Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

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

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I was a governor of the LSE for 30 years and am now an emeritus governor and I serve on the courts of Lancaster University and Newcastle University. At the end of this month, Professor Chris Brink, who has been the vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, will complete his period of service. He has made an outstanding contribution to that university and, indeed, to Newcastle and the north. This will be recognised in a civic farewell which is being organised for him this week. He came to Newcastle from Stellenbosch, where, as vice-chancellor he played a key part in leading that university from being the high redoubt of Afrikaner nationalist education to being a successful multiracial university. He is worth listening to.

I have been reading some of his reflections, which I shall share with the House. First, I was heartened to see him referring to Socrates saying that a good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers—and he was writing as a mathematician. His own reflection is:

“Universities … have never accepted that they are bound by some overall governing body which sets universal rules of performance. Nor should they. For universities, it should never be the case that the rules define the entity. It should always be the case that the entity defines the rules. The strength of universities lies in institutional autonomy and academic freedom. The moment universities start playing the rankings game they tacitly accept the authority of the rankers to define the game. That is a dangerous thing to do. As we have seen, when universities become complicit in rankings they reinforce a public perception that ranking reflects reality, and once there is such a perception, politicians and the market are eager to shape the higher education sector towards complying with that perception”.

Those words are very relevant to our considerations this evening and are worth thinking about.

In whatever lies ahead, Britain desperately needs a first-class higher education system in all its dimensions—that is obvious. But what, within that system, is the role of a university? In an inescapably interdependent nation, and an equally inescapably interdependent world, it should surely be a socially and internationally inclusive, and convincingly representative, community of scholars —staff, academics, teachers, researchers and students. How right the noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, was to re-emphasise that we should be calling them, and they should be calling themselves, “students”. The way in which “customer” has crept into the system is utterly demeaning. It undermines the whole concept of higher education and scholarship.

So it should be a community of that kind, in which the quality of teaching and of research are recognised as interdependent and in which universities, across the country, form a matrix of the humanities—not least ethics and philosophy—the physical sciences and the social sciences. All this together will make their strength and will provide their guarantees for the future.

Originality, integrity, a wholesome caution about an overdependence on sponsorship in research and applied research, vision, endless searching and challenge should be the lodestars of our universities and what they are about. To guarantee all this, there must be a relentless commitment to autonomy and to academic freedom. These are the fundamentals of what has achieved the standing of British universities, and what will be their strength in the times ahead. It is against all these issues that we shall have to very carefully scrutinise the relevance, validity and, I fear, invalidity of what is presented in this far from convincing Bill.

I will end by taking up a point made by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. If we are a decent society and if the values of our universities that I am speaking about have real effects, we really must ensure in our society at the present moment, and into the foreseeable future, that we give all possible support, not least financial, to the young people who are resident in this country and who, having been through hell in their lives, find themselves as refugees, displaced people and asylum seekers. Like any other youngster, they should have the opportunity of a university education.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. I support the amendment. We get the opportunity to legislate on higher education once every couple of decades. It is therefore really important that we get it right. It seems really sensible to put into the Bill a definition of what we are talking about. That is especially important because one thing the Bill does is give a fast-track procedure for new universities to be created. We ought therefore to be framing as part of that legislation a definition of what a new university should be committed to.

I have to say that I am taken by one or two of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about the precise wording of parts of the amendment. I think he has fastened on the one point where the amendment is weak; that is, in allying the word “must” with the extensive range of subjects. Actually, it is right to put “must” in the Bill in relation to the commitment of a university to academic freedom. If Oxford University were to abandon the principles of academic freedom, it would rightly be up in front of the court of public opinion or a court of law.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

On this specific point, I have read the amendment carefully and it does not say that a university must provide a range; it says that “universities must”. This is a very important and somewhat subtle point which needs to be taken seriously.

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

I take the point from the noble Lord, Lord Judd. However, I think that it would be important for the avoidance of doubt to ensure that there can be no doubt about the ability of a very focused university, concentrating on a particular range of subjects or type of subject, none the less to stand tall and clear as an accepted university. Laying aside the point about “must” and “extensive range”, the whole thrust of this amendment and the principles behind it are absolutely in the right direction. For heaven’s sake, let us put this into the Bill and then set about making one or two adjustments at a subsequent stage of our discussions to get it specifically right. The broad principles enshrined in the amendment are absolutely the right ones that we need to focus on. I make two observations in relation to that.

First, academic freedom and autonomy is not a luxury for a university; it is part and parcel of what a university is. It is rightly said that a university does not teach people what to think but how to think, and that happens through debate, discourse, discussion, research and the contestability of ideas. It arises from a clash of minds and, above all, from no one in a university being told by anyone—government or anyone else—what to think. Secondly, in the ghastly jargon of the age, we are, I fear, living in a post-truth society. Universities, par excellence, are about truth and evidence. They are about making sure that we pay attention to knowledge and reality. I particularly like the phrase in Amendment 1 about,

“the pursuit, dissemination, and application of knowledge”,

because a university absolutely has to do that: pursue knowledge and research, attend to it and discuss it, test it, then disseminate and apply it. It has a duty to its students, to itself as a research community and to wider society. This amendment gets it broadly right. It does not have every single word right, but let us put it in the Bill and then make it even better when we come to further stages of discussion.

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[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

Following on from the noble Lord’s comments, if the Minister is minded to reject the amendment and go and think about it, could he think in particular about the many institutions that sometimes appear in different parts of the world under the title of university, which may not be universities that this Bill is designed to promote or protect, nor institutions where we would want many of our young people to seek their education? I have in mind not merely the well-known Hamburger University, which has a rather limited set of subjects on the menu, but also those universities that are in fact annexes or derivatives of respectable universities which set themselves up in other parts of the world and which would be most attracted to setting themselves up in a place where students have access to funding for their tuition. Those places offer a very narrow, minimal and perhaps not very demanding set of subjects.

The Minister told us at Second Reading that the big problem currently is that the legislation is needed to update the regulation of universities. I accept the point, but it would be much more helpful to know which specific mischiefs the Government hope to remedy with this piece of legislation. There are specific mischiefs—the noble Lord, Lord Myners, mentioned one of them; there are places where too little teaching is done. But I am very certain that, if the Bill goes through unamended, there will be many more universities, so-called, where very little teaching is done. It is quite ordinary for institutions to compete not to be the best or to have the best offerings but to make the greatest profit and to do it in the most cheap, cheerful and economical way. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, as we move through a technological revolution, of which MOOCs will be a serious part, we need to think very hard about what is not a university. That may be rather easier than defining what is a university.

[Lord Judd]

First, I declare an interest. I am an emeritus governor of the LSE and a life member of court of Newcastle University as well as being a fellow and life member of court of Lancaster University.

My experience in those quarters has left me in no doubt that this new clause is definitely needed, and this has been an interesting debate about what its exact shape should be. It should be looked at in relation to Amendment 65, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and Amendments 165 and 166 in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson. They make the crucial point that this legislation should state that the Secretary of State has an inescapable responsibility to uphold academic freedom and freedom of thought. That first principle should be there, right at the beginning of the Bill. I am very glad that my noble friend has tabled those amendments, but it would have been better if their proposals had been included in this new clause.

There are some pressing issues which make this more urgent than ever, and colleagues in the House have spoken about them. The post-truth society is being talked about: there is a desperate need to rebuild and regenerate a commitment of some weight to the search for truth and excellence. That is crucial. I have sometimes reflected that the real test of a good university is the strength of its departments of ethics and philosophy. There is not much ethics these days in most universities. More than this, there is a terrible confusion growing in society about the difference between education and training. If we are to operate our society effectively, of course we need very good training. Some will be vocational training which is sometimes terribly impressive in its quality and its leadership. We also need increasingly to be able to see issues in a multidisciplinary context. It is trite, but it can be said that these days it is a matter of knowing more and more about less and less. We have to have somewhere where things are being brought together and views challenged from different perspectives.

This new clause is very important; we need to make sure that all these ideas are taken on board, as I am sure my noble friend would be the first to agree. His opening speech was very conciliatory and invited suggestions about how the situation could be improved. I hope he meant that because it is important—I am glad and relieved to see him nod his head.

This has been an excellent debate and it would be very unwise not to take these ideas fully on board. Coming back to my first point, we must not, with all our preoccupations, miss the opportunity to leave future Secretaries of State in any doubt about their personal, direct, ministerial responsibility to uphold the principles of academic freedom and autonomy in every way that they can.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased that what has come to the fore in this debate has been the concern of this House for the qualitative impact on our universities. I look at the world as someone who has done international work all my life, and what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, was very important. He underlined that the day that Brexit comes into effect, we become more dependent on our relationships with the world than we have ever been. It is not just a matter of what markets we will get; in every dimension of our security and well-being, we are inescapably linked to the world community.

