Universities: Financial Sustainability

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I shall first answer the question about the pension scheme. The noble Lord may know that Her Majesty’s Government have a consultation on the teacher pension scheme changes which closes on Wednesday—in two days’ time. The Department for Education has limited financial resources and can afford to fund only part of the increase in employer contribution costs relating to the TPS. Schools, further education colleges and other publicly funded training organisations are in great need of additional support for those costs. The live consultation seeks views on the proposal’s impact on higher education institutions. We will finalise funding decisions once that consultation has concluded.

On the Horizon programme, the noble Lord may know that negotiations are ongoing. As he said, it is important that we continue to engage in that programme, and we very much hope that will be the case.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that some university funding might be made easier if the whole process of receiving bona fide students from overseas were made somewhat less complicated? Does he agree that that in turn would be much easier if we took the student immigration figures out of the overall immigration figures and dealt with them carefully and sensibly in a separate way, and that this would be particularly beneficial for links with the Commonwealth, and especially with India?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My noble friend would expect me not to agree with that point, but I think the whole House would agree it is very important that we continue to attract students from overseas—from EU and non-EU countries. It is very encouraging that the number of applicants from the EU has increased by 1% to 43,890. There is still a lot of work to do in that respect but, in terms of students being included in the migration figures, we have had much discussion in the Chamber about that, and I do not want to go into it today.