Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“UK universities: functions
(1) UK universities are autonomous institutions and must uphold the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech.(2) UK universities must ensure that they promote freedom of thought and expression, and freedom from discrimination.(3) UK universities must provide an extensive range of high quality academic subjects delivered by excellent teaching, supported by scholarship and research, through courses which enhance the ability of students to learn throughout their lives.(4) UK universities must make a contribution to society through the pursuit, dissemination, and application of knowledge and expertise locally, nationally and internationally; and through partnerships with business, charitable foundations, and other organisations, including other colleges and universities.(5) UK universities must be free to act as critics of government and the conscience of society.”

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, happy new year, and a particular welcome to our respected guest standing at the Bar, who for those of your Lordships who were not present at Second Reading set a new record for MPs standing listening to debates. I gather he is here again to do a repeat performance. We should welcome his interest and his commitment to this issue, which I know is shared by so many Members of the House. I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden, Lady Wolf and Lady Brown, for joining me and supporting Amendment 1. I look forward to hearing their comments and those of other noble Lords across the Committee who have indicated to me that they support the amendment.

I declared my interests in higher education during the excellent Second Reading debate we held in the Chamber last month. Even if I had not been to a university, never worked in the university sector or not had my children educated in UK universities, I would have wanted to engage with the Bill because our excellent university sector—currently the second most successful higher education system in the world, with four universities ranked in the top 10—faces substantial challenges in the years ahead. It could, of course, be improved and it could, of course, be more innovative, and we support both those aims, but it also needs to be supported and protected, particularly if we go ahead with a hard Brexit, as now seems inevitable.

The abiding sense I have from our Second Reading debate is that the Bill fails to understand the purposes of higher education. I suggest that without defining these important institutions, there is a danger that the new regulatory architecture, the new bodies and the revised research organisation will do real and permanent damage. Universities across the world have multiple and complex roles in society, and there is no doubt that we all gain from that. They come in all sizes, and that too is good. They are at their best when they are autonomous, independent institutions which have the freedom to develop a range of missions and practices, while at the same time being public institutions, serving the knowledge economy and the knowledge society as well as being tools of economic progress and social mobility. They use the precious safe harbour of academic freedom to seek truth wherever it is to be found and publish it for all to see and discuss. They transmit and project values of openness, tolerance, inquiry and a respect for diversity that are the key to civilisation in an increasingly globalised world.

The purpose of the amendment is simple. The Bill before us does not define a university, and we think it will be improved if it does so. Our amendment does not simply itemise some of the core functions of a university, though it does that too, but also scopes out a university’s role, with its implicit ideals of responsibility, engagement and public service. A characteristic of all these functions is the expectation that universities take the long-term view and nurture a long-term stake in their local communities and wider society; that they embed scholarship and original and independent inquiry into their activities; and that they demonstrate a sustained commitment to serving the public good through taking up a role as critic and as the conscience of society.

I am confident that there is support for this approach across the House, based on the real sense of disappointment at the lack of ambition that the Bill currently exhibits. I hope the Government will feel able to accept the amendment. I say to the Minister that if he were minded to do so, not only would he improve the Bill but he would be signalling a willingness to listen to all the expertise, experience and wisdom that this House possesses and give us hope that he wished to use that for the benefit of this important sector and of the country as a whole. If he does not feel able to accept the amendment as it stands, perhaps he could offer to take it back and bring it back in an improved version on Report. If he did this, we would of course be very willing to work with him on how to improve the text—we have no pride of ownership.

I have to warn him, though, that if he does not want to engage as I have outlined, he will have to explain to this House what it is he cannot accept about specifying that universities have a secure and valued place in our society, and why he has difficulty in confirming that our universities should have statutory rights to institutional autonomy, academic freedom and freedom of speech. He will have to explain why he disagrees with his right honourable friend the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, who is standing at the Bar, who said in response to questions in Committee in the other place:

“At its most literal, a university can be described as a provider of predominantly higher education that has got degree-awarding powers and has been given the right to use the university title. That is the most limited and literal sense. If we want a broader definition, we can say that a university is also expected to be an institution that brings together a body of scholars to form a cohesive and self-critical academic community that provides excellent learning opportunities for people, the majority of whom are studying to degree level or above. We expect teaching at such an institution to be informed by a combination of research, scholarship and professional practice. To distinguish it from what we conventionally understand the school’s role to be, we can say that a university is a place where students are developing higher analytical capacities—critical thinking, curiosity about the world and higher levels of abstract capacity in their thinking. In brief, that is my answer to what a university is”.—[Official Report, Commons, Higher Education and Research Bill Committee, 15/09/16; col. 271.]

