Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

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

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a visiting professor of King’s College London, a chair of the advisory board of Times Higher Education, advice to 2U and an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. The exceptional number of Members of your Lordships’ House intending to speak in this debate is evidence of the significance of the Bill and the care with which it will be scrutinised in this Chamber. Today’s Second Reading debate is an opportunity to look at the Bill as a whole, and I welcome it. Indeed, one of my regrets is that we did not legislate in the last coalition Government as we intended to do, and I am pleased that the Government are now grasping that nettle.

The key feature of the Bill is a shift to an open and transparent regulatory model for higher education. That seems the logical consequence of a process that started under the Blair Government and carried on under the coalition of rebalancing the funding of our universities away from HEFCE grants to fees and loans. HEFCE was in practice the regulator, using the power of the purse to exercise its regulatory authority. It is right, now that universities are much less dependent on HEFCE grants, to have an explicit and transparent regulatory function instead, and one responsibility of the regulator must certainly be to continue to promote the opening up of the sector to a wider range of providers. So I welcome this new regulatory regime, which builds on a series of reports, many from independent bodies calling for such a structure.

The Bill’s second key feature is the creation of UKRI. I was initially sceptical about this proposal, because the old structure of research councils worked well. Indeed, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, who designed much of that structure. I was not convinced by the argument that Governments could not change the balance of funding between different research councils, as clearly Ministers did have that power and could draw on expert advice. But two very significant events have swung the argument.

First, there is Brexit, which does not weaken the argument for change—it means that change is more necessary. There are several options, which we have considered in your Lordships’ House, about how the United Kingdom could remain more closely involved with European research and science funding in future, perhaps by making a direct contribution to Horizon 2020 and its successors, perhaps by setting up some arrangement to shadow EU funding decisions, or perhaps by creating a new intergovernmental research council to which we could contribute. We do not know which of these models may be possible, but I am convinced that they would all be much easier to negotiate and operate if we had a UKRI at our disposal. The second event is the exceptionally good financial settlement for science and research in the Autumn Statement. I am persuaded by the argument that that settlement was possible only because of the Treasury’s confidence in the proposed new structure. That makes an important difference—and I believe that it is right to establish UKRI.

Next, of course, the Bill will be carefully scrutinised in Committee. There will be many legitimate concerns, some of which have already been expressed this afternoon. I hope and believe that Ministers will address those concerns. Perhaps the biggest is about the autonomy of our universities. Some of the earlier government documents could have been read by some as implying that universities were a kind of poorly performing part of the public sector that needed a bit of a doing over. That is, of course, not the right approach—I do not believe that it is how Ministers see it—and the autonomy of universities is not a gift from government. It is a right that they enjoy as independent bodies. I do not believe that it is the Government’s intention to draw universities into their ambit, and I hope that the Bill can be amended further to make that clear.

I welcome the overall thrust of the legislation and look forward to opportunities for careful scrutiny in future.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

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

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, it is perhaps not surprising that those of us who are academics are concerned about definitions because one of the things we always teach our students is to define their terms. Hence, I support this amendment which seeks to define what we are talking about. At the same time, we should recognise that over the centuries universities have changed. In England, between the 12th and the 19th centuries, there were just two universities—Oxford and Cambridge—which served largely as institutions for educating people for careers in the Church or in canon law. The modern university as we understand it, an institution which combines research and teaching, was essentially invented in Germany by Alexander von Humboldt in 1810, when he founded the University of Berlin. However, in spite of the changing details of what universities do, they have certain enduring qualities and properties that we should cherish and ensure are retained during the passage of the Bill.

I offer two quotes. We have already heard one excellent quote from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. One of my quotes is from the then Poet Laureate, John Masefield, when he was offered an honorary degree by the University of Sheffield in 1946. He said, among other things about a university:

“It is a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see; where seekers and learners alike, banded together in the search for knowledge, will honour thought in all its finer ways, will welcome thinkers in distress or in exile, will uphold ever the dignity of thought and learning, and will exact standards in these things”.

That is the spirit in which, during the passage of the Bill, we should consider what a university is. My second quote reverts to perhaps the most famous treatise on universities, written by John Newman in the middle of the 19th century. I will not attempt to read the whole book to your Lordships, but just one brief quote. He says that,

“a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life”.

These are high-flown ambitions for universities, but ones that we should uphold today, not resorting to a purely instrumental view of universities that are there for economic benefit and training in technical skills.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the Bill as a visiting professor at King’s College London, chairman of the advisory board of Times Higher Education and adviser to 2U.

We heard at Second Reading, and have already heard this afternoon, the deep concern in the House about the autonomy of our universities. I am sure that in the process of our discussions we will want to find ways of enhancing the protection of the autonomy of our universities. However, this clause is not the right way to set about it. As we have heard, this clause is the first attempt ever in British primary legislation to define what a university is. It is an ambitious project, and if I were to set up a committee to define a university, I could think of none more distinguished than the Committee in this House this afternoon. It has, however, the paradoxical effect that the first clause we are debating is a set of obligations on universities; it is formulated as a series of “musts” that universities have to do. It reflects a view of the university that is rather narrow and traditional. Of course, it is absolutely right that academic freedom is there, but it also says, for example:

“UK universities must provide an extensive range of high quality academic subjects”.

When I was Minister, I was proud to have given university status to institutions that focused on particular subjects—the Royal Agricultural College, for example, which is now a university. Are we really going to put into law a requirement that there must be an extensive range of subjects before an institution can be a university? That sets back a set of reforms not only from my time as a Minister; it goes right back to the Labour Government of 2004.

There is a long list of ways in which universities,

“must make a contribution to society”.

I do not know quite what this “must” is, but it says that they have to contribute “locally, nationally and internationally”. Does that mean that if a relationship with a local authority leader in the area breaks down, you can turn up and tell the university that it is in breach of its obligations to contribute locally? My personal view is that we should be protecting universities by putting obligations on Governments and regulators to respect their autonomy, not trying to define universities and put obligations on them.

[Baroness Bakewell (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of Birkbeck. I support the amendment for the following reasons.

It has taken decades if not centuries to build up the network and infrastructure of UK universities, and it would be folly to damage their standing and reputation in the world as it stands today. That is not to deny that the sector needs updating and amending. But from the start we must assert, as this amendment does, the age-old academic values that are at the centre of what universities stand for. Those are: reliance on reason, argument and evidence; critical and creative thinking uninhibited by limits on free speech; rigorous analysis and use of data; and precise and meaningful communication between academics and pupils. I hope that we will seek to embrace those values as we scrutinise the Bill, and I invite the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, to endorse those values.

Since the abolition of the block grant and the arrival of student fees, other concerns have come to the fore in the sector: universities have increased resources to extend their marketing, and management values have come to matter. Universities have become businesses—there is nothing wrong with that—and competitive listing has been one of their recruitment tools. Now, we are told, new providers will, by increasing competition, drive up standards. However, there is no evidence that that will necessarily follow. Indeed, experience elsewhere—in the energy market, for example—indicates that this may not be so at all. For-profit organisations seek first to please shareholders before they please consumers—which is what we are now told we should call students.

Therefore, from the start and throughout the consideration of the Bill we must reassert and defend the prime values of our university sector and resist the Government’s plans to seek central control via their own appointed, unhappily named, Office for Students.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment begins very well:

“UK universities are autonomous institutions”,

but the rest of the subsection abolishes that effect entirely. I am really worried about the ability in the Bill of a quango to abolish Oxford, to put it in cartoon terms. This proposed subsection gives anybody the right to abolish Oxford. The moment that anybody can argue that Oxford has not upheld the principles of academic freedom, and if that is argued in court and it goes against Oxford, it is no longer a university. That is an astonishing level of control. You really do not need the rest of the Bill. There would be complete government control over all universities just by having this amendment as the Bill. There is so much in here that allows universities to be controlled because it is mostly about telling universities what they have to do.

If we are going to have a clause such as this—and I really support the idea of it—let us have something that gives universities rights, declares that they are autonomous, and other things that we can think of that work, but let us not keep all these unstructured obligations on them, which can go only in entirely the opposite direction from that which is intended by the proposers.

[Lord Willetts]

My noble friend is making a really important point, which I strongly agree with. Will he accept that when we turn later to, for example, Amendment 65 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, we then have an approach which might be better at achieving this objective than the approach we are debating now?

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 14 and 16. I thank the Minister for the amendments tabled in his name. I have a couple of questions on them, but I reiterate the importance of the role of the Director for Fair Access and Participation. I think we can say that all parties and the Cross Benches in this Committee agree that widening access is a goal that we all want. In coalition we certainly pushed that quite heavily and there was some limited success—the bursaries, scholarships and supports for students from low socioeconomic background —which sadly now looks as if it is going downhill again. However, the figures on improving access for those least likely to apply to Oxbridge and to the Russell group universities had not significantly improved, and it must remain a priority for the Government and for the Office for Students to make sure that this changes as we move into the next phase of the Bill.

That is why when the White Paper came out I was really rather encouraged by the tone and the language, which talked about,

“an OfS executive board member with responsibility for fair access, the Director for Fair Access and Participation, whose role will be enshrined in law”.

It said that this person would take on responsibility and that it would be,

“a continuation of the current approach”.

There was real concern when the Bill was published to see that this role had been significantly downgraded. I am grateful that the omission has been rectified, but I just want to rehearse the reasons why it is so important that the Director for Fair Access and Participation is a senior role enshrined in law. This person must have the power to negotiate with institutions, which would undoubtedly be compromised if he or she could not approve or refuse access and participation plans. The person recruited needs to be someone with a high profile in the sector, who will have senior-level respect within our institutions. I know from working at a college for mature students—the previous debate was about distance learning, mature access and part-time—that all the institutions need to take this on board. It should not be the specific responsibility of one or two parts of the sector. The only way that the Director for Fair Access and Participation will be taken seriously is if he or she has credibility within the sector. That comes back, absolutely clearly, to the director having the power to approve or refuse access and participation plans. That is why our amendments refer to the director being “responsible”, echoing the language of the White Paper.

My questions for the Minister are as follows. What is the difference between being responsible for and the words used in the government amendments, which talk about “overseeing the performance”? For me, there is a distinction and I wish to understand exactly why that is there. In Amendment 27, it seems sensible that any OfS annual report should report on,

“the period or periods in that year during which those functions were not delegated to the Director, and … the reasons why they were not so delegated”,

but what might those reasons be? Clearly it could be if the director were away, off on sick leave or other things, but I want to be absolutely clear that this is not a backdoor power-snatching route by the Secretary of State or the director of the OfS.

With those details satisfied, I will stop carping on about the distinction between the two but we must make it clear that the role of the Office for Students is as important in widening participation because it remains a consistent priority. Anything less than that will tell the sector that access and participation is no longer a priority of the Government.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly comment on the very interesting interventions we have already had, which reflect the shared belief across all sides of the House in the importance of access and participation. Since the original Blair Government fees and loan system and the increases that we introduced, despite all the fears, we have seen a doubling of the proportion of people from the poorest backgrounds going to university, but there is still a lot more to do.

I did not completely agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made that this was about restoring the status quo as it has so far existed. I will try to explain why I do not think that that is quite the case. There have been proposals to get rid of OFFA and make it part of HEFCE. The report of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, in 2010 envisaged something rather like that. I was one of the many who did not want to see OFFA, with its distinct responsibilities, disappear into some wider body. However, there is a dilemma here and it is made more acute by the wider responsibilities that go with access and participation.

One thing that can easily confuse us is that “participation” is now being used in this Bill in a rather different sense from how it has been traditionally used, where “access” meant getting through to the most prestigious universities and “participation” meant getting through to higher education. My understanding is that in this Bill “participation” is used in the rather different sense of continuing engagement with the student experience so that, through their years at university, students from more disadvantaged backgrounds continue to get help. I know from my conversations with the excellent Les Ebdon that one of his frustrations was that his remit on access agreements was quite narrowly defined, and there were some initiatives that might have been very worth while but it was not totally clear that he could press for them.

I am not at all clear how this example would apply in the current legislation but if there is an internship programme—a very good way of getting into some job or profession—which requires that you live in London during the summer holidays at the end of your second year, is it legitimate to help meet the housing costs of a low-income student so that they can participate in that internship programme? Is that part of an access agreement or is it going beyond getting into university and something different? My understanding of this new role of access and participation is that it is an attempt to broaden responsibilities so that as well as focusing on getting into university, it is about the nature of the support that disadvantaged students get during their three years, or whatever, at university.

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[Baroness Brinton]

Might I use an example to try to answer the question that the noble Lord raised? I have amendments later on in the Bill about the support for students with disabilities; they have issues about both access and participation. I would welcome a director who had responsibility for overseeing support for a specific group who have problems with participation, whether that is financial support or extra support because they have a disability and might need support in different ways, rather than those students being subsumed into a general participation pot.

[Lord Willetts]

It is certainly the case that mainstreaming can be a euphemism for a solitary and nasty death, delivered invisibly. A lot of programmes get mainstreamed and it is a euphemism for their disappearance. My view is that when the Office for Students has the kind of ambitious responsibilities for the student experience envisaged in the Bill, it is reasonable to expect participation—in the sense that it is used in these clauses —to be a responsibility for the OfS as a whole. I would argue that that is a better way of ensuring that the noble Baroness’s concerns are met than narrowing it down to one specific function within one part of OfS.

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, I am afraid that my comments on fair access reflect my general worries about the Bill, which in some respects seems like a dinosaur that has lumbered into the room. It seems to have no relationship structured into it in relation to the tremendous changes that we face in this disruptive period, which are bound to invade education and will crucially affect social mobility.

Fair participation is about social mobility. If the Committee will forgive me being a bit didactic, almost all mobility in the 20th century was what sociologists call absolute mobility. It was made possible by the decline of manual work and the creation of white-collar and professional jobs. As my noble friend Lord Winston mentioned, we have to take really seriously the possibility that this process will actually go into reverse for the next generation, and potentially in a relatively short time, as supercomputers, robotics and other aspects of the transformation of labour markets invade professions. What happened to manual work in a previous generation is almost certain to happen to large segments of professional work over the next 15 to 20 years.

This means that the so-called graduate premium, on the basis of which younger people are encouraged to amass huge levels of debt, reflects the market conditions of two or three decades ago. Somebody must think about the crunches ahead in the relationship between education, social mobility and massive technological innovation. Will that be one of those two offices, and how will it set about it? Why is there not more emphasis on planning in relation to the trends and transformations that we as an economy and a society face?

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[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I want very briefly to endorse the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, on the role of access and engagement in postgraduate education and training, particularly in relation to taught and vocational master’s degrees, where there is virtually no funding from the Government any more and people have to rely on their own resources. However, if students from less well-off backgrounds are to benefit from their university education, for many career paths they will need to undertake a higher degree, particularly taught master’s degrees. I hope that we will hear something more about that from the Minister.

[Lord Willetts]

Before the noble Lord sits down, of course, he and other Cross-Benchers are absolutely right about the importance of access to postgraduate education. I am sure he would not want to miss the opportunity, therefore, to welcome the extension of student loans to master’s students, so that they will be funded on a greater scale than has ever been possible before.

