Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

My Lords, I rise in opposition to Amendments 12 and 13, which are in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. In doing so I thank him for raising a very important point, but I suggest that we already have a very effective mechanism for doing what he wishes to see happen, which is the British Council. I urge the Minister to ensure that the British Council is properly funded to undertake talks of this sort in the future.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I have signed this amendment and all the others that make up this package, which is a substantial one; we should not underestimate the impact it will have. It is a most significant move for the Government to recognise the pressure of institutional autonomy right across the sector. It would be hard to overstate the impact of this coming together of the whole House with the Government to create an intervention in this area. We welcome it.

It is important also to recognise that the concession made was not just rearranging the existing wording—we acknowledge that the Bill already had a lot about institutional autonomy. Making not simply the OfS but the Secretary of State responsible for having regard to the need to protect institutional autonomy is a much more powerful approach. We should be cognisant of that as we accept the amendments.

It is important also to recognise that there is a gap. Although it has been pointed out that the UKRI is not a regulator in the same sense as the OfS, we will later move an amendment that proposes that the UKRI also have regard to institutional autonomy because there will be joint responsibilities in relation to research degrees, but also because these bodies will be operating with the same funding group—obviously, a smaller one in the case of the UKRI; nevertheless, it is important that we have equality of arms.

This has been a very successful case of trying to get a better Bill from what the Commons presented us with. It is a better Bill as a result of this intervention—of course, there is more to come. We should acknowledge that the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and the support that he and I received from the noble Baronesses, Lady Wolf and Lady Brown, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, from the Liberal Democrats, has been instrumental in persuading the Government that they should take account of this issue.

In bringing attention to the need for new providers in Amendment 5, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has done us a service by ensuring that we think not only of existing arrangements within the sector but new entrants. It is important that we pick up the theme behind his amendment and ensure that it is properly regarded as we proceed.

In concluding, I hope we can have the Minister’s assurance that all the amendments in this group will be taken as consequential if the lead amendment is passed.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, for introducing this group of amendments and the helpful and constructive engagement I have had with him and many other noble Lords, not least the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brown and Lady Wolf, and my noble friend Lord Waldegrave on the issue of institutional autonomy.

I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, for his amendment in Committee, which was widely supported across the House and which has provided an excellent template for the institutional autonomy protections that we are discussing today. Indeed, on issues across the Bill, I am grateful for the expert scrutiny the Bill had in Committee and the many constructive meetings that my honourable friend in the other place, Jo Johnson, and I have held with noble Lords since.

I said in Committee that we were listening and reflecting on the issues raised, so I hope that noble Lords will recognise that that is exactly what we have done through the government amendments. I am particularly pleased that institutional autonomy is one of the areas where we have found common ground. Institutional autonomy and academic freedom are the keystone of our higher education sector’s strength. Throughout the Bill, we have sought to protect these values, but we recognised and understood the importance of extending these protections to the work of the OfS and of enshrining institutional autonomy itself in legislation for the first time.

I turn to Amendment 5, spoken to by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay. We have already seen new providers emerge that do not fit the stereotypical—often negative—description that has been previously offered. The Government welcome plans to introduce new models of provision, such as that proposed by the New Model in Technology & Engineering in Hereford. I reassure noble Lords—my noble and learned friend in particular—that the Bill already allows both the OfS and the Government to consider, encourage and respond to the emerging needs for new providers, so while I support the broad intent of Amendment 5, I feel it is unnecessary.

I should like to make a few further points. We believe that the duty on the OfS to have regard to the need to encourage competition between higher education providers and regulate in a proportionate manner will ensure that it encourages meeting the emerging needs of new providers. The OfS has many duties and there are already a variety of other measures in our reforms that will enable the Government, as well as the OfS, to support the need for new providers.

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[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with getting the age statistics right. That is a crucial example because it is objective and not highly sensitive, at least in my view. However, most of the other protected characteristics are not susceptible of statistically robust estimation. People do not always want to declare whether they are pregnant or to declare their ethnicity. I discovered that young people of mixed background did not wish to take sides between their parents, as they put it. People do not always wish to declare their sexual orientation, particularly when they are very young. The result is that one has an enormous number of “no information” entries in these statistics. To use this information in a statistically responsible way is not a simple matter. However, I exempt age. I would, until recently, have exempted gender because I think most people will give a simple answer on that. However, I fear that the information one actually records is not always robust.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this has been a very good and interesting debate. I think that there are some questions to which the Government will want to respond and I will not overegg the pudding at this stage. However, the question of why we are not including protected characteristics, as mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, is interesting. Amendments 16 and 18 are helpful in this regard. I take the points made by the noble Baroness, who is expert in these matters. However, if we as a country do not start to set out these requirements in terms of a whole range of protected characteristics, we will be the loser in the long run. It may be just be a question of how we do that.

This group of amendments also contains important first steps towards a more engaged transfer and credit transfer arrangement for students in relation to the higher education sector, which I welcome. However, I again wonder why the Government have not thought to take into account Amendments 47, 128 and 129. It seems to me that they would help progress in this regard, which is something we all support.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

First, I reassure my noble friend Lord Lucas that Clause 10(2) already requires higher education institutions to publish the information contained within the transparency duty. We expect prospective students to be able to access this easily on providers’ websites. I further reassure my noble friend and the noble Lords, Lord Triesman and Lord Willis, among others, that this information will also be shared with the OfS with the intention of presenting these data in a comparable form to students, commentators and advisers.

To respond to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, I say that noble Lords will recall that we have concerns about legislating to add a wide range of additional characteristics to the duty due to the quality and comparability of the data as well as the disclosive nature of some of the information. However, having listened to noble Lords, and in particular to the noble Lords whom I mentioned just now, we have reflected on their suggestions, and I am pleased to make a commitment to the House today. The Government will, through guidance, ask the OfS to consult on what other information should be published by individual institutions with a view to making their record on widening participation even more transparent.