I do not understand how a university can be a relevant centre of learning and higher education in the modern world unless it represents, in its character and being, the world of which it is a part. It is essential in virtually every discipline. On Monday, we emphasised the importance of interdisciplinary studies. It becomes even more important within those studies to include the reality of what the world is. I just hope that any reporting that may be introduced will take those wider dimensions into account, not just the quantitative dimension.

As a young MP way back in the 1960s, in the first debate in which I cut my teeth, I was up against the Secretary of State, the almost irreplaceable Anthony Crosland. It was about overseas student fees increasing. I remember thinking then what a pity it was that the vice-chancellors put so much emphasis on the impact of fees on their income. Of course that is crucial, but I wondered why they were not making the important point that the quality of their education itself was desperately dependent on that international reality.

I thank those noble Lords who have made this debate possible. I am glad to hear from those who know him better than I do that the Minister is on our side. I sincerely hope that he is, because we shall damage the quality of our education—academic freedom and the autonomy of universities—which we took so seriously for many hours of debate on Monday. Why? Because we wanted to preserve that quality. How can we have that unless it is international in character?

I add just one point, which is anecdotal, so far as I can make out—it is not established in statistics—but I think it needs to be taken to heart. Already there are indications of overseas academics being offered an enhanced future in their profession but unwilling to take it because they are not sure that Britain is a place in which they want to live and work. That is a tragedy of the first order. There is already anecdotal evidence that sensitive, imaginative students at undergraduate level across the world are saying, “Hang on a moment. Is this hostile Britain really the place we want to go to pursue our learning and higher education?”. There is a fundamental issue at stake here, and we need to get it right very fast indeed.

[Baroness Cohen of Pimlico]

My Lords, at the risk of lowering the tone after my noble friend Lord Judd’s speech, I say that I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Not only are we cutting ourselves off from the intellectual, social and international contribution from the students we are refusing or discouraging, we are behaving with staggering ungraciousness to those students who have already made an enormous financial contribution to the welfare of our universities. It would serve us right if they stopped doing so. Anyone who, like me, has been instrumental in raising money for universities knows how we can depend on the generosity of foreign students educated here to support our universities. I cannot bear it that we are treating them with such ungraciousness.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very important amendment. I want to make two points. First, we have already spent a great deal of time talking about the purposes of higher education and the desire to see fully educated, rather than just trained, people going into society and playing their part. Elections are occasions that provide real opportunities, so if we are serious about our earlier discussions on the Bill, logically we ought to ensure that everything possible is being done to enable students to participate.

My second point is simply that it is most important for society as a whole to ensure that we have the fullest possible participation in elections. There should be no unnatural hindrances whatever. Although we should of course have safeguards—I am the first to agree with that—we want to make sure that as many people as possible have the opportunity to participate as they should. Students have a particularly important contribution to make in the democratic process. Therefore this amendment makes absolute sense, in terms of both achieving our objectives as a democratic society with full participation and making sense of what we talked about at great length earlier in our deliberations: we want students to become fully participating and informed citizens.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, the case for the amendment has been explained clearly and persuasively by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and its other supporters; I, too, support it.

The amendment reflects a strong cross-party conviction, in both this House and the other place, that the underregistration of young people for electoral purposes is a most serious and pressing problem that needs to be tackled resolutely in a number of ways. The amendment embodies one of them.

Its objective was recommended strongly in last year’s report entitled Getting the ‘Missing Millions’ on to the Electoral Register, prepared by Bite The Ballot and others for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation. That authoritative study makes it clear that university registration procedures could easily be adapted to incorporate provision enabling students to opt in for electoral registration, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, explained.

The Government should associate themselves firmly with the cross-party proposals to increase electoral registration of our young people. They need to demonstrate a clear commitment to working in a bipartisan spirit so that our democracy can be strengthened by bringing those missing from the register on to it. By supporting this amendment, the Government would make a significant contribution to the bipartisan progress that we need so badly.

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[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, I thank your Lordships for your contributions. This has been interesting and, by way of general introduction, I listened with interest to the broader electoral point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. However, as this amendment deals specifically with students and young people, perhaps he will understand if I deal specifically with that aspect.

The Government fully share the aim of increasing the number of younger people registered to vote, as part of creating a democracy that works for everyone. This is an important subject but, although we support the overall aim of this amendment, we do not believe that placing a prescriptive, statutory duty on all HE providers is the best or most appropriate way to deliver that aim. Let me explain.

The Government have already shown their commitment to ensuring that students are registered to vote by supporting, and contributing financially, to the pilot project integrating electoral registration with student enrolment at the University of Sheffield. I commend those behind this successful pilot, which produced encouraging outcomes, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, indicated. I am pleased to note that many providers are already implementing this system voluntarily, such as the University of Bath—the university of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall—Sheffield Hallam University, Cardiff University, the University of Birmingham, Coventry University, Lancaster University, Manchester Metropolitan University and Newcastle University. Other providers are looking at this of their own volition and we anticipate that more will choose to do so this year. To encourage take-up of this system, or at least of one of the other models which institutions deem most appropriate, we have committed to write out to other HE and FE providers later this year.

With many universities already embracing this system, we expect and are confident that many more will do so voluntarily, which we believe is the right approach. Let me reassure the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that we are looking at the University of Sheffield scheme to fully evaluate it and ensure that it is fit for purpose before we share the outcomes and encourage wider application. We will continue to work closely with sector partners, the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators to evaluate and share the outcomes from this and other schemes, and to consider other solutions for areas such as London where this system is impractical to deliver.

There will obviously be an administrative burden associated with such a system as used by the University of Sheffield. Larger providers may have the resources to accommodate the introduction of an integrated voter registration system, and to absorb the costs of such an arrangement, but I hope the Committee will agree that it is not appropriate to include such a mandatory condition in the Bill. The conditions of registration in the Bill are primarily to provide proportionate safeguards for students and the taxpayer, and to take forward social mobility policies. The imposition of other mandatory conditions risks undermining this proportionate approach to regulation, which is a key element of the system. This is a deregulatory Bill from a deregulatory Government.

Moreover, it is not a case of “one size fits all”. Providers should be able to choose from this or other options, such as the one used by De Montfort University, which offers students the opportunity to register automatically when logging into their student intranet. In places such as London, with its 33 boroughs, there are major issues to contend with, such as students with a term-time address in a different registration area from their university, which makes this system impractical to deliver for electoral administrators.

It must be for HE providers, working in partnership with their students and electoral registration officers—the acknowledged experts in registration—to determine how best to increase student registration. Yet this does not mean that we cannot do more to encourage registration. The Government are also looking at modernising and streamlining the annual registration canvass. Impacts on students from the current process will be picked up as part of the modernising electoral registration programme. We are also considering other options to increase student registration, including as part of the Government’s democratic engagement strategy. We expect to set out more about this later on this year.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, referred to the Cabinet briefing note, a copy of which I have in my hand. I confirm to your Lordships that we will circulate a copy to all Peers and will place a copy in the House Library. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised the issue of including local electoral registers in university areas. According to YouthSight, 60% of students actively choose to be registered at their home address. That is their choice, but it means that underregistration is not perhaps such a material issue—students simply elect to register elsewhere.

Although the Government fully support the aim of increasing student voter registration, we do not believe that this amendment is the most effective or appropriate way of meeting that objective. In these circumstances, I suggest that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Lord Judd]

The noble Baroness made the point that a growing number of universities are, of their own volition and initiative, taking action in this area. That is something to be admired and is absolutely right, but democracy is immediate and in the meantime there will be elections. Are we really accepting a situation in which there will be two opportunities available—one where universities have chosen to enhance the quality of democracy and another where they have not? There is some urgency on this matter, and I do not think that the Minister, on reflection, will really believe her own argument.

[Baroness Goldie]

With all respect to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, I do not think anyone is suggesting that there is a desert of electoral registration by students. Everyone is agreed on the importance of ensuring that as many as students as possible register to vote and that they are encouraged to do that. The distinction we have to draw in securing that objective is whether putting something into this Bill and making a mandatory provision is proportionate and the best way of achieving that aim. As I have just explained to your Lordships, the Government feel that that is neither appropriate nor the best way to achieve that objective. That is why we invite the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. In coalition, our Health Minister, Norman Lamb, campaigned staunchly for parity of esteem and funding for mental health in order to bring it up to the same standards as physical health. We are still a long way from achieving that parity.