[Lord Krebs]

I certainly welcome that, but it still leaves open the question of the accumulated debt.

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[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

They were the Minister’s words, not mine, but I hear what he says. I hope that he is taking account, rather than just listening, as that would give us a more satisfactory sense of what we are doing.

Secondly, I was struck by the thinking behind the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and I will read Hansard very carefully. He is very wise and has thought about this issue. I came to it in a rather simplistic way, reading access and participation as effectively one word—that the participation was the access having been granted, which I think was the sense understood by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. However, in his explanation, whether wittingly or unwittingly—I am sure it was wittingly; I would never assume that he would act in any other way—he led a slightly different line of thought, which I think we may want to come back to at a later stage. Is this office about access and participation in the combined sense—following up those who have been given specific access because of a disability or a disadvantage, and making sure that they have the chance to benefit—or is it about the wider question of participation, which would be a completely different sense? I shall be happy if the noble Lord can help us on that point.

[Lord Willetts]

It is not simply about the participation of people who come from a disadvantaged background and benefit directly from an access agreement; getting into university is only the start of the journey. It is fair to say that Les Ebdon himself has sometimes felt constrained by operating within a framework which assumes that his job is to get the students in. Having got them in, we all know that there is another set of challenges, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said. My understanding is that the word “participation” is intended to give a wider set of responsibilities also covering the process of whomever it may be through university.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I thank the noble Lord. That is very helpful and extremely interesting if we are talking about giving somebody within the structure of the OfS the capacity to engender among people a much better sense of engagement with an institution once admitted, whatever their background—that is the point. The noble Lord knows what I am going to say next. Those are the ends of the policy, but where are the means by which it is going to happen? I am sure that it would involve cost because we are looking for a change from where we are, and there may be additional responsibilities. I do not see those mentioned anywhere in the Bill. We may want to come back to this point but I agree with the noble Lord that it changes the whole nature of what we are talking about, and we should reflect on that. In the interim, I beg leave to withdraw.

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[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I very much agree with the proposition behind the amendments—the importance of collaboration and co-operation between the two new bodies being created. With the disappearance of HEFCE and the creation of these two new bodies, we have to agree the divorce settlement. This is not as painful as Brexit, but we have to work out how these bodies that are now separating will work together. I support the idea of some kind of duty on them to collaborate. The idea of an annual report is also a very good one and I hope that the Government will look sympathetically at it.

However, I will add one further point, taking a step back. Because one can detect across the House a certain degree of scepticism or concern about the way the two bodies may function, we are piling on them duties, committees and specifications about what they should do. When I look at the idea in Amendment 22 that we would require a committee and an annual report, which I have some sympathy with—the amendment lists 10 items that the annual report would include—and then look ahead to some of the other amendments we will discuss in the course of today and later in our consideration of the Bill, I think that we need to give some capacity for the people who will run the OfS and UKRI to operate as grown-ups with a degree of discretion—which, incidentally, is how HEFCE functions. HEFCE operates with a minimum of specification in legislation about how it should be structured, what its committees should be and what its duties are to report.

When any one individual proposal seems attractive, when we look at them all in aggregate and ask how an organisation is really supposed to function, apart from with a lawyer endlessly advising on all the legal obligations we would add, we have to be careful. That is why I would prefer a duty to collaborate. We may be getting a bit carried away by specifying committees and the exact subjects each individual committee would discuss.

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow what my noble friend Lord Willetts just said—but first perhaps I should say that I am afraid I was unable to participate at Second Reading because I was on parliamentary duties abroad. In Monday’s debates I did not have the temerity to participate among the serried ranks of vice-chancellors and other highly important academics. I felt that it was far beyond my pay grade. I have two degrees, one from Durham—I never attended any university function in the city of Durham—and one from the University of Newcastle, for which I had to do no work whatever. I am a former member of the court of the University of Lancaster, and for many years I have been a member of the court of the University of York.

The debate has made me look at Clause 106, which deals with co-operation and information sharing between the OfS and UKRI. The first two subsections of Clause 106 say:

“The OfS and UKRI may cooperate with one another in exercising any of their functions”,

and that the two bodies must,

“if required … by the Secretary of State, cooperate with one another in exercising any of their functions”.

My noble friend Lord Willetts rather questioned whether we need to pile obligations that may not be necessary on these organisations.

I hope that the Minister will tell us the Government’s view, because I hesitate as to whether we need to insist that there be an annual report with all these specific things. I would have thought that the bodies were likely to do that anyway and that the Secretary of State, if he found it necessary, would insist that they produce such a report. He would have the right, if he thought it necessary, to insist on the topics that should be covered in that report.

Over many years working in this building, I have always had a rather dismal view of imposing on people duties that are not really necessary. I remain to be convinced that what is proposed is necessary and await what the Minister says in reply.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to amendments in this group as set out by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. I also support Amendment 57, as introduced by my noble friend Lord Addington. They relate to the general duties of the Office for Students and reflect some of the concerns over the unprecedented powers of this new body. We have already addressed the issues in Amendment 41 to do with part-time study and lifelong learning.

Amendment 42 comes from MillionPlus, which is the Association for Modern Universities and has as much interest as anybody in maintaining confidence in the sector, which they have all joined relatively recently, and promoting the reputation which has been hard earned and needs to be protected.

Of the other amendments in the group, Amendment 43 is on the provision of higher education which meets the vocational and professional needs of the students. In the 20 years that I worked for City & Guilds, my work involved linking in with universities, professional bodies and the higher reaches on trying to gain transferability and acceptance for different types of awards. Anything that can be done to try to promote that transferability between types of qualification has to be commended—particularly, I suppose, in view of the degree apprenticeships coming up. Again, recognition of vocational achievement within an academic context there would surely be for the good.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has introduced amendments on supporting and working with student representatives. As we have addressed previously, if the Office for Students is to live up to its name it would be quite useful if students had something to do with it. Amendment 67 suggests that they could even have current experience of being a student.

The amendments on the financial health and viability of the sector are all self-explanatory and seem good. My last comment is on the right reverend Prelate’s amendment. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, about the importance of diversity and how having providers with a denominational characteristic has to be a good part of the mix that we are trying to promote in higher education.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to comment on some of the interventions we have heard expressing concerns about alternative providers. Sometimes, it has been an unhappy story and alternative providers have not delivered what they were supposed to but some of the criticisms are unfair, for two reasons.

First, we should remember that these organisations have no access to research funding or funding for higher cost subjects, so there is a large range of university activities for which they have no access to public funding to engage in. In fact I know that for some of them, their grievance is that they would rather like to have access to some of these strands of funding so that they could provide a greater range of subjects.

Secondly, it is not entirely true to say that they are all of a sort. In my experience, they are quite astute at identifying where there are gaps in provision. For example, modern music is not a subject which is particularly accessible and well taught in higher education institutions. If you want some qualifications of higher education standard for modern music, you by and large go to an alternative provider. Many of them have focused on vocational courses. There is increasing interest in alternative models for delivering medical education. I am being wary as I see the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is poised but there is beginning to be debate about whether medical education could do with some innovation, and some new providers would like to come in.

The argument on this was very well set out at the time of Robbins. There was a lively debate then about new ways of delivering higher education, and the conclusion of some of the leading universities at the time and of the UGC was that the best way to get innovation in higher education was to allow in new institutions to deliver it, as that was a better way of achieving it than expecting the existing ones to do things differently. The new Robbins universities were of course set up without any prior track record. They got university title straightaway and came in with great ambitions for doing things differently.

As we go through these clauses there are lots of genuine concerns, which we need to focus on, about the weight given to competition and collaboration. I may come to those when we debate those clauses, but we should just remember that the story of the advance of British higher education is successive waves of new entrants coming in and doing things differently. That is why we have the diversity that we currently celebrate, and we should, as a minimum, expect it to be as possible in the future for new entrants to come in as it was at the time of Robbins and of the great Victorian reforms.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am glad I am following rather than preceding the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, because the point I wanted to make was about geographical diversity. Mindful of the injunction he gave earlier on that we do not want to load still more duties and responsibilities on the Office for Students, I am not suggesting that there should be an amendment on this, but it is very important that the OfS, and indeed public policymakers at large, have regard to the importance of fostering and improving the geographical diversity of our higher education institutions. One of the things that is surely clearest to those of us who have been engaged in the big and increasingly challenging debate on regional regeneration is the importance of higher education institutions in the regions serving a steadily higher proportion of our larger communities across the country.

What is interesting about Robbins is that of the big developments in the 1960s, although it is true that there was some significant innovation in terms of the type of higher education being introduced, by far the biggest and best example was not in fact a Robbins institution but the Open University, which was quite strongly opposed by some of the established institutions at the time. It was only—how can I put it?—a significant exertion of prime ministerial power on the part of Harold Wilson, along with Jennie Lee, that got the Open University going.

[Lord Willetts]

I completely accept the heroic success of the Open University. But is the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, saying that he very much welcomes the fact that it got university title straightaway?

[Lord Adonis]

The OU was a wise and sensible innovation, although there is a wider issue here of alternative providers and profit against trustee status, which I will come back to. The 1960s universities were of course set up on the trustee model. The most significant change that Robbins made was not innovation in terms of types of university, but in extending university institutions to large parts of the country where they either had not existed at all before or could offer only other people’s degrees. The University of London was basically the institution which enabled large parts of the country to have any higher education system at all in the past.

Three years ago, on behalf of the North East local enterprise partnership, I was asked to lead a review of policies to promote economic regeneration in the north-east. One of the things that became clearest to me in our work was that the single most important class of public institutions, in terms of fostering regeneration and innovation in the north-east, were the five universities in the region. Without them, what was an exceptionally challenging area for growth, innovation, the location of businesses and creating higher education opportunities would be in a much worse condition. Underlying this, a particular issue which we face as I see it in the higher education sector is the propensity of students, particularly those from less-advantaged backgrounds, to study at local universities rather than to aspire to go to national universities. If the local universities are not there or do not themselves offer the quality—there will often not be a choice there because of the nature of their communities —then there are no higher education opportunities at all in those communities. When it comes to objectives for public policy for the period ahead, maintaining and enhancing the geographical diversity of high-quality institutions is hugely important.

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[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I would like to follow on from that speech by asking the Minister, who has been so helpful this evening, to clarify how collaboration might work. I listened attentively to what he said in his intervention on the previous group of amendments and he seemed to make the argument that this overarching aim of serving the interests of students would encompass both competition and collaboration. It would be helpful to me and perhaps to other Members of the Committee to have that explained.

We have had examples from academics of what might happen in the world of universities. Let me give an example from the area of policy, which is that sometimes a university may have got into significant financial difficulties. What HEFCE did was essentially to broker a merger of universities. Sometimes that involved sending a rather weak swimmer to rescue a drowning man and created another set of problems, but nevertheless what HEFCE can do when an institution gets into difficulties is promote mergers.

It is an unhappy parallel and I am reluctant to raise it, but we have seen examples in health legislation of bringing in a duty to promote collaboration. Reportedly, that subsequently led to occasions when it was rational for two underfunded and financially exposed hospitals to come together, but that was not possible because there was a competition requirement on Monitor with no scope for promoting collaboration. So it would be helpful if we could hear from the Government that they do indeed understand these types of functions and that there could be circumstances where it remains desirable, and—here I follow on from what was said by my noble friend Lord Jopling—whether the way to tackle it is through a long list of duties or a simpler overarching statement. It would be helpful to understand the logic.

What is partly going on here, if I may say in my final observation, is that we are dealing with a problem of trust. Indeed, we may have someone who is an expert on trust here in the Chamber with us. The odd feature is that HEFCE had an extraordinarily wide range of powers, which it operated with extraordinarily high levels of discretion and a minimal legal framework. It got away with that because, by and large, people understood and trusted HEFCE. The more we can think of this body as a successor to HEFCE in a different financial environment—it does not have grant-giving powers as its ultimate source of responsibility, so it needs a legal power as a regulator instead—the more we can think of it as the heir to HEFCE, apart of course from the research side, and exercising the range of functions that HEFCE had. At one moment, HEFCE was promoting cold spots and at another it was brokering mergers because, by and large, it was trusted by the sector to do that kind of thing. Some statement about the spirit of HEFCE living on, combined with a broader approach, might be a better way of tackling this than setting out a very long list of duties and obligations of which I continue to remain wary. There is no evidence that that promotes trust in any other area, and I have to say that the advice I was given by parliamentary draftsmen when I was a Minister was that they hated long lists of duties in undifferentiated lists. They never regarded that as a good way of defining a legal framework within which a body would operate.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I turn to the issue of geographic diversity. One of the prime areas where there has been collaboration is in creating campuses and a university presence in areas of the country where it otherwise would not have been either an economic or a prime mission of a university to seek to make such provision. The example that comes to mind from my time as a Minister, and where quite a lot of work was done by government bodies to foster collaboration, was in Medway. As I recall, that was a collaboration between the University of Greenwich, the University of Kent and, I think, another institution to enable higher education provision to be made in a very challenging and deprived area. A sole provider would not have been prepared to move in there. The same was true of the creation of higher education provision in Cornwall, which, as I recall, was a collaborative vision on a similar basis. Looking at the need to spread geographical provision more widely, fostering collaboration between institutions, and further education institutions where necessary, will be very important to making any provision at all.

Collaboration is not only between prestigious institutions, although I should add that in my experience the Government can foster collaboration of any kind where they are prepared to sign very large cheques, which has a large part to do with Crick. However, where we want to see more provision in areas of the country where it is not at the moment in the prime mission of any institution to provide it, collaboration between different types of institution may be a prime way to see that come about.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

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

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

I support the amendment. I think there are wider reasons for feeling that not everything can be well done by guidance. Among other things, guidance sits there in the cupboard, so to speak, and there is no reason for the Executive or Parliament to review it until somebody is tripped up in an unfortunate way.

Guidance seeks a sharper definition between what may and may not be done—between compliance and infraction—than is probably feasible. There is much to be said for a somewhat more formal procedure that will make it clear what has parliamentary backing, because it is a statutory instrument, and what does not. Excessive reliance on guidance would weaken the structure of the Bill and create a degree of persisting uncertainty. People are frequently being tripped up by guidance of which they have never heard which lives in an obscure place. That is unnecessary.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may briefly comment on these amendments by looking at them from the perspective of how the old system has functioned. We have been told about the powers of the OfS, and your Lordships are scrutinising those very carefully. I think that perhaps the powers of the old HEFCE have been understated. In reality, HEFCE was not only the funder but was using its funding power to be the regulator—a highly discretionary regulator that operated with very little transparency and few constraints.

HEFCE was the extremely successful buffer body between government and universities, and the Government communicated with HEFCE notably through the grant letter—and the grant letter, I suspect, is the origins of the guidance provision in front of us today. The grant letter is the way in which the Government have historically set out their policy, week by week, year by year, for universities, and so, for example, it has been historically possible for the Minister for Universities to go to the Chancellor and say, “High-cost subjects are not being sufficiently funded. We do not think that the extra costs of doing them are properly reflected in the higher cost bands. Will it be possible to have extra funding attached to that?”—and then in the grant letter to suggest to HEFCE, “In the light of the funding we have available, it would be excellent if HEFCE were able to identify and set aside more funding for high-cost subjects”. Indeed, I used to write such grant letters with my excellent former colleague Sir Vince Cable.

