National Security and Investment Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th March 2021 Grand Committee

Perhaps the Minister can tell us what those exchanges have produced to date because engagement is crucial and we must find a solution that creates a proportionate set of circumstances for our universities.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, although I spoke at Second Reading and have lent my name to later amendments, supporting my noble friend Lord West and the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I have to say that most of the content is way over my pay grade. I have learned an awful lot as I have listened to the debate this afternoon.

My position on the Bill is the same as on the CHIS Bill: I am with the Government. I realise that higher education is large and varied but I am not prepared to give it the blind support that I have done in the past. As such, I do not support Amendment 36.

I want to raise three aspects: pay, academic freedom and security, as it is tied to the Bill. The pay of vice-chancellors is out of control and, like the Army, where no general gets the sack for failure, no vice-chancellor walks the plank. That is due to poor governance, so it is not down to a single person. Many salaries are well north of £250,000 a year—some are £500,000 a year—with whopping increases into five figures annually, on top of which there are vast expenses and, sometimes, free accommodation. In the meantime, the so-called world-beaters screw down the staff on flimsy contracts, with pensions constantly under attack. The treatment of students during the pandemic has been appalling, in some cases. It reminds me of what I read about the Victorian mill owners’ treatment of their workers—but the students are the payees, not the employees. The leadership is not world-class, except as in snouts and troughs.

Then we see the negative aspects of academic freedom —that is, its decline—becoming the norm. The Civitas report makes for very disturbing reading. The study of campus censorship over the three years between 2017 and 2020 is grim. It covered all 137 registered universities and 22 variables were assessed. Noble Lords will be pleased to learn that I do not intend to detail them, but the key finding was that only 19 of the 137 universities were considered “the most friendly”. Seventy—that is 51% of them—were not performing well and were classed as “moderately restrictive”, leaving 48 universities, including some of the highest-ranked ones, performing badly on free speech. They were classed as the most restrictive. It would take too long to list them so I shall give just seven examples: St Andrews, Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool, Exeter, UCL and Imperial College, London. There are more. There is a very strong correlation of them with the high pay of vice-chancellors. The Russell group of world-class universities did not come out very well either: 42% were recorded as “most restrictive”; 54% were “moderately restrictive”; and only one registered Russell group university came out with a “most friendly” score.

Before I come to my final point, it is worth pointing out that your Lordships’ House does not hear much about this aspect of education. The last time I checked, which was about three years ago, there were over 40 university chancellors in your Lordships’ House. That speaks volume.

My final point on why Amendment 36 should not be accepted by the Government is that too many universities are almost subsidiaries of the Chinese Communist Party Ltd. Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, has called for a clamp-down on British university research relationships with China to stop the flow of intelligence secrets. Bloomberg has reported that UK intelligence agencies are concerned about these links and the passing of sensitive information about defence technology from the UK to China. Too much Chinese money is going into UK universities. It is alleged that at least 20 British universities have relationships with 29 Chinese universities with strong ties to the Chinese military, as well as some of China’s largest weapons producers.

Earlier today came the report from the Policy Institute, The China Question. I have not had time to read it all, so I will make just two or three points. In 1990, there were 100 co-authored papers between Chinese and UK universities. By 2000, it was 750. In 2019, there were over 16,000. The report, which I have only glanced at, points out the reliance on significant tuition fee income by UK universities from China, which is used to cross-subsidise research. This creates a strategic dependency and potential vulnerability. We are not managing the risks associated with this aspect of our education and Chinese influence.

In short, it is a sorry tale from higher education. While I support my noble friend Lady Hayter’s Amendment 88, the Government should reject Amendment 36 out of hand.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I remind the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that this is a particular Bill designed to do a particular thing. It is not a higher education Bill. While he may feel strongly about many of the issues, I will not comment on them, because they do not fall into the remit of the Bill. I point out that I am also not a university vice-chancellor.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, set out the danger, and this was supported by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. If this Bill is used to police these issues, the deluge that will fall on the agency will be huge. We are back to the point that my noble friend made on the previous group: we are creating a Bill that does everything, then the Government will gradually calibrate what they do and do not need to do. That is not the best legislative approach.

There are issues with the research relationships that universities may have, but this Bill is not the policing agency that we should be using for them. I do not 100% agree about the outset of a relationship, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, in his and my noble friend’s amendment. Sometimes that has to be looked at, as well as the outcome of that relationship, but I do not think this Bill is the place to do it.

To steal a word that was used earlier and use it differently, we are also looking at the nexus between this and export control. Universities seem much more comfortable with export control, and if there is an issue with universities it could be addressed through the increased and more rigorous use of these measures, not through this Bill.

I return to the point which I asked the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, about last time and which I put to ask the Minister now, what are we seeking to stop? In other words, in putting this Bill together, how many partnership agreements does the Bill team imagine would have been stopped by this process? What sort of things are the Government seeking to arrest, stop or cancel compared to that which the export control regime would be doing anyway?