My noble friend has spoken particularly about students. In the amendment we included care for university staff, many of whom work under intense pressure. The introduction of new assessment measures in the Bill may well increase those pressures on staff, many of whom may be on insecure contracts, with high ambitions, high expectations and long hours. We know that many universities already have a great duty of care to their staff as well as their students, but this measure would see all universities, as places of study and work, fulfil their duty of care to both their staff and their students.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I commend the amendment. It is enlightened and imaginative. University should be a thrilling and fulfilling experience. Of course it should be testing—there is no question about that—but it should be an experience in which a person develops their potential and begins to flourish intellectually and as a being. There is no doubt now, with our increasing awareness of the nature of mental illness, that there are disturbing numbers of students for whom that is just not the reality, and university becomes a hell. As a civilised society, we should not tolerate a situation like that when very often quite a small amount of highly professional help can enable students to come out of this nightmare and join the rich learning experience. The amendment is just the sort of thing this House should take part in.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, I shall speak to the government amendments and wait to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, before responding to his amendment. These government amendments relate to the various appeals processes contained in the Bill in relation to a decision by the OfS to deregister a provider, impose a monetary penalty, vary or revoke degree-awarding powers or revoke a university title. The amendments address points of inconsistency and are intended to ensure a smooth and clear appeals process. I emphasise that the amendments clarify and put beyond doubt various procedural points, including that no decision can come into effect while any appeal, including a further appeal, can be brought or is pending; that a provider may appeal against the decision itself, the date on which it comes into effect or both; and that a provider may appeal, in relation to degree-awarding powers and university title only, the exact sequencing of a decision, an appeal and any order which brings the decision into effect. These amendments further align the various appeals provisions across the Bill. They are not a change of policy but simply to try to iron out inconsistencies. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very interested to find my amendment surrounded by government amendments, and I am not quite sure whether to interpret that as good will from the Government towards my amendment or what. Due process sounds an awfully boring phrase, but it is often terribly important. My amendment is very brief and to the point and is about due process. I should remind the Committee that I am involved in the governance of three universities—the LSE, the University of Newcastle and the University of Lancaster. The rights to appeal in the Bill are somewhat patchy. In particular, there is no right to appeal against a decision not to register an academic provider or to challenge the suspension of registration. Decisions over the registration, suspension or deregistration of academic institutions represent significant examples of the exercise of discretionary power by the Office for Students. It seems only right that in the exercise of these powers the Office for Students is properly accountable, and my amendment seeks to ensure that. It is not right that it should be accountable to an appeals process for decisions about removal from the register and yet will not have the same accountability for decisions to suspend or not to register. This conforms to the norms of public law that bodies should be properly accountable.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and ask the Government whether they have fully considered the appeal and legal implications of this new structure. There is already quite a body of education lawyers. I have no doubt, subject to correction by noble and learned Lords, that every single significant decision in the Bill will be appealed when it comes into force. The awards of gold, silver and bronze will immediately spark judicial review, as will the metrics used for the teaching excellence framework. Grant and non-grant of title are mentioned in the Bill. Registration, validation, numbers of students, access—every single vital decision is unprotected, quite rightly, from appeals and, in particular, judicial review, which could bring a whole system to a halt.

There is already a student complaints system which will, I am sure, expand, given the promises that will have to be made under the new structure being brought into effect by the Bill. Have the Government thoroughly considered all the areas in the Bill that will be open to judicial review and how institutions and the OfS will cope with it?

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I omitted to respond to a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who inquired about the assessment by government lawyers of the potential for claims arising. I do not have that information but I undertake to write to her.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the Minister has not altogether reassured me. There is a very important principle in justice that it should not only be done but be seen to be done. There is also an anxiety that it would not be possible to have new applicants who challenged the established order because they were bringing a completely new or fresh approach. If they are refused recognition, surely the normal practice of law is that they should be able to appeal against that decision. I do not see why the Government should resist that, because it is in everyone’s interest that everyone can understand why the applicant was refused. Otherwise, anxiety might begin to build up about what was really happening, along with the anxiety that the Government were backing some of the existing club, as it were, in excluding new members. I am still anxious about the principle of justice in this context, but I will consider very carefully what the Minister has said. At this stage, I shall not move my amendment.

Amendment 145 agreed.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, I am moving the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson. The amendment intends to establish the principle that a statutory instrument containing an order to revoke an institution’s authorisation to grant degrees must be an affirmative statutory instrument. We believe that such a draconian action as revocation—which in some circumstances is potentially fatal to the institution concerned—should not simply be left to the OfS to issue as a statutory instrument. I take on board the points the Minister made in respect of group 13 a few moments ago, when he talked about the OfS being an independent body. That also applies to the Privy Council, but it has been written out of the equation. It should not be possible for such a statutory instrument to be made unless a draft has been laid before and approved by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament.

In response to an earlier amendment before the dinner break the Minister stated that requiring the affirmative principle would delay a decision that had been recommended by the OfS. If that is the case in certain situations, so be it. If ever there was a case where the maxim “Better to get it right than to get it right now” applied, this is it. Depriving an institution of degree-awarding powers is sufficiently important for Parliament to have its say, and any delay that results is surely justified in terms of due process.

I made my remarks on the importance of retaining the Privy Council in the debate on the group containing Amendment 266, and I shall not repeat them. However, I shall again draw to your Lordships’ attention the fact that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee made a further comment on Clause 53, which impacts on this group. I will not repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, said at that time. But the committee made it very clear that it took the view there were significant new legislative powers being given to the OfS that are not subject to any limits to their exercise, and that there should be parliamentary scrutiny with the affirmative procedure applying. I think that is a very important point to make. I know that the Minister is considering this and other aspects of the committee’s report but, in the meantime, I beg to move.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak to my Amendment 298A, which is on the Marshalled List. At this stage of the proceedings, as an older Member of this House, I must be allowed to make an observation. We have gone a long way down the road I predicted. We are trying to make the best of this legislation. We are trying to engage in damage limitation, which becomes almost a cause. As an older man, I grieve at how far we have drifted from the concept of a university as an international community of scholars awarding degrees, based on the distinction of the university. This is a sad road we have taken, and we are dealing with the consequences: the commercialisation and marketing of the whole concept of universities and higher education. I have great difficulty in coming to terms with this language of markets and of students as consumers, as distinct from students as contributors to a community of scholars. It is a sad situation, but we are in the situation we are in, and we have to try and make it as acceptable as possible.

Under my last amendment, I talked about fairness, justice, transparency and accountability, and this amendment is about exactly the same theme. I talked previously about decisions not to register or to suspend, and now I want to talk briefly about why it is that there are no rights of appeal against the OfS refusing to authorise providers to grant degrees. Apparently, by this legislation, rights of appeal are allowed only when the OfS decides to vary or revoke such an authorisation. However, the decision to authorise or not in the first place is a significant decision and a significant exercise of power, which will determine whether a provider could enter the market—here I go using the word myself—or not. There seems no justification to deny a right of appeal where the OfS has decided not to grant authorisation.

There must be transparency and accountability. I absolutely understand and relate to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, when he says that we cannot have institutions below the grade granting degrees. If we go down that road, there will be a temptation for people who are just opportunist money-makers to get into the money-making business by awarding degrees. We know this, so we have to have safeguards—of course I understand that. But I also understand the Minister when, in the logic of his position as he sees it, he says we cannot rule out the possibility that there will be newcomers to the field who will bring something new, fresh and challenging and who ought to be taken very seriously. I understand the logic of that point, and my amendment tries to take that point on board.

We cannot have an alienated public who think that there are high-handed university administrators and regulators, as well as universities themselves, making these strategic decisions without having to explain to those involved, let alone the wider public, why they have come to particular conclusions. Indeed, I can see a case for saying that, if what I advocate comes to pass, it will be a very educative experience for the public, because there will be an explanation of why a particular authorisation cannot be allowed. I think that the amendment and the principles behind it matter, and I am aware that I am becoming a collaborator in damage limitation.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 282A and 347B, which stand in my name. I declare an interest as the pro-chancellor of Lancaster University.

I am learning a lot tonight about parliamentary procedure and affirmative resolutions, and about the relationships between independent regulators, Secretaries of State and Ministers, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, on carrying out such a good exercise in educating me. The questions posed by these amendments are very important. My noble friend Lord Judd is right: if you are to have a much more liberalised system with free entry, you have to have regulation and procedures so that it operates in a fair way.

The purpose of my amendments is simple. I would like to see the OfS be under a statutory obligation to set out its reasons for all the decisions that it has taken. I would like Parliament, once a year, to be able to debate a report which looks at whether, having set out a common set of principles by which the rules should operate, the regulator sticks with it. I think that that is a necessary addition to the ad hoc business of affirmative statutory instruments, and that it would be a sensible addition to the Bill.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it is my privilege to have added my name to this amendment. My favourite Christmas card of the past year came from a refugee from Burundi. Last summer, when I visited Burundi, I accessed the rector of the university that she had had to flee and arranged for her qualifications from that university to be released and forwarded to her in this country so that she could commence university, which she will do in September this year. It was a huge relief to her because without that piece of paper she would have had to return and undertake A-levels. In her Christmas card she not only thanked me, but said that it was being able to access higher education straightaway that made her feel welcome and wanted, and that we believed in integrating her into our country.