What is happening—this goes back to discussions we had last week—is that as we are now moving from that old discretionary high-trust system to a new rule-bound system with a regulatory function, quite understandably your Lordships, at each stage of the process, are trying to pin down what kind of decisions will be taken and how they will be taken. I think that a power to give guidance distinct from a power to give instructions, and a reasonable amount of flexibility for Ministers to use it so that they can communicate the same kind of messages that they used to in the old HEFCE letter, is in the interests of the sector as a whole.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the group contains several common-sense amendments that would strengthen the Bill and one of the amendments within this group seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State should have regard to any advice given to her or him by the Office for Students. The Government are placing a huge amount of faith and power in the Office for Students and it makes sense that the Secretary of State should not only give guidance to that body but should have regard to what the OfS says to her or him. Why would it not be sensible to do so?

It is not enough for the Minister to say, as he did several times in Committee, that he does not want to see too much detail on the face of the Bill. In effect, he is saying, “Trust me. There is no need for it. Everything will be fine”. With the greatest respect, even were we to accept that from such a find upstanding Member of your Lordships’ House as the noble Viscount the Minister, he cannot of course bind his successors, who, I suspect, would not be willing to be bound by him and his colleague Mr Johnson. Who knows what might or might not follow in the months and years after this Bill passes into statute? For that reason, it is helpful to have this sort of detail in the Bill. At the end of the day, it is only a question of having regard to what the OfS says, but it will have built up considerable experience and wisdom over time and the Secretary of State should surely benefit from that.

There are also amendments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Garden and Lady Wolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on the need to ensure that the Secretary of State does not take any action that would prohibit the Office for Students from funding a particular course of study. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, eloquently explained the reasons behind that and there was some discussion on this last week as well. I trust that the noble Viscount has taken note of the arguments advanced in support of those amendments.

The most important amendments in this group are Amendments 69 and 510, which seek to make the Secretary of State’s power to give guidance to the OfS exercisable by statutory instrument. Last month, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of your Lordships’ House reported on its consideration of the Bill. When commenting on Clause 2(2) which requires that the OfS,

“In performing its functions … have regard to guidance given to it by the Secretary of State”,


the committee said:

“There is no Parliamentary scrutiny of the guidance and there is no requirement for it to be published. The absence of any Parliamentary scrutiny is explained in the Department’s memorandum”,


but that,

“We are wholly unconvinced by the Department’s reasons”.


However, it did not stop there. In summation of its consideration of that part of the Bill, the committee concluded:

“The wide range of functions which are being conferred on the OfS will give it the ability to bring change to the whole of the higher education sector. We consider that the guidance issued by the Secretary of State under clause 2 will act as a significant control over how the OfS exercises its functions. Therefore, far from having no Parliamentary scrutiny, we recommend that guidance issued under clause 2 should be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny and that the affirmative procedure should apply”.


That does not leave much room for doubt, and I am not aware that the Government have yet responded to the committee’s report, but I hope that they will be able to take such trenchant criticism on board—or will this be yet another example of the Government saying in effect that, “We know best. We have a monopoly on wisdom and we intend to plough on regardless”? I certainly hope not. The Delegated Powers Committee is of course cross-party and in this case was actually chaired by a Conservative. If its role is to be treated with respect, its considered view should surely be weighed heavily by the noble Viscount and his colleagues.

Last week the Minister undertook to reflect on the amendments debated and it is to be hoped that, as regards Amendments 69 and 510, the issue really is rather a black-and-white one. I hope that he will be able to give a considered response to it when he rises to speak in a few moments.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, in deferring to the noble Baronesses on the Cross Benches, Lady Brown and Lady Wolf, I now have pleasure in supporting the amendments in this group to which I have added my name. They express concerns raised by Universities UK and GuildHE, two bodies with immense expertise in this sector and fully committed to its standards and reputation.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, has said, central to our concerns about the erosion of university autonomy is the need for the Government and the Bill to be clearer in their approach to standards. UUK and others have noted that the Bill unhelpfully elides quality and standards—we have had reference to this already in debate in this Chamber—but they are two separate concepts in higher education policy. While there is a legitimate role for the new Office for Students in assessing quality, standards are the preserve of independent academic institutions and should be free from political interference. The proposed changes to the Bill would therefore: separate quality and standards to enable different treatment in subsequent clauses; clarify the definition of standards to focus on threshold standards and a condition of registration focused on academic governance of standards; recognise that academic standards are sector-owned and ensure a sector-owned process for agreeing threshold standards; and remove or limit the reference to standards in relation to the teaching access framework, as it is inappropriate to attempt to rank standards.

Quality and standards are separate, distinct concepts in higher education. Amendments 63 and 129 to 131 would remove references to standards to make what was one potential condition of the OfS into two separate conditions for quality and standards. Amendment 131 would make robust academic governance a condition of registration with the OfS, which protects the principle that self-critical autonomous academic institutions are responsible for the maintenance of academic standards.

Amendments 167, 169 and 170 would ensure consistency of definition when it comes to quality and standards and, again, that governance of academic standards sits with the institution. Amendments 168, 180 and 184 seek to clarify that the proposed assessments of teaching quality established by these clauses is based on the quality of teaching in an institution and not on standards, while Amendments 214 and 215 would ensure the separation of quality and standards once again.

At various points the Bill brackets quality and standards together, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, has pointed out, when they are in fact related but distinct elements of quality assurance and assessment. Academic quality covers how an institution supports students to enable them to progress and achieve their award; academic standards are the student outcome standards that individual degree-awarding bodies set and maintain for the award of their own academic credit or qualifications. As drafted, the Bill risks the OfS being able in future to define and determine the standards applied, rather than ensuring that the standards set by autonomous universities are met.

During Committee in the Commons, the Minister gave some reassurance, saying:

“Let me be absolutely clear … this is not about undermining the prerogative of providers in determining standards. This is about ensuring that all providers in the system are meeting the threshold standards set out in the ‘Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications’, a document endorsed and agreed by the sector”.—[Official Report, Commons, Higher Education and Research Bill Committee, 15/9/16; col. 308.]


This was helpful but the lack of clarity in the Bill should be addressed. It is essential that student outcome standards remain the responsibility of autonomous institutional academic communities and continue to reflect the pedagogical diversity of higher education. I hope the Minister will respond favourably to these amendments.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, briefly, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, on her lucid explanation of the thinking behind her amendments. She makes an absolutely correct point: quality and standards are distinct. As they were always put together in some of the original drafting, the understanding of their different functions in the system was being lost. She is right to remind the House of that. I do not know about the exact way in which her proposals have been drafted but the spirit in which she is trying to make that distinction much clearer must be right. We already have, through the QAA, a direct role in the regulation and inspection of quality, and that is right.

However, to just comment on what the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said, there also is and has been a legitimate role in standards. Of course universities and higher education institutions have to be responsible for the specific decisions about standards, but threshold standards have been part of the QAA’s remit. At the moment, for example, in response to I think widespread concern about the effectiveness of the external examiner system—a concern raised by the Minister for Universities and Science, who it is good to see with us again today—HEFCE is investigating how that system operates. It is absolutely not, and should not be, intruding on the autonomy of individual institutions, but it is undoubtedly, in a broad sense, investigating and considering standards.

Provided that we have the capacity for that type of engagement in standards to occur—as we heard from what the Minister said in the other House, the threshold standards is a legitimate function as well—I hope it will be possible to find a way forward which embraces the spirit of what the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, is doing but at the same time recognises that any regulator has some legitimate role in standards, not just in quality.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, in urging the Government to think again about the way in which they reflect their intentions for academic standards in the Bill. This picks up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made, which I will come back to. In his recent letter of 11 January, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, helpfully clarifies several points, but again seems to muddle up “quality” and “standards”—and is not clear to which “standards” he is referring.

There are many other issues in the Bill that have attracted more attention. This is, however, possibly the single most significant issue. Those with long memories know that this is a subtle but significant red line in the relationship between universities and government. The distinction between quality and standards is often misunderstood or missed entirely, but it is one of the defining features of a system in which universities have the freedom to determine the content of the courses they offer, to differ from each other, to innovate and to offer variety to students. The current system requires universities to meet commonly agreed threshold standards, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, but avoids the straitjacket that is an inevitable consequence of defining standards across the board.

It is worth setting out why this matters. The disagreement with the Government reflected in this large number of amendments is not just a rather precious academic conceit; it is a fundamental underpinning of academic autonomy. Academic standards are the levels of attainment associated with specific awards and the grades required within those awards: in other words, how well Judy Doe has done against the requirements of her psychology course at, let us say, Reading, and whether she merits an Upper Second. It has to be that specific because different universities teach different curricula that reflect the specialisms of their particular institution.

These judgments are made by groups of academics who are subject experts and who are best placed to judge a student against academic criteria. The decisions against those standards are and have always been the prerogative of universities themselves, acting autonomously, freely and independently of any government or quasi-government interference. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said in last Monday’s debate, it is unfortunate that she was given such a disingenuous, rather flip answer to her question about degree classification by some academics involved in these judgments when they said that they trusted their gut feeling. In fact, their judgments are made within a clear framework of sector-owned national principles and are backed up by the external examiner system, although it has its weaknesses—as indeed the noble Baroness subsequently discovered.

That setting of academic standards I have just described is separate from the threshold standard or the minimum requirements that every degree course must meet in order to reassure students that they are studying at degree level. These requirements include the robustness of the processes that underpin them, and the design and delivery of courses. This process is driven by the Quality Assurance Agency through the sector-wide quality code. Here the Government have a role, in partnership with the sector’s designated body, in ensuring that a degree is worthy of the name.

It would be helpful if the Minister could put beyond doubt that when the Bill talks about “standards” it is referring to threshold standards and not to academic standards as they are normally defined and as I have described. In the other place the Minister did just that, very clearly—as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, indicated. Given that the Minister is in what is now his very familiar place, the Bar of our House, I do not want to quote him again. Since this clarity has not yet been reflected in the wording of the Bill, I hope that the Minster here will undertake to bring back amendments to achieve this. Amendments 136 and 167 offer ways of doing this, as do others.

UK higher education has an international reputation for excellence, due in no small part to the attention given to the management of both standards and quality. Governing bodies of institutions take both very seriously. They are, of course, interlinked: a high-quality learning environment is necessary for students to attain the levels of knowledge, understanding and skills required to obtain their awards, as the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education points out in its advice to governors on these matters.

“Quality” is a broad term, applied to the overall academic provision for learning, including teaching and assessment, student learning opportunities, the nature of academic programmes, the design of the curriculum and student engagement. It is worth remembering that each institution has its own agreed criteria for assessing the quality of learning and teaching. By international standards, as the former chief executive of the quality assurance body has said, mechanisms of internal control are really quite elaborate.

As yet the Government have provided little in the way of concrete reassurance that they understand the significance of the issues I have described. At this late stage in the passage of the Bill, we really need to see some evidence that the Government understand that it is precisely because universities have the freedom to determine the standards that they require of students in relation to the enormous range of programmes on offer that we have one of the strongest university systems in the world. The argument for greater comparability is superficially attractive but masks the inevitable consequence: a more limited range of provision, which is less open to change as academic subjects evolve. I cannot believe that the Government are deliberately doing that, given the high expectations they have of our universities to support innovation, to support local, regional and national economic priorities, and indeed to support social cohesion.

The higher education system is changing at an unprecedented rate, and the quality assurance system needs to change with it. That is surely what the Bill should seek to do. The challenge is to keep the best features of the current quality and standards systems but also adapt to the new conditions. There are some key principles that will keep reappearing in our debates: non-interference by government in what is taught, a high threshold for degree-awarding powers and university title, encouraging innovation to flourish, the provision of excellent public information and, in the case of this part of the Bill, autonomy over academic standards. This is one that the Government, through the Minister in the other place, have already explicitly accepted. It is one that the Minister in this House ought to be able to ensure is included in the Bill—and I urge him most strongly to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey]

The Bill creates separate regulatory and funding bodies for teaching and research and in so doing risks undermining the positive interaction of teaching, research and innovation activity in our universities. The Government have gone some way to address this problem by giving the OfS a new duty to monitor the financial sustainability of the sector and by publishing a note on joint working between the Office for Students and UKRI. However, the Bill could do more to deliver what the higher education White Paper promised: that the OfS would take a holistic view of the sector and institutions. The Office for Students should have the same power to provide advice to Ministers without the specific instruction to do so that is being proposed for UKRI. I beg to move.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, briefly, the thought behind the amendment makes a lot of sense. Currently we have had for decades close exchange between Ministers and HEFCE; it goes both ways, and the point I tried to make earlier is that we should not regard all that as equivalent of passing a statutory instrument through Parliament. It is important that Ministers can communicate their concerns to HEFCE and its successor bodies, but it is equally important that the communication goes the other way. I hope that we may hear from Ministers that they believe it will still be possible for these communications to happen, and anything that assures us that that flow of ideas and information in both directions will continue in the new dispensation will, I think, be welcomed by noble Lords on all sides of the Committee.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, on the amendment. It is a good one, and although it may not be high profile it is certainly worthy of further consideration. If there is a defect in the current drafting, the Minister may wish to look at it before we get to Report. He can give one of his equivocal answers if he wishes, but of course the more clarity, the better.

I was not going to speak in particular about the amendment, although I was interested in the substantive clause to which it is applied. The current wording says:

“Guidance given by the Secretary of State to the OfS which relates to English higher education providers must apply to such providers generally”—


so far I am with the drafting—

“or to a description of such providers”.

At that point I got completely lost. When the Minister responds, perhaps she could give me a better—perhaps Scottish—interpretation of this. Clearly, the Scots are much sharper on these matters than English drafters. As I understand it—and I normally understand draft legislation relatively well—guidance must apply to the providers, which are defined as “English higher education providers”, generally. That is quite fine. I accept that. However, I do not get the next bit:

“or to a description of such providers”.

To whom or to what does that description apply?

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[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

My Lords, it would be difficult to ask universities to tell the Government about their overseas students, as this is, as it were, part of a university’s commercial business. However, I understand entirely and sympathise hugely with the reason for wanting to do that. An alternative way to achieve the same end might be to provide additional funding to the British Council, which works closely with all UK universities and is a great asset to us, co-ordinating our engagement with our overseas graduates and bringing them together for all sorts of overseas alumni events. In a post-Brexit environment, the British Council is a treasure that we need to make sure is adequately funded to support us in this important area.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, briefly, I support this amendment but ask my noble friend Lord Lucas whether the obstacle is not somewhere else. The universities do not necessarily have as much data about their graduates as we think they do. Sadly, the Foreign Office and the British Council do not have enough. They try to host parties for Chevening scholars in embassies around the world and have a limited database of who the people are who were on the scholarships in the past. There is, sadly, surprisingly little information. The organisation that has the data is the Student Loans Company, and the legislation around it is heavily constrained because it is treated essentially as an arm of HMRC, with all the confidentiality that goes with that. If I were a university that wanted to communicate with my alumni, instead of putting an obligation on me, I would say, “Please, can there be some way in which we can communicate with our alumni via the Student Loans Company database?”, as that is where the contact addresses are. I hope there might be some way in which, in the spirit of these excellent amendments, that could be facilitated. That is the infrastructure we do not have. The American universities have built it up over generations. There was the great observation: “If only Osama bin Laden had been to Harvard Business School, because the Americans would have found him within 24 hours”. They are very good at tracking down their graduates, we are not so good at it, and access to the Student Loans Company data would make that a lot easier.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, this group of amendments relates to collaboration across the higher education sector. I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for highlighting these issues and for allowing this short and interesting debate. I value his knowledge in this area and, should he wish, I would be happy to meet him to discuss these matters further. I reassure him that the Bill does not preclude collaboration on any of these important issues, which I suspect he knows. The Government support collaboration where it is in the best interests of students and where it is not anti-competitive. Furthermore, the OfS has specific duties to promote quality, choice and equality of opportunity. If it considers that promoting collaboration is necessary to achieve these aims, it has the capability to do so.

