Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

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

[Lord Sawyer (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has just crept into his place, because I want to say how much I enjoyed his speech: I see myself as more of a plumber than a poet. I know that the noble Lord did not mean any disrespect to plumbers in his lovely contribution. If any noble Lords might want bathrooms or kitchens fitted, I am not actually a plumber but I am pretty close to it. In later life I have been lucky, through diverse ways—not least of which was membership of your Lordships’ House—to get to be chancellor of Teesside University, of which I am extremely proud. It does an amazing job dealing with its part of the education sector. It tackles some of society’s big challenges but it strives for academic excellence at the same time and does a fabulous job. It is part of the University Alliance, a group of universities whose members are working to make a big difference in their cities and regions, as I am sure noble Lords know, and I agree with it that there is much in the Bill that we can support. But at Teesside University, we believe that the Bill could do much more to support universities and make a difference to our society and our economy.

In particular, I would like to see the new Office for Students have a duty to promote collaboration. This needs to be right at the top of the Bill, in Part 1, Clause 2, standing alongside the duty to promote competition. I emphasise that collaboration is an extremely important concept and I selected this feature because of the young people I represent. I cannot help but feel that I am a representative of my university. It is in my home region, near my home town. These young people are having a particularly tough time with paying tuition fees, housing and finding jobs. The right measures in the Bill, and particularly a strengthened right to collaboration, could work for them. I will make two points in support of this.

The first relates to access to higher education and widening participation. I welcome the requirements for universities to do more to reach people who might stay away from higher education. This work is not easy: it is intensive and needs expertise. Professionals in the sector call some of these groups “hard to reach”. The work is difficult and includes people who may have grown up in care; those who have no history of higher education in their families; and those who are completely discouraged by higher education concepts and fees. Reaching them can take years of dedicated work. Traditional marketing does not always work, nor do social media. There are huge barriers to climb in trust, culture and ambition. It is fair to say that many universities find this work quite difficult, but we urgently need them to reach those people. I hope consideration can be given, during the passage of the Bill, to how Parliament might help them to do this.

Some universities have built excellent practice. For example, at Teesside University we have expertise with young people growing up in care. I was taken aback that we were actually doing this. Young people in care being encouraged to go to university is quite a big leap. We share that with other universities and it is highly valued in the sector. This is another kind of thing we can look at to see how we can strengthen it. The more that universities are driven to compete and to guard their expertise from each other, the more we lose these groups. We must not add them to our lost generation. We need the Bill to include a duty of collaboration to ensure this does not happen. As other noble Lords have mentioned, employability is important, as are skills, lifelong learning and making sure that we look at the university road to jobs.

Like my colleagues in the other place, I welcome Clause 15, which will set up a standing commission on the integration of higher education and lifelong learning. That is a really good move. As other noble Lords have said, adult learners and part-time students have been hugely disadvantaged since 2010. Numbers of new part-time students have fallen over five years by almost 200,000. We cannot afford for this to happen and for people to be shut out of education in this way, just because they cannot take part on a full-time basis. It damages our economy and it damages them. We need to be able to access education throughout our lives. I welcome movement in this area and hope noble Lords will look at ways of strengthening it and taking it forward as the Bill passes through Parliament.