to get real. We will have to discuss that point further. I encourage my right hon. Friend to beat the drum in the colleges in his constituency and to tell them that it is their civic or local duty—whatever we want to call it—to do these kinds of things. But we should be wary of what he says.

The Bill is the key to the Government’s skills revolution and it will support our businesses, long-term productivity and job creation. That is particularly important as we deal with the difficult times of the cost of living crisis and other things we will face in the future. We need to make the most of our opportunities. I welcome the Bill; I look forward to it passing into law and to the opportunities it will give so many people across our country for more studying, more career development, more skills and, hopefully, a more successful career.

--- Later in debate ---

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and to speak in what has been a very good debate. I thank the Secretary of State for her opening remarks. It is a shame that there are not more Opposition Members here, but it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge the speeches from the Opposition spokespeople, the hon. Members for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), who are no longer in their places. They both raised thoughtful points, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney, and I am sure the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education and the Secretary of State will have heard them and will consider what more we can do in Committee.

I also pay tribute to the speeches of the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett). I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friends the Members for Wantage (David Johnston) and for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) in due course.

As I said in my maiden speech, if I can remember back that far, education is

“the greatest tool of social mobility that we have.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 78.]

To echo the Secretary of State, I am a Conservative because I believe in equality of opportunity and in the famous ladder of opportunity that I am sure the Minister will mention in his closing remarks.

In my maiden speech, for which I believe you were in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, I went on to talk about young people making the very best of themselves. In truth, I should have widened it out because it is not just about young people; everyone should have the opportunity to educate themselves. I understand that we cannot offer the LLE to, say, 70 or 75-year-olds because there would be no return on the investment, but I hope that 55-year-olds, or even 60-year-olds, might benefit from lifelong learning, because they still have so much to offer.

I spoke on Friday about an 82-year-old in Chesterton in my constituency who wanted to know whether there are opportunities for flexible working in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I am sure plenty of older people are looking for opportunities not only for flexible working but to go back to college to get themselves more skills, perhaps while they are working. This Bill will go some way towards that.

I also said in my maiden speech that levelling up is about education, and not simply funding for local areas, although the funding I have secured for Newcastle-under-Lyme—more than £50 million for the borough from the future high streets funds and through the town deal—is incredibly welcome. I am glad the vice-chancellor of Keele University chairs our town deal board.

As I always say to schools, colleges, universities and businesses alike, levelling up is not simply about throwing in money, knocking down buildings, building new buildings and applying a lick of paint; true levelling up comes from the investment our businesses make, the investment we make in our public services and, most of all, the investment we make in our people.

That starts before school in the first 1,001 days that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) talks about and continues through nursery, primary school and secondary school and into further and higher education, which is the point at which it often seems to stop. If people do not have the opportunity of a forward-thinking employer that pays for training, they often do not continue to grow their skills. They obviously gain experience, but they do not have the opportunity to go out and learn new skills that might allow them to take their career in a new direction. I particularly welcome the fact that the Bill offers the opportunity of lifelong learning to people who may have studied to some degree or who may have dropped out of university, so that they are able to go back and put right what they perhaps once got wrong, or once did not value as much. They will then be able to redirect their career and perhaps their and their family’s entire future.

For too long, young people have been encouraged towards unsustainable degrees. We have a fixed model, pushed under the Blair Government, of three-year courses that all charge the same fees. When that Government introduced tuition fees, the original idea was that different institutions would charge different amounts, but that is not how the free market resolved the problem. It was apparent that if a provider charged less than the maximum —originally £1,000, and later £3,000 or £9,000—it would be advertising itself as inferior, and no provider wants to do that because they all want to have the badge.

In practice, of course, there are inferior courses and universities that are not as good as others, yet people are paying the same for every course at every university. There is no proper market signal to young people as to what is valued in the marketplace and the world of work. The Bill introduces a new method to make sure that students access courses at a fair price, and pricing modules and short courses proportionately will go a long way towards getting the market signal out to our young people, and to older people who take advantage of lifelong learning, as to what is valued.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I recall some of these debates and it was predicted at the time that the universities, in particular, would behave in precisely the way my hon. Friend has described. I am a little bit concerned about the people who did a course that was not really viable in terms of qualifying them for a practical career. How, if at all, will they benefit from this legislation, given that, presumably, they may have used up their three years’ worth of learning allocation?