I will take each of my noble friend’s amendments in turn. He draws attention to the importance of collaboration to evaluate access and participation proposals. I reassure the House that the Government absolutely agree with the importance of widening participation, which will be a key part of the remit of the Office for Students. The new Director for Fair Access and Participation will be at the heart of the new regulator and will sit on the board. This reflects the high priority that this Government are giving to widening participation. The OfS will be able to use the information it gathers from access and participation plans and through working with higher education institutions and sector bodies to evaluate what works in widening participation, building on the good work already done by OFFA.

My noble friend also raised the need for collaboration between providers to attract international students to the UK. He mentioned the well-received GREAT campaign, which does an excellent job. The Government acknowledge that, as well as competing for individual students, the higher education sector has a shared interest in promoting the excellent education provided by our universities to prospective international students. Various sector bodies and mission groups already do an excellent job in promoting UK universities on the global stage and there are many instances of successful collaboration between providers. Furthermore, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, rightly pointed out, the British Council also plays an importance role in this respect.

The third issue raised by these amendments is the importance of greater collaboration to enable more effective communication with current and former students. Many universities already run effective alumni programmes. There are also a number of existing routes to communicate with current and former students, such as through the Student Loans Company—as my noble friend Lord Willetts said—and we expect the OfS to work in partnership to deliver effective communications.

The fourth issue is collaborating to keep track of former students’ locations and employment statuses. The Government appreciate the importance of monitoring the long-term outcomes for students finishing higher education. It is very much an important part of our reforms. The OfS will work with the designated data body and others to ensure appropriate data gathering. As your Lordships will know, there is already a graduate destination survey and we are developing the longitudinal education outcomes data.

I turn now to Amendment 445. As my noble friend Lord Lucas will be aware, the Student Loans Company administers student loan accounts in the UK. I am happy to reassure my noble friend that the SLC already shares information with other government departments where this is of assistance in recovering student loan debt. The Government also published the joint repayment strategy in February last year, which provides more detail of the work under way in this area. We do not believe that this amendment is necessary, given that other frameworks are in place for the SLC to share information where this is of assistance in recovering student loan debt. I thank my noble friend for allowing me to give, I hope, some reassurance to him on all his amendments and I ask him to withdraw this amendment.

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[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, we need to clarify a point that I have raised a couple of times already, which is whether English higher education providers are indeed public sector bodies and therefore fall under the 2010 Equality Act. I speak as a former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. That legislation, which I think is better than it is usually given credit for, is very clear that it applies to public sector bodies. We do not yet know whether the definition of an English higher education provider in the Bill means a higher education provider that is a public sector body or even whether it has to be incorporated under the laws of England.

I suspect that there will be many overseas higher education providers which are extremely tempted by the high prestige, the system and the fact that students here are entitled to student loans, to seek to become higher education providers in England without being incorporated under English law and certainly without being public sector bodies, as the 2010 Act would require them to be to fall under this legislation.

Even were we talking only about a subset of English higher education providers that are incorporated under English law and that are going to fall under that Act, I am not sure that we would want all nine protected characteristics to carry the same weight. In particular, one has to think extremely carefully about age. It is not, of course, right to discriminate against people on the ground of their age, but to refer to disproportionality in the age distribution of a student body of an institution might seem ludicrous in view of the fact that, on the whole, people seek their higher education before they seek their careers.

There may be other difficulties here. I suspect that many people discussing equality fail to note that the 2010 Act sets out “due regard” duties. Those duties are met providing someone has due regard to the different characteristics at the point of making a decision. That seems to me to be correct, but it has no read-across to the question of proportionality and disproportionality, although that is a common misunderstanding. Perhaps we need not worry about the obvious implications of thinking that the proportionality would be an important consideration in these matters in that the fact—they are now facts—that more young women than young men go on to higher education in the UK and in England and that poor white boys and poor boys in particular, but not other ethnic minority students, are less likely to go on. It is quite surprising when one looks at the profile of different groups going on to higher education. I suspect that this is something that we need to untangle before we go any further.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, that fascinating intervention gets to the heart of the direction of travel that is being debated in many different amendments this afternoon.

My understanding—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—is that universities and higher education institutions are not public sector bodies. Nevertheless, in a range of different contexts, Parliament has decided to impose on them the obligations they would have if they were. The public sector equality duty could be one example. Freedom of information is another example. My concern—here I am a bit of a purist—is that universities are not part of the public sector and it is quite important for universities that they are not. If I were running a university—which I am not—I would start feeling two kinds of pressures on me. On the one hand, a significant number of Members of this House and elsewhere want to treat universities as if they are public bodies, so that whenever there is a nice public sector duty around they say, “Let us add it to universities although they are not part of the public sector”. Both FoI and public sector equality are examples. On the other hand, at the same time the Government—and this process goes back before 2010—are saying, “There is a private contractual obligation to deliver a service to a student so really they have got to be subject to competition law and the CMA and so on”. They end up being subject to a pincer movement, where they have got all the private obligations as if they were a company that needs to be competing, plus we throw in all the public obligations as if they were in the public sector when they are not.

The dynamic of these debates begins by saying we must do more to preserve the autonomy of universities and then spend the rest of the time adding extra obligations we would like them to comply with. If at the end of the legal process of preparing what will become an Act of Parliament we have ended up with more obligations on the universities, making them subject to the CMA, and more public sector duties despite them not being in the public sector, we will leave universities even more burdened than they are at the moment. We require some self-denying ordinance so that we do not keep piling more obligations on them. We have already imposed on them a range of obligations that go way beyond what any other private body is susceptible to. At some point there is a danger that universities will end up in the public sector. There is a danger that we all talk about them as if they are part of the public sector and treat them as if they are hospitals, schools and so on. They are not. They are independent bodies outside the public sector and we should be wary of imposing obligations on them as if they are inside, especially when we are in parallel and subject to greater market competition as well.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has said. I declare an interest as chair of the board of Sheffield Hallam University and the chair of Peabody. An explanation for that will follow

There is a cautionary tale here in relation to housing associations and the story around their public body status. For a long period of time they were regarded as not public bodies and therefore able to exercise borrowing and take forward proposals outside of the public sector. The effect of successive changes of regulations and controls on housing associations then led to a reclassification by the ONS as public bodies. As a consequence we are now in a process of seeking to deregulate housing associations to move them out of that situation. We do not want to go through the same process for universities. We should proceed with care on this issue.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think anybody is suggesting that universities should just be left to get on with it. I preface my remarks by saying how important I believe teaching to be. I went into higher education halfway through my working life. I had never taught, and I was shocked to discover there was nothing to train me how to teach: it was just assumed that an academic could relay their subject and teach it. That is completely different now. All universities have very good support to ensure that their staff teach well.

That said, I accept that it is important that there is some kind of assessment of teaching to balance the research assessment—the REF, as it is now called—to which my noble friend Lord Desai referred. REF is based on a direct assessment of the quality of the research; as I understand it, TEF will not be. I will not repeat the good critique that has been made by colleagues both now and at Second Reading of the metrics currently proposed, and I am not sure what the answer is. I can remember—I cannot remember in which year it was now—something called the TQA, or teaching quality assessment. I can remember quaking in my boots as some independent assessor came in to observe my lectures and tutorials. I am not sure what happened to it. It was a huge bureaucratic burden on the universities, so I am not saying that that is necessarily the answer. I am not sure what the answer is, but it is quite clear from what is being said in the sector, by students and people around the Committee that, as proposed, those metrics are not.

In his summing up, will the Minister explain exactly how he thinks the proposed metrics will tell us anything about actual teaching quality? What will be fed back to individual lecturers about their teaching? At Second Reading he said that,

“The TEF is designed to improve teaching”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 721]


How will it improve teaching? Will he explain that to us? If I were still lecturing, how would I know how to improve my teaching on the basis of the TEF and these metrics? It is not clear to me at all how that will happen.

Given the widespread disquiet and difficulties of doing this, will the Minister reflect on the likely adverse implications of this traffic light system, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on Second Reading called a “ranking system for turkeys”? Perhaps that is appropriate in the consumer culture we are talking about, but it is not appropriate for education.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on some of the remarks about the NSS and perhaps try to address some of the concerns and offer noble Lords on both sides of the Committee a bit of assurance about what is happening here.

I should begin by drawing attention to the fact that I am a visiting professor at King’s College London, which sadly scores rather low on the NSS. I will not detain the Committee with a special pleading of why I think that is a completely misleading picture of the excellent work done at King’s. I also chair the advisory board of the Times Higher, which itself produces university rankings.

Surely what we are trying to do is embark on a journey towards what should be reliable metrics of teaching quality and learning gain. Of course, we do not have those yet. The question is whether we do anything now or wait until we have these superior and trusted metrics. The dilemma that one faces is that, back in 2010, there really was only the NSS, and it has been caricatured as simply a question of a student’s kind of, “What’s it like for you?”. We have already seen changes in the NSS and, if I may get into the technical language, it is becoming much more like the National Survey of Student Engagement which does try to get closer to the academic experience of the student.

The measure that will be used in formulating the TEF is not the generic question, “How was it for you?”. My understanding is that that is not what will appear in the TEF. There will be the earlier questions in the NSS. The NSS has more than 20 questions, and incidentally is completed by hundreds of thousands of students. It is the earlier questions that are closest to engagement that will be the ones used in the TEF. They are particularly questions about teaching on their course and on assessment and feedback.

The noble Lord who spoke for the Opposition when he opened said there had been no evidence that anything had been getting better. I can tell him that the fact that many universities have done disappointingly badly on assessment and feedback has led universities to change their practice and give students much more prompt reactions on their essays or other forms of work than they used to receive. I would argue that assessment and feedback are regarded as having genuine value and significance in the world of universities. Those measures are the measures extracted from the NSS which will be part of the overall metric for the TEF. The others which I think will have higher weight are the learning environment and student outcomes.

These are not perfect measures. We are on a journey, and I look forward to these metrics being revised and replaced by superior metrics in the future. They are not as bad as we have heard in some of the caricatures of them, and in my experience, if we wait until we have a perfect indicator and then start using it, we will have a very long wait. If we use the indicators that we have, however imperfect, people then work hard to improve them. That is the spirit with which we should approach the TEF today.

[Lord Lipsey]

Before the noble Lord sits down, will he explain what consolation he will offer to those institutions which are put out of business, at worst, while we perfect the metric that is being used in this case?

[Lord Willetts]

There are genuine questions, including the impact on overseas students, and I understand that issue. But I think that it would not be possible to envisage fees increasing without some kind of measures of the teaching performance in universities.

Given the difficulty of getting any measures, my view is that the measures we have are the best ones currently available. I think that the message that should go out from your Lordships’ House is surely that we would see them improved, changed and reviewed—and improved rapidly. It would be particularly regrettable—I know that I am turning to a later stage in our debate—if we bring in measures, if we amend the legislation, to make future changes in the metrics harder rather than easier by requiring a more elaborate process for them to be changed in the future. I am absolutely not saying that we now have a reliable and authoritative measure of teaching quality.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said that we are embarking on a journey, which indeed we are, but I feel that the car in which we will travel does not yet have all the component parts. I therefore wonder if, when we have concluded all our debates, rather than going full speed ahead into a TEF for everybody who wants to participate, we should have some pilots. In that way the metrics could be amended quite properly before everybody else embarks on the journey with us.

I speak to the amendments in this grouping, many of which I support and I remind the House of my interest as a pro-chancellor at Bath University. Like all other noble Lords, I celebrate quality and excellence, and students should and must expect to receive high-quality teaching in their higher education. This should always have been the case, but is especially important now when students leave university with a debt of perhaps £50,000.

How the quality is measured and the metrics used are of the utmost importance, and it is clear from everything that has been said that the Government have not solved the conundrum yet. However, it is very good news that Chris Husbands is assisting the Government in this task. I have to say that Bath has one of the highest levels of student satisfaction, of which I am very proud. Much of that is down to good teaching. In 11 departments we have 100% satisfaction rates, which is great, but I also have to wonder that there must be some instances in some universities where students are completing the student satisfaction surveys in their rooms and possibly they have never even been to a lecture. That metric is slightly questionable.

I would be grateful if the Minister can say who will make the judgment in respect of what the metrics will be and who will judge each university that is part of the system? Those people are incredibly important.

While I support the TEF in general, whatever system is introduced must not be the traffic light system currently under consideration and it should not be linked to fees. The real problem is when the quality of teaching in a university is measured across the board. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, excellence in some departments will be eclipsed by poor teaching in other departments and vice versa. Creating a system that assesses the quality of a whole institution and allows that whole institution to raise the fees of every course based on that assessment, when the quality of teaching will vary—potentially drastically—for every student at that institution, is therefore fundamentally unworkable. It risks creating the potential that students undertake courses that are not of high quality but at an institution that was deemed by the TEF to provide general high quality, and are therefore unfairly charged higher fees for poor-quality degrees. As has been said on all sides of the House, the bronze, silver and gold proposals are entirely inappropriate and fraught with difficulties, not least the potential for jeopardising the excellent international reputation of our universities. Why would a foreign student paying hefty fees wish to study at a bronze university, and why should our own students go to British universities that are deemed inadequate? Students who begin their degrees at a gold university that is judged to be silver or bronze at the end of the course would feel disillusioned and, literally, short-changed. Amendments 176, 177 and 195 are particularly interesting, and I hope that the Government will give them favourable consideration.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

I rise to speak in support of the desire of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for there to be a strong focus in the Bill on care leavers as a very special group of students. When we were developing our strategy for care leavers at Aston University, I was absolutely horrified to discover that care leavers at 19 were very much more likely to be in prison than at university. It seems to me that supporting care leavers at university is a much better way of spending public money than supporting them at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

I hope the Government can put something in the Bill such as the noble Earl described, or something in every university’s access agreement, to ensure that this group of very special people get a really good opportunity to be socially mobile and successful.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

Noble Lords on all sides of the House appreciate the personal commitment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to this issue. However, I have to say that there has always been a long queue of people who wish, for various reasons, to exempt students from fees. My view has always been that this is an extremely dangerous route to go down. Students do not pay fees, and as soon as one implies in some way that fees are a barrier to students getting into university, one feeds a misconception that can do enormous damage. Indeed, if students from care were not, through the Exchequer, repaying these fees, that would be a loss of revenues for the university. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has recognised that because his Amendment 449A provides an alternative means of financing their education out of public expenditure.

