Relationships Education: LGBT Content

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Elliot Colburn]

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend. We sit on the Petitions Committee together and I am sure we can happily have that chat. To clarify, I am not saying that the material is not out there. I think I have made that clear in my speech so far, but I apologise if I have not. I want to be crystal clear that with a universal service that everybody gets, such as education or health, it is inevitable that sometimes things go wrong. What I am saying is that there is no statistical data to back up the idea that this is a widespread problem, so rather than trying to erase LGBT people from existence in schools, we need to look at why teachers do not feel confident delivering such material and why, on occasion, people sometimes invite inappropriate stuff into the classroom. I agree with my hon. Friend that if material is not age-appropriate, it should absolutely not be in our classrooms. The point I was trying to make was about ensuring that schools feel confident delivering the information and that parents feel empowered, but I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is often a conflation between all the material an organisation might produce and the material that is used in schools? Disney produces adult movies as well as children’s movies; the children’s movies have children’s content and the adult movies have adult content. An organisation might produce adult materials and children’s materials. Just because an organisation produces a range of materials does not mean that is evidence they are being used in schools. The evidence is what teachers are doing and what children are reporting, which is broadly positive.

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[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to support the second petition, but it is important that we recognise the concerns of those who signed the first petition. I hope those concerns can be allayed.

Let us remember what we are really talking about: age-appropriate education for children. It is not the first time that people have deliberately used age-appropriate education to try to ban wider education; in fact, that is one of the ways that section 28 was introduced. People will remember “Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin”, a rather dull and boring book about a little girl who goes and has ice cream and walks through a park with her two daddies. That was one of the books that caused the furore when it was stocked by the Inner London Education Authority and it was suggested that it should be in schools. I do not think anyone in the Chamber would now suggest anything other than that the book is appropriate for children aged three to five, as it was designated at the time.

The book was rather dull and boring, as these things should be in many respects. People’s boring and dull lives in all their different aspects and orientations need to be explained to children, and we can see that if we look through children’s libraries in schools at the moment. There is the fantastic “And Tango Makes Three”, where two father penguins are raising a penguin child, which is actually a true story based in a zoo. There is “What Does a Princess Really look Like?”, which is for nought to three-year-olds, and is about how anyone can be a princess if they want and how everyone is flawed. The book ends with the father and the child realising that we are all flawed, but we are all striving to be good people. “Love Makes a Family” contains pictures of loving families in all their diversity—mixed race families, where the grandparents are raising the children, and so on. From “’Twas the Night Before Pride”, which is four to eight-year-old appropriate, children can learn about why people of all different backgrounds celebrate Pride. There are other books for older age groups.

Those books are in school libraries. Would I give “’Twas the Night Before Pride” to a two-year-old? No, because it is stated quite clearly on the book’s cover that it is appropriate for four to eight-year-olds. The same is true of teaching materials; we use different materials and different levels of education for different ages. However, I am afraid that there is no starting point where children need to start to realise that there are lots of different families, or to realise that gender and sex are important dividing points in society.

I think that children in lower primary school—infant school—generally should not be divided very much by sex at all. At that age, they should be taught, “Actually, you can be anything you want. You can play with any of the toys you want. You can do all of the sports activities that you want.” We should have almost no gender-specific activities or separation at that age, and I think that it is a great shame that we now see adverts for Lego that are gendered, whereas only 30 years ago they would have no gender attached to them. I think that we have gone backwards in many respects for infant and lower-primary-school age groups.

That does not mean that we should be blind to differences. It does not mean that we should not say, “When you get older, sometimes, girls and boys do separate off and do different activities,” but that that should be dealt with in an age-appropriate way. Of course, when we talk about bits of the body, as well—children of a very young age are curious—that should be described in an age-appropriate manner.

To ignore differences in that sense is actually to raise our children to be oblivious to what is appropriate—to what parts of their or others’ bodies are appropriate to show or to touch. If we do not get that across, we create children who are less safe, because when people then do have inappropriate relationships with them, they have not been taught that that is wrong. If we just talk about it in the sense of “mummy and daddy,” then we also set up a relationship danger, where we are not explaining to children that, “As you get older, your older brother and sister, and your older aunts and uncles, might also have different forms of relationship that are healthy and that are safe.” Therefore I do think it is important that that is done.

Where I think we have gone wrong, particularly in this area, is in the lack of proper guidelines when relationships education was rolled out initially. When some of the Birmingham protests were happening, we expected teachers to engage with the community without proper, clear guidelines from the Department for Education about what was and was not appropriate. Teachers had to go to bat for what were often very sensible policies without the defence of, “We are following the national guidelines.” Those guidelines have now been out for a little while, and it is perfectly sensible for those guidelines to be reviewed from time to time to make sure that they are still working.

I also think that that parents should be encouraged to see the text of the work in all aspects of education. In maths and in English, we should not have secret education, where we say to parents, “Oh, well, you want to know what literature your children are studying at the moment? No, I am afraid you can’t do that.” We should be open about it: “Here’s the book that we are studying, and here are the resources.” That is partly because we want to encourage parents to go on a learning journey with their children. We know that children perform best in schools when the parents are working at the same pace with the children. That sometimes means the parents learning as well. When I have taught nieces and nephews or worked with other younger children, and I have tried to help them with maths, sometimes, I learn as much as them. They do long arithmetic nowadays very differently to how I did it. It is perfectly acceptable to say that, as a minimum, we expect parents to see the resources. I do not think that is unusual. We should not be targeting LGBT specific RSHE in that discussion, but talking about it as a wider school community.

There is also a case for schools to ask parents to come in to learn about the RSHE the school is providing. I actually think we should encourage schools to offer those activities for wider parts of the curriculum as well. We know that children from highly educated backgrounds often have an advantage because their parents are able to engage easily in the curriculum, while parents who do not have that same academic background might not be able to do so. Schools inviting people in to engage with that is therefore something that we should encourage.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is making some important points. Does he agree that additional safeguards can be put in place? In Wales, the curriculum specifically says that material has to be “developmentally appropriate” for young people. We have to take into account not only age but knowledge, maturity, additional learning needs and physiological and emotional development to ensure that materials are provided at the right stage for every young person.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I totally agree. We also need to be clear that these considerations should apply not only if there is a trans child at the school; they are of wider importance. I remember this issue at my primary school, not with relationship education but with education around different religions. My year group was almost exclusively of a white and Christian background, but we learned about Buddhism and Hinduism, with all the different festivals. There is a danger of thinking that we should teach these things only if there happens to be somebody in the class with a gay family member, or an older sibling who is transgender. I benefited hugely from the school trips we took to the synagogue, even though I think I am right in saying that there were no Jewish children at my school. It was really important for me to understand the different backgrounds that different families have, and then, when I went to secondary school and mixed with a bigger group of people who were from different groups and had different backgrounds, I understood where they were coming from.

I want to touch briefly on a point I made in an intervention earlier. I think we have got waylaid in this conversation by condemning organisations that produce different age-specific materials. It is quite right that sex and relationship-based organisations that specialise in the subject will produce materials for adults and materials for children, and on their website they will publish all those materials. It is totally right that they will do that. It is, of course, totally wrong for a teacher to pick adult material and use it for activities with younger people. When we had this debate last time, I remember several Members on the opposing side of the argument reading out a number of rather adult activities, but when we got to the bottom of it there was no evidence that those activities had been run in any primary school in this country. To this day I have seen no evidence that schools have run those activities.

I am sure the exception will prove the rule in the sense that the outrage of one example out of the 100,000 schools across our country will be one where it needs to be age-specific, but that is why we need a better system for the Department for Education to share the books, educational resources and organisations that it recommends. Diversity Role Models is one organisation that does great work. It recently released a set of great cartoons that touch on all these different issues, which it launched only a few weeks ago at the Disney headquarters here in London. That is the kind of thing the Department should be signposting. It would ensure that teachers and parents have that reassurance, but most importantly that children can learn about the glorious diversity of the world they are growing up in, and that when they get to the right age, they are equipped and prepared to keep themselves safe and to have a happy and wonderful life.

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[Nick Fletcher]

It is the T that I am discussing today, but I believe that the sexualisation of our children should stop within schools—all of it. I do not think there is any need for it, especially in primary schools. I genuinely do believe that there is absolutely no need for it.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am very interested in the hon. Gentleman’s analogy, but it is a bit unclear. Is he saying that we should not teach what two plus two equals at all? In other words, is he saying that we should not teach anything around relationships, including straight relationships and that there are parents, mothers and fathers? Or is he saying that he wants that to be taught, but that the only outcome he wants is that people have to be straight? That is what is not clear.

Every book, whether it be Enid Blyton, Harry Potter or whatever, mentions relationships and we talk about them when we teach literature to children. In primary schools, children are taught about how a hen lays an egg, and the egg hatches—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It would be great to know what the hon. Gentleman wants: only straight, or nothing?

[Nick Fletcher]

I thank the hon. Member for his speech. I said right at the beginning that I would be speaking specifically about trans, and what I was trying to say is that I believe there is an untruth there. Two plus two equals four, but we seem to be teaching that two plus two equals five when it comes to gender. I believe that boys are boys and girls are girls, and that they cannot change sex.

Stonewall, Mermaids and other bad actors in this field have lobbied schools into subscribing to their ideologies, which are not grounded in anything factual. We have mainstream publishers such as HarperCollins publishing school textbooks that tell children:

“Myth 1—the world is divided into men and women.”

HarperCollins actually teaches children:

“Trans women are women and trans men are men.”

If that were so, that would be the end of female-only sports.

We have Stonewall teaching children:

“Everyone has a gender identity.”

I do not, so that cannot be true. We are lying to children. We have Brook teaching that a man who identifies as a woman is

“A woman of trans history”,

or even simply, “A woman.” If that were so, that would be the end of female-only spaces. We have some teachers, who have written to me, who are too scared not to teach those lessons, when they know that what they are teaching is wrong. That cannot and should not continue.

The Department for Education has quite rightly written a letter to schools telling them to let all parents see what their children are being taught. However, we have evidence that some schools are ignoring that and continuing regardless. Parents who have been shown what is being taught have sometimes seen only part of the material, or they have had to go into schools to see it and are then told they cannot photograph or copy it. Copyright issues have trumped our children’s safety. Be under no illusion—this is happening across the country. Swindon Borough Council produced its own material for use across local schools and it is quite clearly abhorrent. A staff member from Pop’n’Olly who explains to primary school children that he is trans and non-binary claims to have spoken to 100,000 children. Jigsaw says it has worked in 7,000 schools.

