Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn Excerpts

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

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn (Con)]

My Lords, this is a large and ambitious Bill that many will consider long overdue. At once I should say how helpful it has been that my noble friend Lord Younger and indeed the Minister for Universities and Science have been able to hold meetings to discuss it, along with the new chair of UKRI, Sir John Kingman. I too should declare an interest as a former professor at the University of Southampton and then at Cambridge.

The point is very well made in the Bill that, while research has been assessed with increasing effectiveness in recent years through the research excellence framework, teaching in higher education has not been subject to direct assessment in a similar way, so there is clearly a place for the new teaching excellence framework. But establishing the criteria by which teaching excellence can be measured is a far less easy task. There is no evident physical and palpable end-product which can be assessed and measured. The metrics so far put forward are not persuasive and do not relate to individual courses, which is probably the only way that teaching can effectively be measured. So this issue needs further thought and I am sure that it will be discussed extensively in Committee.

The new Office for Students will indeed be a powerful organisation but, like other critics, I am concerned that its powers in the Bill are very sweeping. It seems a positive step that new bodies with the capacity to award higher degrees—in effect, new universities—will be set up by the Office for Students. And it is logical that under Clause 43 the OfS should have the power to withdraw from such newly created educational institutions or universities the ability to award higher degrees if their teaching capacity and effectiveness comes into question.

However, why should this newly created Office for Students also have, under Clause 43, the power to deny long-standing universities the capacity to award higher degrees—in effect, to close universities which, long ago, had that capacity conferred upon them by royal charter or Act of Parliament? This point has already been made by my noble friend Lord Waldegrave and others. What sort of process can this be? The chair—or would it be the chief executive officer?—of the Office for Students could at a stroke, if subject to appeal, end the degree-awarding powers of a university that was established decades ago by royal charter. That seems almost inconceivable. Of course, we shall be told that this will never happen; it is a power that will never be used. In that case, why make it a power of the Office for Students in the first place?

The principle of university independence and autonomy is long-standing in this country and it is much valued, so the Bill should be amended so that a university established by royal charter is not potentially at risk in this way. Of course, we all have great confidence in the Minister for Universities and Science personally, but who knows who the next Minister will be? I do not think it follows that we will have the same confidence in that future appointment.

The case I am discussing is an unlikely eventuality and so is perhaps less immediately relevant than other problematic issues, such as the relationship between the Office for Students and UKRI, the twin pillars of the new establishment. But now is the time to try to get these things right, so I hope the Government will accept, or even introduce, an amendment to remove from the Bill this potential threat to long-established and well-respected higher education institutions, and reassert the principle of arm’s-length university autonomy.