Higher Education (Basic Amount) (England) Regulations 2010

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Triesman]

Leave out from “that” to the end and insert: “this House regrets that the Government has failed to consult adequately with parents, students, higher education bodies, employers and local authorities on raising student tuition fees and to convince many people of the fairness and sustainability of its proposals for funding higher education; urges the Government to undertake more public consultation on the issue, including consultation with future graduates and their families who did not contribute to the consultation over the Browne review; further considers that there should be an independent impact assessment on (a) the financial consequences of the proposed fees on students from both lower and middle income families, and (b) the financial consequences of the proposed fees on women, including a full assessment of the impact of the fees on equalities and fairness, and further calls on Her Majesty’s Government to commission new research to analyse the probable impact on demand for university courses of fees being increased to the range of £6,000 to £9,000 per annum from students from lower and middle income families and women; and further considers that, prior to contemplating any increase to the basic amount specified in section 24 of the Education Act 2004, the Government should publish a White Paper on reform of higher education funding, allowing for consultation and for consideration of alternative proposals”.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for his clarity on the Government's propositions. We have not heard them put with that level of clarity before. It is unfortunate but necessary to move the amendments to the regulation and the resolution which follows it. Like the noble Lord, I will do so in one speech; I think that that will be welcomed by the House.

The consequences for the future of higher education policy and the damage which we believe that the Government's proposals will do cannot go unchallenged. The House has heard before my declarations of non-remunerated interests: fellowships at Cambridge and Warwick universities and at the LSE. I should add that I also served—and met a number of noble Lords on the other side of the House as education Ministers—as the general secretary of the Association of University Teachers. My regret about today's circumstances flows above all from a long connection with, and even a great love of, the United Kingdom's higher education system. I know that that is true for a great many of your Lordships, who have had at least the same contact or feel the same contact. I take no pleasure in this at all. None the less, I hope to persuade the House that what we are saying is vital.

It has been put to the side of the Chamber on various occasions that the Government’s proposals flow from the report of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, commissioned by a Labour Government. As we all know, commissioning a report does not imply agreeing with it. Indeed, I hope that I will be able to demonstrate that it was commissioned in circumstances so different from those obtaining today that we, as a House of Parliament, would be foolish not to consider whether it is today right for our universities.

May I also be clear—as clear as I can be—about what this regulation and resolution together do? It is no ordinary proposal. It is not simply an adjustment of fee levels. This proposal is the game changer. Of all the issues raised, but never fully or properly discussed in the past six weeks, this proposal changes everything. It is the most profound of the policy proposals. It doubles the starting threshold fee for students and trebles the basic student fee, with only sketchy conditions to be met. The House will not need to be reminded that no student will pay upfront—that is not a new provision —or that repayment starts at a higher level of income, which I welcome, of over £21,000 per year, but that repayment will also occur at an additional rate of 9 per cent of income and will attract an increasing, sliding rate of interest which, at the top, is 3 per cent above RPI.

The House will know that it has been pleaded in aid that there are some compensating factors said to lessen the blow to students. If a student’s parents are out of work and the student has received free school meals—that is, fortunately, a very small group in our society—there may be a fee-free period for the student to study paid for, by the way, by other students whose parents had been in work but who, nonetheless, may not have any considerable salary to dispose of. The increase in maintenance grants for lower-income students, consistently described by the Government as generous, in fact amounts to £6.70 per week. The compensating factors may give comfort to some people whose consciences may be pricking and who will, perhaps, still support the proposals today, although I hope they will not, but I would have had a sizeable bet a year ago that they would have described these arrangements as parsimonious.