In 1994, we had 12 children suffering with confusion about their body and attending gender clinics. Now, we have 5,000 on a waiting list and we ask: why? I will tell you why: it is because our schools have been captured by bad actors in despicable business making huge sums of money out of feeding our children this ideology. We should not have to put legislation in place to deal with this. We as a nation should be playing no part in this. However, if individuals are too weak or too scared to stand up and say no to this ideology, I am afraid we must legislate. We must put legislation in place to deal with this with immediate effect. In 10 to 20 years’ time, this will be the next contaminated blood scandal or Post Office scandal. I hope all who have been pushing this will be dealt with accordingly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston]

I think the hon. Lady knows that the reason providers do not have their rates at the moment is that local authorities have not informed them of their rates. We published the rates in November and it is up to local authorities to tell their providers. Where they do not have those rates, that is the reason. It is yet another example of where the Labour party hopes that if it snipes enough from the sidelines, no one will notice that it has no plan whatever for childcare.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What steps her Department is taking to increase the availability of mental health support in secondary schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

We are rolling out mental health support teams to schools and colleges, supporting young people to access early intervention for mental health. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools said, as of March 2023 there were 398 teams covering 47% of secondary school pupils. That will increase to around 600 teams by spring 2025.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

When I was a young person, we had a counsellor in our school. It helped many people, not for the long term but through short-term interventions that put people on the right track and meant that they did not need more expensive interventions down the line. Unfortunately, those counsellors have gone in many schools. Labour will reintroduce them. Will the Minister commit to reintroducing a counsellor in every school to ensure that we spend now to save later?

Free School Meals: Children with SEND

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to follow all the previous speakers. I will follow on from that mention of Brighton and Hove.

Brighton and Hove is slightly, but not hugely, above the national average for young people and children who have special educational needs, and for young people with EHCPs. We are not an outrider in that sense, but we do notice more and more children not attending school, not because their parents are keeping them at home—that is another issue entirely—but because the schools are unable to provide the special educational needs support that those children need. My view is that this issue is caused by two things. The first is the disastrous austerity policies that have led to our schools suffering and unable to support pupils. Secondly—this is more controversial—I personally believe that we have had a 20-year incorrect educational project, which believes in integration only, and not that separate special schools are sometimes best for many young people.

No matter what additional support is provided, I am afraid that a pupil with sensory needs will not always manage to work in a large secondary school where there are thousands of children running around, and they can sink. However, if they are at a special school that can provide for their needs in an alternative location with sensory adaptations, usually off site, they can flourish. These schools used to be commonly provided by the mainstream—by local authorities, at a reasonable price for the authority. Then, when the children leave the school or move into mainstream school, if that moment comes, they are a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small fish with lots of sharks. I am afraid that we have shut down many of those local authority schools, and local authorities cannot afford to place pupils in special schools, so a lot of children have been put into education otherwise than at school, and are therefore not provided with free school meals.

Only yesterday, the Minister wrote to me to say:

“Regarding students receiving…EOTAS, the department’s position is that pupils must be registered with a state-funded school in order to be eligible”,

and that the Department does not plan to change that. Well, that seems different from today’s briefing from the Department, so of course there is confusion. Brighton and Hove has decided that we will skip past this confusion and mandate free school meals for all those children. They are not there because of parent choice; they have been placed there by the authority, because the authority cannot find suitable accommodation. They must be given vouchers, and the Minister should update the guidance to ensure that that happens.

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[Damian Hinds]

I ask the hon. Lady only to be patient. That was a central point made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby and clearly I need to come on to it. To be straightforward and clear, we will update our free school meals guidance to make reference to the reasonable adjustments duty that is already set out in non-statutory guidance published by the Department elsewhere, in order to heighten awareness about reasonable adjustments, in particular as it relates to meal provision among schools, local authorities and families to support local solutions. That should give parents clarity and something to point schools to when discussing their child’s needs.

Where pupils have a medical condition that impacts their access to food, section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a legal duty on schools to make arrangements to support pupils with their medical condition. The accompanying statutory guidance from 2015 included in the document “Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions” sets out that governing bodies must have regard to that guidance when carrying out the duty.

The guidance makes it clear that schools should ensure that they are aware of any pupils with medical conditions and that they have policies and processes in place so that those conditions can be well managed. The guidance is also clear that that includes how the processes will be implemented and the potential role of individual healthcare plans in supporting pupils. The guidance is clear that any individual plans should include consideration of

“access to food and drink where this is used to manage their condition”

and any “dietary requirements”.

Members also asked whether supermarket vouchers could be provided in lieu of meals. The requirements for free school meals are clear, such that eligible children should receive their free meal either on the school premises or at any other place where education is being provided. In some circumstances, it may be appropriate to provide supermarket vouchers to parents in lieu of meals. Equally, in other cases, it may be more appropriate for other arrangements to be made, such as food parcels.

The exact nature of alternative arrangements will of course depend on individual circumstances and should be determined case by case. It is rightly up to schools to decide how the provision should be made. We believe that they are best placed to understand individual circumstances, their families and their children, and to tailor their food provision accordingly. Ultimately, the best and most nutritious option is typically for children and young people to receive a hot and freshly cooked meal at school. That is what our policy supports, while allowing for alternative arrangements such as food parcels and vouchers to be put in place where necessary.

It is a condition of free school meal eligibility that children are registered with a state-funded school. Eligible pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, are entitled to receive free meals. Some children are not able to attend a school setting on a long-term basis or sometimes at all, owing to their complex needs. It is right that the Government’s high-level policy and funding framework leaves flexibility for local responses to the complex needs of individual children.

The Department allocates high-needs funding to local authorities to support the education and learning of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and local authorities have wide discretion over the use of that funding. We strongly encourage parents of children with complex food needs to be in touch with their school or local authority to discuss the support available to them.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Damian Hinds]

I will ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me, because I want to ensure that I get through and cover the points. If I end up with more than a minute or two at the end, I will try to come back to him, if that is all right.

Safety of School Buildings

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

We would remember the lesson from the pandemic that every school day matters. We would be ensuring the continuity of education for every child in school. We would be ensuring in-person learning for all our children. We would be doing that right now, and we would not be looking for plaudits, blaming others, or demanding praise. We would accept responsibility for what had gone wrong on our watch, and we would take responsibility for fixing it—fixing it fast, fixing it to last and fixing it for good.

The Government cannot even fix sending out their suggested interventions for today’s debate to the right set of Back-Benchers. It is hardly a surprise that they cannot fix the chaos in our schools. Here we are today, because of the utter shambles that has accompanied the start of a new school year for so many children. The public realm is literally crumbling around the next generation. The defining image of 13 years of Conservative Government is children cowering under steel props to stop the ceiling literally falling in on their heads.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is it not always the case that when the Conservatives are in power, our schools crumble? In 1997 one in five schools were inadequate and needed to be rebuilt by a Labour Government. Because the Conservatives slashed the rebuilding programme, under this Government we are in the same dire situation again, and the only party that can fix it is a Labour party in government.

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Like him, I remember the transformation that that Labour Government delivered. I will come to that in more detail during the debate.

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[Gillian Keegan]

I should make a bit of progress, because I do have an awful lot of this in the speech. I really do want to satisfy people with detailed information because I have a lot of it.

Although local authorities, academy trusts and other bodies are directly responsible for school buildings, we support them by allocating significant capital funding each year, delivering major rebuilding programmes and providing guidance on effective estate management. Responsible bodies’ local knowledge of their estates and their work to maintain their estates make them much better placed to ensure that school and college buildings are kept safe, compliant with regulations and in good working order. However, the Department always stands ready to provide additional support on a case-by-case basis if we are alerted to a safety issue by those responsible bodies. This is the normal pattern of maintenance—a careful and calibrated local response.

However, we judged in this case that the issue of RAAC required us to take a much more proactive and direct approach. This approach is unprecedented across the UK, where England is leading. Sensing the scale of the potential challenge, we improved our surveying so that we had the capacity to act, even if we did not need to do so. Our condition data collection, which ran from 2017 to 2019, visited nearly all 22,000 schools and sixth-form colleges, and is one of the largest data collections of its kind. It helps us to understand what is needed in schools and to target our efforts in the way that best meets needs. In contrast, over the 13 years of the last Labour Government, there was not a single comprehensive review of the school estate. Yes, that is right: they were simply in the dark. Individual reports from the condition data collection—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Gillian Keegan]

I will make a bit of progress, but I am not ignoring Members and I will take other interventions.

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[Gillian Keegan]

Thank you for that, Madam Deputy Speaker, and for giving me the reminder, because I do not want to take time away from people who have put in to speak. What my right hon. Friend the Schools Minister said is absolutely right: any time there is an immediate risk, action is immediately taken. However, what we were doing was more preventive than that: finding out where everything was, so that we could act. When the three new cases happened over the summer, that is when I made a decision to be very cautious, because I did not want to take any risk whatsoever. I knew exactly where to go, because I knew exactly which schools were judged as non-critical. I knew exactly what we needed to do.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Gillian Keegan]

I am sorry but I will not give way. I know I promised the hon. Gentleman, but I will see if I can make a bit more progress.

We deposited copies of the school condition data in the House Libraries on 20 July this year, in advance of the summer recess. It is also available on the Parliament website, and I am sure that many Members who are interested in this subject will be interested in seeing it. The successor programme, CDC2, is now under way. Early indications from the programme, which has been under way since March 2021 and will finish in 2026, and feedback from the sector suggest that in almost every case where a D grade—a bad condition—was identified in CDC1, it has since been addressed. We are getting on with the job. That is a demonstration of the approach that I and my Department are taking: we identify where the issue is and how severe it is, then we take the right corrective action. That is what our children deserve and what our schools deserve. When we have data, we can act to improve our schools.

The 2021 spending review announced a total of £19 billion of capital funding to support the education sector between 2022-23 and 2024-25, including £5.4 billion for school condition allocations. That includes £3.6 billion announced in allocations for the first two years of the period to improve the condition of the school estate. That is in addition to the school rebuilding programme, which is rebuilding 500 schools over 10 years. That builds on nearly £30 billion of capital between 2016-17 and 2021-22, including over £13 billion for improving or replacing buildings.

Improving education is this Government’s mission. Ensuring that our education settings are safe is a key part of that, and we therefore prioritise it as part of our capital funding, and actively manage funding and support for the school estate to stay open and safe. I also note the distinction between our targeted approach and what came before. The system we inherited was found by an independent review of capital to be poorly targeted and wasteful. We on this side of the House have acted to protect children, while others have ignored problems for decades. School building is more effective and efficient than ever before. The significant investments made in education in recent years by this Government, coupled with essential reform, have raised standards for our children and given them a better chance of success in life.