[Aaron Bell]

I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend was in the Chamber earlier when I intervened on the Secretary of State on precisely that point. This comes with a four-year entitlement. It is not perfect and people will have used up entitlement; I discussed this last week in the Tea Room with the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, who is in his place. The flexible loan is worth £37,000 at today’s prices—four lots of £9,250. Those who did a three-year course and found it did not do much for them may have the opportunity to do a one-year course now. When people are a bit older and wiser, they can often get as much out of a one-year course when they really want to do it as they did in three years when they were at university and perhaps were too busy in the bar, on the football pitch and so on. I take the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and thank him for sharing his experience of those debates from back in the early days of the Blair Government. However, I do think that the Minister and the team in the Department for Education have considered this point, and I think it is one reason why they have set this at four years rather than three.

I also welcome the investment we are making in skills training more generally, and I will talk a little more about that in a moment, because I want to speak about the further and higher education institutions in my constituency. I am lucky, as it is blessed with both a fine further education establishment, Newcastle and Staffordshire Colleges Group and, specifically, Newcastle College, and a higher education institution, Keele University. It is genuinely positive for the area, if not for my re-election prospects, that we have a university in my constituency. If we could make sure the next election takes place during the holidays, I would be extraordinarily grateful, although I know that is not in your gift, Mr Deputy Speaker. I always enjoy going to Keele University and speaking to the students, even if they do not always vote the right way at the ballot box. [Interruption.] I see the Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), heckling me from a sedentary position.

Keele University is very integrated now into Newcastle-under-Lyme, in a way that it has not always been, partly because of the involvement in the town deal that I spoke about earlier, with the vice-chancellor as the chair. As part of that, Keele University is going to be opening a digital society centre in the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme. The science and innovation park at Keele is also a huge benefit to the constituency. We manufactured the vaccine on that park; the AstraZeneca vaccine was manufactured by Cobra Biologics, which has since been taken over. A number of small businesses are also going on there, through the Denise Coates Foundation, which has funded a school of management there. All of that is essential to levelling up, having more money in our local economy and more wealth generated locally and spent locally, supporting our high street and helping us to get the growth we want in our local economy.

I will speak a little more about Keele in a moment, but first let me speak about the Newcastle and Staffordshire Colleges Group. I am delighted to say that it is becoming an institute of technology—sadly, it is in Stafford, not Newcastle-under-Lyme, but that is by the by because it will be open to people from both areas, which are very much connected. Ours was the first FE college anywhere in the country to be rated outstanding across the board by Ofsted. I wish briefly to raise a point about T-levels with the Minister. I know that the college welcomed them, and it currently has 2,259 learners studying level 3s, mostly in applied general things, mostly on BTECs. That cohort is considerably disadvantaged compared with the one doing A-levels at the college; they are eight times more likely to have education, health and care plans, twice as likely to have a learning difficulty or a disability, and 33% more likely to be economically disadvantaged and in receipt of a bursary. The college has written to me as it has concerns about the transition to T-levels and the speed with which it is occurring, and I think there are a number of practical concerns. The college is very much in favour of what the Government are doing but it has a number of practical concerns. If the Minister would be willing to meet people from the college, either on a visit, which I know he would be keen to do, or virtually in the meantime, that would be welcomed by the excellent principal, Craig Hodgson, who has written to me about those concerns. I am very blessed to have that further education establishment in my constituency, as it is changing the life chances of many of my constituents. It is also well engaged with local businesses, as it offers apprenticeships as well. Having such a good further education provider in my constituency is a fundamental part of what will help to level up Newcastle.

