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.