Since 2010, we have reformed our capital programmes to bring down the cost of school building. The James review of education capital in 2011 found that Building Schools for the Future, the programme that the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South is proud of, was overly bureaucratic and did not deliver outcomes that were good or affordable. Just as the people of Birmingham are finding out so heartbreakingly today, and as I saw as a young girl growing up in Liverpool, the consequences of Labour always see things worse off than when they started. By contrast, at the 2020 spending review we announced our 10-year school rebuilding programme, which will transform buildings at 500 schools across England. We have already announced 400 of those schools, including 239 in December 2022, prioritising those in poor condition and with evidence of potential safety issues.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Second sitting)

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Gill Furniss]

Q You have more or less answered quite a few of my questions. My concerns are about the disparity in pay between school and FE and between FE and HE. It worries me that this proposal cannot be successful unless the Government put in some investment to make it more equitable, because, as you say, recruitment and retention is a massive difficulty, particularly in specialist subject areas where people can earn far more in business. Do you agree?

David Hughes: I completely agree, and it looks as though it might get worse in the short term. The Government are negotiating with the teachers’ unions at the moment; if teachers get a better settlement, the gap between schoolteacher pay and college lecturer pay will get wider. It will get even more difficult. I know that the Minister is aware of that; I have talked to him about it. It is a difficult one, but we absolutely need college staff to be paid the right wage to attract and retain them.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q Following on from that, given the modulisation and the ability for people to draw down things and then use the credits in other institutions later on in life to build up a portfolio of higher education, is there a danger that some universities will be less willing to take on students who need additional support and will wind up pushing them into the Association of Colleges members to do the work that sometimes they have to do? We see that a bit in the American system. People go to a community college, which is where the heavy lifting is done to get someone ready to learn, and then they go off and do their final year at an institution, and the institution gets all the kudos. Is there a danger of something similar happening with this?

David Hughes: I think it is happening now. It happens as part of the system. We have a system in which if you have good level 3 and good A-level results or BTEC results, you get into a university. If you are an adult and you have not got quite the same simple set of results, it is much harder to get into a university, and colleges open their arms to that group of people. So we already have that schism between a university sector that does not include those people and a college sector that does. It might get worse. A lot of adults need to build their confidence and learn how to learn, and colleges are very good at doing that. Often universities are not as good at doing that. They can teach someone a subject and can teach the research. Colleges are experts at teaching and universities are experts at research. Somehow we need to accept that and applaud it and use it to deliver to the right people.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Is that fair? When we talk about the cost basis we are talking about the same for both institutions rather than understanding that colleges, rather than having less than they have at the moment, might need more to do this than a university would.

David Hughes: Yes, I think that is absolutely right. If you think about the extra learner needs and the high number of young people and adults in FE colleges with additional learning needs and disabilities, it is enormous—much higher than in any other sector. That learning support needs to be fully invested in. Students tend to come from poorer backgrounds as well, so bursaries and support with their finances are equally important.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Finally, could I ask about diversion from what employers are paying at the moment? The Association of Colleges will have lots of your members running adult education and lifelong learning courses that employers pay for because they want to upskill their workers. Are there significant protections in the Bill to stop employers offloading that to the personal debt of the individual and then not putting the professional development money in that they should do?

David Hughes: I think employers in this country generally pay less than in other OECD countries, so we are not doing very well on employer investment. Some employers are brilliant; many are not. I think there are massive dangers. We need to make sure that universities, colleges and private providers do not allow that to happen, because I am absolutely certain that some employers will want to do that. In my 32 years’ experience of working with employers and skills, we know that some will want to game the system, so we absolutely need to be alert to that. It will be a small number, but it could be significant. We must think about how to drive that out of the system. The providers need to make sure they are not playing that game as well.

[The Chair]

I am afraid we have run out of time, so there is no time for further questions. Thank you very much for your contribution to the Committee this afternoon, David Hughes.

Examination of Witnesses

Dr Elizabeth Norton and Professor Sue Rigby gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Katherine Fletcher]

Fine—now I understand you. Ecology might not be top of the list—I am a biologist who did a lot of ecology so I can say it—and that is a bit like archaeology. The initial stuff at level 4, 5 and, ideally, 6 could be more granular in detail and perhaps more obviously tied to a job—moving satellites around in space or whatever. Thank you very much for putting up with my questions.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q That was very interesting. At the moment with a three-year degree something that protects students from universities completely destroying their course is that universities have to honour the programme they started with. You will allow a cohort to continue. I have been in many fights while representing the unions when universities have done that. I should make a reference to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests on that. With a modularisation process over 10 years, is there a danger that someone starts a process of collecting credits and modules that they want to pursue over a long period and ends up at a dead end, where they have used up all their money and credits but are not able to get the degree because it does not exist any more? How can that be mitigated?

Professor Rigby: I do not think we can avoid that risk. If we imagine that the lifelong loan entitlement will be drawn down from 18 to 50, that is 30 years of continuity, and we have not had 30 years of continuity in higher education in the last century. It is quite possible that an organisation or, indeed, a subject area would cease to exist during that time. You are working from the premise that people would start an LLE in a modular form always intending to get a degree as an outcome, and I am not sure that they would not then just do a degree, because they could do that at any age. The commitment of time might stop them, but I doubt that many people over 30 years would have their eyes set exactly on a particular degree outcome; they would surely be moving in and out of the workplace, revisiting their own choices of modularity. It would be lovely if those modules stacked so that they end up as a generic degree, but I would have thought that the risk is only if we over-specify what that degree would be on graduation. If we say it is a geology degree, that is fine. If we say it is a palaeontology degree on vertebrates that can only be delivered by the University of Bristol, we would have to be assuming that it would have continuity of delivery through 40 years. It probably could, but others might not.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q So there has to be some acceptance in other courses and pathways and possibly other institutions of these credits and modules. That happens on a case-by-case basis, building up institutions’ networks. Does there need to be more co-ordination or somewhere for that information to be published, so that, rather than having to go to a university and find out whether it accepts a module, a student can go to a portal and see whether a module is accepted and where they can transfer it, or is that unnecessary?

Professor Rigby: It is complicated. It would be adorable, but universities will always have the right to reject people. My son went for an interview at Oxford, and he did not get in. His qualifications were recognised; he just was not quite over the line. Universities will always have the capacity to be selective, and that means that any qualification may be insufficient for entry. I suspect that for the bulk of people, the reason for their not being admitted would be something other than the status of the qualification they have brought through the LLE.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Where would the support come from for people wanting to design that journey, not from the institution’s point of view but from the learner’s perspective, to understand what those modules mean, rather than just having lots of institutions shouting at them, “Come to us”?

Dr Norton: That is where the OfS can step in. The student protection directions under the OfS have needed a review for quite a long time, but they are certainly not capable of dealing with the level of consumer protection that the LLE will demand. As Professor Rigby said, we cannot have a totally pick-and-mix approach; there would need to be certain pathways followed and competencies gained as someone bundles together, so that they can learn in the proper order. The OfS can step in and provide advice and guidance. It already has Discover Uni, which contains a lot of information regarding student outcomes, and that could be added to one of its websites.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q At the moment, a student who is choosing different modules in a course will have guidance from their institution—for example, they will speak to their tutor, who will say, “Actually, maybe that’s not the best one to do”—to make sure they are following the right pathway. Should it just be the Office for Students, or do institutions have a role in that beyond the fixed period during which someone has studied with them?

[The Chair]

It will have to be a short answer.

Professor Rigby: Any institution will have a vested interest in giving that advice, because having put all the effort into recruiting somebody and training them and realising they can learn with us, we will not want to lose them later on. The risk is that it will be partial advice, not impartial advice. The assumption has to be that the lifelong loan entitlement will be something that someone takes through mature adulthood, so they can temper to an extent their own expectations with an increasing degree of curatorial ability as they move through a career. In a sense, we are presupposing that people will remain ignorant of this system, whereas actually, they will quickly work out what works in it and what works less well, and those mores will guide someone through a career. It is not like they will do it all immediately and with the open-mindedness that we are presupposing before it starts, I suspect.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (First sitting)

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Given our time constraints, we have time for just one quick last question.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q First, I draw attention to my registered interest in the universities sector.

I am interested in what you were touching on in respect of the wraparound pastoral care that you offer students. I studied my masters over three years, part time at the University of Sussex, but I was a student throughout the whole of it, so the university was able to offer that wraparound care. In a modular system, in which people pay for modules and may come back in a year or two, how will you be able to offer that continuing care? Even if they have breaks of only a few months, they might still need some kind of care as a student. Have you considered how you would organise that?

Professor Press: Every university will have a different answer to that. My university provides close care—

[The Chair]

Professor Press, I am sorry but, given the constraints of time and the fact that we have many other witnesses, I am afraid I have to end your session there. I thank you immensely for taking the time to give evidence to our Committee.

Examination of Witnesses

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Given the pressures on time, may I ask questioners and witnesses to be brief?

Ellen Thinnesen: I think it will make a substantial difference to disadvantaged students. For example, many of our disadvantaged students have caring responsibilities or are single parents, so to be able to attend education and study flexibly, on a credit, modularised basis, will make a significant difference. Removing the equivalent level qualification regulation is really important, because many of our disadvantaged students have progressed into higher education but, unfortunately, have obtained HE qualifications that are not relevant to the technical careers that they want to go into. This measure allows those students to go back and retrain, upskill and relearn.

Liz Bromley: I endorse everything my colleagues have said. One of the greatest disadvantages that disadvantaged students have is lack of confidence—you know, they say, “Families like ours don’t go to university.” This is a wonderful opportunity to build up confidence that they can access the system and understand how it works. It helps them manage this notion of terrible debt because they can do it on a much small scale. While concurring absolutely with everything my colleagues say, I think this is just as important for young people as for those who are reskilling or coming back later in life. The phasing is really important, because it is part of getting their confidence built up at levels 4 and 5. It is a great way to enter the HTQ market, and that is the basis on which young people, as well as reskillers, can think, “I’ve done this. I could top up and get a full degree. I am in one of those families who can achieve.” I think that is terrific.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I am interested in the workforce. Liz, you mentioned the need to manage the workforce; if we are to have, in effect, all-year-round entry, with people able to join at different points, will there be additional workforce costs? The workforce in the further education sector is one of the worst paid workforces in the education sector overall, because the funding for your sector has been among the worst overall. Are there some challenges, given that staff have never been paid as much as, say, university sector staff?

Liz Bromley: One of the biggest challenges that my colleagues and I face is that we have a finite amount of resource and it has to be split between pay costs and non-pay costs. I think in the implementation of the system we will incur significant non-pay costs in terms of our systems and administration, to get all the points that Ellen referred to about the ILR and the data collection correct. That will have a knock-on effect on our ability to raise pay.

We already have a real challenge in attracting people from industry—the industry experts—to come and teach, because they can earn so much more in industry. What would be wonderful—I would say this, wouldn’t I?—would be an injection of funding to see this through so that we can improve pay and address the workload issues. I think that would cause the workforce to embrace this far more willingly.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Of course, in the FE sector you are paid less per head than people in schools or in universities—it kind of dips at a crucial time—so that is a fair point.