Let me speak a little more about Keele University, which, as I have said, is also in my constituency. A total of 31% of home undergraduates are in receipt of financial support due to low household income. That places the university 27th out of 122 English higher education institutions, according to the Office for Students. It does very well on non-continuation—keeping disadvantaged people in university—but it acknowledges that it has more to do on attainment. According to the most recent figures that I have available, in 2017-18, only 14% were mature students, and the university wants to do more about that. I am sure that the Bill will encourage more people to study at what is an excellent university in Keele. It is so excellent, in fact, that it was voted Britain’s best university, as ranked by students. It has 96% graduate employability, which is very encouraging.

I will, if I may, briefly mention Staffordshire University, which, although it is in neighbouring Stoke-on-Trent, is attended by a number of my constituents. It has a different profile: some 24.5% of its students are in quintile 1of the income deprivation affecting children index; and 50.5% of its students are mature, of whom 35.5% are full-time—that compares with 21% nationally. The university is incredibly well set up to deal with lifelong learning. There are a number of disadvantaged people in Stoke-on-Trent who did not even get GCSEs, let alone A-levels or go to university, and I hope that some of them will take advantage of the opportunities that this Bill presents.

Let me cite some figures that were provided by UCAS, for which I am grateful, to give the overall picture in my constituency. In the last cycle, there were 730 applications to higher education institutions, 600 of which were accepted. Of that, 135 were studying locally, which I think is mostly at Keele. Those numbers are lower than average. I would like to see them higher, again, to see us do better, but 28.1% of those were aged 21 plus, which is above the latest national average of 23.8%. That is encouraging, as it shows that mature students in Newcastle-under-Lyme are already taking advantage of the opportunities through UCAS.

The Bill also sits alongside our record in education in general, and how we are using education to improve people’s life chances to help level up their opportunities and outcomes. I welcome T-levels, despite the aside from the college that I mentioned, because they are a technical qualification that will help people. They provide practical learning for those who do not necessarily want to study A-levels. We have also delivered lots of money on different fronts—£490 million to boost skills training and upgrade our colleges and university, £432 million of which will fund state-of-the-art university and college facilities at 100 providers, and a further £57 million will support 20 specialist higher education providers to deliver a wider range of specialist courses of the highest quality. We have invested £350 million in renovations for further education colleges across the UK. We have brought forward £200 million of that to renovate 180 providers. That means that colleges have started immediate work in repairing and refurbishing their buildings.

Importantly, given the context of Putin’s war in Ukraine, we have provided £500 million for energy efficiency upgrades for schools and colleges, which will help them to save on their bills. A primary school will receive, on average, £16,000, a secondary school, £42,000, and further education groups approximately £290,000 each, which is very welcome and will help to make sure that we have energy efficient buildings, saving ourselves and the providers money in the long run.

We have £3 billion in the National Skills Fund that we have established. That helps individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises to access high quality education and training. Although that is not completely in the scope of the Bill, it is important that we engage with businesses at every stage on what they want. I had representatives from businesses down here just last week to attend a roundtable meeting, and they told me that their two challenges are land and planning and then skills in the local population. Therefore, everything that we can do—whether it is through apprenticeships, through training on the job or through the opportunities that the Bill will provide for people to acquire new skills, possibly taking a year out and possibly while working part time—will be welcomed by businesses in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

It is not just money that we need. We are also requiring further education establishments to provide for local needs. The Bill creates a new duty on further education colleges, sixth-form colleges and other designated institutions to ensure that the provision of further education is fully aligned with local needs. That will be considered on an annual basis to strengthen accountability and performance, so if an area is falling behind, there will be scope for it to catch up. Finally, we need to reform initial teacher training in further education, which is part of the cycle that I spoke about earlier. We need the best quality teachers. At the moment the system is a bit too fragmented, so we need to make it easier to navigate and it needs to have high-quality, clear standards throughout. We need to ensure that public funding for teacher training goes only to high-quality providers following the standards that we and employers want to see.