Amendment 443, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, would allow all refugees resettled to the UK, including the Syrian refugees being resettled at present, as well as those young people who have made applications for asylum who are granted a form of leave other than refugee status, to access student finance and home fees. It is an important amendment because it addresses one element of how we as a country treat people to whom we have said we will offer protection. Currently, individuals with refugee status can access student finance and qualify for home fee status from the moment they are awarded their protection. However, those with a slightly different status—that of humanitarian protection —are treated differently. Those with humanitarian protection have to be able to show at the start of the academic year that they have been ordinarily resident for at least three years to be able to receive financial support. This is the case despite people granted humanitarian protection having been found to be at real risk of suffering if they were to return to their country of origin. This includes risk of the death penalty, unlawful killing and torture.

The group most impacted by this are the Syrian refugees currently being resettled under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, as these refugees are granted humanitarian protection rather than refugee status. The result of this is that a young Syrian refugee who arrived in the UK would not qualify for student finance until the start of the academic year in 2020. The only exception to this, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out, is in Scotland.

I currently serve on the inquiry of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees looking at the experience of refugees once they are settled in their status. We have heard from many witnesses, including refugees themselves, that there are several barriers to successful integration, and one of the most often cited is access to education. Amendment 443 would remove at least one of the barriers.

Subsection (2)(a) of the proposed new clause would ensure that all resettled refugees, no matter what status they were given or where in the UK they were placed, could access student support immediately. Subsection (2)(b) would make student finance available for those who were granted humanitarian protection after making an application for asylum. For people granted humanitarian protection after applying for asylum, their future is clearly in the United Kingdom, so they should be allowed to access university education in order to build their lives here and to be able fully to contribute to society.

Subsection (2)(b) would also provide access to student finance and home fee status to people who had applied for asylum and then been granted another form of immigration leave. Again, the Government have accepted that the immediate future of such individuals is in the UK and so they should be given every opportunity to contribute and develop, yet they face significant hurdles in doing so. This is because, in 2012, the Government changed the rules so that potential university students in this situation could no longer access student finance and would be reclassified as international students, meaning that they would face much higher fees.

The Supreme Court found these rules discriminatory and, as a result, a new criterion of “long residence” was introduced. However, young people who have gone through the asylum process, including those children who arrive as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, are unlikely to meet the long residency criteria and so will have to watch their school peers go off to university, leaving them behind.

This amendment is not about creating special circumstances for refugees and other people who have arrived in the UK seeking asylum. Instead, it is about removing the existing barriers that prevent young people who came to the UK seeking protection and who are capable of attending university fulfilling their potential and gaining the skills and knowledge that will then allow them to participate fully in, and contribute to, the United Kingdom. I hope that the Minister will offer some support and agreement for the amendment, because it would help refugees feel more welcome.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, am glad to have my name on the amendment. Appreciation and tribute should be offered to those universities which of their own initiative are doing what they can to meet the challenge in the current situation, but that is obviously not adequate.

In the long debates on this Bill, we have constantly returned to the argument about the quality and tradition of our universities. It is really rather sad to see universities with that quality and tradition caught up in such an oppressive and negative administrative policy.

I relate this to another amendment which we shall discuss quite soon, about security and terrorism. In the awful problems relating to security which we face, a key issue is the battle for the minds of the young. We want young people to have good education which helps them to form a more responsible and enlightened view about society and their role within it.

The potential students to whom we refer have been through the most dreadful experiences. It is important to keep reminding ourselves of that: they have been through harrowing experiences, and very seldom is it their fault. We have to look at the situation as they see it, and how they talk of it with their friends and contemporaries. They see it as oppressive and negative. It is not helping to build stability and peace in the world. If we take security and peace in the world seriously, we should want to do everything we can to meet this challenge and to enable potential students to have the advantage of education. I very much hope that the Minister will take on board the seriousness of this issue and try to meet it in some way in his response.

I sometimes worry already about the anecdotal evidence that I hear about how negative attitudes are beginning to build up across the world, and not just in the places from where those potential students come. I worry about how far the United Kingdom is really the sort of place in which they want to come and study, whether it really is the warm, welcoming society which it has traditionally been. There is too much evidence of a culture of “no”, of rejection, unless there is an exception. This amendment would help to meet that situation and I hope that the Minister will find an opportunity to say something positive in response.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I should apologise to the Committee, as I did not speak at Second Reading, but I am very deliberately speaking from the Front Bench as a member of these Benches’ home affairs team to add our support to the amendment.

I want to speak about integration—I cannot do so as eloquently or forcefully as the right reverend Prelate. I remind the Committee that we are talking about people whose status here is legal. Integration is a two-way process. The Home Office uses much too often for my comfort the term “hostile environment” and does so very deliberately. In the context of the subject of this amendment, we should be talking about a supportive environment.

If one changes the perspective, many people in these categories can be seen as a resource for the UK, so this is not just an altruistic point. People who meet individual refugees are often startled at their high level of skills and education, and startled too at their determination to be educated. Of course that does not apply to every individual, but it is really quite notable. Noble Lords who attended a City of Sanctuary event recently were impressed by hearing a young woman’s experience in overcoming the hurdles which the amendment seeks to address to get to university. She did but, my goodness, what a waste of time along the way.

As well as it being the right thing for us to do as a society, it would be to our benefit to facilitate the education of those who seek sanctuary and who are likely to be here on a long-term basis. Many of them come from cultures which value education very highly, perhaps because it is harder to attain. It often seems to me more highly valued among them than by those in our indigenous community, who perhaps take it rather more for granted. We very much support the amendment.

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[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I congratulate without qualification those who have put this amendment forward. When I was a young MP in the other place, back in the 1960s, I cut my teeth by making my first major speech on this subject. Anthony Crosland was the Minister at that time and we became great friends.

The world is totally interdependent. It is simply impossible to think of a place that calls itself a university that does not reflect this reality—that international character in every dimension of its activity which is so important to the learning process. We talk about overseas students in financial terms, but what interests me is their indispensable contribution to the whole character, quality and calibre of the university.

I am an emeritus governor of the LSE. I have been involved in the place for a very long time, since I was an undergraduate. I am also a member of Court at Lancaster and Newcastle. There is absolutely no question that the quality of these universities is related to the overseas students and staff. They contribute to the dimension of the university—not only in their specialist studies but by their presence.

Post Brexit—lamentable Brexit—we are going to be faced with this reality of global interdependence more acutely than ever. Let us come to our senses in time.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I support the amendment introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. As my noble friend Lord Patten displays such a close familiarity with Conservative slogans, let me add a second—one of the great Brexit slogans, “Take back control”. I do not see why our migration policy should be determined by the United Nations. No other country says its policy should be determined by how the United Nations has chosen to define immigration. If we want to take back control, I do not see why we should allow our policy to be determined by the United Nations. We should take back control of our migration policy and set it in accordance with our national requirements, rather than allowing this dangerous, global institution to decide who we should or should not count as migrants. As well as being about global Britain, the excellent proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is about taking back control.

I have two brief questions for the Minister. We all appreciate the difficult position that he is in. One of the problems for universities has always been planning ahead and marketing themselves around the world when there is always a danger of further changes to the migration rules. If there is anything he could say that would indicate that the Government are not planning any changes in the regime for overseas students that would be a modest but helpful step.

Secondly, could the Minister indicate where he thinks education could sit within the industrial strategy? In the brief reading I have made of the documents so far, what has surprised me has been that I did not immediately see education in the list of key potential sectors. I hasten to add that education is not simply a business sector; it has a value in its own right. Nevertheless, it is a very successful British export. If, in response to the consultation on the industrial strategy, there were a message from the education sector that it would like to be backed by the Government in an exporting mission and be seen as an important part of GDP, I hope the Minister would be able to indicate that they would strongly support education as a key British export sector as part of their industrial strategy.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I add my support to what has already been said. Amendment 463 builds directly on the discussion that we had on the previous group.

Amendment 464 complements Amendment 490, which we have tabled and which will be discussed on Monday. Amendment 464 would ensure that members of staff from other countries were not in future subjected to more restrictive immigration controls or conditions than were in force on the day this Act was passed. Both amendments point to the concern that restrictions on freedom of movement following Brexit will have very serious consequences for universities—both for students and for academics. We have heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Patten, about the difficulties that academics currently face in planning their future, thinking ahead and considering what they will do about their families, with young academics in particular wondering where their future lies. Like a lot of people planning their lives, they want a bit of security.

Recently I spoke at a conference of modern foreign language academics, who were asked how many of them were EU citizens. There were about 80 people there and over half put up their hands. They were all wondering what the future held. Some were having difficulties becoming UK citizens. Even those who had lived all their lives in the country were being put through hoops. They had never lived anywhere else, but getting a British passport was suddenly proving to be incredibly difficult for them. They play an absolutely essential part in the provision of modern foreign languages in our universities. We heard earlier from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, about the important role that they also play in engineering. However, I assure noble Lords that those working in modern languages departments are really concerned about how they are going to continue their provision if EU academics feel unwelcome.