Stripped back to the realities, this is a 200 per cent starting fee hike and, for most, it will be 300 per cent increase. It will, in all probability, result across the board in about a 300 per cent increase in student debt. The independent Higher Education Policy Institute predicts that £9,000 will be “the going rate” because universities must charge “all that they can”. Indeed, since these proposals are joined at the hip with an 80 per cent cut in the teaching unit of resource—90 per cent in universities without significant medical or engineering departments—the cut has imposed an average of £7,500 per student per year in university teaching income. Any institution charging less than that will lose money on teaching when compared with its current position. These are not proposals about gaining administrative efficiency in a university or unwarranted overheads that we should all properly address; they are an attack on high-quality teaching in our universities, which is a central function of our universities. That is quite simply what they are. One vice-chancellor, urging me to vote for the increases today—and I shall not—has written saying:

“The nightmare scenario would be the retention of the cuts but no means of restoring the balance through the higher tuition fees and the modified graduate tax that the Government is proposing”.

When the Government plead in aid the support of some vice-chancellors for these measures, let us, at least in this House, be candid. It is Hobson’s choice. They feel compelled to get the students to pay privately the sums that have been cut by the Government on a scale and at a rate that no other country has contemplated. Judging from my mailbox, and I cannot believe that it is particularly different from the mailboxes of others in this House, no other higher education system believes we are sane. Nobody else would contemplate introducing so blatant a division between the rich and the poorer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I sense that the noble Lord is coming to the end of his speech. Indeed, he has made a powerful case to the House, as he always does. To what extent that turns out to be a cogent case will be seen no doubt in the debate which follows. He asked for fundamentals. Perhaps I may ask him to address this one: is it not the case that the Labour Party acknowledged before the general election that there would be a sharp shortfall in the basic funds provided to universities? If not by these means, by what means would the Labour Party fill this gap?

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, it was always a likelihood that there would be some increases in fees. But increases on these kinds of scales were never contemplated.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Triesman]

A question has been asked and it is right to hear the whole of the answer. It was never contemplated at these kinds of levels. In general, it has been felt that, like all other countries which make a significant and major contribution to the education of their university undergraduates, that responsibility should continue to fall to the state because universities are emanations of the state and not supermarkets.

Mr Vince Cable in another place said that he was proud of the legislation. I think he said that a couple of days after he said that he might abstain on it, and then decided that he would vote for it. I do not know what constitutes pride in a piece of education legislation. I am sure that the 1944 Act must have been thought by those who introduced it—Lord Butler certainly—to be legislation to be proud of. The Education Reform Act 1988 steered through by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, would have been legislation of such sweeping importance that people would have been proud of it. But I wonder whether history will look on a sequence of tripling fees, cutting the EMA, and stopping funding for the arts, culture, studies of society and many things which we think are fundamental to the quality of our life in this country as being the great reforming moments of an education process of which anyone should be proud.

The noble Lord’s leader described those who oppose or, in his view, do not understand the proposals of the Government as dreamers. I do not think that people out there should be insulted in that way. Dreamers often are not people with their heads in the clouds; they are people who have an aspiration. They want opportunities in higher education and they want to be included, not excluded. I hope that the House will support the amendments, most of all because I believe that the House will want to demand the right to decide the policy by the means cherished in Parliaments over the decades, and then decide how to implement the policy, and not do it by a blind guess.

[Lord Browne of Madingley]

My Lords, a little over two months ago, I published a report outlining a sustainable way forward for higher education funding. Our conclusions are now generally well known, and I have expounded upon them in detail in your Lordships’ House on a previous occasion. Today, I will speak as directly as I can on the narrower issue of raising tuition charges, but I do not wish to mislead your Lordships that the argument rests there. The Government have accepted many of our proposals and have made a strong argument for tackling tuition charges first to ensure certainty for students and universities. Let me be clear that, although the Government’s proposals for higher charges deviate in some important ways from our own, I will support the government Motion today.

Under our system, we recommended removing the fee cap and introducing a levy mechanism that would kick in at £6,000 to ensure that institutions shared the cost of supporting their students; the Government’s proposals are for two caps—a basic cap of £6,000 and a higher cap of £9,000 for institutions that agree to tougher standards on access and widening participation. While I remain a supporter of our proposals, the Government’s plan replicates the benefits of our approach in some important ways by allowing institutions to gain increased access to private sources of finance at a time of necessary fiscal austerity, by enforcing different behaviour for institutions charging higher fees and by allowing the Treasury to budget accurately for the cost of student loans. Those are powerful arguments in favour of passing today’s Motion.