In conclusion—I know that a couple of other Members wish to speak—as I said at the start, I believe in equality of opportunity and in giving people the tools they need to make more of themselves. My people in Newcastle are ambitious; indeed, all of our constituents are ambitious. They want to stretch themselves, learn new skills and make a better life for themselves and, above all, their families. As I have said, education is at the core of that. It gives people and their children the opportunity to make more of themselves, and this Bill is all about expanding that opportunity and making it available to more people—more than I considered in my maiden speech, to be honest. It will ensure that opportunities are available, with Government support and the help of teachers, lecturers and everyone else who works in the sector. I pay tribute to them, because they have been through a very tough time with covid and have had to work very hard to get back on track. This Bill will be a shot in the arm, giving them more keen students who have actively chosen to go back into learning. That is exactly what teachers and lecturers want—those are the people they want to work with. This Bill is about expanding opportunity, regardless of people’s background, previous educational history and age, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend makes another important point, and it leads me incredibly nicely to the point that I was just about to make.

I understand the motive behind the Labour party’s desire for 50% of young people to go to university. It was not a malign motive. Labour believed that that was aspirational and that it would help us compete, but it has clearly had a number of negative consequences. One of the most important—this goes to my hon. Friend’s point—is that we have told people, “The most important thing you can do is go to university at 18. It doesn’t particularly matter where you go to university or what you study. The most important thing is that you go to university, because we want all young people to go to university.” Thanks to a whole range of organisations, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which has done great work on this issue, we now know that people who graduate from a number of institutions will earn less than they would have done had they just got a job. In 2020, the IFS found that about 20% of people who go to university—one in five—earn less than people with similar grades who just get a job.

We might dislike that that is the case—we might wish that every university or subject gave people the same earnings outcome—but when I worked in this field, people could choose from 60,000 university courses, which of course do not all give the same outcomes. Certain universities—particularly Russell Group ones—give people higher earnings, as do particular courses, such as medicine, engineering and maths. The charities I worked with overwhelmingly supported disadvantaged young people, and the truth is that it is usually those people who do not get the advice they need and who pay large amounts for courses that do not add to their employability outcomes. They do not get good information, advice and guidance at a young age from school or from parents, in the way that a middle-class child might. That is one big way in which the 50% target has prioritised quantity over quality.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I thoroughly endorse the direction of my hon. Friend’s thoughtful argument. Does he agree that, even at the Russell Group university end of the spectrum, there has been a serious issue with grade inflation? So many people—a large majority, I think—are now awarded first and upper second-class honours in institutions where, 20 years ago, one in 10 might, if they were lucky, have got a first-class degree, that it becomes difficult for employers to pick out people for the right reasons and for the right jobs.

[David Johnston]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. Part of the reason why that has happened is that young people feel, “I’m making an investment here. I’m paying £9,000 a year. I’m not doing that for you to give me a 2:2 or a third at the end of it.” There has therefore been this pressure on universities—often, unfortunately, with the threat of legal action from parents who can afford it—to inflate the grades people are given. This is another unintended consequence.

People will say, “Look, it’s not just about the money you can earn after your degree,” and that is the case, but because we as individuals are making that investment at that age, we understandably want to see an impact on our earnings. However, another problem is that lots of people will never pay back the money they have borrowed, and that is a huge liability for the taxpayer. Some taxpayers have been to university themselves, and some have not, but they will all incur this cost. We lend money to people to go to university, but if they do not earn enough to be able to pay it back, the taxpayer will not get a return on that investment. At the moment, we are on course for only a quarter of people to fully pay back their student loans. That is a huge amount that the taxpayer is investing unnecessarily in something that I hope we will change through this Bill.

As has been touched on, it is also the case that the three-year, full-time model for people aged 18 does not suit every young person. Lots of the young people I used to work with at the charities I ran had caring responsibilities, either for younger siblings or ill relatives. Perhaps a member of their family had unfortunately died, and those young people therefore had greater responsibilities, or they needed to work alongside study in order to supplement the family income. As such, again, we need greater flexibility, and that is before we come on to the technological change that we are expecting. We will see some of the most radical technological change that the country has ever known, and lots of the jobs that we train people for today will become obsolete. A person might make a decision at 18 about the particular course they want to study for a particular job, and in 20 years find that that job is obsolete and that they need to retrain for something else. That is why the Bill will be so important.

