Higher Education (Access and Participation Plans) (England) Regulations 2018

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Lords Chamber

Finally, I express appreciation of the former Minister, Jo Johnson. He was assiduous in trying to ensure that opposition voices were heard, and I hope that his successor will equally be in listening mode as the measures in the Act are implemented.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister explained, these regulations are the start of a succession of statutory instruments that will come before the House in implementing the Higher Education and Research Act. In these opening remarks it is not possible to debate the regulations without reflecting on the general principles behind the Act and the huge changes taking place in our higher education system. We have seen the tripling of fees, the introduction of loans and the ending of maintenance grants, promoted by the Government as market-driven and aimed at putting students at the heart of the system. Unfortunately, as my noble friend Lord Stevenson said at Second Reading, in reality it relied on the all-too-familiar neoliberal ideology which places faith in the unregulated free market as the most efficient allocator of resources, and which of course has privatisation, deregulation and individualism as the so-called engines of economic growth.

If we look at the outcome in practice, what do we see? There is no competition in fees, students are leaving universities with debts of around £50,000—a large majority will not pay them in full—we have the most expensive undergraduate courses in the world, and there has been a complete collapse in part-time provision and a reduction in home-based postgraduate students. Some vice-chancellors took the Government at their word and paid themselves enormous salaries and perks in the belief that they were FTSE 250 companies. Most worrying is the huge uncovered gap in the public finances. There have been a number of reports on this, including from the Education Policy Institute, which reckoned:

“The contribution of student loans to net government debt is forecast to rise from around 4 per cent of GDP today to over 11 per cent in the 2040s”.


We still have no answer from the Government to what on earth they will do to face up to the issue.

I find it somewhat ironic that alongside the Government’s genuflection to free market ideology we have the creation of the OfS, which brings with it the tools of what could be a heavy-handed regulator, determined to micromanage what universities do. I am not an expert in higher education but I know a little bit about the health service, and I could not help reflecting that this is in parallel to what has happened in the health service. We had the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which is full of the language of the market. Indeed, it brings in the Competition and Markets Authority to oversee the activities of NHS providers, with draconian powers of intervention. But, at the same time, Ministers continued to micromanage the NHS and set up a number of other bodies to interfere and intervene in what they do. We have ended up with the worst of all worlds: a heavily top-down micromanaged system within a legislative framework designed to promote a market—the point the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, made.

It seems that we risk going there in higher education. This tension was seen all too clearly in the character of the last Education Minister. One moment he was extolling the virtues of the market and new private providers, and the next threatening the same institutions with draconian punishments if they did not do what the Minister wanted. Intervention in the pay of vice-chancellors might be justified in the public sector, but it sits rather uneasily in the competitive market that Mr Johnson was so keen on. We now have a change of Ministers; the on/off review of student loans is on again. The Minister should tell us what direction higher education policy is going in.

The key to our concern is whether Ministers, instead of promoting scholarship and encouraging research or a concern for truth, have as their goal turning the UK’s higher education system into an even more market-driven one at the expense of both quality and the public interest. It is worth reminding the House that this is not a broken system which needs shoring up and intervention. It is the second-most successful higher education system in the world, with four universities ranked in the top 10. When and how will the Government give us an assurance that they are stepping back from their market-driven obsession and that they intend the OfS to be a sensible, balanced regulator?

Perhaps the OfS has not had the best of starts. The first press release from this new body, issued on 1 January, made depressing reading. It was full of guff about choice and competition, with five prosaic lines from the chairman, Sir Michael Barber—of blessed memory—who managed to split an infinitive in welcoming what he described as outstanding appointments to the board, including a Mr Toby Young. Two weeks later, the very same Sir Michael got up to say how much he welcomed Mr Young’s resignation. That is all we have heard from Sir Michael Barber about Mr Young and his appointment. In addition to the debacle over that appointment there is the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. This is not a small board but a large one, so how can it be that there are no active further education sector representatives, as confirmed by the Permanent Secretary last week in front of the PAC? Nor are there any representatives of the National Union of Students or university or staff bodies on the board. Will the Government rectify this?