Therefore, this is a personal issue for a lot of valuable and skilled people, some of whom are already facing—unbelievable though this is—incredible hate crime and racial discrimination from universities where they have previously been seen as valued contributors. Of course, if they go, some of our courses simply will not take place. We need these people—the students and the academics—and our university life will certainly be the poorer without them.

This proposed new clause would help to remedy the very unfortunate situation that we now find ourselves in, and I hope that we can move forward in making life better for the EU citizens who make our universities much better places.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, in at least one of the universities in which I am involved, I know of a specific example where a very able and impressive member of staff was offered, and encouraged to take, a promotion in the department but turned it down because he and his family had come to the conclusion that the UK was not a place where they saw their future.

[Lord Rees of Ludlow]

My Lords, I fully endorse the amendment and the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Patten. I am from a different university but it has entirely similar concerns. I work in a small department where all of the last five faculty appointments were of people from outside the UK. Crucially, we depend upon being attractive to these people but it has been much harder to persuade them to accept positions post Brexit, because not only is there uncertainty about their future employment but they will almost certainly risk losing the freedom for their family to come here in the post-Brexit era. Therefore, we have the same concerns of many other segments of society.

One has only to imagine a young academic from, say, India, Singapore or China deciding which country they wish to work in. It is clear that the attraction of the UK compared with other countries has been greatly diminished by recent events and, unless we can send a signal to counter those trends, we will lose out in the long run. I note that the Government promised some special treatment for bankers; I think that, equally, they should provide it for other skilled occupations, including academics.

I want to make one further remark. Of the last six presidents of the Royal Society, three were born outside this country. We have had a great tradition of attracting to this country scientists who have made their careers here because of the appeal of our universities and our scientific excellence. All that is in jeopardy if we do not pay regard to the concerns expressed in connection with this amendment.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, left the JCHR at the moment I arrived on it. I wanted to refer to its more recent report of July last year, following an inquiry into counterextremism in preparation for the Bill which we expected but which has not emerged, perhaps because of the difficulty in defining “nonviolent extremism”. I follow her in my thinking as well. We took evidence from a number of people, and in our report quoted Professor Louise Richardson from Oxford, who said:

“My position on this is that any effort to infringe freedom of expression should be exposed, whether it comes from what I take to be the well-intentioned but misguided Prevent counterterrorism policy or from student unions that do not want to hear views that they find objectionable. A university has to be a place where the right to express objectionable views is protected”.


We went on to report that our evidence suggested that it is important for universities to ensure that debate is possible. Our conclusion and recommendation in this part of the work was that:

“Any proposed legislation will have to tread carefully in an area where there is already considerable uncertainty. For example, in the university context, it is arguable whether the expression of certain views constitutes putting forward new ideas in the form of controversial and unpopular opinions, or whether it amounts to vocal and active opposition to the UK’s fundamental values. The potentially conflicting duties on universities to promote free speech, whilst precluding the expression of extremist views, is likely to continue to cause confusion. We believe that free speech is precious, particularly in universities, and should not be undermined”.


I accept that the context is slightly different from the objective of this amendment, but the points are important. The Government, in their response, said that,

“universities have to balance their duty to promote freedom of speech with their other legal responsibilities including equalities law, health and safety responsibilities … We recognise that balancing these responsibilities is not always an easy job and that there are difficult decisions to be taken”.

That entirely misses the point about freedom of speech. The Prevent strategy is discredited in so many eyes. What is most important is that it has lost confidence. As the noble Baroness has said, I wish that the Government would accept the need for an independent review—not its own internal, unpublished review—called for by such a variety of very authoritative people who should and do understand the importance of such a review.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the suggestion of an independent review bears very serious consideration. A very difficult issue confronts us on the matter raised in this amendment. In the considerable amount of time that the House has spent in recent years on issues of security, one thing that has always concerned me deeply is the dividing point between essential action and what in fact begins to be counterproductive.

We have to approach the issue of how universities play their part in the security of the nation by considering the danger of fostering extremism and unacceptable views by heavy-handedness or the appearance, however far from reality it is, that universities are acting as agents of the security services. If that perception gains ground, it will certainly provide more potential recruits for extremism and unreasonableness in the student community. I do not dissent, with the evidence of anti-Semitism and hostility to Islamic people, from the view that urgent action by the state is necessary. Security is the responsibility of the state and universities must play their part within the law and vigorously ensure that they uphold it—of course, that is right—but when we start using words such as “prevent”, I think myself into the position of young students discussing issues and saying, “What the hell is going on? Is this university really a place where we can test ideas?”. We must have self-confidence in the middle of all this; we must not lose our self-confidence. The whole point of a university is that we encourage people to think and develop their minds. Therefore, it is a very good place to bring into the open the most appalling ideas that some people have, so that they can be dealt with in argument, and the rationality and decency of most people can prevail. They are places where what is advocated may be argued against effectively and where those arguments may be demonstrated. If there is any move towards preventing such opportunities to take head on in the mind the issues which threaten us, we will be in great danger of undermining our security still further.

I said in an earlier debate, and I mean it profoundly, that the battle for security in the world must be won in hearts and minds. It will not ultimately be won by controls; it will be won by winning the arguments. If the opportunity to win the argument is not there in universities or begins to be eroded, what the dickens are we doing in terms of undermining our own security?

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, the threat we face from terrorism is unprecedented and very real. In addition to the framework of the criminal law, we must have a strong and robust preventive element to our counter-terrorism efforts. We must collectively help in the fight against terrorism and try to protect those who may be vulnerable or susceptible to radicalisation towards acts of terrorism.

I want to make it clear that HE providers are not being singled out as the potential cause or root of radicalisation. Responsibilities under this duty have also been placed on schools, hospitals, prisons, local authorities and colleges, and other institutions which regularly deal with people who may be vulnerable to the risk of radicalisation. In higher education, the Prevent duty exists to ensure that providers understand radicalisation and how it could impact on the safety and security of their staff and students.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for her helpful, informed and powerful contribution, which was cogently authoritative. What the Prevent duty does not do is undermine free speech on campus. Higher education providers that are subject to the freedom of speech duty are required to have regard to it when carrying out their Prevent duty. This was explicitly written into legislation to underline its importance both as a central value of our HE system and of our society.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England, the body responsible for monitoring compliance with this duty in England, reports that the large majority of institutions have put in place clear, sensible policies and procedures that demonstrate they are balancing the need to protect their students and their obligations under Prevent, while ensuring that freedom of speech on campus is not undermined. We have seen higher education institutions become increasingly aware of the risks to vulnerable students and there have been some really good examples across the sector of how to proportionately mitigate these risks.

On the whole, the higher education sector is embedding the requirements of the Prevent duty within its existing policies and procedures. It gets ongoing advice and support both from HEFCE and from our own regional Prevent co-ordinators. There is a wide range of training available to staff in HE and there is an ongoing dialogue between the Government, the monitoring body and the sector to ensure that the implementation of this duty is done in a pragmatic way.

It is also important to note that this amendment has another consequence because it seeks to disapply the Prevent duty not only in relation to English higher education providers but in relation to Scottish and Welsh institutions. That would require the consent of the Scottish and Welsh Ministers.

We welcome discussion about how Prevent is implemented effectively and proportionately, but blanket opposition to the duty is unhelpful and, dare I say it, dangerous, given the scale of the terrorist risk before us—the threat level currently stands at severe. The Prevent duty is an important element of our fight against the ever-increasing threat of terrorism. We must have an efficient strategy for trying to prevent people being drawn into it. On this basis, I very much hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw Amendment 466.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments raise important issues. I would like to bring to them my own perspective as pro chancellor of Lancaster University, not speaking for the institution but talking about how it strikes me that these issues concern us, thinking about the strength of the university sector in the north of England.

The fundamental problem with UKRI—on the whole I support the idea of UKRI, I hasten to add—is that the research and innovation strategy concerns the whole of the UK but the HEFCE functions on research are purely for England and are to be exercised by Research England. My fear about a board that, like that of the BBC, had a governor for each of the nations would be that the interests of England in such a body might not be as strong as they should be, and, in particular, that Research England and its funding might over time be marginalised as a result of the emphasis on the UK.

The funding for Research England is absolutely crucial to institutions such as my own. We are a top research university but not part of the golden triangle. We are in the north of England and we are quite small. So, because of scale, the ability to land big grants from the research councils is limited. A lot of our research success comes from the ability to do well in the research assessment exercise and get QR funding. If there were any reduction in the total of QR funding, that would hurt universities such as my own quite considerably.

