Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, with this amendment we move to registration conditions, and a number of issues arise in this and subsequent groups in relation to these conditions. The conditions are very important and I do not think that we should skip too quickly over them, despite what I just said about trying to move forward quickly. As well as my amendments, to which other noble Lords have very kindly added their name, this group includes an interesting amendment from the right reverend Prelate. They affect some important issues and it is worth pausing slightly on each amendment as we go through.

Amendment 132 picks up the hopefully unlikely situation that if a provider was to close—or, as does happen, a course closes—there should not be any reasonable financial loss transferred to individual students. There are one or two scare stories about how difficult it is sometimes to extricate students who have commitments, particularly when a course has an overseas engagement. The amendment is valuable in that it picks up on an area that is not covered well in the Bill. However, it may not be necessary to press it if sufficient reassurances about the processes that would be applied can be given when the noble Baroness comes to respond.

Amendment 133 was an attempt to use the registration conditions contained in the Bill to, in this particular clause, try to sketch out a bit more what was meant by saying that there is a vision of what universities are in the United Kingdom. The amendment lists a range of issues that one would hope to see in these institutions, which may or may not be attractive to the Government in trying to help with their understanding of it. It is a probing amendment and deals with something that is of interest. We will read what they say in due course and think about bringing it back, if necessary.

Amendment 134 would enable the OfS to set stricter requirements for new providers to get on to the register by looking in more detail than is perhaps given in the Bill at the moment at previous history and the forecast of future sustainability. The problem we come up against is that, in considering challenger institutions, we are often talking about very small and relatively recently formed organisations, some of which may not even have proper corporate status or, indeed, the issues related to that, which I gather have been touched on in the Minister’s recent letter about what was required of an institution intending to register as a university—that was very helpful. This plays back against a little of that because there will be concerns about small institutions. They may be unwarranted but size is a factor in what may be required to sustain an institution. We need to think about track records and these entry requirements might be worth considering in that context.

With Amendment 138 we are again back to the question of what happens in the event of the failure of a course or institution. It is more about courses and focuses on simple protection plans which would make sure that there was no disruption to the studies of existing students if a particular course was pulled out, and more generally would make sure that institutions that fail have got plans in place to ensure that the students effected are not lost to the system, for example, and that there are other arrangements.

Our attention has been drawn to the phrasing of the Technical and Further Education Bill, which contains significant recommendations in this area. They do not appear in the Higher Education and Research Bill and I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why we do not have the same degree of reassurance in this area as we will have when the Technical and Further Education Bill becomes law. There is a gap—it may just be because the two Bills are proceeding at a different pace—and if it is possible to look at that and bring back something on Report, it would be a good thing.

Amendment 149 relates to a technical question about what happens to students in any suspension period. At the moment the regulations are clear in general terms but they are not specific about what would happen in terms of notifying students. The student protection plan agreement should be revisited to make sure that that is covered.

Amendment 224 would ensure that when higher education providers produce an access and participation plan there is a consultation process with the students—and it gives a definition of the students who would be consulted. I beg to move.

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 138, to which I am a signatory.

I made the point at Second Reading that a shell provision for student protection plans is not sufficient to reassure students that, in the event of institutional failure, they will be able to continue their education. I chair the Higher Education Commission and in our report, Regulating Higher Education, we stressed the need to have a strategy in place that allowed for an institution to exit the market in an orderly manner with the right level of protection in place for students.

Institutional failure would create obvious problems for students, not least in terms of disrupting their education and potentially leaving them adrift, at significant financial cost. As we argued, good governance and proper scrutiny should reduce the chances of failure, but there needs to be greater attention given to what happens when an institution does fail.

On the recommendation of HEFCE, we looked at the travel insurance industry, which participates in a sector-wide scheme to protect air passengers. We argued that this model could be applied to the HE sector, with a requirement for institutions to sign up and pay a sum per student into a fund which would cover costs in the event of failure. Our recommendation was:

“Institutions need to be better prepared for the possibility of a failure in the sector. Given the potential damage this could inflict on students and the sector as a whole, a ‘protection’ or ‘insurance’ scheme coordinated by the lead regulator should be put in place”.


I welcome the fact that the Bill recognises the need to have some student protection plan in place, but merely placing a duty on the OfS to ensure that such plans are in place is inadequate, in my view, for the purpose of providing the reassurance to students before they embark on a course of higher education that they will be able to complete it. The more new entrants come in to HE and the more a market exists, the greater the risk becomes. However, it is not the new entrants causing the potential problem; that already exists. It just exacerbates the potential.