Office for Students: Appointments

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I say at the outset that this is very much a time of reflection following the resignation this morning. We will want to learn from this. It is regrettable that the offensive tweets were not picked up on or before the appointment. The Prime Minister herself made it clear that a repeat of any such language from someone within a public position would not be acceptable. There is always a balance of proportionality in undertaking due diligence. In this case, there were more than 50,000 tweets, some of which were completely abhorrent. We need to learn from this and be sure that the due diligence is improved.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, with the greatest respect to the noble Viscount, the job specification required candidates to have “good judgement” and “high levels of integrity”; to,

“inspire confidence with a wide range of stakeholders”,

and,

“demonstrate high standards of … personal conduct”.

Is the noble Viscount saying that these objectionable tweets were not known to his department and Mr Jo Johnson? Is it not the case that Jo Johnson imposed this wretched man on the board of the OfS? Will he now tell me, as Jo Johnson has been removed, that the independence of the OfS, which the Government guaranteed during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act only recently, will now be established?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, there is no imposition of a candidate into this particular position. The current make-up of the Office for Students is a broad church. It is a broad range of people, which is what we set out to do in the first place. On the noble Lord’s question: no, we did not know about the obnoxious tweets that came out. That is why I said at the outset that we need to do better. With 50,000 tweets, some of which were completely obnoxious, this is something that we should have known about. We need to learn lessons from this.