I am concerned about the tension—it is in the nature of the beast, really, and we have to find a way of resolving it—between Research England, its Englishness and the need for that to be protected on the one hand and, on the other, the need, which I fully support, for a coherent UK research and innovation strategy. I am not sure that the best way of achieving it is by having, as it were, a governor for each of the nations of the UK. Indeed, if that were the Government’s response to this question, I would come back and say, “Well, can we please have a north of England member of UKRI?”.

I know that this sounds sectional, but the truth is that one of the strategic objectives that the Government have just put forward, in the very good industrial strategy paper that Greg Clark has presented, is to try to prevent the ever-greater concentration of research funding within the golden triangle. If we are going to have an effective regional resurgence, which I think there is cross-party consensus that we need in this country, universities will be at the heart of it. We have to find a way of making sure that other parts of England, as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have the opportunity to benefit from this welcome increase in research and innovation funding. To be frank, the risk with UKRI is that it will be dominated by the great and good of the science world, who will continue to channel most of the money into the golden triangle. I hope that the Government will take action to make sure that this is prevented.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, as somebody involved in the governance of Newcastle and Lancaster universities, I must say that in Lancaster we regard ourselves as extremely fortunate to have as pro chancellor my noble friend Lord Liddle. I was present at the meeting on Saturday when he made a terrific contribution and people listened with real sincerity to what he said.

There is a lot of importance in the point that the noble Lord just made about the north of England. If there is to be a regeneration in the north of England, the universities will be crucial to this. It is therefore essential that we ensure that we stop talking about regeneration in general terms and start doing concrete, specific, identifiable things to support that regeneration. This area is one that will obviously be crucial.

What attracted me to this particular amendment is that, as someone who is both a Scot and an Englishman—my mother and my brother were both at Scottish universities—I am very conscious of the high-powered and distinguished contribution that has been made by universities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It seems to me quite extraordinary that we should not as a matter of course say that that tradition and wealth of experience should be represented in the governing councils—as of right and as essential. That is very important.

If what I have been saying about regeneration in England is true, we are also these days discussing the need and importance of a greater sense of cohesive community in the devolved parts of the United Kingdom. We need to show that we are serious about this where it matters. The amendments help in that respect. It is very difficult to look at the Scottish universities, for example, and not see the whole story of the British industrial revolutions of the future. They have made profoundly important contributions, and continue to do so.

I do not know intimately, or so well, the story in Wales or Northern Ireland, except that I know that it is powerful. There is an area that is not central to our immediate considerations, but perhaps it should be. One of the things that I have always been struck by in Wales is that Aberystwyth was the first university in the United Kingdom to make the study of international relations and international affairs a recognised, serious degree and postgraduate subject. That has been terrifically important in our history.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for introducing the amendment, and I hope that the Minister will take it very seriously.

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 502. Indeed, until I saw it I had been minded to submit a similar amendment myself. My desire is to ensure that Innovate UK receives appropriate funding and the amendment happens to fit that rather well.

I believe that while the distribution of money across the research councils should to a significant extent be determined by UKRI, the allocation to Innovate UK which, I remind noble Lords, is to benefit persons carrying on business in the United Kingdom and improving quality of life in the United Kingdom, as laid out in the Bill, should be determined by the Secretary of State, and then not interfered with. It is important to emphasise that this allocation cannot be altered by UKRI without the specific approval of Parliament, by means of a resolution of each House. The criteria used by Innovate UK to determine which projects to fund are of a completely different nature from those used by the research councils. The noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned this, and I shall mention it with other amendments; they are different from those used by the research councils to determine excellence in research in science, the arts and the humanities. While it is important that UKRI ensures that there are strong links between the research councils and Innovate UK, the allocation to Innovate UK should not be balanced against that to the research councils. It should be determined as a separate matter of national concern in consultation with industry and others by the Secretary of State.

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Finally, I would be very grateful if the Minister could take this opportunity to give us some clarification of how the Government see the role of UKRI in its function of overseeing postgraduate research students and part-time students. We have a tremendous group of institutions in this country, particularly Birkbeck, with which many noble Lords will be familiar, which is an outstanding institute that deals with part-time students. The Bill lacks clarity about the role of such institutions. I would be grateful if the Minister could make that clear. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, Amendment 485C is in my name. I want to follow the theme developed by my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn in the latter part of his remarks. This country needs strong industry and strong technology, which are vital to our future survival. The universities are indispensable in this respect. But the standing of our universities in the world, particularly universities with unrivalled reputations—I am proud to be involved in one, LSE—have those reputations because of the quality of their research. What has sometimes been most important in building up that reputation is exactly what my noble friend was talking about: the independence of that research. Within the vital indispensability of the applied research we do there is also a danger: that we lose perspective and the independent ability to judge what it all adds up to for the future well-being of our country.

It is no good trying to disguise the great concern that exists that in placing heavy emphasis on applied research and its vital needs, which we have debated this afternoon, the social sciences get weaker. It is absolutely indispensable for us to have firm guarantees from the Government that whatever arrangements are made, the social sciences will be guarded and protected, because within them are the people who see the consequences of developments as they take place. They see the wider social implications of what is happening. If we are talking about the well-being and viability of our society, their significance cannot be underrated. My amendment would simply add to this by saying that pure research matters, and we must emphasise it. In doing that, we must not become so mesmerised by the battle to survive in the immediate economic sense that we lose the perspective which is the guarantee of our future well-being as a nation.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, while I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn—the points he made were absolutely right and I hope the Minister will be able to address some of them—I would like to concentrate my remarks on Amendments 493, 494 and 495, which are in the names of my noble friend Lord Sharkey and I and the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

In outlining the desirable functions of the research councils, Clause 89 is far too narrowly defined, particularly subsection (4)(a). Amendment 493 recognises the importance of resilience as a fundamental requirement for the UKRI landscape. While a significant amount of the research funded by research councils should rightly contribute to growth—and most certainly does—a significant amount of research council investment directly benefits the economy by avoiding cost, rather than increasing income. Both these funding objectives are important and contribute to the UK’s resilience. Equally, by retaining a broad scientific capability across the research councils, the UK retains the ability to be resilient when under threat or pressure.

In his earlier remarks on his amendments the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, stressed the importance of the arts and social science in this respect but the impact of other areas of science is equally important. Successive Governments have cut back on our national capability to generate scientific advice, and thereby resilience, by privatising government laboratories such as the government chemist, which is within LGC, the National Physical Laboratory and the Forensic Science Service, which was the last to go into 2012. I am not making a negative comment about privatisation, but once the Government could no longer rely on them for advice, an element of national resilience went at the same time.

Particularly since the mid-1990s, right across government, departmental resource for in-house science research has dropped dramatically. Since 2010 it has virtually disappeared from some departments, so it is a rather academic exercise to say whether it should be included within UKRI or elsewhere, because most of it has gone. The only way the Government can get a great deal of that hard scientific advice is, yes, through their own advisory services, but from the research councils. The need for the research councils to maintain capacity to train a body of scientists to carry out research on all manner of possible events—from avian flu to erupting volcanoes, from BSE to the El Niño effect—and to support the efforts of organisations such as the Met Office, the Antarctic service, Rothamsted and the Diamond accelerator has never been greater. It is the research councils which generally develop the skills at PhD and postgraduate level to supply those cadres.

Amendment 494 follows in a similar vein. Clause 89(4)(b) clearly recognises that research councils should have regard to the desirability of “improving quality of life”. It would be odd if they did not want that, which is clearly an essential element of government. This amendment would go much further by adding that research councils should support research activity that seeks to improve quality of life by seeking to enhance,

“social inclusion and community cohesion”.

When I wrote these amendments, I did not know how appropriate they would become as the threats to social inclusion and community cohesion, both here and abroad, become even greater. Using scientific research to make our lives simply better, rather than wealthier, seems an objective well worth pursuing.

However, Amendment 495 is in many ways the most significant in this small group. I hope that when he responds, the Minister will either accept this in its entirety or, if not, find a suitable set of words to convey the same meaning. A huge, although I believe unintended, consequence of the Bill, along with the emergence of UKRI as a new accounting body for UK science, is that the future success of UK science will be judged by its economic rather than its societal impact. Each should have parity of esteem. The principal role of fundamental or discovery science is to improve the nation’s science and knowledge base. Everything else flows from that, which should be an objective in its own right. While research councils must guard against their presumed inability to draw to an end certain funding lines of inquiry, we should never be so risk-averse that we do not try to fund risky ventures but always try to fund winners. Some of the greatest fundamental science had absolutely no outcome at the time it was developed, yet has proved incredibly powerful across the world.

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Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, which I also supported in Committee, and agree with what we have already heard from the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Burns. In addition to their arguments, I would say that the Office for Students is a very limiting title for such an all-encompassing and all-powerful body. As I pointed out in Committee, it was particularly ironic because it took quite some effort to get students in any way involved with it or represented on it. The Office for Higher Education seems an eminently sensible title for it, which I personally prefer to the addition of “standards”—although I will certainly not go to the wall on that.