I wonder about the modulisation discussion we have been having, and employers. I am supportive of the measures, as I have heard you are, but is there a danger that employers push staff members to use their credits, and then when staff members actually want to make a career change their credits have all been used up because the employer has forced them to do modules that, really, they should have paid for? Should there be some provisions in the Bill to make it clear that credits are personal and should not be used for in-work professional development? Is that possible?

Ellen Thinnesen: This is one of the areas that I am concerned about, knowing a number of employers that I work with, the constraints they are under and what they have done with their own professional development budgets. I would need to go away and think about that, but in the same sense I encourage you to think about it and explore the problem in a little more detail, because I do think it needs some consideration.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Alun, you are nodding along; did you want to say anything about the safeguards that might need to be in the Bill?

Alun Francis: I am with Ellen on this: I have not thought it through sufficiently to give a really punchy answer to your question, but I do think it is a concern. It is about the balance of who should pay for training. It feels like there is the potential for it to skew perhaps too much towards the employer encouraging learners to pay for training that the employer could pay for. How we police that, I do not know. There is a variety of things that we might explore in more detail, but I cannot give you a really clear sense of how we would solve that problem right now.

[Sir David Evennett]

Q I am particularly interested in potential older students who are in employment and want to progress or change their careers. First, I welcome what you have said about business involvement, but now that we have a new framework—or will do, hopefully, when the Bill is passed—what can you do to try to get more employers involved who have not expressed interest in the past?

Secondly, you highlighted how hard you have worked, Ellen, to reach the disadvantaged, and I am sure that your two colleagues are doing the same. How are you doing outreach to those who are in employment to let them know what you offer?

Ellen Thinnesen: In terms of the work we do with employers to help them to understand what is available, which I think is what the question was about, in a college such as mine, and I know in many other colleges, we employ business development teams—essentially employer liaison personnel—whose entire job is to work with employers and help them to understand how they can translate their workforce development needs into workforce solutions and upskill and reskill their workforce. That is easier for larger colleges such as mine; I can flex funding and use it in creative and different ways. We go back to the underfunded nature of colleges and the impact on smaller colleges, where it is incredibly difficult to do that.

On outreach, we employ a significant number of school liaison personnel, who are out working on a daily and weekly basis in schools giving careers information, advice and guidance, and delivering training to school teachers and staff. Again, I am able to do that, as I am sure Liz is in Newcastle College Group, because we are large enough to be able to reconfigure our budget to invest in resources such as that. Again, for smaller colleges, that is not always possible.

For example, my college merged with a sixth form in 2017, which now benefits from that service. Prior to the merger, it would never have been able to deliver that type of infrastructure to enable employers to understand what they need to do and what is available, and to enhance outreach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

Q Finally, can I just ask you about the future of the apprenticeship levy? It is currently not written into, or not within, this legislation. How do you see that sitting alongside the lifelong loan entitlement and the role for employers?

Professor Peck: Yes; I do think many employers will make use of the modular learning that the lifelong loan entitlement will promote. I think many employers will pay for their staff to do some of this upskilling and reskilling as part of investment in their training more broadly, which takes place outside the levy. I think there are some challenges at the moment about the levy and its size, aren’t there? We might be getting to a point where much of the levy is now being committed around apprenticeships, which is a real success. The question is: how do we keep apprenticeships growing over the next five to 10 years? That is for a very different group of staff. Apprenticeships often are for new starters or people completely changing their career with an employer, whereas the LLE is about modules enabling people to upskill and reskill when they are already in the workforce and established in the workforce.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q At the moment, students come and study part-time or via the workplace. Predominantly, who pays for those courses?

Professor Peck: It is a really mixed picture. Some are paid for by employers and some will be paid for by individuals who have the means to do so. Those are the two major sources that we currently accept.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q Do you have a “finger in the wind” kind of breakdown between own-paid for and employer-paid for?

Professor Peck: At NTU, the vast majority of UK undergraduate students are paid for by the Student Loans Company loans. We have some students undertaking short courses, which are professional qualifications and paid for by their employers, and about 2,000 apprentices who are, again, paid for by their employers. At the moment, it is heavily weighted towards full-time undergraduates, and I think that is the challenge that the LLE is trying to unlock.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I was trying to exclude the full-time undergraduate. I am trying to get at if there is a danger that, for some of those who might already be accessing technical, part-time, upskilling skills courses that are paid for by their employers, the employers will shift that burden on to the students. My follow-up question, which I have asked to other panel members, is do you believe there are other things that can be done to ensure that employers do not shift that burden—for example, in regulation putting things that make it clear that this is for personal, not professional, development?

Professor Peck: It is a really interesting challenge. One of the things that the short course pilot should tell us, even if they are relatively small numbers, is how many trainers are paying for themselves through taking out a loan with the SLC and how many are coming in through employers. There is a suggestion that there are bigger numbers doing those modular programmes but actually they are being paid for by employers. I have not seen the data on that yet, but I am trying to get those data to see if that is the case.

I think most employers would see it as part of their responsibility to pay for training their current employees. Indeed, they might want to do that in a different way from doing it employee by employee. In sufficient numbers, you would commission your own training; that happens already. It is important to ensure that we are not transferring the cost from employers to the individual employee. I think how you do that is a really interesting question, which probably bears more consideration, but there may be ways of ensuring that that does not happen.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q Thank you so much for your evidence. As we transition into this new world, I am interested in hearing your expert view on where you are seeing immediate demand—for example, the renewable energy retrofit gets discussed regularly in Lancashire. Could you give us the top three from both of your perspectives?

Julie Charge: The main one we are seeing is around computer science; that is definitely top of the agenda. The other ones for us in terms of all the range of skills are things like the artificial intelligence and robotics space, and absolutely sustainability. That understanding of sustainability actually touches a lot of subjects, whether that is housing through the retrofit or others. Those are the three areas that are definitely at the top at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald]

Q You appear to be somewhat sanguine about heaping yet further choice and complexity into an already complex system. Is that a genuine reflection of your concerns?

Sir David Bell: I do think it gets a bit more complicated, and we are in the process of trying to work out how we can address those complexities. I would go back to the point that Rachel made. I have not had the chance to say it, but I too want to say that this is a really positive development if it is giving people more opportunities to undertake additional education at different stages of life. That is a very good thing. We want to make it work, and if it is a bit more complicated than perhaps the system has been up until now, there is an onus on all of us to ensure that we provide the right kind of guidance and support. There are all kinds of players in that regard. Reference was made to the work in Sunderland through DWP, which is a really good source of advice. There is the university or college itself, and independent advice and careers guidance. All of that has to connect, so that people get the right advice in what I think will be a slightly more complicated system under this reform.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I am interested in the additional costs for institutions. Rachel, you touched on that. Do you think there need to be some additional payments to institutions to incentivise them to do this? Who should look after students between modules? Who should offer that ongoing support? Should it be the institution, or should there be another body?

Rachel Sandby-Thomas: That is a really good question. Let me do the first part first, because that is a slightly easier question. I do not want to appear as if I am putting out a begging bowl and saying, “Yes, please—more money,” but I do think it would help. There are certain one-off costs, such as the reconfiguration of SITS. Seed funding happens quite a lot. Little pilots are started, and a little bit of money is given to get a bit of resource in. Everybody gets used to the fact that it is there, and then they just keep it. Universities are very good at responding to that initial incentive, absorbing it and making it part of their resource base as they move forward, so I think that that would be welcome. If we want this policy to take hold, which we do, it would be money well spent.

The second part of your question is really tricky. I know that policy makers very often go to the most nefarious possible outcome: the wily student who might have mental health problems and thinks, “Aha! I can get a far better service if I do a 1,000 module at Warwick. I’ll just stay on for ages and ages, and get great-value mental health services that are not publicly or privately available for that money.” That would not be a good outcome. However, I am a firm believer that most people are not nefarious, and we should be regulating for the majority of players with good intent rather than evil intent.

There has to be a cut-off at some point, otherwise somebody could do one module but be able to access the library and take up library space forever and ever. On whether somebody should hold things in between, I do not quite know who that would be. There probably needs to be a bit of a time-bound associated status. You do not want to just chuck somebody out the door as soon as they have finished a course. That is not what universities want—universities want stickiness with their graduates and students—but nor do we want loads of library space blocking. There should be a bit of a time-bound lapse.

[Robert Halfon]

Q I want to ask you both about credit transfer. It will obviously be for the institution to decide on this—where people move their courses if they decide to transfer. There are good examples of this taking place already, as you well know. How will this work in practice? Will it be embraced by colleges and HE institutions?

Rachel Sandby-Thomas: As you rightly say, we do credit transfer sometimes, but it tends to be in the minority of students. The 2+2 course is a good example of that—generally students will do two years at a college and come to us for the final two years—but we know that college well, we know what they are teaching and we know the standards the students get to at the end of their two years at college, and that makes for an easy progression to us. That makes it much easier. There will be a lot more work if this really takes off, because we will have to get to know, assess and understand that prior learning in order to be able to recognise it. It would be a short-sighted kindness to allow a student who is not properly prepared to come on to a module if they have not reached the standard needed for that module. It might seem a kindness, but it does them no favours at all.

Sir David Bell: Making credit transfer work is a very important requirement if the lifelong loan entitlement is to work, because people will want to move between institutions. If we hold the mirror up to ourselves, I think universities also have to be a bit more liberal in this regard; we can at times be a bit sniffy when it comes to the qualifications that have been accrued in another institution. As Rachel said, there are a lot of good examples of this happening where you know your partner institutions. As a sector, we have to show that we are engaged in this by having better credit transfer arrangements without putting enormous bureaucratic hurdles in the way of students, who think, “Why can’t I transfer from this place to that place?”

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

Having spoken to many academics and people in universities at the moment, I firmly disagree. They are the people who would like that sort of protection. They think it would give them a legal backstop to the duties that we are placing otherwise in the Bill. Let me reassure the hon. Lady that the Government do not want providers being taken to court without good reason and being forced to defend themselves against unmeritorious or vexatious claims. We do not expect that to happen. The tort has always been considered a backstop.