We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, quite correctly, that we need to support more care leavers in university. If there were ever any public expenditure of the sort the noble Earl envisages in Amendment 449A, rather than devoting it to a group of students being exempt from fees that they are not going to pay anyway, it should be devoted to helping people leaving care to go to university. Exempting them from a fee that they are not going to pay anyway, or will pay only if they are in a well-paid job afterwards, is not the most effective way to help care leavers.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute, as I have in the past, to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for his hard work in many areas, particularly in respect of care leavers. We worked together last year quite effectively on the Children and Social Work Bill, and made some progress in terms of government concessions; I hope that we might have some success here as well.

I am slightly disappointed to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said about exemption from fees, as that is not what is sought here, as I see it. The amendment seeks a limit on or exemption of part of the fees, but not an entire reduction. In the circumstances that is important, because we have to understand that for people leaving care even to get to university is quite an achievement in many cases. Only 5% of care leavers make it to university, compared with 38% of the population as a whole at that age. So it is incumbent on us to do what we can to offer some assistance.

The amendments proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, cover a number of areas, which together create a package which would be of considerable assistance. People leaving care are some of the most vulnerable young adults, and they need help and encouragement to make their own way in life after a childhood that has often been devoid of the kind of settled home environment that many of us simply take for granted. For that reason, it is surely right that any care leaver who succeeds in gaining the passes necessary to be offered a university place should not be denied it due to financial constraints. I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made about a university degree leading to higher earning, and that is the general backing that the Government, and Conservatives generally, give for tuition fees. That has some traction, but in this case you are dealing with people who have had many difficulties in their lives.

We also have to think about the question of accommodation, which another of the noble Earl’s amendments touches on. Some universities already discount fees; some do not charge fees to care leavers. But another issue is what happens outwith term time. As the noble Earl said in speaking to Amendment 229B, the question of accommodation can be a crucial factor. All too often, care leavers who begin a course of study do not complete it because they have been unable to settle during holiday periods, having no settled home to go to, to the extent that they do not feel able to resume their studies.

Being in care does not prevent young people achieving a successful life, but those who have spent time in the care system are less likely than other children to achieve academic success. In many cases, there has been a gradual improvement in educational outcomes, but the rate of care leavers going to university has hardly changed in recent years. Children in care have the wealthiest parent of all—the state—yet it fails them in the most fundamental aspect of child development: education. The noble Earl’s Amendment 122 should not be seen as a cost to the public purse. In the longer term, care leavers who complete their courses will put back more than they have received—an argument understood in Scotland. Last year, the Scottish Government decided that all young people who have experience of care and who meet the minimum entry standards will be offered a place at university. Of course, although fees are not an issue in that part of the UK, those students are awarded a full bursary, which will be worth £7,600 from academic year 2017-18.

That is an example of the extra, targeted help to those who most need it, so that young people who have had life experiences that most of us can barely imagine are given an enhanced chance to succeed in building a life for themselves. Reduced tuition fees should, I believe, be automatic for care leavers, although I accept what the Minister said on Monday about not all care leavers wishing to self-identify as such. There are various reasons for that and I hope we can at least try to understand them, but we should do all that we can to minimise those reasons in offering a helping hand into higher education. The group of amendments of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, would provide a powerful means of doing so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, we are surely clear that the route that we are going down will mean that institutions go bust and find themselves unable to function. My noble friend the Minister said in one of his replies to me on Monday that information as to whether a university was getting near the borderline, in terms of having the ability to admit overseas students removed from it, would be concealed. So we must expect students to be faced with the closure of their courses at short notice, and we must expect the institutions running those courses to be completely incapable of helping them.

In those circumstances, we need what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth has proposed, which is a mutual scheme. That must have the ability to organise for the courses to happen—so it must have money and it must have agreement that room will be made for students. It must have enough leverage to deal with the Home Office, because any student who is looking at an extended time here to complete a course will be in real trouble—returning home; six-month waits—trying to organise extensions. It is difficult enough for a student at Imperial who needs an extra year for his PhD; it will be extremely difficult for students in a failed institution. We need some money, some clout and some organisation behind this. If it is not to be the sort of structure that my noble friend proposes, my Amendment 163 would dump the obligation to look after such students on the OfS—but it has to be somewhere.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I welcome particularly the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Lucas. The official doctrine has always been that a university can go bust, but I was never able to contemplate the political feasibility of a scenario where a padlock is swinging on the gates of a university, with a group of students outside desperate to go in for their history lectures and being told, “I am terribly sorry; we’re closed”, while tumbleweed blows through the campus. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher faced this in 1985 in Cardiff. She was not willing to allow University College, Cardiff to go bust. I think that we can accept that we are functioning in an environment where in reality it will be very hard just to say, “Bad luck. You’ve done 18 months of a course and it’s come to an end”.

The question is how one should address that, which gets to the heart of some quite important issues in the Bill. There has been a fashionable doctrine for a few years of the ABTA solution—and some kind of scheme like that could be made to work—but in my experience the closest we got to this problem was clearly HEFCE. It was acting as the co-ordinator, organiser and convenor. It might have been that students had to be located at several other universities and it would get different universities to make their contributions so that students would be educated. If we get into such a scenario—my noble friend Lord Lucas is absolutely right that we have to contemplate it—it is very hard to see how it could be resolved without some convening power for the OfS, which, as I have said in other contexts in this Committee stage, is in many respects the son of HEFCE. A lot of our problems will be resolved if we think of it as the son of HEFCE. My noble friend’s proposal to make it clear that there is some legal responsibility for OfS must be an important and credible part of any solution. It is not credible to imagine that the matter could be addressed via an ABTA-type scheme.

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, I will try to abbreviate my remarks somewhat but this is a very important group of amendments so I want to try to genuinely address some of the points that have been raised. I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions. Student protection and experience are important issues.

Student protection plans are important. They should be robust and offer real protection to students, should their provider or course close. The Office for Students will have overall responsibility for creating and issuing specific guidance on student protection plans. That is an important development and a very important safeguard. We expect this guidance to include the content, the process for approval and review, and the likely triggers for implementing student protection measures. The guidance will be developed as part of the regulatory framework, in consultation with the higher education sector, including bodies representing the interests of students.

In relation to the specific point raised by my noble friend Lord Norton, it is absolutely right that the OfS consults on this issue fully, and it should set out further details and best practice in guidance. We tabled an amendment to the Bill in the other place to require student protection plans to be published and therefore brought to students’ attention. That is an important step to ensure transparency in relation to these plans.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that protection from financial loss could be an important function of some student protection plans, as could measures to enable students to transfer or continue their studies, perhaps within the same institution but in a different faculty or department. Student protection plans are likely to include a diverse range of measures to protect students, reflecting the diversity of the higher education sector, together with a diverse range of possible triggers for a student protection plan, including suspension of registration.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked why we do not have the same degree of reassurance in this Bill as in the further education Bill. The different mechanisms reflect the different characteristics of students in higher and further education as learners in these two spheres. But both approaches are designed to protect the interests of students. That is something we must not lose sight of.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, also raised the issue of strengthening registration conditions for new providers. That is an important matter. In determining initial and ongoing registration conditions, the OfS will assess, among other factors, a provider’s academic track record and—this is very important—its financial sustainability. I assure the noble Lord that where the OfS determines that a new provider represents a higher level of risk, it must, under the provisions already included in Clauses 6 and 7, apply more stringent, but proportionate, conditions to that provider. There is a facility to recognise where there may be an element of risk.

I wholeheartedly agree with the views expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely in his amendment, which were very helpfully expressed by his colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth. I thank him for being with us this evening. Student protection plans should be mindful of additional or particular protections that may be required for disabled students or those with special educational needs, which the noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Benches referred to. Again, this could be made clear in the OfS guidance.

Turning to Amendment 163 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, I want to make it clear to your Lordships that there are currently no direct regulatory barriers to students moving between universities. Supporting students who wish to switch higher education institution or course is an important part of our reforms.

In relation to student experience, which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised, there is no universal neat-fit template that covers all situations because student populations vary hugely in their requirements. As independent and autonomous organisations, higher education institutions are best placed to decide what experiences they can and want to offer. I do not think that that should be prescribed by government.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, also raised the question of involving students in access and participation plans. I reassure the Committee that the Office for Fair Access currently expects providers to include a detailed statement on how they have involved and consulted students in the development of their plan, and the Director of Fair Access has had regard to these when deciding whether to approve a plan. Providers are encouraged, for example, to set out where students have been involved in the design and implementation of financial support packages. Some student unions run information, advice and guidance sessions to explain the support packages to ensure maximum take-up from eligible students. We fully expect this successful approach, which has developed over a number of years, to continue.

I hope these comments reassure your Lordships that these issues have not fallen off the radar screen. They are very much before us and I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas can speak for himself but it is worth focusing on this scenario for a few more minutes. I would be grateful if the Minister could take us through what she expects now to happen if a university gets into difficulties. I can tell her that it will end up on the Minister’s desk within a matter of hours. In my view, the Minister needs to have the power to ask the OfS to do things which ensure that those students continue to get higher education. That could supplement ABTA-type arrangements or whatever. I would be grateful for her assurance to the Committee that either the powers already exist in the legislation as drafted, or that the Government will support measures to ensure there are those powers. There will otherwise be quite a serious gap. We know from other areas, including health service legislation, that it is a fantasy to imagine, “Don’t worry, we can just leave it all to the individual universities and their ABTA arrangements—it is nothing to do with the Minister”. It will end up on the Minister’s desk and we are doing a disservice to future Ministers if they find themselves in this situation and ask, “Why on earth did nobody give me or the OfS any power to do anything in a situation like this?”, where clearly public action to convene is expected as a minimum.

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank my noble friend for raising significant points. Let me try to put his mind at rest. I hope he will accept that the whole thrust of the Bill is to create not just new territory for the way in which we deal with the provision of higher education in England but a set of new relationships, not the least of which is putting the student right at the core of higher education provision—perhaps doing so in a way which we have not seen before. That is to be applauded. The constitution and creation of the OfS develop a body which is not just a paper tiger. This body is given significant, meaningful and tangible powers in the Bill—powers that it will be required to deploy and use if difficult situations arise.

My noble friend posed the specific question of what will happen to students if a higher education institution goes bust. First, it is intended that the OfS will monitor the financial health of institutions and require student protection plans to be implemented if a provider is at risk of being unable to deliver a course. The OfS will not be operating in some silo or vacuum. It will actually be a hands-on and in-touch body, with its finger on the pulse to know what is happening. It will have an early indication if there are reasons for concern.

For example, if in the unlikely and very unhappy event that a higher education institution goes bust, existing students might be taught out for the remainder of their course or academic year, with provision to transfer to another institution having banked their existing credits. It would entirely depend on the terms of the student protection plan but that is indicative of how these plans have to be broad, far-reaching and flexible. The core of all this is that at the end of the day, they must provide that underpinning protection to which students are entitled.

It is currently the case with HEFCE that the Office of Students may be able to support an institution while it implements a student protection plan. It might, for example, reprofile loan repayments or provide short-term emergency support. This is very much a nuclear option because instances of a provider suddenly and without warning exiting the market completely are likely to remain extremely rare. We would expect student protection plans to be implemented as far as possible—for example, measures to financially compensate students—and the OfS to support students in transferring to alternative institutions. There is a variety of solutions, remedies and initiatives which could be deployed, and it is very clear that the powers that will be available to the OfS will make such deployment perfectly practical, reasonable and manageable. I hope that reassures my noble friend on the issues which he raised.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

The NSS in the TEF is using—or rather, abusing—statistics for a purpose for which the NSS was never designed. My amendments are designed to reduce that risk for good colleges with good teaching that are in danger of falling foul of a statistical lottery. I beg to move.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to briefly comment on the interesting and important observations we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I completely support his commitment to using statistics with integrity. There are issues about the NSS. I would argue—as I did in Committee last week—that the NSS itself is changing and increasingly has genuine questions about student engagement and academic experience. For example, I know from speaking to many vice-chancellors that how their university does on the metric of academic feedback is something they pay a lot of attention to; it reflects genuine concern among students sometimes when they do not get essays back in time and they do not get prompt feedback.

I would like, however, briefly to comment on the noble Lord’s specific point as to whether the use of the NSS, as proposed in the TEF, meets the required standards. He briefly gave a quote from the ONS on its views, saying that it would not be right to use the raw NSS data. I would like to assure him that, to my understanding, the TEF does not use raw NSS data. Using raw data simply means taking all the universities and seeing how they stand. Instead, the way in which the TEF is being constructed is to benchmark universities against similar universities. Using his own example of students from ethnic minorities, it would be possible to compare groups of universities that all have roughly similar proportions of students from ethnic minorities, so the data that will be used are not raw data. Universities will find themselves being assessed and compared with a peer group. That itself, interestingly, raises a new set of questions, but at least it means that the TEF is not exposed to the charge which the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has levelled this afternoon.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I find myself in agreement with the noble Lord. There is a slight danger that this will become a club of former higher education Ministers. However, as a vice-chancellor and former Minister, I found that the National Student Survey was a rather useful device—in a rather broad-brush way, admittedly—for telling us something about what students perceive about their own experience as undergraduates. It is not done for graduate students. I am somewhat at loggerheads with my noble friend Lord Lipsey, and I am sorry about this because normally we agree on many things. I would say that a 70% response rate that—if I understand correctly—my noble friend was quoting to be unacceptable, is a rather high response rate in most surveys of this kind. It is sometimes possible to do deep dives and find out a bit more about the group that had not responded to see whether they are in any way different in their views or backgrounds. I had not read the critique that he quotes by the ONS and the RSS. It is important that the Minister comes back and tells us whether the Government have looked at those criticisms. If not, why not, and will they in future?

I have a lot of concerns about the TEF and how it should be done. The Government are taking on a very difficult and complex task. I am not sure whether they realise how difficult it is to get reliability and validity in the responses provided. I look forward to hearing what Professor Chris Husbands, who has a lot of expertise on this, will say. I would also like to hear his response to the criticisms and comments of the ONS and RSS.

We cannot entirely take out and ignore what the NSS tells us about students’ experience. There is only a small number of questions about teaching, but there are some. There are many other questions about things that are relevant to the successful completion of their courses, including how they are assessed and examined. I hope we can look at this in a bit more depth and not completely rule out the contribution that a rethought NSS can make to any assessments of how our universities, and departments within them, are teaching, and whether it meets the kind of quality that we expect it to meet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, on the National Student Survey, and will speak to Amendments 194 and 201 standing in my name. Before doing so I would like to underline that we are talking about the use of measures to give ratings. With respect to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I think that there is a huge difference between what is useful internally and what is suitable for a high-profile, high-stakes national rating system. In my first amendment I have suggested, or requested, that any measures used should be criteria-referenced, and therefore provide a substantive rating and indication of attainment or degree of attainment. I am slightly alarmed that this is even at issue, and take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, when he suggests that benchmarking is the way forward.

