Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

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

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the pro-chancellor of Lancaster University. From this side of the House, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, on her maiden speech. We look forward to hearing many more speeches from her.

As many Members have said, higher education is one of the jewels in the British crown. It is a tremendous success story. Of the world’s top 200 universities, I think that something like 30 are British. There are not many other areas of life today where we can make such a proud boast. I know from Lancaster how big a contribution a university makes to the local community. When Lancaster University was founded 50 years ago, there were 10,000 manufacturing jobs in the city. There are hardly any now but there is a thriving university. That pattern has been repeated in many of our northern cities and is key to their future success.

The university sector as a whole makes a huge economic contribution to our balance of payments and to the UK’s soft power—as long as, that is, all this is not ruined by current developments. Questions arise with the Bill, given that we face great challenges with the impact of Brexit on university funding. Brexit has had an impact on my own university, where two professors from the continent who were offered jobs have turned them down because they think that Britain is no longer a country where they want to live. The prospect of immigration controls being tightened as a result of Brexit could have a devastating effect on our universities.

How will the Bill help in this situation? I think there is a case for the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, referred to the changing nature of the higher education system and the shift from a funding council to a regulatory body. I believe that is necessary. I also support the increased emphasis on, and the objective of, raising teaching quality. I am not sure that the methods which have been chosen are the right ones, but it is a good objective. This afternoon, a lot of noble Lords who know far more about universities than I do have expressed very serious reservations about the Bill. I hope that, in Committee and on Report, we will have the opportunity to build a cross-party consensus behind the Bill, because the last thing we want at this stage is to have political mucking about with our universities. That makes the situation worse.

I wish to make three points in the time left. First, it is essential that the Bill does more to safeguard autonomy. I would like to see the Office for Students have much greater autonomy with regard to the Secretary of State, rather like the new BBC board which the Government have agreed should be appointed not only by Ministers. I would like to see the body have clearer duties in regard to respecting the autonomy of higher education. Much more could be done to reassure universities that it will not be a centralising, controlling body.

Secondly, we must be much clearer about protecting the balanced funding principle for research. Quality-related funding is a way of letting a thousand flowers bloom in the sector, and again avoids the top-down centralisation of which the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, warned. We must be sure that this will be properly guaranteed in the new system.

Finally, I am not an ideological opponent of more competition. I think there is a role for new providers in driving innovation, but it has to be done very carefully. There has to be a very high bar for the awarding of probationary degrees, and the best interests of students have to come first in the legislation. We have to recognise that there are problems with this. In most universities there are complex funding flows. If you have a competitive market, one of the things that tends to happen is that the subjects which are more expensive to teach are neglected. Nothing could be more important to this nation’s future than science and engineering. Are we setting up a system that effectively competes away the margins in universities and prevents subjects which are expensive to teach being taught? That is a real issue which the Government will have to address in Committee.