The vast majority of complaints should be resolved through the new, free-to-use Office for Students complaints scheme, or through the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. In practice, we expect its use to be relatively rare, but it is crucial because it will offer complainants an opportunity to bring a case where they feel that their complaint has not been resolved to their satisfaction by the OfS or the OIA. It will be useful on the rare occasions where a provider, for some reason, fails to comply with the recommendations made by the OfS or the OIA.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

The problem with the tort clause is that it also applies to student unions and student associations, which were always free to invite people that they wish to invite along. Conservative clubs only invited Conservative MPs. They did not have free speech in the club per se; they were Conservative-minded and they did not necessarily invite Labour-minded people. But within the student union and the university as a whole, students were free to have clubs and societies that might be Labour clubs, Marxist clubs, further right clubs or whatever mix they wanted. That is enshrined in the Education Act 1994 and the judgment of Baldry v. Feintuck. The danger is that the tort affects those clubs and will have a chilling effect on student unions, which might say that it is easier for those clubs not to exist, and they will therefore fall out of regulation—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make a speech, he should put his name in. That was not an intervention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

I talk to members of all university communities of course, as the right hon. Member would expect: I talk to the senior leadership teams, UCU members, Unison members, those who are non-affiliated, and also students. I listen to all points of view across the piece. I am sure that occasionally the right hon. Member did not say what he would have liked to have said in a Cabinet meeting when in power, but that is the nature of how society works and there should be no difference between what happens on campuses and in wider society.

Anyone would think that the Minister’s colleagues have come to the fair conclusion that the Bill is more about political posturing than delivering on students’ priorities. Let me be clear for the record: this Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill and its passage through both Houses is a product of a Government who are out of touch, out of ideas and out of steam. It has been a masterclass in how not to pass legislation.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Members opposite say the banning of the Christian union was a disgrace, but is there not a real danger with this Bill that all societies will be banned from campus because the university will not then have to worry about regulating them, so it will exacerbate the problem, not help it?

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for his important intervention. He is absolutely right, and he and many others on our side made that point repeatedly in Committee about the unintended consequences of the Bill, which would have a chilling effect. Those are the thoughts of Lord Willetts and many others in the House of Lords as well, who made it clear that that would be the result, particularly among smaller institutions, that may be less familiar to certain Members across the House, which do not have the resource or capacity to be able to administer these measures.

Ministers are choosing to ignore the widespread condemnation of the tort from Members in this place, Lords, sector representative bodies, students, trade unions and academics. They are seemingly prepared to carry on regardless. As recognised by so many, the tort is a clause primarily in search of a problem, but perhaps that is the point for Ministers. It is otiose; that is to say it serves no practical purpose or result.

Put simply, the objections to the tort raised in the other place are damning. I am well aware that this Government do not value expertise or experts, but, my God, they should. Their predisposition towards certain right-wing think-tanks has cost this country dear, and in terms of legal matters, or indeed the tertiary education landscape, the intellectual heavyweights in the other place, comprised of former vice-chancellors, current chancellors, former Supreme Court justices, ex-Masters of the Rolls and many former Education Secretaries and universities Ministers, have a brain quotient that is certainly higher than two. Their collective experience dwarfs that of the current Education team, and for that matter my own experience. It is for that reason that I take very seriously the warnings and advice given by peers in the other place, and, importantly, not just from one party but from across the House. There is perhaps no other clause in the Bill that provokes such widespread condemnation as clause 4, allowing individuals and groups to sue universities for losses resulting from a university or student union failure to secure their free speech duties.

Speaking of brains, Lord Willetts, a former Minister for higher education, believes that the risk of legal challenges would be terrible for freedom of speech in our universities, as people are likely to keep their heads down, not invite speakers, lie low and stay out of trouble. In other words, the prospect of vexatious litigation will have unintended consequences.

Lord Grabiner, an eminent jurist, went further and feared that the clause could be used by

“well-heeled trouble-makers for whom the costs issue would be of no concern at all.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 November 2022; Vol. 825, c. 709.]

That may all be well and good for well-funded free speech litigators, perhaps with the unlimited support of the Free Speech Union, but for small institutions and higher education providers in particular, it will be crippling. He poses the question we all want the answer to:

“Why would the Government think it appropriate to subject our universities and student unions to any of this legalism?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 December 2022; Vol. 826, c. 210.]

Perhaps the Minister can give us a satisfactory answer today.

Even if we agree with the principle of the statutory tort, it is totally unworkable in its current form. The ex-Master of the Rolls, Lord Etherton, identified two glaring deficiencies in the tort as it stands. First, it is not clear what level of loss or damage is required for a successful claim. Secondly, it is also not clear what category of persons is entitled to make a claim. Lord Etherton concluded that

“it is extremely difficult to see what kind of order a court could make in practice that would deal with the situation that has arisen in relation to the non-securing of freedom of speech.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 November 2022; Vol. 825, c. 706.]

That leaves the tort as both undesirable and unworkable.

As well as being undesirable and unworkable, the tort has the potential to be actively harmful to the promotion of free speech on campus and hence totally counter- productive, as I was saying a moment ago. The Russell Group has reiterated its warning that:

“Managing the potential for litigation would…likely create significant administrative and resource burdens without adding to the enhanced protections for free speech introduced by the new OfS complaints process.”

In other words, we could have the worst of both worlds: no liberalising effect on free speech on campus, but with all the associated costs of legal action.

One student union I heard from recently informed me that there is currently no budget allocated for paying for legal action. Legal advice would need to be paid for out of its reserves. To make matters worse, it claimed that it would also be impossible or difficult to obtain insurance for such legal action. In a sense, therefore, student unions will be doubly bound, being required to build up large enough reserves in preparation for fighting such lawsuits, while also having to engage in expensive legal battles. Using that money will inevitably detract from student welfare budgets, SU facilities and the much-valued nature of campus culture. I return, once again, to the ever-prescient question posed by Lord Grabiner in Committee in the Lords:

“Why would the Government think it appropriate to subject our universities and student unions to any of this legalism?”

--- Later in debate ---

That is why I wish to finish by appealing to those on the Opposition Front Bench. If ever, in some distant day, they take power in this country, they should not undo this legislation, and this tort in particular, because they need to look behind them. Those on the Labour Front Bench are the hosts to a new totalitarian idea, which is well represented tonight. The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) is a decent liberal. He may think that he is just defending liberalism here, just protecting diversity, and that there is no danger from the ideas behind him, but this rapacious spirit, this intolerant totalitarian idea, will come for him, too. Those on the Labour Front Bench should support the Bill, with the tort included, to ensure and defend free speech, and ultimately to save themselves.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I receive donations from the University of Sussex to provide services for some of its politics students, and I received donations at my first election from the University and College Union. I am also a trustee at the University of Bradford student union, and we had our trustee board meeting today.

One worry for student unions, such as the one that I sit on in Bradford, is how we would manage this kind of law. Only a few years ago, the Prevent laws caused us real problems in relation to inviting speakers along to the university. I remember once trying to bring in a speaker who had served time in prison. We wanted him to talk to the students about the folly of his ways—the stupidity of radicalisation. The very best person to speak to students who are likely to be radicalised is probably someone who has been radicalised and has come out the other side. The paperwork that had to be completed for this speaker meant that the students from the Islamic society felt that it was just too complicated to do, so they backed off and self-censored.

The problem with the Bill is that all such student societies will self-censor. Students will say, “It is too complicated to invite a speaker in. It is too risky for student unions,” so they will just not be invited. There will be equal speech because there will be no speech. That is the reality of some of these clauses, particularly the tort element because it puts liability not only on trustees like myself—I am big enough and can take it—but on student trustees who are finding their way in the world. To put such liability on them so early on is rather dangerous.

The protections are already there in previous education Acts. We heard about the 1986 Act, as well as the 1994 Act, which requires student clubs to receive equal and fair funding across the board, no matter what their political persuasion. Those Acts have been tested in the courts. The settled situation is that if a Conservative society in a university student union wishes to register and receive money, it must be given the same opportunity to do so as any other society. If a society is prevented from doing so, it is likely to win in the courts under current legislation.

The problem with including a tort that does not require an element of proven financial damage is an ambulance-chasing solicitors charter. That is the reality. Any single grievance that does not have to demonstrate a financial impediment can of course whip up cases. Most student unions, like my own, which broke even just this year—in fact, we had a slight deficit because we are still recovering from covid at the University of Bradford, and student union activities were reduced and are only just coming back to full force—do not have the finances to fight these things, so they will settle.

[Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)]

I am somewhat confused, because the Bill is not designed to limit freedom of speech; it is actually there to protect it and to ensure that people are not cancelled—there have been some very high-profile cases of that. It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues misunderstand what the Bill is about.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I sat on the Bill Committee and heard the evidence. Some, which I supported, talked about the unnecessary nature of the Bill, much said it would be unhelpful, and a lot said it would impose a chilling effect. I have no problem with a requirement for free speech. I have no problem with, for example, allowing the Office for Students to determine these matters. In fact, I would like an appeals process to be part of that, which would strengthen the provision by allowing people to seek resolution. Instead, the evidence we heard on the tort aspect was that it would be chilling. Rather than take the risk, people would not do anything.

We know that that has happened before. Many Acts have been passed in this place that have had a chilling effect, meaning that people do not take action. I want to see vibrant debate in my universities. That has always happened, such as when University of Sussex students in the 1970s blocked the American ambassador from coming on campus until he condemned the war in Vietnam. Those activities are also about free speech; students’ ability to express their heartfelt beliefs and desires must be allowed as well, but such activities would be prevented under the Bill.

That is why I am against the Government’s move to reject the Lords amendment, although I welcome some of the other moves, particularly on non-disclosure agreements, that we put in initially. I wish the Government would come together with us to remove the tort clauses and to provide other appeal processes, so that people can seek proper justice that is not just about financial recompense.

[Sir John Hayes]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in relation to the University of Bolton.

Learning is, through exploration, the discovery of truths. Of equal importance to the answers learning provides are the questions it poses. For the emergence of understanding is a process, not a moment—a journey, not a destination. Such is the delight of being inspired to know more that it provokes an open-mindedness to all kinds of possibilities.

That is the spirit that speakers across this House have enjoyed and recommended to us, and yet across universities that spirit is being frustrated by the kind of intolerance that, rather than opening minds, aims to close down debate. This Bill must provide a significant shield and a sword to those who are determined that universities remain places where ideas are discussed freely and can be tested through critical analysis.

W. B. Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” We must not quench the fire of learning because we regard some ideas or views as contentious or controversial. Some may alarm. Some may cause offence. Yet without the ability to alarm and to disturb and to shock, there is no ability to inspire and to move and to enthral. They are two sides of the same coin.

The practitioners of intolerant identity politics have successfully cancelled a litany of students and academics who dared to espouse particular understandings of race, gender and sex—understandings, by the way, that are commonly held by our constituents—taken as read by most of the people we represent.

Those without wealth or influence to resist have too often been left at the mercy of the mob. It is a bitter irony that one academic who came forward to give evidence when we discussed the Bill in Committee, Kathleen Stock, was subsequently driven out of her job by a combination of militant students and weak-minded academics who refused to support her. She told us, along with my friend Arif Ahmed, that there is a climate of fear and a culture of silence, as academics self-censor for fear that what they say might leave them at the mercy of university authorities that use all kinds of techniques to silence them. So, this Bill is critical and the tort is critical to its effect.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I happily give way to the hon. Gentleman, who served on the Committee.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

When we served on the Committee, did we not agree that one thing this Bill lacked was security of tenure for academics—very rare now—which would provide a bulwark against a chilling effect? Is that not something we could seek agreement on?