I have an example from the rail regulator. We can be told what proportion of trains are late, which is a substantive measure: we can have a target—which in fact it has—which says that it is reasonable that there should be X per cent, and then you fall this far short. We can be told whether a given rail company is doing better or worse than the others. This year it is really pretty easy for everybody to do better than Southern, but does that mean that they are all doing well? I do not think that you can conclude that.

If you have benchmarked or relative measures, the problem is that all that you are being told is how people stand relative to each other. We might have a system in which the quality of teaching was excellent across the board, yet in which half the institutions would by definition be below average; or we could have a system in which all the institutions were doing rather poor-quality teaching, yet in which half of them would be above average. That is not the sort of system that we wish to use. We would not wish to imply to students that that gave them helpful information. A measure that is bad does not become good by being made relative; and a measure that is good is good in its own right, not simply by being turned into something in which you rank people on the curve. That is an important aspect of how the Office for Students approaches the sorts of ratings that it gives and the way in which it conceives of them.

[Lord Willetts]

Does the noble Baroness accept that her objection is the opposite of the one raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey? His objection was that these are raw data that cannot be trusted. As a result of that concern, they are being benchmarked, and that indeed raises the valid questions which she has raised.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I promised the noble Lord that I would try to be present for this brief debate, and I am sure it will be brief. I think he has performed a very signal service, not just for the Muslim community, but the student community in general. I sincerely hope that my noble friend Lady Goldie, who I am told is due to reply to this debate, will be able to meet the points made by the noble Lord in an extremely well-balanced, sensible and moderate speech, with a realistic timetable built into his amendment. In giving my support and expressing that hope, I also express the hope that we will not be disappointed.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, having launched that original consultation document I am delighted that we now have these provisions in this Bill. It is welcome progress and the lack of legal framework to do it was the main reason for the delays. I very much hope that the new scheme can be brought in as quickly as possible. Although it is a familiar excuse, there are IT issues to be resolved and the noble Lord is right to press for rapid progress on that.

My one qualification to the noble Lord’s otherwise excellent speech was that we have to be careful not to assume that all Muslims take the view that the current arrangements are not acceptable within Islamic law. The good news is that there are many Islamic students whose religious advice is that they can use the current framework. There is a small number who do not believe that that is satisfactory and that is why we need this provision, but it is very important that this Committee does not give the impression that Muslims cannot use the current scheme. Many of them do and their imams say that they can.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, it is very much to be welcomed that Muslim students are to be offered Sharia-friendly student loans which should assist in applying to university, although I accept the point of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, that only some students have been put off in the past in the belief that taking out a loan conflicts with their religious beliefs.

This is certainly a big step forward, but as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, outlined, when will it happen? He has traced the path that has been followed since 2012, when a government commitment was first made. As he said, the consultation exercise was undertaken and the Government responded in September 2014—quite quick for government replies. Their response said that,

“the Government supports the introduction of a Sharia-compliant takaful alternative finance product available to everyone, and will work on its development”.

That response also mentioned the need to find what was described as an “appropriate legislative window”. Two years on—more than that, in fact—we are at that window, yet we do not have a date for the commencement.

Amendments 442 and 516 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Willis, appear to me to be rather contradictory. Amendment 442 calls for the scheme to begin in the autumn of 2018, while Amendment 516 seeks its introduction immediately after the Bill becomes law, but no matter. We wish to see the scheme introduced as soon as it is practical, and I trust the Minister will outline the timescale that the Government have in mind. In particular, I hope they will offer some explanation if, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said, they suggested that a delay would be necessary until 2019. I found it very interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said that he had consultations with people in the Muslim community who said that it need not take that long, so we look forward to the Minister’s response on this important matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, Amendment 444, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, seeks to mirror the rules around the benefits system, which require the Secretary of State to uprate benefits automatically each year in line with inflation unless he passes, as is currently the case, law to freeze them. The clause would mean that similar procedures have to be followed in uprating the starting point of £21,000 for repayment fees. Under the current tuition fees system, a graduate starts to repay their fees only if they are earning about £21,000 a year. One of the principles we agreed in coalition was that this threshold should rise in line with inflation from April 2017 so that only those earning a decent salary are repaying their fees. This is important in ensuring that only those who can truly afford to over their careers pay back the full £9,000 a year fees.

Liberal Democrats therefore strongly oppose the bad-faith decision of the previous Chancellor to freeze the repayment threshold. This effectively amounts to a change in contract terms for those with fees to repay that would be wholly unacceptable in any private business dealing. It is no wonder that Martin Lewis, who helped explain the Government’s original scheme, has sought legally to challenge this unfair retrospective action. The freeze means that people on relatively low incomes will start paying back fees, meaning those on low and middle incomes will end up paying back more while those on the top salaries, who will pay off their fees before they reach the 30-year cut-off, will be unaffected.

The issue is even more important considering rapidly increased inflation due to Brexit. Our amendment therefore seeks to provide a mechanism to ensure that the repayment level must rise with inflation. It uses rules around social security benefit increases to require the Secretary of State to consider whether prices have changed over the last 12 months—ie, inflation has taken place—and, if so, to increase the repayment threshold by a similar level. This would therefore require a new order every year to be placed before Parliament, ensuring the Government can never again unilaterally decide to freeze the point at which students start to pay.

Liberal Democrats hesitate, for good reason, to talk about university fees. We suffered the political consequences of breaking our contract with the electorate. The Chancellor was very clever, but there was very little saving in the end to the Exchequer and there were concessions to the Liberal Democrats. What we are looking at now is the elimination bit by bit, piece by piece, of those concessions, starting with grants and moving on to access, and so on. So the policy has clearly worsened, and what we have currently, with the raising of the threshold, is nothing short of a scandal. A contract has been broken and there has been a one-sided redefinition of the terms of the loan. In any other context, as Martin Lewis quite correctly said, this would lead to legal action. The only reason legal action is not possible in this case is the small print, which, as far as most undergraduates are concerned, was very small indeed.

This amendment is simply an attempt to avoid a repetition of that bad situation by defining a minimum level of earnings and a mechanism for adjusting it in a rational, open way. It would avoid partiality, exploitation, misunderstanding and lack of trust, which is absolutely crucial. That, surely, is the way to go. The Government would be doing the right thing by accepting this amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, perhaps I could briefly challenge the proposals of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I do so very aware of how the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats worked together on this years ago, and I pay tribute once again to my former ministerial colleague, Sir Vince Cable, with whom it was a pleasure to work. But I think her account of the way the decision was taken is not quite correct and I do not think that her proposals for the future will work in the best interests of students or the Exchequer.

When we set the £21,000 repayment threshold in 2011, we were working on the basis of forecasts of where earnings would be by 2017. We thought we were setting the £21,000 repayment threshold at about 75% of earnings—I cannot remember the exact figure. What has happened since then is that earnings have grown by much less than was forecast, as a result of which the repayment threshold has become significantly more generous relative to earnings than we expected when we set it. With the wisdom of hindsight, I wish that we had put in brackets alongside £21,000, “that is, approximately 75% of earnings”, but what is relevant for graduates is that this is relative to their earnings and average earnings. On that basis, the purpose of the current freeze of the £21,000 threshold is to bring it back gradually towards the kind of relationship to average earnings that was envisaged when it was first proposed in 2011.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, that it would be worth having some kind of mechanism for review of this threshold. I have proposed a kind of five-year review at the start of each Parliament of the right place to set the repayment threshold. I do not think some fixed relationship to the RPI is relevant. The big social decision—it is a decision—is where it should be relative to average earnings. Of course, the coalition decided it should be a significantly higher threshold than that in the old system. Although I remember working with Martin Lewis on this, I think his argument that this is some terrible breach of faith is incorrect. This is actually a relationship to earnings which has ended up much higher than was originally expected.

I also think that Amendment 449 is misconceived and would be very dangerous indeed. It proposes that these loans should be regulated as if they are commercial loans by the Financial Conduct Authority. The student loans scheme steers a very narrow course between two equal and opposite problems. One problem would be if student finance were once more counted as public expenditure, as a result of which it would be rationed and we would not see the increase in cash for universities that we have seen. Although some people think this is public spending—to my surprise, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, talked about there being very little saving to the Exchequer—the fact is that the shift to fees and loans achieved a very significant reduction in public spending. We do not want to go back to the days of it being public spending.

However, neither do we want it to be a commercial loan scheme. It is absolutely not a commercial loan scheme. I worked very closely with Lib Dem colleagues at every opportunity to explain to prospective students that this is not a commercial loan. This is not like an overdraft or a credit card. It is a universal scheme accessible to almost all students and is in no way like taking out a loan from a bank regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. If the Student Loans Company were regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, it would immediately have to go through requirements such as the “know your customer” requirement. It would have to decide: “Should we lend to young John Smith? Is he going to be able to repay? Should we lend to young Janet Smith? Is she going to be able to repay?”. That panoply of assessment of whether individuals should take out loans, which is part of the regulatory regime for commercial loans, should not apply to this provision. This is a universal scheme using taxpayer finance. Therefore, requiring it to be regulated as if it is a commercial loan would be a retrograde step and very regressive.

All three parties in this Chamber today, when faced with the dilemma of how to finance university education, have ended up with an essentially similar model: fees and loans, with a universal loan scheme. It is no accident that we have ended up with this model. It is because it steers between two equal and opposite perils. These Lib Dem amendments would destabilise that model, which is now working to the advantage of students, universities and the Exchequer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I congratulate without qualification those who have put this amendment forward. When I was a young MP in the other place, back in the 1960s, I cut my teeth by making my first major speech on this subject. Anthony Crosland was the Minister at that time and we became great friends.

The world is totally interdependent. It is simply impossible to think of a place that calls itself a university that does not reflect this reality—that international character in every dimension of its activity which is so important to the learning process. We talk about overseas students in financial terms, but what interests me is their indispensable contribution to the whole character, quality and calibre of the university.

I am an emeritus governor of the LSE. I have been involved in the place for a very long time, since I was an undergraduate. I am also a member of Court at Lancaster and Newcastle. There is absolutely no question that the quality of these universities is related to the overseas students and staff. They contribute to the dimension of the university—not only in their specialist studies but by their presence.

Post Brexit—lamentable Brexit—we are going to be faced with this reality of global interdependence more acutely than ever. Let us come to our senses in time.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I support the amendment introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. As my noble friend Lord Patten displays such a close familiarity with Conservative slogans, let me add a second—one of the great Brexit slogans, “Take back control”. I do not see why our migration policy should be determined by the United Nations. No other country says its policy should be determined by how the United Nations has chosen to define immigration. If we want to take back control, I do not see why we should allow our policy to be determined by the United Nations. We should take back control of our migration policy and set it in accordance with our national requirements, rather than allowing this dangerous, global institution to decide who we should or should not count as migrants. As well as being about global Britain, the excellent proposition from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is about taking back control.

I have two brief questions for the Minister. We all appreciate the difficult position that he is in. One of the problems for universities has always been planning ahead and marketing themselves around the world when there is always a danger of further changes to the migration rules. If there is anything he could say that would indicate that the Government are not planning any changes in the regime for overseas students that would be a modest but helpful step.

Secondly, could the Minister indicate where he thinks education could sit within the industrial strategy? In the brief reading I have made of the documents so far, what has surprised me has been that I did not immediately see education in the list of key potential sectors. I hasten to add that education is not simply a business sector; it has a value in its own right. Nevertheless, it is a very successful British export. If, in response to the consultation on the industrial strategy, there were a message from the education sector that it would like to be backed by the Government in an exporting mission and be seen as an important part of GDP, I hope the Minister would be able to indicate that they would strongly support education as a key British export sector as part of their industrial strategy.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, I felt that this part of the debate would not be complete without the voice of the overseas student. I was an overseas student. I did my PhD at Harvard. The process for getting a visa was rather fierce. I remember going to the American embassy in London with a chest X-ray in a very large brown paper envelope, and there were other things that had to be produced. When the time came to leave, I had an American husband and a baby with an American passport. That made no difference. I was a foreign student who had come in under a particular programme, with a particular sort of visa, and I had to leave.

The point that is relevant now is that it is the accuracy and precision of the control process that prevents any drift from student status to economic migrant status. This is what matters and pretending that they are one and the same does not really address the problem. The problem is surely clarity about categories and controls.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge]

I rise to speak to Amendments 490C and 490D, which are tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Krebs, and Amendments 495A and 495B, which are tabled in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Mair and Lord Broers. These amendments concern the roles and responsibilities of the science and humanities research councils.

Amendments 490C and 490D would ensure that the science and humanities research councils are able to exercise the functions of UKRI in their fields without any additional constraint from UKRI, which is important for the autonomy of the research councils. Clause 89(1) currently restricts them exercising those functions of UKRI in such fields of activity “as UKRI may determine”. Amendment 490D simply removes the implied additional level of control by leaving out “as UKRI may determine”. This helps to strengthen the autonomy of the research councils in the new UKRI structure which noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Finlay, Lord Patel, Lord Kakkar and Lord Rees, and the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, spoke so passionately about at Second Reading.

Amendment 495A echoes the concerns that we have just been hearing about and reflects the focus of a number of amendments in this group that I strongly support. The research councils in Clause 89 are very focused on contributing to economic growth and quality of life, both of which are clearly very important. However, as we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Willis and Lord Judd, and my noble friend Lord Cameron, basic or pure research, whatever you like to call it, whether in sciences or humanities, is the pursuit of new knowledge for its own sake and as a contribution to scholarship, knowledge and understanding more widely without a current economic purpose. That is critical for a healthy research base.

Amendment 495B, which is tabled in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Mair and Lord Broers is to help ensure that Innovate UK’s business-facing function remains clear and distinct from those of the humanities research councils. In Clause 90, Innovate UK is specifically prohibited from doing the research councils’ role of carrying out research, which seems appropriate. This amendment would prevent the research councils duplicating Innovate UK’s functions so that those important functions remain clearly business-led.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall briefly speak to some of these amendments. I think the Government, perhaps through infelicitous drafting, are creating unnecessary anxieties, given the way that these clauses are currently formulated. I particularly welcome two of the amendments. First, Amendment 484AB tackles a rather peculiar feature of Clause 87, which may well be due to the way in which the parliamentary drafting developed. The phrase,

“research into science, technology, humanities and new ideas”,

is not the way in which the science and research community would list its activities. It is regrettable that social science is not specially identified in that list. We are all familiar with the term “arts and humanities”. Many of us are lay people, but we nevertheless understand the distinction between life sciences and physical sciences. This is a rather peculiar way of formulating it. I suspect a parliamentary draftsman said, “Well, social sciences are a science, so they must be covered by ‘science’. We don’t need to say ‘social sciences’ as well”. I suspect that that is the conversation that happened. We have ended up with something that, for people in this community, looks a rather peculiar list. It would be better if it were closer to the way in which we think of the range of research activities carried out in the UK.

Secondly, Clause 89(4) currently lists,

“contributing to economic growth … and … improving quality of life”.