As an aside, lots of jobs should not need a degree anyway—we have slipped with the 50% target, I am afraid. In order to make the lives of employers easier, we have applied a higher and higher degree threshold to weed out people when we make selection decisions. If everybody has a degree, we end up starting to ask for master’s degrees, so we have entry inflation, not just grade inflation. Above all, that target has contributed to the disparity of esteem between academic and vocational courses. As has been touched on, this is a limited, smallish Bill, so giving people the equivalent of £37,000 in today’s money to enable them to train themselves across their lifetime, at some point in the future when they decide that they need to study for qualifications that they do not yet have, is so important for what we are trying to do: create that parity of esteem.

The Bill will promote lifelong and modular learning, and set limits on course and module fees based on credits. It will also achieve subtle things. Going back to the point about the whole system being geared towards one particular model, changing from an academic year to a course year is hugely important, because when everything is geared towards academics, we are continually reinforcing the message that the academic model is the only one for people.

We know that lifelong learning has a huge number of benefits. We know it will help with earnings; for some considerable time only about one in eight of the people who are in low pay have escaped that low pay a decade later. That has been true for decades, and part of that is about progression. By the way, that is partly the job of employers —they need to have good strategies for progression —but it is also about allowing adults to train in things they are not able to do, so that they can get more skills and therefore get more money.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker]

I recently spoke in a Westminster Hall debate on relationships and sex education, and I made it clear that we regularly review our guidance, both on keeping children safe in education and on safeguarding.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Do the Government share my concern at the injection of vast quantities of communist cash from countries such as China and Vietnam into our universities—Oxbridge colleges in particular? Will they set up a taskforce to examine the problem and make recommendations?

[Michelle Donelan]

We have recently added a further clause to our Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill to ensure that there is more transparency when it comes to the donations that our universities receive.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

Many countries have worked with their university sectors to enhance the choice on offer. For the first time, the Bill will give the OfS the power to act if free speech is in question, so it is radical in that sense.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I appreciate that the provision is mainly about free speech in UK universities, but does the Minister share my concern about the proposed £155 million gift from the billionaire chairwoman of a Vietnamese company to Linacre College, Oxford, a distinguished graduate college, on condition that the name of the college is changed to that of the chairwoman? Her company is extremely close to the Vietnamese Communist Government, where there is certainly very little freedom of speech. The Privy Council has to approve the change. Are the Government taking a view on the matter?

[Michelle Donelan]

I have recently been alerted to this issue and I am actively investigating it. I will update my right hon. Friend in coming days.

Government amendments 3 and 4 and 6 to 10 make provision on the payment of security costs for events. The amendments place a duty on higher education providers, colleges and student unions not to pass on security costs unless in exceptional circumstances to secure freedom of speech within the law. The Government want to put an end to the practice of no-platforming by the back door, raised by many Members in Committee, including my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings.

I said then that I was listening, and the amendments address the concerns. We have seen reports that a student society faced a £500 security bill from Bristol University student union to allow the Israeli ambassador to give a talk, while charging nothing to allow his Palestinian counterpart to do the same. The Union of Jewish Students has reported to me that some Jewish societies have even been billed for security costs for having stalls at freshers’ fairs. That is outrageous. If a university has a culture on campus in which security is required for inviting routine speakers, it has a culture in which intimidation, threats and violence are seen as acceptable. That does not constitute promoting free speech. The solution is to stamp that unacceptable culture out and stop student societies paying the price for those who break the law.

Government amendment 5 will change the coverage of college student unions, often called junior and middle common rooms. It makes it clear that the Bill does cover the activities of JCRs and MCRs, thereby clarifying the position.

Government amendment 11 will make it clear that the OfS is not required to make a decision as to the extent to which a free speech complainant is justified if that complaint is then withdrawn. Government amendments 12 and 15 set out how publication under the scheme will work in relation to the more general publication provisions recently inserted into the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 by the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. In particular, the Bill provides for absolute privilege against defamation claims arising from publication of OfS’s decisions under the complaints scheme, whereas the general provisions give qualified privilege to other publications. The absolute privilege matches the approach taken by Parliament to the complaints scheme run by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education.