Higher charges are just one part of the proposed system, as the overarching philosophy of our report was guided by three distinct but related principles: quality, participation and sustainability. I want to outline very briefly how tuition charges fit into our approach to those three important principles. On quality, we recommended lifting the cap not only on tuition charges but on the number of students admitted to individual courses. That is a critical element of our reform package. We cannot expect institutions to change unless we first allow them to change. The panel’s view was that students, as the people who experience higher education, are best equipped to judge its quality. Allowing institutions to grow, expand and adapt according to student needs will be critical to ensuring that our universities remain the best in the world.

On participation, the panel was keen to ensure that no student felt compelled to avoid higher education for financial reasons. We should begin by drawing a distinction between tuition charges, which are paid back after graduation, and living costs, which must be paid during study. The evidence that we received was very clear that, for poorer students, having adequate cash in hand for living costs makes a big difference to whether they feel able to participate in higher education. However, on tuition charges, the panel received no evidence that higher fees have so far had an impact on participation. Most likely that is because education remains free at the point of access. We determined to maintain that important principle. That is why we recommended that all students continue to receive generous loans to cover their tuition costs. That is also why we recommended that loans be extended for the first time to the 40 per cent of students who choose to study part-time. As for the repayment of loans, we wanted to make the system much more progressive than it is at present. By increasing the graduate repayment threshold to £21,000, and raising it annually in line with earnings, that is exactly what will be achieved.

Turning to the final principle of sustainability, we wanted to create a system that could evolve organically rather than by painful contractions every five years or so. Our system—I stress again that it is a system—would achieve that by putting students very firmly in control of shaping the university landscape. Their choices would become the key variables to which everything else would respond. However, for that to work, the concept of student choice must be supported by the practical measures that bring it to life. School pupils must receive adequate information, advice and guidance from the age of 13 to ensure that they fully comprehend their choices. We recommended that money be set aside to create a professional career service for exactly that purpose. We recommended that all universities develop student charters to spell out what students will receive in return for their investment. We also recommended that a new, independent regulator be created to target funding on expensive subjects and to ensure that students can continue their studies in the rare event of institutional failure.

I hope that it is clear that what we have presented is not just a series of recommendations but a systematic approach to reform—a system in which the pieces fit together for a reason. Today we are debating the question of tuition charges, but soon we will be back to discuss the further elements of reform. I believe that these reforms are essential for this nation to maintain its hard won pre-eminence in higher education, and I therefore strongly support this step.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

We have always accepted that this House has a right, if it feels appropriate, to vote down orders. However, this House should consider that very carefully before doing so. That is why I am warning the House that it ought to remember that these two amendments are fatal. For that reason, I recommend that the House rejects them.

[Lord Triesman]

I shall be brief. If I made points at length before, I apologise but I thought them important. I certainly do not apologise for the links that I have had with former Ministers responsible for education. That was always part of the consultative process. In those days I always thought that they were welcome, as I welcomed the opportunity as well. As a consequence they will make no difference at all to my Christmas card list. In those conversations we always agreed that one of the most cherished things about universities was their autonomy. It is certainly true that because some of the money that goes to universities flows through the Exchequer it was always the case that they were emanations in that sense, unless you can move it off the books, which is the cunning mechanism that is being described this time.

Of course they are fully and proudly autonomous organisations. Has there been change and reassessment on this side of the House? I hope so. There were always reasons for thinking about whether the proposals that we made were the right ones, and if you lose an election—and we did—it is essential that you think again about what you proposed, to consider whether it was most appropriate. I have no doubt that that has been the case for every party that has lost elections, including the previous one—including the Liberal Democrats, who lost that one as well.

I want to make only one or two specific comments. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate, because it has been illuminating for me. I promise you, I could not do justice to what has been said; I would speak for too long and that would probably meet with your disapproval.

First, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that I am not chiding anyone about using the right. It was plain that the right to vote or speak against such a proposal was put into primary legislation for good reason. That is not chiding: I welcome it, I applaud it, and those who pushed it were right to push it.