Hopefully, the stonemasons have not already started engraving the nameplates and the headed paper has not yet been ordered, so there should be an opportunity to rethink the title before it gets set in stone. I hope the Minister will be able to come back at Third Reading with a more relevant title for this body.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend, but for a slightly different reason. It seems to me that we have gone an awfully long way towards making universities part of the market, and I believe that we have to get back to the conviction that a good university is a community of scholars. Students are not clients, they are members of a university community, and divisive titles of this kind play into the hands of a very sad trend in our university life. We have to get back to the concept that a student joins a community and participates in that community and does not just use it as a facility to provide them with a future.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, Office for Students is a particularly dreary title. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, that “standards” would be better left out—but none the less, I support this amendment.

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[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, I add my voice in support of Amendment 7 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the two related amendments—Amendments 94 and 98—proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

Disabled young people are about half as likely to hold a degree-level qualification as those without a disability. True opportunity of access needs to make certain that everything possible is done to ensure that every student who wishes to partake in further study is able to do so and to succeed to the fullest of their potential with reasonable adjustments being made for them. Some institutions make excellent provision for disabled students but there are many cases where the ordinary pursuit of their studies entails many obstacles and challenges. The amendments would help to ensure that provision was present and excellent in every institution, including those that may be new, small or highly specialist, and that disabled students had the same wide level of choice in their education as all other students.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I warmly support the amendments dealing with disability, mental health, access and participation. There is far too much mental illness and mental stress in our universities. They should be places of excitement and fulfilment and places for developing the mind, but too many students struggle mentally with the pressures on them—such as the need to prove themselves and to achieve because they might be, for example, the first in their family to have the opportunity of going to university. On disability, after the marvellous speech by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, there is very little to add except to say that he is right.

For a while, I was a member of the committee monitoring access and participation at the LSE, and several issues came home to me very strongly and demonstrated the importance of what we are talking about with these amendments. First, particularly in our older universities and places such as the LSE, there needs to be a will not only to make things happen functionally but to believe in the importance of what is being done and to make it a success.

We had a first-class team of people at the LSE who were highly motivated in working with young people from inner-city schools, particularly in London, with weekend schools, vacation schools and so on. It was very exciting work, but I was interested in knowing how many of those youngsters ended up at the LSE. The answer was that sometimes it was a disappointingly small number, although certainly a lot of them were helped to gain better opportunities in higher education than they would otherwise have had.

To be successful in this regard, the people dealing with admissions have to be prepared to be courageous and look for potential and not only proven ability. Very often, the youngsters whom you want in the institution to make a success of the institution—for the sake not only of the institution itself but of the students—are young people who not only have not had parental support but have not had the same kind of scoop in their school education that other children take for granted. Therefore, the admissions people have to look for that potential. However, once you have brought in more of the people who would not otherwise have had the opportunity, you cannot just leave them to swim. That is very cynical, and it relates to the issue of mental illness. However sensitive the staff and however informally it is done—but formally, if noble Lords understand me—you must have in place systems that make sure that a particular student is getting the kind of support and compensations in attention that other students can take for granted.

These are terribly important amendments and I hope that the Minister has it in his heart and his intellect to take them seriously.

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Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

I do not want our great universities being labelled gold, silver and bronze. As I said at Second Reading, I do not foresee many universities putting a banner outside their premises saying, “This is a bronze university”. They just will not do that.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with those who have expressed deep anxiety about the impact of this gold, silver and bronze scheme. When I first read about it, I thought it was a further trivialisation of the whole concept of education and scholarship. It seemed to me to be the language and preoccupations of the market—marketing creeping in and distorting still further that ideal. I have said before that I wish that we could get back to the concept of universities as a community of scholars—I would hope, an international one. Students are not clients or customers: they belong to the university and they should be contributors to it. Student surveys encourage the concept of “the university and us”; whereas they should be encouraged to contribute to thinking about how the university is functioning and how it could improve its provision.

I also agree with those who have expressed another anxiety. If we are really concerned about the quality of higher education, how on earth will it help to start having oversimplified measures of this kind? When I was much younger, I held HMIs in very high esteem because of the contribution they were making to education in schools in Britain. Several inspectors were good family friends, one of whom was a godmother of one of our children. They were not going around failing schools; they were assessing their strengths and weaknesses and finding out how to help overcome any weaknesses. It should be the same for universities. There is a great deal of room for helpful assessment.

Another issue is that it is a crude measurement. I do not believe that scientific objectivity can be established. This system is inevitably a very subjective process, based on the experience and values of the people who concoct it. It is too crude, in another sense. In a university, you may have areas in which the teaching is weak and for which a great deal could be done to enhance it. That may apply to some of our older universities as well as our newer ones It is not uniform. There may be areas within the university where there is amazing excellence in teaching.

We need a much more sensitive approach that looks at the university as a living entity and reports convincingly—of course we need the information—on its different dimensions and patterns of success and failure, such as, what is strong and what is weaker. Surely, too, we should not be discouraging teachers with innovative approaches to teaching that may not lend themselves easily to crude metrics of this kind. I hope the Government have listened to the debate and will say that they understand that this may not be the right approach, and will go away, think about it and come back with something better.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 62 to 66, 88 and 93, tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and Amendment 72, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, to all of which I have added my name. I declare my usual interest as a full-time professor at King’s College London, but also note that I am a founding editor and editorial board member of Assessment in Education, a leading international academic journal in the field.

I have listened with interest to all the remarks made by other noble Lords and have agreed with the overwhelming majority of them. I just want to comment on an issue that is at the heart of the amendments to which I have added my name. It concerns the profound difference between using a single composite measure and having a wide variety of measures that are reported separately.

One of the prime rules of assessment—indeed, of measurement—is that you do not throw away information if you can avoid it. The Government have, rightly and repeatedly, emphasised their commitment to transparency and to giving students better information about teaching quality and other aspects of the higher education courses to which they might or do subscribe. But the trouble is that a composite measure is the opposite of transparent. It is also a problem that it is seductively simple: three stars, four stars—how can one resist it? We believe it is somehow objective because that is how we respond to a single number. In modern societies, we love rankings. But if we add up measures of different things and produce a single number, we are not being transparent and we are not being objective. What we are presenting to people, first, throws away large amounts of information and, secondly, imposes our value judgment on those different measures. When we use different indicators, add them up and create a single rank or score, we are denying other people the chance to see how it was done. It is irrelevant whether you gave equal weight to each measure or decided to do all sorts of clever things and weighted one thing at threefold and another at a half; the point is that by doing that, you have imposed your judgment. The students for whom these are designed—the students we want to help—may have different interests from you, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has pointed out.

That is why I support the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that a scheme to assess quality must report individual measures individually. It is also why I completely agree with the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, that the last thing we want to do is impose on Governments, quite possibly for the next 30 years, the obligation to create rankings.

In this case, we are not even adding apples and oranges, which at least are both pieces of fruit. We are adding up things that are completely different. If the numbers are measuring or representing different things—and doing so with varying degrees of error, as is always the case—adding them up will compound the error. Obviously it would be nice to have a wonderful single measure, but the fact that we would all like one does not mean that it is better to have an unreliable one, rather than not have one at all. On the contrary, it is worse.

We know why most universities have signed up to this. On Monday, the Minister pointed out that if they do not agree to link TEF scores to fees they will,

“lose £16 billion over the course of the next 10 years”.—[Official Report, 6/3/17; col. 1140.]

Universities are in a corner and over a barrel—as we have heard, that is exactly how you would feel if you were the vice-chancellor of Warwick.

It seems to me that this is all quite unnecessary. The Conservative manifesto did not commit to rankings, to a single measure or to labelling people as gold, silver or bronze. It said that students would be informed of where there is high-quality teaching. That is something to which everybody in this House would sign up. I very much hope that the Government will continue to listen and will move away from a current commitment that can only be harmful, for all the reasons that people in this House have talked about so eloquently this afternoon.

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Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, an amendment on this topic was put before the House in Committee. I have now had it reworded to take account of the Minister’s objections on that occasion. Essentially, the amendment concerns access to student support for higher education for people who are either refugees or have humanitarian status.

In fact, people with refugee status are eligible for this support and they do not have to wait three years to receive it. The anomaly concerns people who have come here under what is called humanitarian protection—mainly, but not all, Syrians who have come under the vulnerable persons scheme—and if they wish to get student support for access to higher education they have to wait three years. That is a pretty long time for people whose education may already have been harmed by what happened in their lives before they got to this country.

In every other respect, those with humanitarian protection have the same rights as those who have refugee status. Refugee status comes under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, whereas, as I understand it, humanitarian protection comes under domestic and EU law. But it is only in not having to wait three years if you have refugee status that there is a difference between the two. That is surely an anomaly. To make things even worse, the position in Scotland is better than it is here. I am not sure that this is a day when I should refer to Scotland in glowing terms, but certainly they do better there.