Government amendments 1, 2 and 16 will remove the express limitation on the definition of academic freedom that it covers only matters within an academic’s field of expertise. Once again, the Government have listened carefully to Members who raised issues in Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings.

The Bill marks the Government delivering on our manifesto pledge, while listening and strengthening the Bill throughout.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I fear that Cambridge University will not come out well from my speech either.

The debate is about freedom of speech on campus. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) pointed to six cancellations—in my view, that is six too many—but I am going to talk about the silencing in non-disclosure agreements, which thousands of people are suffering from.

We know that the data on violence and abuse, and certainly on sexual violence, is a tiny fraction of the reality, but even that data shows that millions of pounds are being spent on this issue. The amendment tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend and near neighbour the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), would stop young men and women—including university staff—being prevented from speaking about their experiences on campus. That is what this is all about, isn’t it? It is about people being able to talk about their lives, experiences, beliefs and freedoms on campus. Currently, we are all sitting by while that section of the community, who may have been raped on campus, bullied, harassed or racially abused, can be silenced by that very institution and cannot speak about it at all. I am going to talk about those people.

Horrendous examples of silencing have been reported in the press. Brave women have spoken out even though they know the risks. According to one student, her university imposed a “blanket gagging order” on her after she alleged she was violently raped by another undergraduate. The victim claimed she was warned she would be expelled if she went to the press to report this violence or to talk about the college procedures. That gives you a clue as to where some of these people are from, because I said the word “college”; most other universities do not say that. The non-disclosure agreement was imposed. Apparently, the college had tried

“desperately to convince her not to complain”

and she had

“lost count of the members of staff who tried to silence, scare, threaten and undermine”

her.

According to an investigation by the magazine Elle, a student alleged she was sexually assaulted and then endured terrible treatment from the university relating to her claim of violence. Post-graduation, she complained to the university about how it had handled her situation. She was eventually offered £1,000 compensation, without any admission of wrongdoing, and with a non-disclosure agreement to prevent her from talking about it. The student, exhausted by her experiences, signed the NDA.

[Dr Lewis]

rose—

[Alicia Kearns]

rose—

[Jess Phillips]

It does not seem very feminist, but I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Dr Lewis]

I have not heard of this case before. Did the student not go to the police? If she did, what happened?

[Jess Phillips]

I almost wish for the right hon. Gentleman’s sake that I had taken the other intervention. Has he seen the figures on police rape recording and reporting? In the first instance that I was talking about, the individual absolutely went to the police. Of the 66,000 women—I am speaking only about women now; there will have been more—who came forward and said that they had been raped last year, a charge will have been faced in about 600 of those cases; and then look at the number of convictions. Are we expecting our institutions, our workplaces, our university institutions not to have a role to play in supporting people when that has happened? As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman know, the balance of probability has a different relation to civil law than criminal law, so the idea that if a woman did not go the police she should not be allowed to complain to her institution is not one that I recognise and it is not one that this House recognised when we set up an independent complaints system. However, what often gets said to women when they come forward to their employer, to their institution, is, “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree, and the amendment clearly covers staff being able to talk about their experiences. The Minister cited a member of staff who felt compelled to leave their employment because of what the Minister rightly pointed out was bullying. Had that member of staff signed a non-disclosure agreement, the Minister would never have been able to talk about them, and nor would that particular employee of that particular university. We would not even know what had happened. Had a non-disclosure agreement been signed in that case, which was, I believe, at the University of Sussex, the Minister would not have had her helpful example.

I took part in a debate on the television the other day about freedom of speech. A Government Member of Parliament, who I like and respect, turned to me and said, “The thing is, Jess, that no one can be forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement”—I just said my own name. Is that allowed? I don’t have to refer to myself as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley?

[Dr Lewis]

It was a quote.

[Jess Phillips]

Yes, that’s right.

That Government Member said, “You can’t be forced to sign”, but that is to totally misunderstand the power imbalance. Someone might have worked hard and be the first in their family to go to university. They might have studied and done everything they could, because they wanted to go and make something of themselves. They might get into an institution that they are proud to say they are from. The fact that they could be raped on that campus by another student and complain, but then be threatened that they will be expelled if they speak out points to an enormous power imbalance. It is something that this House should legislate on for the sake of freedom of speech.

