Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

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

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to two amendments in my name, which are probing amendments. Since they refer to the awarding of ecclesiastical degrees by the Holy See, I am bound to declare my interest as the holder of a papal knighthood.

I will say a word about church universities. The Catholic Church has 16 higher education institutions, including five universities, which are classified as church universities. These are part of the so-called Cathedrals Group. There are 16 universities in the United Kingdom with Catholic, Anglican and Methodist foundations. All are based on ethical principles. They are rooted in their local communities and in Christianity. They have a common commitment to social justice. An example of that is St Mary’s University, Twickenham, with its Centre for the Study of Modern Slavery.

Some 5% of all UK students—about 100,000—study in such universities. That is the equivalent of the total number of higher education students in Wales. They are specially connected to teaching. Some 30% of all primary and 16% of all secondary teachers have been trained in church universities. Roughly half of all those students in this country studying theology and religious studies are in church universities.

My amendments refer specifically to Roman Catholic ecclesiastical degrees. These are academic degrees—bachelor’s degrees; licentiates, which are equivalent to master’s degrees; and doctorates—recognised by the Catholic Church. They are used throughout the world, particularly with regard to philosophy, theology and canon law. They are often necessary qualifications for office within the Church throughout the entire world. The Holy See is a full member of the European education area and in this country two faculties which award degrees from the Holy See in philosophy and theology are at Heythrop College. In this country they are awarded in parallel with degrees; at Heythrop it is in parallel with degrees from the University of London.

Legislation in 1988 criminalised the awarding of degrees which did not have the authorisation of an Act of Parliament or a royal charter. Any degrees which did not have those foundations after 1988 were in fact criminal. Heythrop College of course, because it was founded before 1988, was exempt from that legislation, but the reason for these probing amendments is that the future of Heythrop College is in some doubt and, were it to close, the faculties which offer philosophy and theology would have to be transferred to other higher education institutions run by the Catholic Church and, under current legislation, would therefore be illegal. These two amendments would allow those degrees to be awarded if the Minister, when he replies, is gracious enough to accept them.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who is unable to introduce it herself this evening, I shall speak to Amendment 269, to which I have added my name. I support all the amendments in this group that have already been spoken to. This amendment creates a new clause which confirms the role of the Advisory Committee on Degree Awarding Powers within the designated quality body to provide independent, expert advice before degree-awarding powers and university title are conferred, or creates a committee of the Office for Students which fulfils much the same function as the current Advisory Committee on Degree Awarding Powers where no body has been designated. This provides independent, expert scrutiny and advice to the OfS.

The Bill amends the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 to give the newly created Office for Students the ability to give and remove institutions’ degree-awarding powers and to award or remove the use of university title. This power currently sits with the Privy Council, which acts on the basis of guidance and criteria set out by the department for business, with advice from the Quality Assurance Agency. It is important that any new higher education providers awarding their own degrees, or calling themselves “university”, meet the same high requirements as existing universities. Appropriately robust market entry standards serve the interests of students by minimising the risk of early institutional failure or the need for intervention by the OfS, and we are not reassured that this is currently the case in the proposals put forward by the Government. Of course, we support new providers in the system, but we need particularly to scrutinise the fast-track private providers, as proposed in the Bill.

We propose a new clause legislating for a degree of independent oversight of the OfS in awarding degrees and university title to provide checks and balances on these very important decisions. In practice, this would require the OfS to take the advice of an independent specialist committee within the designated quality body or, where no quality body is designated for the OfS, to set up a statutory committee along the lines of the existing Advisory Committee on Degree Awarding Powers. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the various amendments in this group.

Armed Forces: Capability

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate and pay tribute to my noble friend, Lord Robertson, on a masterly introduction to and analysis of the current situation. It was a fitting beginning to a very interesting debate. The noble Lord, Lord Sterling, and I were both founding members of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. A few months ago that Committee reported and said that the Armed Forces,

“will not be able to fulfil the wide-ranging tasks described in the NSS & SDSR 2015 … with the capabilities, manpower and funding”,

allocated. Doubtless, in half an hour’s time, the Minister will tell this House that the Government spend so much money that we are the fifth largest defence spender on the planet and that we are one of only five NATO members that spend at least 2% of GDP on defence. Both of course are true; but a number of Members of this House, over the last hour, have indicated that the 2% figure is not really what it seems. As we know, it includes £820 million on war pensions, £400 million on our United Nations peacekeeping missions and £200 million for pensions for retired Ministry of Defence civilian staff. For the very first time, it includes spending on the single intelligence account and on one-off items that cannot be counted towards the 2% in years to come.

On top of that, it should be seen in the context of so-called efficiency savings, which the noble Lords, Lord King and Lord Reid, both referred to earlier, which are the most nebulous things in government accounting. It is not surprising to me that the Defence Committee of the House of Commons said that this was “shifting the goalposts”, my honourable friend Nia Griffith, the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, called it a “sleight of hand” and my noble friend Lord Reid today has called it “creative accountancy”. It is fiddling the figures a little, I suppose, and I would be interested in the Minister’s response on those points.