[Sir John Hayes]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on that, but, having declared my interest that I am employed at the University of Bolton, I had better not make too forceful a point about it.

Many more academics we do not know of will have faced similar pressures, in untold everyday stories of students and academics that, whether through fear or otherwise, go unreported or unresolved. That is why it is so important to reject the Lords amendment that would abolish the new statutory tort proposed in the Bill as it was originally drafted. It is disappointing that the academic establishment in the other place made a case against that—disappointing, but unsurprising, because of course these people look after their own. I am very pleased that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) said, the Minister has resisted those calls. She has shown determination, insight and, I must say, a degree of courage in doing so, because it is easy to roll over when the big beasts in the other place roar in defence of the academic establishment.

BACKBENCH BUSINESS

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I want to start with some things that I agreed with in what I have just heard. I agree that education materials in our schools should be made public. I agree with that for all subjects, actually, and not just in schools. I think of the scandal in universities, where academic journals are behind paywalls, so we cannot look to see what academics on public money are researching in this country without paying huge amounts. I totally agree on that point.

I totally agree we needed better guidance from the Government on the issue. In fact, when we introduced RSE or RSHE, one of the big problems was that the Government guidelines were late and delayed, and some of the problems we saw in places such as Birmingham, where parents were protesting outside schools, were because the guidelines were not clear enough, often putting too much on teachers having to negotiate with parents, rather than the Department protecting teachers by saying “These are exactly the things that should be covered.”

I totally agree that we need to have an education facilitated in schools with subject specialists. It is an ongoing scandal that we have biology teachers teaching this wide area when, as the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) has said, this is so much more than the metaphorical condom on the banana that students have in the last year of secondary school. It is about the relationship, the emotional aspect and mental health, so I totally agree.

Actually, the inclusion of this in a wider citizenship and RSHE portfolio, by which we developed an education pathway for trainee teachers during the last Labour Government, was important. The destruction of citizenship education over the last 10 years and, therefore, the training of teachers specialised in such areas has been a great failure. I know there has been some reversal of that, but I am afraid that that is the situation we are in now. We have fewer subject specialists in citizenship and RSHE because of the choices made in 2010. I agree on the principle that we need to reverse that.

Where I disagree, I am afraid, is on some of the hon. Member’s examples. I did not plan to say this, but during the pandemic, my second cousin—a 15-year-old boy—died in a tragic accident of auto-asphyxiation. It devastated the family, as can be imagined, and happened in the pandemic when we were only allowed six people at the funeral. If he had been taught about risky sex acts—he was 15, not a pre-pubescent child—and how to make sure he did things safely, rather than just learning something from the internet that then led to the end of his life, he might still be around and his family might not be devastated. So, actually, because of that personal experience I do have a problem with saying that we should not teach any of this to our children.

The hon. Member picks out examples of the dice or whatever that might sound frivolous, and I cannot judge how exactly things played out in those schools—she might well be right that it was played out by some teachers incorrectly—but the principle of learning about things before people are legally able to do them but when they are physically able to engage in them, which 15-year-olds are, I am afraid, could have been lifesaving.

My sister, who is a teacher in Essex, has worked hard to try and incorporate some of those teaching methods into the school’s RSHE, focused on an age-specific approach and on stories of people such as my cousin and others, so we can talk about the dangers of some of these things. We cannot know about the dangers of things if we do not talk about them, or if we say that they are just things that families need to talk about. I am afraid most families will not do that because those kinds of things are darn embarrassing to talk about—but also because you never think your child will do something like that. I disagree with that element of what we heard today. I do agree that there needs to be oversight and I do agree that there need to be checks to make sure that we are not just promoting risky activities; we need to be talking about the risks of risky activities. Then, when people are of age, they can make their own choices.

I want to reflect on the things I was planning to say in this debate in the last few seconds I have. The UK Youth Parliament ran a campaign for years to try to get RSHE better taught. Elements of the campaign were about emotions and relationships, and it was also about LGBT inclusive education—and that does include T. We have seen the Fédération Internationale de Natation ruling that competitors will not be able to swim unless they transitioned before they were 12, so we are in a difficult and complex world that we have to navigate. Broad-brush bans from the Department are unhelpful; we need to be content specific and school specific. The Department needs to show more leadership, but we cannot exclude talking about trans people or these complex issues in schools because that, I am afraid, would be very dangerous.

Budget Resolutions

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I am sure the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will take a careful look at her letter and respond in good time.

Nevertheless, it is this Government who have grasped the nettle of adult social care and will deliver on capping personal care costs, which can be so debilitating, at £86,000. While £1.7 billion will improve the wider social care system, including the East Riding of Yorkshire, as announced in September, at least £500 million of that will go towards improving qualifications, skills and wellbeing across the social care workforce.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is it not the case that the additional money for adult social care is on a promise that might come along in a few years’ time, and that most local authorities will not see a penny immediately to tackle the immediate problems that they have in adult social care? That is why I tabled my amendment; it was quite rightly not selected, but it would have brought in £15 billion extra and not harmed anyone earning under £50,000. Why will the Government not just make national insurance a flat rate for everyone?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s question. I think he may have missed, while trying to catch your eye, Mr Speaker, what I just said about the £1.7 billion to improve the wider social care system that was announced in September. The additional £3.6 billion to local government that was announced in the Budget is more money. This is not an arms race on how much we can spend; this Government are interested in delivering outcomes. Covid has, no doubt, added extra challenges to our reforming agenda, but it has not deflected us from delivering our promises; it has made our commitment more focused as we deliver and build back better. For me, that means skills, schools and families.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend makes the case.

Labour’s plan would deliver the wellbeing and academic support needed to meet the scale of the challenge and ensure that all children can reach their potential. That is the level of the investment that the Government should have been making in the nation’s children.

When we look at overall school spending, the picture does not get much better. The Chancellor announced a 2% per annum real-terms increase in school budgets over the next three years. I want the Secretary of State to listen to this very carefully, because we are messing around a bit with figures here. That increase will finally return school spending to 2010 levels, in real terms, in 2025. As Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said,

“To have no growth in 15 years in such an important part of public services is unprecedented’’.

This means that 732,000 children in state-funded reception classes in 2010 have seen their whole school careers affected. A whole generation of children has been failed by consecutive Conservative Governments.

The Secretary of State spoke of a cash increase in school spending as a result of the Budget, but schools are facing a host of rising costs to set against that: covid costs, energy bills, and employer national insurance contributions. The ending of the public sector pay freeze is overdue, but it is schools that will have to fund the teacher pay settlement.

The impact of this underfunding is plain to see. Some 200,000 children are growing up in areas with not a single primary school rated good or outstanding. Forty per cent. of young people leave compulsory education without essential qualifications. By the time they finish their GCSEs, pupils from poorer families are 18 months behind their wealthier peers in terms of attainment, and a third of teachers leave our schools within five years of qualifying. Last week’s Budget was an opportunity to fix those deep-rooted problems, but the Chancellor failed to do so.

Youth services help to equip young people with the skills and confidence that they need for life. They provide careers guidance and mental health support, they are one of the most effective ways of tackling the root causes of crime, and they help to build community cohesion. However, although they have already experienced a decade of cuts, last week’s Budget went on to inflict on them the single biggest one-off cut in youth services for a decade, leaving a £470 million hole in the youth budget. The Chancellor’s boasts of investment cannot disguise this crippling cut. Under the last Labour Government, youth services were accessible to people whatever their background; today, they are a patchy postcode lottery.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kate Green]

I am about to finish my speech, so I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not.

This Budget failed to address the challenges facing our education system—from early years to schools and from skills to higher education, about which the Chancellor said almost nothing last week—just as it failed to address the challenges facing the country. There was no plan to tackle the growing cost-of-living crisis, no plan to remove the enormous tax burden that the Conservatives have placed on working people and businesses, and no plan for growth, which is crucial to boosting our economy. This is not a Budget for the stronger economy of the future about which the Chancellor boasted; it is a Budget that lets down business, lets down our public services, and lets down the British people. They deserve better from this Conservative Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

While the Chancellor presented his Budget as the best Budget in 10 years, he seemed to forget what party has been in control of the country for 10 years. The reason why this miserable Budget is the best of all the miserable Budgets of the last 10 years is that a miserable party has governed our country for the last 10 years. It has cut, cut and cut every time.

We have seen £1 billion of cuts in youth services since 2010, when the Liberal Democrats brought the Conservatives into power, and we see further cuts to youth services in this Budget. I know from my work on the all-party parliamentary group on youth affairs that many Conservative Members think youth services should be invested in and that the failure to invest in them, and cuts to them, have caused many social problems in their communities. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) is not in his place. We have done much work on youth services in his area, where I have seen really good projects. I am sure, though of course he will not say it publicly, he is disappointed that there is a real-terms cut for youth services—and if he is not, he should be looking at the small print, because that is the reality.

Even when there is investment in youth services, it is in buildings. I love a new shiny building; there is nothing better as the local MP than going to cut the ribbon, getting a nice photoshoot for our next political leaflet. However, the reality is that we do not need large numbers of new youth centres. There is a need for some to be refurbished; there is a need for some to be returned from use as government offices, because they ended up being glorified council offices rather than active youth centres. That has happened because we do not have the operating costs for those youth centres up and down the country.

When I speak to housing associations, they say, “Well, if you really need a youth centre, we can probably build that within the framework of the local housing budget we have, but we can’t pay for the day-to-day costs.” Have the Government provided any support for that? No. We see in my constituency, for example, the Conservative-controlled council writing a press release in the middle of the night to say it is going to close the 1,000 square metres main library in Peacehaven and replace it with a 35 square metres facility, because of budget cuts and other changes that the council says are unforeseen.

That is not unique. It is a great shame, of course, that a Conservative-controlled council would do that, and particularly that it would do so without speaking to the local Labour councillors, or to the local town and parish councillors who wrote to them asking for a dialogue on the matter. However, I will ignore the snub from the Conservative county council leadership and the officers there, who have shown complete disregard for Peacehaven time and again. Only last year, in the dead of night, the council filled in the local primary school swimming pool—a pool paid for by the local community. During covid, the council sent in the bulldozers and bulldozed it up, saying that it cost too much to run. We said, “Surely it costs more to bulldoze it over than to keep it and mothball it?” But that is enough about the dangers of the Conservative council in East Sussex abandoning Peacehaven. The reason the council has to do those things, even though they are the wrong choices, is that its funding has been cut to the bone time and again by this Government.

