Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay—another mathematician from Trinity College, who later turned into a lawyer. Those of us who have studied and taught in universities around the world and conducted research recognise that there are advantages and disadvantages in the way that UK universities function, and in how they contribute to the life of this country.

We are well aware that there have been considerable changes in our universities over the past 50 years, which the Bill before us further modifies. There have also been some deficiencies which have not been remedied. One or two noble Lords may remember that in the 1960s some students at Oxford University were expelled for publishing a critique of lectures. However, by 1970, when I started lecturing, three years after the student revolt at the LSE, lecturers at Cambridge, in science and mathematics at least, had to review their courses with student committees—it was a bit Marxist. It was often a rigorous process. Unfortunately, students are not consulted on many courses at many universities and reports on those courses are not available to student applicants. The Bill aims to help universities to be run better in future in this respect and others.

The OfS needs to give applicants from the UK and abroad confidence in regard to universities by providing full information about teaching, research, social and sporting facilities and the application of knowledge in their area. Reports by the OfS should give applicants confidence that universities will continue to be the focus of economic and cultural growth in all the main cities of the UK where they are located. Universities are often the major employer, so it is appropriate that their financial stability, as well as their innovation, should be an aspect of the OfS’s responsibility in this overarching Bill. However, as my noble friends Lady Dean and Lady Rebuck pointed out, changes need to be made to the traditional type of university teaching and social experiences. One way of doing that is by providing high-level part-time courses in common with all the large cities in the United States. Some of us have tried unsuccessfully to introduce these in the UK.

Another gap in the UK is the lack of arrangements for students to visit other universities and experience advanced courses in several universities, which is an aspect of continental education. Such arrangements should also be available to specialists in industry and business—somewhat on the lines of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has just described. Both these kinds of exchanges are available in the Netherlands and other European countries.

The third part of this Bill proposes a reorganisation of the government funding of UK research and development in universities and industry. The balance of the future research policy of UKRI is not clear as between the fundamental or Haldane aspects and the applied aspects. Will there be some given proportion? I hope not because, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, pointed out, the linear theory is wrong. It is well known that many fundamental developments came from applied research. My example is that the basic ideas of chaos theory came from detailed studies of weather forecasts. The new Innovate UK and research council structure of UKRI could put this integrated policy into practice.

Finally, while UK research is excellent, it is less than 10% of the world’s total. Therefore another role for UKRI, working with BEIS, should—again, as happens in the United States—facilitate the importation of leading foreign research to be combined with our own research and connect it to UK applications. I saw that myself; I did some research, and two months later, the Americans picked it up and turned it into a company.