I welcome the Minister saying that she will take the proposals away, listen and perhaps do something in the House of Lords later in the process, but under this Bill, without our amendments, if a woman or a man, whether staff or student, is raped on campus, that person’s freedom of speech will be completely and utterly denied on campus and outside, and we would do nothing about it. Freedom of speech surely has to mean freedom of speech for all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

We are dealing with a complex subject. Free speech by its very nature means people saying all kinds of things in all kinds of ways about all kinds of subjects. The hon. Lady is right that there will be tensions to be settled, which is precisely why the Government have put in place mechanisms to do that. They are going to appoint, as was said earlier, an office with responsibility for ensuring that this Bill’s intentions and provisions are applied consistently. The Government acknowledge the difficulties that she has highlighted, which is precisely why they are putting in place a person and team to do exactly that.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

I can see that my right hon. Friend is about to make an erudite intervention.

[Dr Lewis]

You can always hope, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Does my right hon. Friend not feel as I do that the interventions that he has just taken show that perhaps the diminutions on free speech have already spread into other areas of legislation rather further than he and I would like them to have done?

[Sir John Hayes]

I agree entirely, which is precisely why this Bill is so welcome, but it needs to be part of a bigger programme of work by the Government to do what I described earlier, which is to unpick some of the legacy of the dark days of Blairism and the impact that that has had on all kinds of aspects of our wellbeing. My hon. Friend is right. This Bill is significant, but modest, so let it be the beginning of a crusade to establish freedom as the default position across all our legislative considerations in exactly the way—with erudition and diligence, matched by experience—that my right hon. Friend illustrates.

Free speech is complex and, in the words of the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington, may be seen as an abstraction, but if it is an abstraction, it is one that is essential for the wellbeing of our free society, for it is at the very heart of what an open society is all about. The ability to say things which, as I said earlier, alarm, disturb, or even shock, and hear things with which we disagree is the very nature of what good universities are all about. I fear that that is jeopardised by some of the thinking that permeates universities, particularly university leaders and managers. For example, Professor Ahmed also spoke of

“issues to do with race, with transgender, and with Israel and Palestine on which they were simply unwilling to say what they thought”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 13, Q22.]

people fear the consequences of doing so. It is not just those issues, although those are notable among the list of things that people now regard as beyond the scope of free and open debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes, but the problem is that that line moves with the times, with fad and fashion, with what I described earlier as the zeitgeist. Perhaps the most chilling example of that is the case of Kathleen Stock. The hon. Lady will remember that Kathleen Stock gave evidence to the Bill Committee of which she was part. Within a few weeks, Kathleen Stock was driven out of her job as a distinguished professor at the University of Sussex by the mob, a group of students who pursued her and intimidated her and her family.

Kathleen Stock received scant support from many of her academic colleagues, although latterly the university authorities claimed they were supportive, and she was so affected and so damaged by all that that she ended up leaving the job she loved. I thought how chilling and ironic that she should have been one of the people who came to us, as Members of this House, to a Bill Committee debating this Bill, and yet just weeks later found herself a victim of the very problem she highlighted and emphasised in her evidence.

I will move fairly rapidly on to the amendments that stand in my name, Mr Deputy Speaker, because otherwise you will claim that I am making a Second Reading speech—and with some just cause.

[Dr Lewis]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

But before I do so, I will happily give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Dr Lewis]

My right hon. Friend is so kind. He has just given a terrible example at the extreme end of the spectrum of intimidation and restriction on free speech, but does he share my concern about the paranoid issuing of so-called trigger warnings or alerts, which are meant to protect students from hearing anything that they might find in the least discomfiting or disturbing? How does that prepare them for going out into the real world, where they are, whether they like it or not, going to hear things that are not to their liking? They will be under-prepared for that terrible ordeal.

