Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I am not certain whether the two amendments in this group will place a statutory duty on higher education providers or whether they are intended to enforce some kind of contractual obligation—that is, in order to be registered, they have to agree to do this and that, which would not be quite the same thing. There are important distinctions between universities and other providers of higher education. Whether the level playing field that has just been referred to applies across that divide is an interesting question, on which I would be glad to know the Government’s view.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

It is incredibly important for students and for society as a whole that all providers of higher education are subject to freedom of information requests. I shall give your Lordships an example. A number of private colleges provide higher education, but if you wish to find out their progression rates, you are not allowed to do that—the books are closed. However, if you wanted to know the progression rates for students from year to year at a university, that could be obtained in a freedom of information request. There should be a level playing field. In higher education, the same should apply to universities and to any private provider.

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, I think that those in receipt of public money, with students with fees from government loans, should indeed operate on a level playing field. However, we should reflect on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, in which he asked whether we want to add more requirements or take some of them away. Having recently been a vice-chancellor, I know that universities get numerous FoI requests, many of them relatively vexatious and from local newspapers in the area wanting bits of information about vice-chancellors, staff and other things. Is it really reasonable that we should spend students’ fees on responding to this sort of trivial request?

I think that the Bill will make sure that the kind of key data that you need to know about universities—things such as progression rates—are available from registered providers, and that is very important. It is not about universities trying to hide things; the Bill requires universities to provide the sort of data that students need to know. In levelling the playing field we should follow the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and think about taking off some of the requirements rather than adding more on.