That is why I tabled an amendment today. It was quite rightly not selected, and I did not expect it to be, but I tabled it to say that the upper earnings threshold on national insurance should be abolished. That would mean that everyone who earns over the primary threshold should just pay the same percentage, which to me seems fair. Someone who earns £40,000 should pay the same percentage as people earning £60,000. At the moment, people earning £60,000 can pay 3%, while someone earning below the upper threshold has to pay 13%. That does not seem fair to me. Abolishing that upper threshold would raise between £15 billion and £20 billion. We have to put a range on these things, because of course with tax funnelling and so on, we do not know what we will actually get, but the lowest estimate is £14.5 billion.

The precept, the Government’s measures and the measure I have proposed would cover almost all the costs of adult social care that local authorities up and down this country are having to pay. That would free up our councils to do what they should be doing, which is providing libraries and youth services, and not feeling that they have to provide adult social care. That is a plan for adult social care, not the mysterious plan involving money that might come down the line in a few years that we heard from the Chancellor. That is why I tabled my amendment.

It is also important to realise that in this Budget there are tax giveaways. Who are those tax giveaways to? Not the ordinary person. There is £4 billion in tax cuts for banks in this country—banks that have made record profits in this period. We see no real action on companies such as Southern Water, which keeps pumping pollution, filth and sewage into our seas and rivers. When I met the chief executive officer of Southern Water, he said, “I don’t understand why my staff are getting such a bad time.” I said, “It might be because you’ve just awarded yourself half a million pounds in bonus while also being fined for illegal activity.”

Did this Budget tackle any of that? Did this Budget support money going in to transform our Victorian sewers or measures to repatriate the excessive profits of corporations? No, it did not. It left our seas dirty, our libraries closed and our youth services abandoned. What a shame; what a missed opportunity—but what did we expect from them?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I absolutely will, because there is sometimes said to be ambiguity about levelling up. It is clear to me that it is about life chances through life, from cradle to grave. It is about jobs, prospects, investment in skills and jobs, and all of that comes from the start of life. I know that my hon. Friend will be doing a fantastic job in Nottinghamshire to help to deliver that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Clarke]

Yes, I will. It is always a pleasure to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

So much for intergenerational levelling up—why have the Government cut the youth budget? It is the biggest cut in youth funding in 10 years.

[Mr Clarke]

The Government stand fully behind our youth budget. From the National Citizen Service to youth hubs, our wider work is clear. We are fully committed to ensuring that young people benefit as part of the Budget and spending review.

Meanwhile, we are spending record sums on improving connectivity and have allocated £5.7 billion to eight city regions to transform their transport systems. There is also the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund. We are taking on the criminals who make too many people’s lives a misery by recruiting 20,000 new police, providing an extra £2.2 billion for the courts, prisons and probation services, and committing £3.8 billion to the largest prison-building programme in a generation.

World-class public services are made possible only by the hard work of the private sector and the genius of the free market—a point made brilliantly by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young). That is why we are choosing to ignite even greater public sector success by investing in our economic infrastructure, improving skills and supporting innovation, with commitments to boost R&D funding and access to early stage equity finance.

To make sure that work pays, we are increasing the national living wage, cutting the universal credit taper rate and increasing the universal credit work allowance by £500 a year. That was the subject of a powerful speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) and likewise by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely).

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 70, in schedule, page 17, line 36, at end insert—

“14A After section 32, insert—

‘32A  Section 26(1) duty: exception for higher education providers

For the purposes of section 26(1) of this Act, the obligation to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism shall not apply to any decision made by a registered higher education provider that directly concerns:

(a) the content or delivery of the curriculum;

(b) the provision of library or other teaching resources; or

(c) research carried out by academic staff.’”.

We have had a useful debate on the principles of the Bill. A difference between us has emerged during that debate, which is essentially the difference between those of us who think the Bill is essential, because we think there is a prevailing problem that we need to address—that was reflected to some degree in the evidence we received from Professor Biggar, Dr Ahmed, Professor Kaufmann, Professor Goodwin and so on—and those who take the opposite view, that there is not a problem and, if there is, it can be dealt with by existing means.

My anxiety in all of these matters is to bring clarity to the Government’s intentions. I have made that point throughout. We have been reassured by the Minister a number of times that she is listening to the Committee and will go back and reflect further on the points that have been raised. We have also heard that much will be made clearer in guidance. That is not uncommon in this place. Over many years, as a shadow Minister and Minister, I have encountered many occasions where the implementation of a Bill, particularly when breaking new ground, has required that guidance be issued. It is right and important—if I were the Opposition, I would be making this point—that that guidance is made available at a time that allows it to be scrutinised. I understand that argument, and it is a perfectly reasonable one.

However, equally, from the point of view of good governance, it is important that the guidance—based on the discussions and consultations that will no doubt take place, as the Minister has assured us, between the sector and Government—is iterative and that it reflects those discussions and marks those consultations. I am not as concerned about that as some, because I assume a degree of good will in that respect.

My view about the Bill and the Committee is that, as was said by Members from across the House, our task is to improve the legislation during its passage. That is precisely what I have tried to do in the amendment. For me, it is about certainty and clarity and about establishing an environment where universities and others will be confident that the new regime is one that will deliver the outcomes we want, which is to facilitate and, indeed, to guarantee free speech on campuses across the country.

I am a supporter of the Bill, and the amendment, as hon. Members will see, is a helpful one. It is not designed to do anything other than to improve the legislation. I am also mindful that all Acts are rather different from the Bills they begin as. No Act of Parliament is quite like the Bill that is published; they all metamorphosise during their passage and improve as a result of that metamorphosis. So, the amendment, which is straight- forward, is designed to provide greater clarity, build the certainty I have described and also mark the progress of the Bill. Once the Bill becomes an Act we need to measure its effect. I have argued throughout the Committee for greater clarity, for greater certainty and for more information to be provided.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

The amendment talks about the Prevent obligations, which are not an Act in themselves so are subordinate to Acts, not being applied for purposes of research, delivery of the curriculum or teaching. Can the right hon. Gentleman give some examples of how he would want this to be applied? We are not quite yet clear on this side of the Committee about whether that is something we would be positively happy with because we are not clear on how the he sees it being implemented.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman has not only anticipated fully my preliminary remarks, but the essence of my amendment and my speech. I was about to say that my efforts are to improve the legislation and ease its passage to create the certainty and clarity I described. The hon. Gentleman will not necessarily know this, but as Minister for Security at the Home Office, I introduced the Prevent duty. Prevent was a long-standing part of our strategy to deal with counter-terrorism, as he will know, but I introduced the change to oblige local authorities, schools, the health service, community organisations and others to identify, where they might, people who were vulnerable to the overtures of terrorists or who were possibly dangerous already in those terms. We are talking here about potential terrorists and the hon. Gentleman will know that the way the Prevent duty works is that when those people are identified, a process begins, which may end up in them being referred to the Channel programme. The Channel programme is designed to counter the activities of extremists and others who wish to groom those individuals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

I see the Whip is nodding. It is important that we are clear about how the Prevent duty operates in practice; the intent of that duty; and the relationship between that and the provisions of this Bill.

We have already spoken about the necessary consistency in the application of these provisions. We have also spoken about the interaction, the interface between these new legal responsibilities and existing law, particularly in respect of the Equality Act 2010. More generally, it is important that this fits with other legislation when it becomes law. That is always a challenge for the Government because Ministers and Governments inherit a statutory landscape not of their making. That is not always a straightforward process. However, by improving legislation in this metamorphosis we can address that issue. That is what I am trying to do with the amendment. I do not know whether it is perfectly worded; I do not know whether it could be improved.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The right hon. Gentleman has clarified his thinking for me, which is very useful. I am not sure about some of the detailed wording, but that is the point of a probing amendment, is it not? I wonder if he would like to reflect on the interesting contradiction that the Prevent duty does not apply to student unions, but it does apply to the institutions. This amendment applies to both. When the right hon. Gentleman was Minister, did he consider why the Prevent duty was only on the institutions? Why did he not extend that duty to the student unions, and why is he now supporting this Bill, which does the opposite?

[Sir John Hayes]

I spend a good deal of my time contemplating what I think now, and I occasionally contemplate what I thought once. However, the longer one has lived, the harder that becomes. I could not say with absolute conviction that I recall the considerations I made in years gone by. It is complicated, in my case, by the fact that I have held a lot of different ministerial offices, and dealt with a lot of legislation over a lot of years. I said to the Labour spokesman that I have sat many times where he sits today, and, while it is tough being a Minister, it is pretty tough being a shadow Minister too.

I hope I have made it clear that my intention is positive; good Committees are about responsible progress being made—to that end I do not want to delay the Committee any further. This is a probing amendment to clarify, and make straightforward, the relationship between these legislative imperatives, so that the universities know precisely what is to be done. Finally, I send this signal out again: the Prevent duty is not about curbing free speech, it is about identifying potential terrorists. It is no more or less than that. It should not be under-interpreted, because we need to find those people before they do harm. However, it should not be over-interpreted as a backdoor means of closing down free and open debate.

--- Later in debate ---

In the light of the example that the right hon. Member used, I suggest that he stops reading certain newspapers. We have a tendency whereby if someone says X, suddenly it is a huge problem. Well, perhaps it was for the poor vicar who was referred, but it did not actually end anywhere. It is like when we read sensationalist stories about people taking stupid cases to court for compensation. The cases have no foundation in law and are thrown out, but the headline is about someone taking the council to court over some spurious claim; rarely does the story explain the background of the case or the fact that the court threw it out. The same would be the case for many of the referrals. In my experience of speaking with the people who run Prevent, people who are referred but who do not meet the criteria do not go any further, so I do not see any need for the amendment.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I declare my usual interests with the University of Bradford, the University of Sussex, and the University and College Union.

When I first saw the amendment, I was slightly confused —[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

When I first saw the amendment, I was slightly confused about its purpose. The idea that the Bill ought to refer to contradicting or overlapping—however one might phrase it—legislation and sets of guidelines is something that we have proposed in previous amendments, which I feel were slightly better worded.

I put it to the Minister that we need in the Bill a recognition that there are contradictory guidelines and that there will be guidelines to explicitly outline how duties and laws at universities will interact. That would relieve of a lot of pressure. We want surety that the guidelines will have that element to them in perpetuity, so that whatever new Government or office comes in, the guidelines will always outline how the Acts and duties interact with each other.

In that sense, I understand and agree with the spirit of the amendment, but the Bill probably needs something that goes further and has more detailed wording. I also understand that there have sometimes been cases in which either the Prevent duty as it is now, or the Prevent programme as it was, was used and had a chilling effect. We have heard that from different organisations. The Nottingham Two have been mentioned; that was a case of a PhD student researcher and a lecturer at the University of Nottingham. The university felt that it was its duty to report them to the police; they were arrested for downloading and disseminating the al-Qaeda manual and were refused bail for a period of time. There has been a lengthy court case on that. Compensation was paid to the two individuals because they were researching how terrorists radicalise people—the very thing we need researchers to be working on.