The main SI before us today is the one on access and participation. The recent end-of-cycle report from UCAS offered really concerning statistics, stating that young people from the most advantaged backgrounds are still 5.5 times more likely to enter university with the highest entrance requirement than their disadvantaged peers. As Les Ebdon, the outgoing Director of Fair Access, said in response last month,

“people with the potential to excel are missing out on opportunities. This is an unforgivable waste of talent”.

As my noble friend Lady Blackstone said, the statistics and discussion often focus on the number of 18 year-olds, but to me the 61% fall in part-time participation since 2010-11 is alarming, with the number of mature students declining by 39%. Do we have any doubt that this will impact on our economy and the skills agenda? I thought that Birkbeck put it right in its evidence on access and participation. It said:

“The vast majority of our students are aged over 21. Most choose evening study because they work full-time … Provision for part-time and mature learners is important for social mobility”.


What will the Government do to turn this depressing statistic around?

The Minister referred to the role of the Director for Fair Access and Participation, which was of course debated extensively during the passage of the Bill. Can he assure me that that director will be able to sustain the work of OFFA on resources and his actual position within the OfS? Will the director have a direct line to the Secretary of State and not simply report to members of the OfS board and the OfS chief executive?

One of the SIs we are debating, Statutory Instrument 1196, focuses on the register of higher education providers. If Ministers are still going down this route, they presumably want the market to embrace failures. I want to ask the Minster about the failure regime. I refer specifically to the collapse of the London College of Creative Media. Wonkhe’s briefing reported that after the college collapsed and entered into recent administration its validating body, the Open University, worked very hard to find a new provider. Despite doing so with a compatible partner, a speedy closed sale by the administrators to a different provider altogether caused considerable shock. That raises a number of questions. How can a provider of higher education be allowed to collapse, apparently without much warning, when strict financial checks are meant to be in place? As Wonkhe’s briefing asked, what does a change of ownership mean for the validating body, and what say can it or regulators have over this? Who ensures that students’ interests are protected when debts are owed and providers change hands at breakneck speed?

I fully support what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said on the disabled students’ allowance. The need for proper guidance is clear, with a baseline against which to assess the performance of individual universities.

The health of our higher education institutions is of crucial importance to the UK. We clearly need to do nothing that would cause that position to be at risk. The OfS has a clear role in mitigating that risk but it has to respect the institutional autonomy of our universities and resist the temptation to micromanage every corner of university life. I wish it well but I believe its performance needs to be kept under close scrutiny. Ministers need to step back from their market-obsessed approach and give universities the support that they require.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I was given prior warning that this debate on the regulations would turn into a broader debate on a number of issues raised during the long passage of the Higher Education and Research Act, and I welcome that. It is good to go over these issues again, and I hope that I can address all the questions asked by noble Lords. If I do not do so or need to get some more specific detailed answers to noble Lords, I will certainly do so and put a copy of the letter in the Library of the House.

I shall address the issues raised in no particular order. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, began by asking about the role of the OfS and the link with government. I think she said there was a danger that the Government might be seen to be telling universities what to do. I reassure the noble Baroness that the OfS is an arm’s-length body. The Secretary of State can give guidance or directions to it and, in doing so, they must have regard to the need to protect the institutional autonomy of English higher education providers. HERA sets clear limitations in this context in order to protect academic freedoms and institutional autonomy. For the first time, it also makes explicit that guidance cannot relate to parts of courses, their content, how they are taught or who teaches them, or admissions arrangements for students. The OfS will absolutely be left to do its job as the regulator. I know we had much discussion about this, but I further reassure the noble Baroness that this is the case.

The noble Baroness also raised concerns about specified persons or students. I reassure her that there is no intention to set targets or quotas. To do so would infringe institutional autonomy, one of the hallmarks of our world-class higher education system. The OfS, like the DFA under the 2004 Act, has a duty to protect academic freedom.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

It is all very well saying that this body has institutional autonomy, but it is well known that Ministers put pressure on the chairman to appoint Mr Toby Young. That is not a very good sign of autonomy, is it?