We expect the consultation to consider whether specific additional information should be made available by institutions. We expect this to include consideration of whether the protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 should be captured, including categories such as disability and age. However, the consultation will not limit itself to the protected characteristics and should also look at categories such as care leavers. This will enable a considered view of what additional information should be published by providers, balancing the desire for greater transparency around access and participation with considerations around the robustness and comparability of data, student privacy and the regulatory burden on providers. Universities will be expected to respond to the outcome of the consultation as part of their future access and participation plans following further guidance, once we have established best practice.

I hope that it is clear that we have listened and reflected on the amendments tabled in Committee. The inclusion of attainment will make the transparency condition more effective, and the additional commitment to consult on what other information should be made available will help drive equality of opportunity for all students.

I now turn to the amendments relating to student transfer—

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[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, I can see why the Government want to link the quality of teaching to fees. I assume that behind it is that they need a kind of sanction to do something about those universities which are not providing adequate teaching. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that the best teaching is not necessarily provided by those universities which do the best research; in other words, the high-status universities. Some of the new universities have excellent teaching quality, where some of the best research universities do not give it enough attention.

I support what my noble friend Lord Lipsey said. It is not the right time to attach the decision about the fees that can be charged to the TEF, because we do not have a TEF that is yet suitable and up to scratch in how it will operate. It is putting the cart before the horse. There may be some date in the future when it might be appropriate for the ability to increase fees to be related to the quality of teaching, but we have not reached that point. We really need to get our metrics right and provide a TEF that is fit for the job that it is being asked to do.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this has been a very good debate and it anticipates another debate which, at this rate of progress, we will be able to schedule and advertise for those noble Lords who wish to come back and listen to it for Wednesday just after Oral Questions, when we will be returning to many of the themes. This is quite a narrow amendment. The amendment before noble Lords is not about what metrics could be used or other issues relating to the TEF, as it is called. It specifically tries to avoid that, to leave space for that debate to take place on Wednesday. It specifically tries, though, to break the link that might be established between any scheme established under Clause 26 and the ranking of higher education providers as to the fees or the number of students they may or may not recruit.

On a number of occasions the Minister has been at pains to point out that, throughout the very long period we kept the House sitting in Committee on the Bill, he was, in complete contradiction to the impression he gave, listening and, indeed, in some cases, reflecting. It was sometimes difficult to get the nuance between listening and reflecting but those were the words he used. We were doing the same. We have been listening to and reflecting on some of the responses we have heard to the very good cases that have been made around this aspect of the Bill, and I have to say that, having listened and reflected, I do not think he has made the case well, but the case that has been made around the Chamber this afternoon is exactly on spot.

If you want to raise the fees in higher education to accommodate the cost increases referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, it has been possible since 2004, and Labour’s Higher Education Act, to raise fees by inflation. It was done routinely between 2007 and 2012 by two successive Governments. There is no reason at all why the Government should not bring forward a statutory instrument under the terms of the Act that makes provision for the power to do so. There is no need, in fact, to anticipate what may be a good system for measuring higher education by linking it to the teaching quality that has been discovered by a half-baked scheme that is not yet half way through its pilot system. The case was made very well by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal. The case for linking the quality of education and fees, or the quality of education and the number of students, is completely hollow. I very much hope that if the noble Lord wishes to test the opinion of the House, he will do so. We will support him.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, before I discuss fees, I would like first to be clear that the Government welcome genuine international students, and to reiterate the confirmation that I offered in Committee that we have no plans to cap the number of genuine students who can come to the UK to study, nor to limit an institution’s ability to recruit genuine international students, based on its TEF rating or on any other basis.

As well as the link to student numbers, this amendment would remove an important principle at the heart of the TEF: the link to fees. The TEF is intended to rebalance the priority given to teaching and learning compared to research. Funding for teaching is currently based on quantity, whereas research is funded on quality. It was a Conservative Government who first introduced early versions of the research excellence framework. Over the past 30 years, the principle of linking funding to quality has incentivised the UK’s research base to develop into the world-leading sector that we have today. We want to apply the same principle that has driven such continuous improvement in research to teaching. Linking fees to the TEF will provide strong reputational and financial incentives to prioritise the student learning experience.

It is important that high-quality institutions can maintain fees in line with inflation if we are to ensure that the sector remains sustainable. As I pointed out in Committee, the £9,000 fees introduced in 2012 are worth only £8,500 today and will be worth less than £8,000 by the end of the Parliament. If we want to provide the best-quality education in our universities, and to compete with our global rivals, universities need the resource to invest in their teaching facilities. This is why the Universities UK board unanimously supported the link between an effective TEF and fee rises. Some 299 institutions have voluntarily applied to take part in the TEF this year out of about 400: that represents a big majority. This includes the majority of the established higher education sector, including all the English Russell group universities. I think that noble Lords will agree that this represents a very encouraging and excellent endorsement of the current scheme.

Furthermore, as GuildHE said:

“The link between the TEF and inflation increases in fee and loan caps makes sense ... When the £9000 fee cap was introduced in 2012/13, the BIS spending review assumption was that it would rise by inflation each year. Instead, the price has been held flat for four years. Without an increase to take account of rising teaching costs, the ability of institutions to invest in the quality of the learning experience on offer will, inevitably, decline”.


However, there will be no something for nothing. Make no mistake: if this amendment is enacted the sector will lose £16 billion over the course of the next 10 years. This is the value of the funding we intend to make available for institutions through the TEF. We will not allow universities to raise their fees unless they can demonstrate, through the TEF, that their teaching is of the highest quality.