The 2% figure should not be a target: it should be a minimum. That is the importance of it. In The House magazine back in the autumn, this was written: “It was a Labour Government who committed to the 2%, and a Labour Government who were a founding member of NATO—every time Labour have been in government, they have taken a responsible view of defence”. Those words were written by the current Conservative Secretary of State for Defence. He was of course right and, despite the rather daft musings of people in my leader’s office, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Touhig will also confirm that this responsible view of defence is the view of the Labour Party.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

I rise as a Welsh Peer. If I were still a Member of the other place, as a Welsh MP, I could not vote on education matters but I could speak on them. Happily, I am regarded as a full Member of this House of Parliament and I can do both.

The first issue I want to raise with the Minister, who will undoubtedly refer to it in her winding-up speech, is higher education. I know that the Bill applies only to England, but there is no question that the nations and regions of our United Kingdom interact with each other very significantly when it comes to where our students go to university. For example, about 50% of Welsh students study at Welsh universities. The other 50% go to universities in England and Scotland and some to Northern Ireland. My plea to the Minister is to talk to her ministerial counterparts in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales about the implications of this new legislation on our devolved Administrations. After all, that covers nearly 11 million people in the United Kingdom.

I also want to touch on the Government’s U-turn on academies. Not long ago, the Minister’s ministerial colleague—the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who has now left the Chamber—was talking about the policy to ensure that every place in England had academies. He said that squabbling local politicians were one reason why it was important to have academies. That did not in any sense fit well with the Government’s avowed policy on localism. The Government have said over the years that it is important to devolve powers, whether to the northern cities or to local authorities and local education authorities. The enforced academisation of schools in England would have completely gone against that idea and policy, so I welcome the change.

It is also important to understand that academies are not the only way that educational excellence can be achieved. I was a member of the Labour Government who introduced the academy system, and I have nothing against that system. Academies do very well in certain places—but not everywhere. A headline in the Times last week, for example, revealed a huge gulf in academy standards. After all, only 15% of primary schools in England and 60% of secondary schools are academies.

I also want to mention the effect of legislation on faith schools in our country. These schools play an extremely important role in the education of our young people, and they are significant in various parts of the country. However, of the 2,100 Roman Catholic schools, only 450 are academies. I urge the Government, when introducing this legislation, to involve themselves with the diocesan authorities of both the Anglican and the Roman Catholic Churches in England to ensure that there is proper consultation, particularly regarding the role of regional commissioners. There is a great need for a memorandum of understanding between the Church education authorities and the regional commissioners on coming to certain decisions.

The other issue that I want to touch on is the way in which Governments take their decisions on legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said some wise things about the relationship between the legislature and Executive. Over the past year there have been at least nine U-turns by the Government—all of which I completely applaud, by the way—including, of course, today’s decision on junior doctors. However, when we look at tax credits, disability benefits, VAT on tampons, Sunday trading, child refugees and others all in one year, we have to think about how the Government are taking decisions. Last week the Guardian said in a leading article that,

“this government prefers to charge into controversy, citing the authority of manifesto commitments approved by a little more than a third of those who voted, and when forced to backtrack on ill-planned proposals, blames parliament as undemocratic”.

You might think, “That’s the Guardian—they would say that, wouldn’t they?”. But a few days later the Sunday Times, not a supporter of my party, said that, “this is a parliament of pulled punches, abandoned initiatives, and U-turns. A Government that cannot risk making enemies—even of the Labour Party—has U-turned on tax credits, disability benefits, academy schools and the trade union political levy”.

The Government should reflect on and rethink the way in which legislation is introduced. The humility which is required by Governments does not come easily to them after five or six years. The Labour Government of whom I was a part had large majorities, and even they were wrong and became arrogant as the years went by. But if a Government have a majority of fewer than 20 in the House of Commons and a House of Lords which is quite rightly flexing its muscles, it seems not only wrong but daft that they should deal with matters in such a way that they end up having to make U-turns almost on a monthly basis.

The Government’s decisions to change their mind were based not on some sort of Damascene conversion to the cause but on parliamentary arithmetic. Would it not be better if, at the end of the day, or perhaps at the beginning of the day, Ministers thought about the implications of their policies before they decided to set them in stone? Then all they would have to do is come to this place—which rightly scrutinises Bills with great energy and verve—and then go back and change their mind, or they could go to the other place where they might be defeated because they do not have a majority, particularly given the divisions at the moment in the government party.

My plea to the Minister who is to wind up the debate is to persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer not to pull too many rabbits out of the hat; to persuade the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that government departments should control their own policies; and to persuade members of the Cabinet that the way we deal with things politically is not the same these days. The landscape has changed dramatically over the 30 years that I have been a Member of Parliament in one House or other. People vote differently and I think that we will end up with more minority Governments, or certainly Governments with small majorities, during the remainder of my political lifetime than we have had in the past. The Government should think about these issues when dealing with their legislation and when considering the relationship between the Executive on the one hand and the legislature on the other.