The law has helped to correct itself through the court process. I am not diminishing the awful effect it must have had on the two researchers, but they have received compensation and to some extent, unfortunately, these things do happen. Most institutions have already corrected their reporting mechanisms to ensure that that kind of thing does not happen. I am sure the example right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings gave us of the chaplain will be a one-off example that will help us to correct in the other direction as well. Those correction moments are sometimes needed, rather than using statute or legislation to do it.

One thing that should perhaps be included in guidelines is some idea of a process for when you are dealing with contradictory things, such as something that might breach the Equality Act but is necessary to talk about difficult issues that are discriminatory, or that might breach the Prevent programme in a literal reading, rather than its intended spirit. It is the same in universities when dealing with issues that might trigger a safeguarding process; a lecturer or researcher would write to the university to explain what they plan to do in order to get prior authorisation.

[Mr Jones]

There are no key principles for how somebody gets referred to Prevent; it is actually about assessing someone’s vulnerabilities and a pattern of behaviour. There may be an example raising one issue that would automatically get people put into Prevent, but I think the structure is already there.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I totally agree. However, an example might be if a lecturer wishes to run a course about Islamic radicalisation. They might say to the university, “I need some extra safeguards put around this course because of the students it might attract and the topics we might be dealing with. It is important to teach this course for academic rigour, it is important to understand these issues, but it might attract people to join the course for undue reasons.” That is not to stop them from doing it; it is just to make sure there is a safeguarding approach. All of that kind of stuff needs to be in the guidelines, not here. I hope that that is what the Minister will say. I think a safeguarding, prior notification approach is what is needed here.

I did want to touch on the interesting contradiction brought up by this amendment. Prevent—although there is debate about its understanding and its use, I do not think that is relevant here—is an important programme to try to safeguard and stop the radicalisation of people in our country. However, it applies to the institutions, and the institutions cascade to bodies that work within them, such as student unions. It does not apply directly to student unions in terms of the duty. This does, which is an example of where this Bill overreaches.

If the Bill is going to have a deeper, more intrusive reach than the Prevent programme, we need either to revisit the Prevent duty or to say that this Bill is a bit of an overreach, that it is not necessary for it to be regulating as deep down as student unions and student clubs. This amendment helps to highlight that. That is an argument I have made many times in this Committee, so I will not go any further on that point.

[Michelle Donelan]

Under amendment 70, higher education providers would not have to comply with certain academic decisions such as those concerning delivery of curriculum or research in relation to the Prevent duty. The Government are clear that the Prevent duty should be used not to suppress freedom of speech but to require providers, when exercising their functions, to have due regard for the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. There is no prescription from Government or the Office for Students on what actions providers should take once they have that due regard.

Specific guidance has been published by the Home Office on how higher education providers should comply with the Prevent duty. The legislation imposing the Prevent duty in higher education already specifically requires that providers have particular regard to the duty to ensure freedom of speech and the importance of academic freedom. That means that providers already have special provisions on the application of the Prevent duty to enable them to take proper account of academic freedom, so there is no need for this amendment to go further.

The Government have commissioned an independent review of the Prevent duty and are looking at how effective the statutory the Prevent duty is, to make recommendations for the future. I hope that reassures the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

This important provision is all about having sufficient resources. As we have debated at some length, student unions will bear a considerable burden of cost and resource to make the duties work on campuses. It is an administrative burden that hitherto they have managed to cope with, but this greatly exceeds what they would have done in the past.

We have to remind ourselves that we are talking about the full plethora of institutions from larger universities to smaller higher education institutions and further education colleges. The Department for Education’s impact assessment quotes a cost to student unions of £800,000 a year to implement and update the code of practice. The impact assessment also makes it clear that student unions will face the heaviest burden because of their unfamiliarity with the new administrative requirements; most universities already have in place good codes of practice on freedom of speech.

The Bill disproportionately affects a variety of SUs, such as those at FE colleges. The Association of Colleges points out in its briefing that 165 FE colleges are registered higher education providers on the Office for Students’ list. The recent submission by Durham University, which I am sure is of particular interest to two Committee members, makes it clear that clause 6 could represent a significant additional administrative burden on organisations. Jim Dickinson of Wonkhe highlighted in his submission that

“the funding and resultant capacity and capability of an SU to undertake these duties is usually wholly dependent on a negotiation between the SU and the provider. Without a duty on the provider to resource the SU appropriately to carry out the duty there is a material risk that they will be unable to. Vexatious complaints surrounding, for example, SU elections may not succeed but would cause an SU committee to need to seek costly legal advice which it may not be funded to obtain.”

Given that the Government have voted down all our attempts to amend the Bill in a satisfactory manner, the new clause is a form of backstop to ensure that the legislation will not challenge the viability of SUs up and down the country through the need to withstand these costs and the potential for vexatious litigants. The new clause is yet another constructive amendment that we want included in the Bill to recognise the immense financial burden and responsibility faced by student unions in the wide mix of institutions and colleges that the measures will affect. We think it important that the Government recognise that student unions will face that burden, which could seriously affect their viability.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

In local government, the health service, education and other areas, there is a doctrine known as the new burden doctrine. It is a sensible doctrine whereby if a new burden is put upon a body—particularly in local government and in educational bodies under local government—the Government shall make provision to pay for that new burden, or they will provide for that body to be able to raise revenue to cover the new burden.

Higher education institutions have income-raising capacity, although I am sure they would say that the cap should be lifted or the funding formula should be changed. They can make that an argument to the Chancellor at the spending review, and I know that many of them have. I desperately hope that the burden is not put on poorer students, as we are reading in the papers. Personally, I would move to a proper graduate tax, or even free education. A new graduate tax could be introduced for the young, and an old-age social care tax for those who are older, so we could have one joint intergenerational tax that allows a bit of intergenerational solidarity—but I digress.

Despite my desire for free education or a proper graduate tax that does not put people in debt, universities can go and make their case to the Chancellor. They have powers to raise revenue, either by seeking research funding or through student fees. They can get more students in, in fact—they could squeeze two or three more students into lecture halls. Student unions have none of those abilities. They do not, on the whole, raise revenue. Some, which are now the exception, still run some commercial businesses, but that is a rarity in higher education—even in campus universities. Most campus university student unions do not even run their own bars now.

Government Members who think that student unions can raise the money need to look again at student union finances, the vast majority of which come from the good will of the institution. The problem is that if the institution deprives the student union of money, the financial penalty for that student union and its duty do not transfer back to the institution; the liability is not reduced. I suspect that the liability will be covered by the student union’s paying basic insurance, but if it is deprived of money it will have no ability to pay for that, while still having the liability.

The new clause does not specify an amount; all it says is that the institution, in appointing the student union—because it appoints the body that is the student union; its job is to say, “This is our registered student union”—has to make sure that the student union has sufficient resources. If the student union has bars and commercial services, the institution can say, “We’ve ensured that you have the right resources because we can see that you have an income. No problem.” If the student union has none of those resources, all the new clause requires is that the institution takes steps to ensure that it has. Perhaps it will give a bar over to the student union to run, so that it generates the resources, or perhaps it will give over an amount of money. The new clause requires that to happen. The guidelines will explain how that happens, of course, but without this provision I am deeply worried that we will be imposing a new burden.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

I have been reading the impact assessment and I can quite understand where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. It suggests that the annual enforcement costs would be around £400,000 a year and that the total ongoing costs directly applying to student unions would be £1.2 million a year nationwide. However, there are over 100 academic institutions and many student unions across the country; if we divide that cost by 100 academic institutions, we are not talking about a huge amount of money per institution. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that student unions should be able to deal with the small extra costs?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I go back to my point. This is not a huge burden on institutions, but we should require institutions to ensure that there are those resources, given that some student unions have almost zero resources—only a few hundred pounds in the bank account. For many student unions there will be no problem, but provision will be needed for others. The new clause just says to the institution, “Check that your student union can do this.” It might just be a matter of a few hundred pounds for the insurance premium. It is fair for the institution to be required to do that. I hope the Minister will take that on board, either in the guidelines or in Lords amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

Earlier, I was too eager to get to new clause 2. The new clause would require providers to take steps to ensure that student unions have sufficient resources to carry out their duties under proposed new sections A4 and A5 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.

There is universal agreement about the importance of freedom of speech in university life. We saw that in the evidence sessions. There is also broad consensus about the important role that student unions play in protecting freedom of speech on campuses. Many student unions do fantastic work in that area, including having their own codes of practice, which often involve collaborative relationships with the provider. We fully expect that to continue, and for providers and student unions to work together, hand in hand, in relation to freedom of speech. That may include, where appropriate, a provider taking steps to ensure its student union is adequately resourced to carry out its duties. It may also involve the sharing of good practice, or a provider assisting the student union with the development of its own code of practice.

The measures are about protecting fundamental principles, not creating more red tape. There is huge diversity among student unions in the ways they are established and funded, reflecting the huge variety in the higher education sector as a whole and in further education. It is important that we reflect that variety in the Bill and do not seek to regulate the relationship between providers and student unions with a one-size-fits-all policy. Some student unions are heavily reliant on funding from their university; others may be more financially independent. Many have developed innovative portfolios as a way to generate income to contribute to a fulfilling university experience for students. The amendment does not reflect that variety or the differing, often complex arrangements that exist between providers and their student unions.

It is also important to note that the duties in proposed new sections A4 and A5 apply only to student unions of approved fee cap providers. Student unions of small, specialist providers that are not approved fee cap providers are not in scope of the Bill. In that way, we are ensuring that the Bill’s measures are not overly bureaucratic and follow the approach in the Education Act 1994, which sets out regulatory requirements relating to student unions at a number of institutions, including approved fee cap providers, but not other providers. In contrast, new clause 2 would place an additional, unnecessary regulatory requirement on providers in relation to student unions. In addition, we expect that there will be guidance from the Office for Students in due course that will help student unions to understand how to comply with their duties and assist them in drafting their code of practice.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

If the student union has nothing more than a petty cash box and no staff or sabbatical officers—there are some such student unions—how does the Minister suggest that they draft a professional code of conduct without the institution ensuring that they have the resources to do so? The new clause does not talk about cash; it could be secondment of staff.

[Michelle Donelan]

I thank the hon. Member for that very good point. While not wanting to predetermine the work of the new director, I fully anticipate that they will look at drawing up templates of such codes of practice to assist.

I trust that I have been able to reassure the Committee that we are taking appropriate and proportionate actions to ensure that student unions can address freedom of speech in a way that is not overly bureaucratic and that reflects the variety in their composition, size and financial arrangements.