Again, that seems to promote unnecessary anxieties. It has not been my experience that any science Minister from any political party represented in this Chamber believes that there is no value in pure research. I do not think that people sit around saying, “All we’re interested in is the immediate consequences for economic growth”. There is a great story about Margaret Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, receiving a brief advising her not to invest in the large hadron collider because it does not have any useful economic effect. She scribbled on the brief, “But it’s very interesting, isn’t it?”, and the public funding went ahead. That is the approach that I hope all of us take to science funding. I do not believe it will be any different under this new structure. However, it would tackle a concern if the Bill were explicit that, alongside the promotion of economic growth and the quality of life, we also believe in simply extending knowledge and research in this country.

There may be other areas. I listened with great interest to what the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said, about what can also be improved on. These are unnecessarily narrow formulations that do not adequately capture what the Government intend with the new structure. As we have heard the Minister’s willingness to reflect, I hope that this is an area where he reflects with particular energy and concentration.

[Lord Broers]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said. I have my name on Amendment 495B, to which my noble friend Lady Brown of Cambridge has spoken so excellently. In trying to distinguish what Innovate UK and the research councils do, Clause 90 states:

“arrangements may not be made under this section for the exercise by Innovate UK of UKRI’s function mentioned in section 87(1)(a)”.

When you look at Section 87(1)(a), you will find it states:

“carry out research into science, technology, humanities and new ideas”.

Innovate UK spends 20% or 30% of its resource, I believe, on research that underpins the product programmes it is supporting, which is only appropriate. In Amendments 484A and 484B, which are in this group, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, suggests adding “basic, applied and strategic” before “research”, which really steps into Innovate UK’s territory. There is no specific amendment on this—I just point out to the Minister that there is concern about the wording. It is misleading if you take it just as it reads.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, in commenting briefly on this clause I draw attention to the fact that I am currently trying to set up a venture capital fund. It does not yet exist, but it might do.

Several noble Lords have gone through the thought process to which my noble friend Lord Selborne has just referred. The decision that Innovate UK should be part of the overall UKRI, which is not clear in the original Nurse review, we now accept and recognise.

There are two points on which it would be helpful to hear more from the Minister. If this involves one of the letters for which this Committee has become famous, so be it. It would be helpful to know how many of the Secretary of State’s powers—which are, as the Minister rightly said, explicit in the Bill as part of the usual Treasury controls—will, in practice, be delegated to Innovate UK. Although it is clear that in theory there is a great deal that Innovate UK can do only with the consent of the Secretary of State, it was not my experience as a Minister that I or Sir Vince Cable were endlessly getting petitions to do specific things. Organisations operated within a range of delegated authorities so that they could get on with doing things. It would be helpful if the Minister could indicate the kind of flexibility that he envisages Innovate UK would have within the UKRI regime.

Secondly, in the Bill as currently drafted there is a hint of old-think pre-industrial strategy. I wonder what would have happened if the chronology had been the other way round and we had had last week’s excellent consultation document on industrial strategy and then the legislation. Some of these constraints are hard to reconcile with the ideas in the industrial strategy. Again, if the Minister can show how this model will enable Ministers to deliver what they are talking about in the industrial strategy, it would be very helpful.

[Lord Mendelsohn]

My Lords, I shall speak to our amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has made a very good case. The long and the short of how we see this is that we do not think it was a very good idea in the first place and time has passed on. Many of the comments that have been made will find an echo in our thoughts.

It is worth returning to the original Nurse review. The report states:

“In relation to Innovate UK, as stated earlier, the current delivery landscape is too complex and there should be a smoother pathway to more applied research. Integrating Innovate UK into the Research UK structure alongside the Research Councils could help such issues to be addressed However, Innovate UK has a different customer base as well as differences in delivery mechanisms, which Government needs to bear in mind in considering such an approach and which this review, according to its remit, has not looked at in depth”.


The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, made exactly that point: what evaluations were made when it went in?

I would suggest that both its target audience and the mechanisms that Innovate UK uses are so dramatically different that it is unlikely to be able to perform such an effective function within the context of UKRI. I think that it would be a terrible misfortune if Innovate UK, which has proved itself over some years to be a very effective body doing great things, were to come into UKRI with its current framework. That would not just be restrictive but could possibly be quite damaging for an institution that is following a good path.

I also think that this is a policy that was designed for a pre-Brexit world. In a post-Brexit world—which we are not in at the moment—we know that we are going to have to rely on research an awful lot more, and a great deal will be required of it. I cannot imagine that in such a situation we would ever put one of our most significant levers into this sort of environment; we would leave it to work independently. With the industrial strategy having now been published, it is absolutely clear that there is a massive hole in the delivery of its research objectives that would have been filled by Innovate UK. That is a mistake that the Government would be wise to take note of.

By the way, it is important to understand that Nurse himself recommended:

“At the very least, the Chief Executives of HEFCE and Innovate UK should be represented, on the Executive Committee of Research UK”,


or UKRI. And that was probably a very measured judgment.

My final very brief point is in relation to what it is necessary to do to make the best of our university sector and to be able to commercialise at both ends of the spectrum via big company investments and tracking what research is being done as well as smaller companies emerging as the result of venture capital. An awful lot is going on in this area. Recently I spent time with some of the companies at Cambridge Enterprise Limited. Innovate UK is not the only solution that is required, and I think that it would be a colossal mistake to expect UKRI to perform that role and to forget the other things we may need to do. To restrict UKRI in that situation has the potential to do great harm to the long-term needs of our country, especially in an environment where we need an effective industrial strategy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, this continues on the theme of uncertainties. I think that I can deal with the issue fairly quickly; at least that is my aspiration in moving the amendment. The starting point for this brief debate is Clause 86, which lists the seven current research councils and then adds Innovate UK and Research England. The intriguing statement is:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations amend”,


that list so as to,

“add or omit a Council, or … change the name of a Council … But the regulations may not omit, or change the name of, Innovate UK or Research England”.

Inevitably, the question that arises is: why is that? This is not in any sense an attempt to set in concrete the existing structures. These councils have come and gone and changed their names with dazzling frequency and I do not think that what we have before us, the seven currently dealing with the range of research that they do, will last for very long. But it is important to have an explanation from the Minister, perhaps by letter if he so chooses, of what consultation might be undertaken before the councils are changed—because there is a bit of a worry about the uncertainty.

[Lord Willetts]

The noble Lord has just made an assertion which I do not think is quite correct. After the research councils were created in 1965 by the Wilson Government, if someone who had participated in those debates at the time were to look at this list of research councils, they would indeed observe changes. However, it is not the case that they change frequently: rather, they have changed very slowly over time. For example, the Economic and Social Research Council was created in the 1980s and the Science and Technology Facilities Council more recently. But the noble Lord should recognise that there is some quite deep continuity here, which is important if we want to ensure that they remain stable entities in the new dispensation.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That is a very kind intervention because I no longer need to give the second half of my speech, in which I would have stated that the names of the councils are only one aspect; the worry is that the work might change. That was the point I was seeking to make. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I recall receiving the letter about the James Hutton Institute, but after so many Members of the House have spoken so eloquently about that case, I would like to make a wider point about the clause. There is a long-standing problem that the Minister will wrestle with of departmental R&D budgets being cut back and attempts always to put on to the science budget policies and budgetary responsibilities that should lie with individual departments. I am sure that that is the back-drop to this case. But with the new UKRI, there is an opportunity to look more widely at the kind of research institutes that are funded out of public money and on what terms.

We have heard examples this evening of the dual funding structure, on which we pride ourselves. However, the dual funding regime actually has some significant omissions, because it is research council funding for research institutes belonging to the councils and specific projects, and, secondly, a funding stream for universities. Those that miss out are research bodies that are not part of universities, and quite possibly not even part of the conventional public sector, that particularly need capital funding. Agencies such as the Welding Institute, now called TWI, or NIAB, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, are charitable bodies that may get individual funding from a research council for a specific project, but they have not historically been able to receive significant capital support for growing their facilities. These are the kinds of issues that UKRI will wrestle with.

It would be helpful if the Minister could say that as UKRI is set up with its new scope, it will be within its power to look at these sorts of issues. It may find excellent research institutes for which, because of the size of its capital budget, UKRI can provide some kind of capital investment in a way that does not fall neatly in the dual funding arrangements that came before. That is a good example of what one might hope will be extra flexibility in the new arrangements, just as we have heard from the Bench opposite about the need for flexibility in another way.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I have to start with the confession that the James Hutton Institute is just a name to me. I confess my appalling ignorance on this subject. I need to research it. If I could, I will investigate the particular circumstance relating to the James Hutton Institute and then write to the noble Lord. I hope that that will be acceptable to him. I am sure it is a world-leading institution but, as I said, I have not visited and am not familiar with it.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I too thank the Government for their amendments, which are much needed and beneficial. I have put my name to Amendment 116A because the four-year period is absolutely right. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has said, it would enable students to go through a cycle of university education and into the labour market. There would then be feedback and we could see clearly whether any issues needed ironing out before that awarding status is given. Feedback should also include things such as facilities: for example, the quality of the library and, dare I say it, perhaps the quality of teaching as well.

I apologise for just throwing this out—it may be that I have missed it—but perhaps I may take the liberty of asking the Minister this. If a private provider gets degree-awarding status and, goodness forbid, that provider goes into liquidation, what happens to the student loans that have been taken out? Will the Government guarantee that they can get those loans back, so that they can pay for the course somewhere else?

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly intervene in this debate to welcome the proposals that the Government have now brought before us. There is, as we recognised in debates at earlier stages, always a balance to be struck. On the one hand is protecting the interests of students, which must be paramount, and the reputation of British higher education as a whole. On the other hand, the fact is that most of the innovation and advances in higher education in England have occurred as a result of new providers coming in and doing things differently. The history of the growth in, and success of, higher education in our country has been that doing things differently from the start is easier than changing an existing body. The arrangements in the new clause today get that balance right.

If anything, the process will now be more rigorous and defined than the kind of process that we had when decisions on degree-awarding powers and university title were taken by, among other bodies, the Privy Council on advice. This is superior to what went before. I feel a bit wary of referring to the 1960s now that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has referred to them. But the fact is that one of the most exciting experiments in the growth of higher education in this country in the 1960s was when universities got their title and degree-awarding powers from the very beginning. We should not be far more restrictive than we were then.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, it is worth reflecting that we had quite a long discussion of this issue in Committee, when opinions were more sharply divided than they are now. Amendment 116A, which has been spoken to and which we have put our name to, was originally drafted in slightly different terms. The balancing point between the end of the first part and the second part was that the new provider would have to be established for a minimum of four years with validation arrangements and that the QAC had to be assured that the provider could meet the required standards for the long term. We are listening and reflecting on what the Government say as much, I am sure, as they listen and reflect on what we say. We have decided to change our position on this and now align ourselves with the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who has spoken on this amendment. We are prepared to accept that it is a good balance. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, that we now have it about right. There is a route through which new institutions can come forward and receive degree-awarding powers: one of partnership and which has a minimum of four years. We would like to see that maintained because it has a value, but there is also the opportunity to be assessed and assured directly, without having to have a waiting period.

I am glad that, in all this debate, we have now lost the idea that there will in any sense be a probationary period; there will be no such thing as probationary degrees. We are talking about getting something up and started, which will have external value and be recognised by everyone in this country and abroad as a new institution that is of the standard required in UK higher education. We can therefore support this, which is why we are happy to sign up to the proposals in government Amendment 116. We acknowledge, although we did not sign up to them, that the new arrangements set out in the government amendments introduced by the Minister will be an effective and efficient way of carrying this forward. We support them but hope to amend the amendments that have been tabled.

The narrow point is about whether the Government’s proposals mean that new, innovative providers can come forward without what the Government allege has been a problem with trying to find validation, and the cost of that. Given that the information from the Minister’s department was that there were of the order of more than 400 new providers, of which just over 100 have degree-awarding powers already, there does not seem to be much of a problem here. We should not be too shaken into worrying about the status to which the higher education system in the UK might have fallen by having this new charge for innovation. I am a bit sceptical about that; it can be overstated. Nevertheless, I accept the general principles proposed here and we are therefore able to accept them. But the measures that are in place would be of value if the specific words in Amendment 116A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, were in place. I hope very much that, when it comes to it, she will invite the House to have an opinion on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, given that elucidation, I shall say much the same thing but in different words in relation to Amendment 119.

My name was attached to Amendment 117A and I have listened carefully to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. It is an offer to the Government to tidy up an area that needs more attention.

I turn first to a letter we received by email today just before we got into the Chamber. The Minister may have something to say on this point which may resolve the issue. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her support on Amendment 119. It was spoken to when we tried to link it to an earlier group of amendments in case, as has happened, the Bill was amended to reflect a situation where validation routes are twofold. One route involves working with another institution or provider for at least four years—some courses are longer than four years—and then applying for the powers at that time. The other route is by having a tougher assessment arrangement, which is done through the Quality Assessment Committee of the Office for Students and the designated body appointed in this area. In those circumstances, it does not seem necessary that there would be a requirement at any stage in the future for the OfS also to be a validator.

The amendment would remove the infelicitous possibility that the body which is now called a regulator, the Office for Students—I wish it had another name—would not only ensure that validation arrangements operated throughout the sector but would also be a validator and the regulator of those two processes. That does not seem appropriate. However, in the letter today there is an announcement, which I am foreshadowing, which deals with the fact that there will be a process of consultation on the precise way in which the OfS will provide a validation service. That seems to covers the point very well, so we will not press the amendment.

[Lord Willetts]

I am encouraged by what we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I think that there is a kind of logical structure here which the removal of Clause 48 would damage. We have currently a lively set of arrangements for validating degrees carried out by a range of universities. I was involved, for example, in supporting a programme to create a new higher education institution in Herefordshire. When it tried to find a validator, it had a queue of universities that wished to be the validator. We have a lively market at the moment, although there are concerns that it may not always cover every case and is not as open as it should be.

There is a proposal that it should be possible, if necessary, for the Office for Students to commission a validating body if it is concerned that validating is not being done properly. However, in cases where it has not been able to commission arrangements that ensure validation, in the last resort it may itself be the validator. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, is right that it is unusual for a regulator also to be the validator, but I hope we will hear from the Minister that the circumstances in which that became necessary are rather remote. Given what is already happening, one would expect either the current arrangements for validating to be satisfactory or for the OfS to be able to commission a body that will undertake validation.

The argument for Clause 48, which it is proposed should be deleted, is that it is the logical long stop in the event that it has not been possible to commission anyone else to carry out the arrangements. On the basis that it is unlikely the power will be necessary, but we can understand why it has to be held in reserve, I think Clause 48 is needed and the amendment to remove it would leave a potential gap in the system. I hope we will hear more on that from the Minister.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has said and with his response to the letter, which is encouraging. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that there will be better consultation. Although I agree that we need a final long stop, what we have at the moment is that the regulator has to put itself on the register and then award degrees, and that could be addressed with a little more care.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 145 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Stevenson. Students beginning their university courses after 2012 were told that if they took out a student loan, they would be required to repay it at the rate of 9% of future earnings above £21,000 a year. The Government repeatedly promised that the £21,000 would be uprated each year from April 2017 in line with average earnings. Indeed, that was confirmed in a letter to parents by the then Minister for Universities and Science, who is now the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. That letter contained no caveats, so students and their families knew where they stood on repayment of their loans—at least, they thought they did until the 2015 Autumn Statement, when the then Chancellor announced that the repayment threshold for student loans was to be frozen at £21,000 from April 2017, instead of being uprated in line with average earnings.