[Sir John Hayes]

Almost every part of the canon of our great literature now seems to come with a health warning. From “Moby-Dick” to “Jane Eyre”, we are told that books are desperately dangerous for young people to read. That this is happening in schools and, amazingly, in universities is almost beyond belief. Snow has turned to ice: they are no longer snowflakes, they are in deep freeze, those people who dare not even read Austen, the Brontës or George Eliot—of those three, I strongly recommend George Eliot, by the way, but let us move on before I get into any more literary considerations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

Over the course of the spending review period, we have secured an additional £2.6 billion for special and alternative provision places, with £1.4 billion of that being made available this year. The hon. Lady should speak with her local authority to make sure that provision is covered.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Last Friday was the 36th anniversary of the rebel amendment in the House of Lords proposed by Lady Cox, which banned the indoctrination of schoolchildren with partisan political views. Does the Secretary of State accept that the concept of anti-nuclear education, and of anti-imperialist education, which led to that ban, are to be compared with the concepts of vicious identity politics and of the decolonisation of subjects, which rightly fall foul of the legislation he cited?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My right hon. Friend raises a very powerful point, and he is quite right: children should be taught how to think, not what to think.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Lady will have heard my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State extend the timescale for T-levels on Second Reading of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. I am sure that she would have benefited from being able to do a T-level when she was at school. It would have given her nine weeks of work placement, and she would have done a qualification designed with employers that would have led to a job in the economy.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Given that section 406(1)(b) of the Education Act 1996 already outlaws

“the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school”,

will the Government take appropriate action without further delay against Brighton and Hove City Council, which is planning to indoctrinate seven-year-olds with critical race theory?

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities has been clear that critical race theory should never be taught as that—it is a contentious political viewpoint. We are working on making sure that we update our guidance on political impartiality in school, to make that absolutely clear.

Antisemitism: Bristol University

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Christian Wakeford]

I completely agree. I have had the fortunate privilege of working very closely with CST since my election. For those who look after the safety of the community to be treated with utter disdain is absolutely appalling.

When challenged on his comments by Jewish News, Professor Miller said that CST

“is an organisation that exists to run point for a hostile foreign government in the UK...This is a straightforward story of influence-peddling by a foreign state.”

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I seem to recall that the previous title of CST was the Defence Department of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, so if CST is being accused of being an agent of the Israeli Government, presumably the accuser is saying the same about the Board of Deputies of British Jews. That gets pretty close to antisemitism in my book.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

We value all international students, including EU students, not just for the financial benefit, but for the cultural benefit and the benefit to our society. That is exactly why we updated our international education strategy. We are on track to see 600,000 international students a year and to increase our education exports to £35 billion, and we have appointed an international education adviser.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Of the 16 Afghan scholars sponsored by the Council for At-Risk Academics, 10 remain trapped in Afghanistan; four, with the welcome help of the Home Office, have managed to come to the UK; and two remain waiting for visas—one of them in hiding. Will it be possible for the Ministers to co-ordinate efforts with the Home Office to ensure that those who have paid-for studentships in the UK get their visas as soon as possible?

[Michelle Donelan]

We already work very closely with the Home Office. I am more than happy to meet my right hon. Friend to discuss the case in more detail.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

Throughout the pandemic we have prioritised the welfare and wellbeing of students, and we will continue to do so. We will respond to the Augar report shortly. As for the transition of students to university, we have worked with universities on that. We have held a session with more than 200 schools and higher education providers, and published a guide to assist with the transition. We have invested £15 million in mental health and welfare support, and with our help £3 million has been provided for Student Space by the Office for Students. It is this Government who continue to support students.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Minister is doing a first-rate job for students in promoting freedom of speech on campus. Does she agree, however, that it would not help students to recover from everything they have been going through and everything they have lost during the pandemic if they faced the prospect of having to pay back already excessive student loans at a lower threshold? Does she also agree that too many universities have become academically indiscriminate cash cows for overpaid university administrators?

[Michelle Donelan]

In response to Augar, we will be reporting shortly. We want to ensure that a more sustainable student finance system exists. We want to drive up the quality of higher education provision, ensure that courses meet the skills needs of this country, maintain our world-class reputation and promote social mobility.