I hope the Government will look at this. I think it requires a statutory instrument to put this right. I am concerned both about people who are already here and are waiting to get access to higher education and about people who will come here in the future. In the year to September 2016, there were nearly 2,000 decisions about Syrian nationals but only three grants of humanitarian protection; virtually all the rest got refugee status. So we are talking about people who are suffering from a couple of anomalies. One is that if they come with humanitarian protection they have difficulty getting access to higher education. If they can only get refugee status, that will all be sorted out.

I am optimistic that the Government will move. I had a meeting with the Home Secretary, at her request, earlier this afternoon. I was left with a feeling of hope and optimism. I did check that it was all right for me to mention the meeting. I hope I am not excessively optimistic about this, but if the Government speak with one voice I hope to hear that voice reflected in what the Minister says in response to the amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I just want to say how much I appreciate the fact that my noble friend has moved this amendment. He referred to the anomaly. In view of what he says about his meeting with the Home Secretary, I hesitate to make this point, but I disagree with him—I say that it is unworthy rather than an anomaly. He says he hopes the Government will look at it. It seems the Government are looking at it, and I congratulate my noble friend on having got it this far.

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[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 150. At Pembroke College, Cambridge, where I have the honour of being Master, some 10% of our undergraduates and 30% of our postgraduates are international students from beyond the EU. They add enormously to the well-being and distinction of the college. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made the financial case very clearly; the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, made the soft power case very clearly; the noble Lord, Lord Broers, made the industrial case very clearly. I would add that there is a very strong educational case as well.

Having international students among the mix of students at our university adds enormously to the quality of the students’ educational experience. They share with each other, learn from each other, associate with each other and hear from people of different backgrounds with different experiences and from different parts of the world. The education that comes from the ability to do that and from that richness could not be replicated by the best teaching. It comes only from being among, and sharing with, students from very different national backgrounds. That is an enormously important part of the value of our higher education in this country. Let us make sure that we keep that. This amendment is one way of doing it.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I feel compelled to respond to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Smith. I am a long-standing governor at the LSE, where I am now an emeritus governor. Recently, we have been rated second in the world as the most prestigious centre of higher education learning in the social sciences, and as the highest rated such place within the United Kingdom. I do not go much on league tables myself but I cannot help being proud of that statistic. The evidence speaks for itself. A very high proportion of our student community comes from overseas. Of course, it is a case not just of the atmosphere of a centre but of the quality of the education which benefits from the input of people with different insights from different parts of the world.

I fervently believe that a centre of higher education worthy of its name should be part of the international community and should recognise that Britain is inseparable from the rest of the world and cannot operate in higher learning without an international community and, indeed, international staff. They are a very important part of the LSE as well. What worries me is that it does not take very long for an impression to grow. We are hearing too much anecdotal evidence that people elsewhere in the world are beginning to wonder whether the UK is the place they want to come and pursue their studies. Indeed, one hears of academics who question whether they want to go on developing their careers in the United Kingdom because they are not certain that it is the sort of place in which they want to live and bring up their families. We have a huge challenge here and we have a great opportunity this evening to put it right.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 150 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and, in doing so, declare my interest as set out in the register. When, many years ago, I went from a Midlands comprehensive school to Cambridge University, in many ways I felt that I was a foreign student. That aside, there is no social, economic, political, moral or legal reason not to support this amendment.

I wish to add the following comments to those made by noble Lords, with which I wholeheartedly agree. “You want our trade, you don’t want our children”, said the Prime Minister of India, Mr Modi. If that is the impression being received in India and other nations around the world, how can we possibly expect to attract the brightest and the best to come to study in the United Kingdom? That is what we need and want. Our doors and our arms should be wide open to the brightest and the best to come to study here because there is no downside to that. International students come, pay and study. If they stay, they work and contribute. If they go home, they are the best advocates for soft power. The GREAT campaign is indeed, as its name suggests, great, but it is as nothing compared with the advocacy of international students who have had that experience in the UK. British higher education is the most gleaming jewel in our soft power crown.

There is absolutely no reason not to support Amendment 150. I urge every noble Lord to do so because it is in the interest of international students and of the United Kingdom. We would want this at the best of times, but given what is ahead of us, we should not just want this, we absolutely need it. We should absolutely pass this amendment this evening.

Higher Education and Research Bill

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Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I start by expressing my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, who have worked so constructively with me and my colleagues over the past few weeks and months. I am also indebted to my noble friend Lord Willetts, whose written definition of the Haldane principle is, and will continue to be, a beacon for Ministers, setting out in detail this important principle and its practical applications.

The Government have been consistently clear in stating that the spirit of the Haldane principle, through various provisions, is already, to use the word of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, “hardwired” into the Bill. I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke on this point at Second Reading and in Committee, many of whom asked for a firmer form of words that directly refer to the principle itself. I offered to reflect on this, and I am delighted to table Amendment 191. I hope noble Lords will be equally delighted to accept it. We have drawn from the first line of my noble friend Lord Willetts’s Written Statement to define the Haldane principle as the principle that decisions on individual research proposals are best taken following an evaluation of the quality and likely impact of the proposals, such as a peer review process. This amendment is hugely symbolic and an important protection for UK research by putting a reference to the Haldane principle in legislation for the first time.

Amendments 176 and 182 place a duty on the Secretary of State to consult formally before laying regulations to alter the names, number or fields of activity of the research councils. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who asked for clarity on the point of prior consultation in Committee. I hope that these amendments overdeliver on my promise to address the noble Lord’s question. While this Government previously committed to consult before altering a council, these amendments will bind future Governments to this commitment.

Likewise, this Government have been consistent in their pledge to allocate separate budgets to each council of UKRI. I listened carefully in Committee to the calls from the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Broers, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, for greater protections. I have reflected on their speeches, and in response the Government have tabled Amendment 188, which requires the Secretary of State, when making grants to UKRI, to publish the whole amount and the separate allocations that will go to each council. This will ensure complete transparency, from this Government and future Governments, on all funding allocations to UKRI and to the research councils, Innovate UK and Research England.

In Committee, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay spoke passionately about the definition of “relevant specialist employees” in Clause 91. This provision is intended to ensure that the research councils may continue to recruit directly certain specialist staff who are employed in relation to a council’s field of activity. My noble and learned friend raised concerns that the current definition could lead to ambiguity for relevant staff who may not be considered by some to be researchers or scientists. I have reflected very carefully on the powerful case that he put forward, and I am very happy indeed to table Amendment 178 to address his points. This amendment draws on the language my noble and learned friend employed in his amendment in Committee and expands the definition to include any person with knowledge, experience or specialist skills that are relevant to the council’s field of activity who is employed by UKRI to work in that field of activity. I sincerely hope that this amendment alleviates the concerns of my noble and learned friend.

I look forward to hearing noble Lords speak on the other matters included in this group, and I will respond after they have had a chance to speak to these amendments.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise simply to make two brief points. In doing so, I hope I will be forgiven for taking the opportunity to pay the warmest tribute to, and to express my admiration for, my noble friends Lord Stevenson and Lord Watson for the sterling work they have put in on the Bill on behalf of this side.

There is a great deal of feeling in the research community about the points covered by these amendments. I am sure there is a recognition that a tremendous amount of work has gone into trying to find an acceptable formula of words. It should be put on record that many of those who are involved in the most outstanding research in our universities remain mystified about why the phrase,

“(such as a peer review process)”

should be in brackets. They believe it should, if anything, be in capital letters because they see peer review as essential to the process.

There is some feeling that the word “excellent” should not have disappeared. Quality is, of course, important, but what ultimately matters in the research record of our universities and in its contribution to Britain’s noble standing in the world community for the quality of our research is its emphasis on excellence. As this goes forward it will be essential to keep those two important concerns of the research community in mind. In saying that, I should emphasise that I am involved with three universities and that I was a governor of the LSE for many years and am now an emeritus governor.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction of these amendments. I shall refer very briefly to Amendments 189, 190 and 191 which are related to the Haldane principle. I am delighted that it is in the Bill. During the passage of the Bill we heard many different views on what the Haldane principle is, whether there is more than one Haldane principle and, indeed, whether it should be called the Willetts principle because one of the key references is the paper by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts.

Cutting to the core of what is involved here, it is about peer review and deciding which individual projects are funded within broad areas. Of course, it is reasonable for Ministers to have broad priorities, just as when the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, was Minister for Universities and Science, he described the eight great technologies that he thought were priorities for this country. However, within those, it should be the peer review system, the practitioners and others who are close to the action, who decide which projects are funded. Although the wording says “quality”, if I were on a peer review committee I would interpret “quality” as including excellence, echoing the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Therefore I warmly support this amendment.