This is fundamentally a question of broken faith: of trusting what the Government say proving ill founded. Quite apart from the substantive issue in the amendment, that question of trust is, we believe, far from insignificant.

This issue is being revisited following debate in Committee, when the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, used his ministerial experience to explain that when the decision was taken in 2011 to freeze the repayment threshold, the figure was based on 75% of projected average earnings in 2017. Earnings in the intervening period having risen by less than anticipated, the noble Lord told us that,

“as a result … the repayment threshold has become significantly more generous relative to earnings than we expected when we set it”.—[Official Report, 25/1/17; col. 729.]

Unfortunately, that possibility was not mentioned in his aforementioned letter to parents.

By the logic of that argument, had earnings risen more than anticipated, students would be facing an increased threshold next month. Noble Lords will forgive me if I cast some doubt on that being allowed to occur. Nor should it, because an agreement is an agreement and should be respected as such by both sides. The Government’s action amounts to breach of a contract, with one party unilaterally changing the terms of the student loan. In any other context, it would be open to legal action to have the contract enforced and that action would succeed.

When the Bill was considered in the other place, the Minister for Universities and Science, Mr Johnson, called on universities to redouble their efforts to boost social mobility. He was right in his exhortation, although wrong to suggest it was solely the responsibility of institutions. When Labour left office in 2010, 71% of state educated pupils went to university. By 2014, that figure had fallen to 62%. This change will have a disproportionate impact on graduates on modest incomes and will act as a disincentive to young people from less well-off backgrounds to take up a place at university, because they will know that a previous cohort of students were misled by the Government over the repayment term of their loans. The parents of that cohort were also misled, and some of the financial impact may well follow them.

Amendment 145 would prevent any changes to the repayment of a student loan, irrespective of whether that benefited students, after the terms and conditions of repayment had been agreed. This would apply to existing loans after the commencement of the Act and ensure that such a situation would not recur by bringing loans under the regulation of the Consumer Credit Act 1974—which, many people were surprised to learn, does not apply at the moment.

Some regulation of the student loan market is needed to provide the protection that students need. In replying for the Government in Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, told noble Lords:

“On the matter of student loan terms and conditions, I share your Lordships’ desire to ensure that students are protected ... However, it is important that … the Government retain the power to adjust terms and conditions”.—[Official Report, 25/1/17; col. 732.]


How are those two statements capable of reconciliation? They are not, because only the Government are protected, not students—the very people that the Minister has consistently said throughout our deliberations are at the heart of this legislation. The unilateral reneging on loan agreements demonstrates that in fact, students’ interests can be dispensed with whenever the Government deem it necessary. That is unacceptable and is one more reason why the amendment should be adopted as a new clause. I beg to move.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

I shall very briefly comment, as I have had my arguments referred to by the noble Lord opposite. The graduate repayment scheme is neither conventional public spending, nor is it a commercial loan. All three parties, when faced with the question of how you finance higher education, have concluded that the best way forward is through such an arrangement. If it is public spending, it will be a low priority, and the funding of universities will suffer. If it is a commercial loan, which now appears to be what the Labour Opposition are calling for, and if we really were to have it regulated under the terms of the convention on private loans, one of the first requirements would be the requirement to know your customer—to make an assessment of an individual recipient to see whether they have the capacity to repay a student loan. The agencies would have to decide whether to lend to any one individual or not, and disadvantaged students would certainly lose out from such an assessment. That is why this scheme is a midway house between two unpalatable alternatives, and why all three parties have backed it.

As part of that arrangement, it seems legitimate that Governments should be able to decide—I have always thought every five years, in an explicit public review—the balance between repayments by graduates and the remaining burden being borne by the generality of taxpayers, as the loans are paid off. That seems a sensible arrangement, bringing necessary flexibility into the system, and it is why it has always been made clear to students that Governments have the right to change the repayment terms as they wish. That seems a sensible feature—and if we go down the route of treating it like a private contract and repayment, it will have consequences which all of us in this House, particularly the party opposite, will come to regret.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that students should be entitled to protection when they take out student loans. Protections are already available in law and take account of the particular nature of these loans. Student loans are not like the commercial loans of the sort regulated under the Consumer Credit Act; they are not for profit and are universally accessible. Repayments depend on the borrower’s income, not on the amount borrowed, and the interest rate is limited by legislation. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Willetts for summarising the excellent speech that he made on this subject in Committee, and putting forward powerful reasons for not treating these as commercial loans.

I turn first to the issue of the threshold freeze. To put higher education funding on to a more sustainable footing, we had to ask those who benefit from university to meet more of the costs of their studies. This enabled us to remove the cap on student numbers, enabling more people to get the benefit of a university education. When the current system was first introduced, the threshold of £21,000 would have been around 75% of the projected average earnings in 2016. Since then, updated calculations, based on ONS figures for earnings, show that figure is now 83%, reflecting weaker than expected earnings growth since 2012. Uprating the repayment threshold in line with average earnings would cost around £5 billion in total by April 2021 compared with the current system. The total cost of uprating by CPI would be around £4 billion over the same period. The proportion of borrowers liable to repay when the £21,000 threshold took effect in April is therefore significantly lower than could have been envisaged when the policy was originally introduced. The threshold would now be set at around £19,000 if it were to reflect the same ratio of average earnings. The current £21,000 threshold remains higher than the £17,495 threshold that applies to loans taken out under the system left behind by Labour in 2010. Low earners remain protected. Borrowers who earn less than £21,000 a year repay nothing, while borrowers earning more than this repay 9% of their earnings above the threshold, irrespective of how much they borrowed. Any outstanding balance on the loans is written off after 30 years with no detriment to the borrower and no effect on their credit rating. This Bill makes no changes to any of these arrangements.

It is important that, subject to parliamentary scrutiny, the Government retain the power to adjust the terms and conditions of student loans. As I said a moment ago, I fully share the noble Lord’s desire to ensure that students are protected and that is why the loan terms are set out in legislation.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak very briefly just to endorse everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has said. On behalf of the House generally I want to thank her for all the hard work and effort that she has put into securing these changes. It is fair to say that this part of the Bill, in its original form, was the one that gave cause to a great deal of worry, and for me personally the most worry of all because in my view it threatened the reputation of higher education not only in this country but overseas. With this amendment, we are now in a much better place.

The only thing that I ask is that there be some monitoring of how it works in practice. It is very important that there should be some evaluation to make absolutely clear to the higher education sector as a whole, and to those who might want to enter it, that there will be rigorous tests of both quality and standards before any institution can have degree-awarding powers and access to grants and loans through the system of financial support that we have. Having said that, however, I am really grateful to the Government and to the Minister for bringing forward this amendment. It is a huge improvement to the Bill compared to what we had originally.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene very briefly to say that, at the end of the deliberations on this Bill, and on this important aspect of the Bill, we have ended up with a more rigorous, more transparent and more demanding regime for alternative providers in higher education than we have ever had before. I regretted that it was not possible to get legislation during the previous Parliament that would have gone alongside the initiatives that we took on alternative providers, but we certainly have a very significant regulatory regime in place now.

--- Later in debate ---

The problem will not go away, and the rejection will not mean the end of the story. This system of treating students as economic migrants will continue to inflict damage on our universities and on our future soft power assets in the decades ahead. We will certainly need to return to this issue when the Government bring forward, as they have stated they will in their White Paper on the great repeal Bill, post-Brexit immigration legislation. I conclude with the hope that a period of reflection will bring wise counsel as well as the realisation that pyrrhic victories, of which this is one, are of a kind that we in this country could do well without.

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on the energy he has put into this issue during the process of scrutinising the Bill. The debates we have had on it have made it absolutely clear that on all sides of the House we strongly support legitimate overseas students coming to Britain to study, because it enhances the academic experience of British students, it is good for the overseas students, and it is a great British export.

What the Minister said in signalling again that the policy remains to attract legitimate overseas students was rather more welcome than the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, accepted, although I fully realise why he made the observations that he did. He says that statistics are not the crucial issue and statistics are less important than policy. However, the point we heard a moment ago from the Minister about this new exercise on statistics has considerable potential value. Aside from all the general arguments, one of the frustrations about this debate is a genuine empirical disagreement about how many students from abroad overstay in this country. A lot of the debate and attitudes in Whitehall are shaped by a view that we have a problem of a lot of overstayers. If there is such a problem, we need to tighten the regime. If, however, there is not a problem of overstayers, and it can be established authoritatively that there is not, that would be a significant contribution to the debate.

The statistics at the moment are very unreliable. If someone comes here to study and tells someone doing one of the surveys that they are here to study, stays on and works for a time, then leaves, answering the question, “What have you been doing?”, with, “I’ve been working”, they count as a leaving worker, not as a leaving student. If someone comes here to study, thinking that they will be here for more than a year, but end up leaving Britain after being here for 11 months—many master’s courses are advertised as a year long but you can complete them in 11 months—they do not count as one of those one-year students departing. There are lots of problems like this in the statistics, which have proved a bane in the debate about overseas students and their numbers. I very much hope that the important initiative which the Minister announced today, which was discussed in the other House yesterday, will enable us to get to the bottom of those types of empirical questions. That would be an important contribution to the debate, and I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that those type of questions will be within the scope of this exercise and that we will learn more about it.

I also hope, thinking of all the time that we have spent on attracting overseas students to this country, that we might briefly remind the Government of the importance of encouraging British students to study abroad. Of course, dare one say it, if they were to study abroad for more than a year, it would reduce net migration—not that that is the most important reason for promoting it. However, when one looks at half a million students coming from abroad to study in Britain and 30,000 British students going to study abroad, especially if we are to be a dynamic global presence, even post Brexit, we need to do better at promoting and encouraging British students to go abroad. One way to do that is to make it easier for them to take out loans to finance their study abroad. I hope that we will look at that.

Finally, as this will be my last intervention on the Bill, I congratulate the ministerial team that has successfully brought the Bill to a conclusion. My noble friend Lord Younger has been courteous throughout this debate, and Jo Johnson has been extraordinarily diligent in spending time in this Chamber observing our debates. This is a substantial piece of legislation. We legislate on higher education only once a generation, and this legislation finally puts in place a regulatory regime that matches the realities of higher education in Britain. We could not have carried on with the old grant-giving body being a kind of informal regulator, using its power of the purse to regulate the sector. This is a much better, more lucid, more transparent and more rule-based system.

In our debates in this House, on all sides, it has been clear that we care passionately about the autonomy of higher education institutions and universities, and the provisions, including the new ones we have debated today, enhance that autonomy. Looking back on this debate, one of my regrets is that while we have tended to look at this from an English perspective. From the conversations I have with vice-chancellors, it is clear to me where the biggest threats to autonomy in our universities lie, and it is not in England. The relationship between the Scottish Government and their universities is far more intrusive and overbearing than anything that would be acceptable in England. We have sometimes had an English Minister with English teaching responsibilities facing challenges about autonomy for which he is not responsible. I hope that in the future we will be avid in securing, scrutinising and protecting the autonomy of Scottish universities, which matters enormously in Scotland and more widely. Therefore, we have a better regulatory regime, we have spoken up for autonomy, and, significantly, the focus on teaching has reminded us of the importance of the educational experience in university. After so much attention has been given to research over the years, it is excellent that we have spent so much of our time focusing on teaching.

I therefore thank the Ministers, and I thank their Bill team for the way in which it has engaged with many of us as we have had questions to make sense of specific proposals and try to engage with them. Indeed, this has been a cross-party debate. We have had excellent interventions from experts on the Cross Benches, people who work in and understand higher education, which has enormously enhanced our debate. We have heard from the Opposition Benches—I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made an important contribution from the Opposition Front Bench—and from the Lib Dem Benches. Occasionally I had to remind myself that we had worked on this together in coalition and that some of the measures that were now proving so controversial could trace their origins to a Government in whom there was even a Secretary of State I worked with who belonged to a certain party opposite. However, all parties have worked together on this, and we can be proud of the Bill that is now going forward.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I echo much of what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, but I want to start with the reference that the Prime Minister made to the “unelected House of Lords” when she announced the election. This unelected House is at its best when it does what it has done with this Bill. It is probably one of the most amended Bills in the history of Parliament, with more than 500 amendments, and that is because of the expertise that exists across the board in this House—a breadth and depth of expertise that no other Chamber in the world comes anywhere close to by a factor of maybe 10. A former Universities Minister has just spoken and we have heard from chancellors and vice-chancellors of universities, former vice-chancellors of universities such as Cambridge and the heads of Oxbridge colleges—and I could go on. Where in the world would you get that? We have had it with this Bill.

I thank the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for having always been polite and decent, and for having listened. We may not be where a lot of us want to be, but the Government have listened and there has been a lot of movement. I, too, acknowledge the commitment of the Minister, Jo Johnson. I have never seen a Minister so assiduous in attending the stages of a Bill in the way that he has with this one, and it shows visibly that he is listening. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the initiative that he has taken on this amendment. He is a former pro-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, where today I am proud to be chancellor.

Normally, you are not meant to repeat things at various stages of a Bill—you cannot make another Second Reading speech later on. However, in this case new information and new reports have been coming out at every stage. For example, the UUK report suddenly revealed that the contribution of international students is much higher than we had ever thought. Figures of £13 billion or £14 billion were quoted, but the figure is actually £26 billion a year. That is new information to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was trying to do with this amendment. On top of that, we have had, hot off the press, the Education Committee’s report entitled Exiting the EU: Challenges and Opportunities for Higher Education, dated 25 April.

Before I go any further, there is a unanimous consensus around the country—let alone in this House, where we won this amendment by close to 100 votes—that international students should not be included in the net migration figures. The National Union of Students has stated:

“We are concerned that—as long as international students are included within net migration statistics—policies that adversely impact international students owing to the Government’s desire to reduce levels of immigration will only exacerbate”.


It also said:

“The Government’s abject failure to offer anything substantial on removing international students from net migration targets is”,


in its words,

“outrageous. There is immense support for doing so, from cross-party parliamentarians, from UK students and from the general public. It is unacceptable that the government continues to ignore this support”.

I come to the House of Commons Education Committee’s report, which no one has spoken about and which has just been published—on 25 April. It contains a whole section on international students and the migration target. It says very clearly that the 100,000 target still exists, yet we all know that the latest figure for overall net migration is 273,000. The excuse that the Government give every time we challenge them to remove international students from the net migration figures is that the UN rules mean that we have to include them and treat them as immigrants—and those are indeed the UN rules.

The Government’s other answer is always, “There is no cap on the number of international students. Any number is welcome”. However, the danger lies in the perception that is created by continuing to include them in the figure and treat them as immigrants. The Home Secretary at the Conservative Party conference spoke about possibly reducing the number of international students. That is scary—and it is a message that goes to the outside world. The Commons Education Committee said the majority of its written evidence and witnesses at its meetings were very clear that international students should be removed from the net migration target, which would,

“help offset risks to higher education from leaving the EU”.

It continued:

“Our evidence was unanimous in saying that international students were a positive force”,


for education, contributing £25.8 billion a year and creating more than 200,000 jobs, and contributing to the richness of our universities, as well as to the UK’s soft power.