Secondly, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, that I read documents and understand that students will not be repaying while they are at university. I hope that everyone in the House will do each other the credit of believing that they have read and understood the fundamental documents, without patronising one another.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I should declare an interest as chancellor of the University of Essex, of which the noble Lord is a distinguished graduate. He says that he has read all the relevant documents. Has he read the document issued yesterday by Universities UK, which is the umbrella body for all the universities in the United Kingdom? It states that, the cuts having been decided on,

“we recognise that the government's proposals are the best option in the current circumstances, and in many respects are more progressive than the current arrangements … Universities UK urges the House of Lords to support the raising of the tuition fee cap”.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, knows perfectly well that I have read it. Not only have I read it but I understand what motivates it. If the ship is going down, you get in the lifeboat. That is a simple matter. You do not quarrel about the painted colour of the lifeboat; you get in the lifeboat.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords—

[Lord Triesman]

I wanted to complete my point about the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown. It is simply this. There is no question in my mind, and it is not a Dickensian point, that people who are in the lowest-income families do not set off to attract massive debt. There is a huge dissuasion in that. Anyone who has come up through one of those families or one of those areas will know it.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I completely share the noble Lord’s view about families with the poorest incomes, but why is it that his party—and, indeed, many of the demonstrators—consistently override the fact that the offer being made by the coalition would help those in the least well-off families by increasing the level at which they repay, by lengthening the period over which they repay and by recognising that they, including part-timers, should pay nothing up front? It is time that we had candour on both sides of this argument, not just on one.

[Lord Triesman]

I can only say to the noble Baroness, for whom I have genuinely huge respect, that the reality in those families is that they have to have confidence to believe that university is for them, despite the fact that there has often never been a history in those families of going to university. They have to believe that it will work for them and that they will not, through the rest of their lives, regret having made that change.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords—

[Lord Triesman]

I think that we are coming towards the end, and I promised that I will be brief, so let me finish.

I ask the House: please study the facts, establish the evidence and take your decisions based on the knowledge that we have, not on hopeful guesses about what may take place. If you do not think that the evidence is there, set in motion a means of achieving that evidence, so that decisions can be taken on the evidence.

Many in this House with great distinction have argued over the years that we should always go for pre-legislative scrutiny and that we should spend the time to make sure that we knew what we were doing. Two and three-quarter hours is a fair time, but it is not the scrutiny that should change the university system of the United Kingdom for decades to come, without the knowledge that is essential to take that decision.

I have argued that I believe that it will be fundamentally damaging; I know that others will argue—on the supply and the demand side, incidentally—that that is not the case. That debate cannot be held until the White Paper promised by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the other bits of this picture are in front of the House, so that the entire picture can be studied.

That is my final point to the House. It is about the dignity and the way in which the House deals with itself. Fundamental change—game-changing change in legislation—to be followed by the White Paper that establishes the basic arguments? That cannot conceivably be the way for a Parliament to proceed. I wish to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Triesman]

Leave out from “that” to the end and insert: “this House regrets that the Government has failed to consult adequately with parents, students, higher education bodies, employers and local authorities on raising student tuition fees and to convince many people of the fairness and sustainability of its proposals for funding higher education; urges the Government to undertake more public consultation on the issue, including consultation with future graduates and their families who did not contribute to the consultation over the Browne review; further considers that there should be an independent impact assessment on (a) the financial consequences of the proposed fees on students from both lower and middle income families, (b) the financial consequences of the proposed fees on women, including a full assessment of the impact of the fees on equalities and fairness, and further calls on Her Majesty’s Government to commission new research to analyse the probable impact on demand for university courses of fees being increased to the range of £6,000 to £9,000 per annum from students from lower and middle income families and women; and further considers that, prior to contemplating any increase to the higher amount specified in section 24 of the Education Act 2004, the Government should publish a White Paper on reform of higher education funding, allowing for consultation and for consideration of alternative proposals”.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I think that we on this side, too, have spoken as much as we need to on the £9,000 increase. I beg to move.