I confess to a little plagiarism in drafting my amendment, which I acknowledge is clearly based on that Minister’s approach, which is the correct one. I beg to move.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, the Bill we are debating today is an enormously important one. I declare an interest as a full-time academic at King’s College London.

The Government are creating the environment in which universities will operate and thrive or decline over many years, probably decades, and are changing it profoundly. Because a country’s universities and the nature of those universities are so central to what a country is—to its values, politics, culture, research and innovation—the Bill is truly important to the whole nation. Yet, curiously, the Bill has nothing to say about universities, as you will find if you have a quick search of the document. It says quite a lot about the university title, and at one point it refers to unauthorised degrees at,

“a university, college or other body”,

by grant, but that is it. Otherwise it refers consistently to “providers”.

Clearly, the Government do not think that the term “university” is meaningless. If it were, neither the Government nor higher education providers nor universities would be so occupied with the university title.

When I dug around a bit, I found that previous legislation also has extraordinarily little to say on the subject. The 1992 higher education Act refers simply to use of the name “university” in the title of an institution, and informs us hopefully that, if the power to change the name is exercisable with the consent of the Privy Council, it may be exercised, with that consent,

“whether or not the institution would apart from this section be a university”.

There is nothing more on what a university is. The Minister has kindly confirmed, in replies to Written Questions that the term is not defined in legislation but is a “sensitive” word under company law, which means that you need permission from the Secretary of State and a non-objection letter before you can use it in a business or company title.

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I ask noble Lords to think carefully about the way in which this amendment would undermine and not protect institutional autonomy and, furthermore, how a large number of existing high-quality providers would be likely to fall foul of it, if it were passed. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

Thank you very much to those who have contributed to this very good debate, which has been high-level and high-quality. I have particular thanks to those who signed up to my amendment. This will set us up well for the rest of Committee. We have already had more than 500 amendments tabled to the Bill and I gather that there are more to come. According to the Public Bill Office, this is the most amendments for any Bill in recent memory—although it then covered itself by saying that it had records going back only seven years, so there may be others. However, it is still quite a lot and a record.

I expected to have put myself up for an attack on my drafting and if you do that, you certainly set yourself up for it. I felt that while most people were very fair to my efforts, there was a bit of an attempt to play the man and not the ball. I also felt that a red card was due to the noble Lord, Lord Myners, for grading me a lower second for offering a contribution to improve the quality of the Bill. The theme was an offer to the Government to try to work together on this issue, which has obviously caught the interest of the House. Among the 30 Back-Bench speakers and two Front-Bench speakers, I think there were only four or five who could claim to support fully where the Government are trying to get to. I am afraid that the Minister lost the House in his long and rather difficult-to-follow explanation of why he wanted to refuse our generous offer to work with him to improve a statement that would enhance the Bill. I hope that people will remember that as we go forward into other issues.

We clearly have different visions about how to proceed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, and to some extent, rather surprisingly, with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that the way forward is perhaps not to push this too hard at this stage because there is an opportunity to improve it later on, if the Government will play ball. But if the Government do not play ball, where are you? You are stuck. In this situation, it is therefore right that we take up the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury: we should take the courage of the conviction of those who spoke today, move forward with this amendment and, if necessary, amend around the Bill to improve any infelicities that there may be in the current drafting.

The major point made by the noble Viscount when he came to respond was that we would be placing burdens on universities by the form of the drafting. That point was explicitly refuted by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and picked up by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne of Eaton-under-Heywood, who said that it was not the case. The Minister has no argument for not accepting this proposal. As he will not, I wish to test the views of the House.