Higher Education

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on securing this debate. I must admit that when I saw the list of speakers and started to calculate the average length of time they were taking, I inwardly groaned. However, I have sat here and, for the most part, have been enthralled by the nature of this debate, its depth, its wit and its analysis. There have been one or two debates that I have sat through about which I could not say the same thing. I feel confident when I enter a debate about apprenticeships because I was on one; I feel less easy on entering this debate because my formal qualifications ended at City and Guilds. My noble friend Lord Giddens once described me as an autodidact, and that is probably about right, so I shall rely on that qualification from the university of life to get me through this debate.

I, too, pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth—not bad for a jobbing priest is all I can say. However, he is a lot more than that, as we have heard. It was a fascinating contribution, and I thank him for the only reference to the living wage in this debate. The church played a significant role in instigating that concept. The last thing I shall say about this is that if you wanted to pay tribute to the House of Lords as an organisation that can bring a wide variety of knowledge and experience, this debate has encompassed that. Hansard will certainly be worth looking at.

Let me start with where the country now finds itself. Surely we have to think seriously about reducing the huge levels of debt write-off that make today’s system unsustainable. I do not say that to make a party-political point; it has been the subject of a recent report. The lessons from the revelations of the past two weeks have driven a coach and horses through the Government’s higher education policies. The revelations have caused huge concerns for students, taxpayers and vice-chancellors. They are revelations that have comprehensively changed the terms of the debate. First, there was the admission in a Parliamentary Answer to my right honourable friend Liam Byrne that the Government now expect the write-off of student loans to rise so high that their system of tripling student fees might not actually save the taxpayer any money. That is surely a cause for concern. Mr Nick Clegg, who tried to defend his change in policy by arguing that the amount students would pay back each month was less than under the old system, somehow forgot to mention that the average student today will not pay their loan back for 27 years, so students today will be approaching 50 before they are free from the debt burden. Surely that should not be the legacy that we leave to this generation and the next generation of students.

A number of noble Lords have commented warmly on the fact that they attended university for free. Yes, they did, but in an era when somewhere between 5% and 7% of people went to university, when it was very class based and very few working class children were able to attend university or even had an aspiration to do so. I can recall only one mention during this debate of the fact that it was the previous Labour Government who set the target of 50% of young people going to university. For a while, I heard it mocked and derided. Yet, when I went round speaking to young people, which I do with the House of Lords outreach programme, and asked group of sixth formers in very working class colleges and schools how many of them were going to university, all the hands went up. I thought that was an astonishing achievement. One might argue about the outcomes, but in terms of social mobility and raising aspirations, I think that was a very important policy.

In stark contrast to the previous regime, it was estimated that, for students starting after 2006-07, when the previous Government introduced a loans system for fees—a difficult decision that I remember having to try to justify, as I was Minister for Students and was going around meeting groups of students, and I probably used that hackneyed phrase about politics being about the language of priorities—the average student loan would take something like 11 years to repay for men and 16 years for women. Then, last week, we got the story’s latest instalment when a fresh batch of Answers arrived to Parliamentary Questions tabled on the scale at which private providers are now enjoying hundreds of millions of pounds of support, funded by the taxpayer. The sheer scale of the subsidy surprised everyone: nearly £1 billion of publicly funded loans and maintenance grants are now flowing through students to private providers. That, as the Guardian pointed out, is a 2,100% increase in recent years.

It is rather surprising that the Government seem to have no idea of the level of profit that these private providers are now making. However, I am conscious of the time, so I will chop out that bit, which I was going to focus on.

A number of contributors to the debate have understandably praised the depth and diversity of our university system, although we have had a worrying analysis of the fall in international and overseas students; I will not go into that in depth, because I think that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and others have made quite an intense analysis. I look with anticipation to the Minister for his response on that. We cannot afford to be complacent. If one looks at the fees that European universities are charging now, it is quite an attractive proposition for people in this country to go to some of the universities that are teaching in English—in Holland and other countries, for example.

Given the levels of debt for which we are asking—with something like £9,000 fees being more or less average, so students will have about £50,000 in debt—surely we should be asking, even though we have a rise in applications and I acknowledge the Minister’s point on that, whether it stands the value-for-money test. I do not apologise for that. I know that some of the contributors to the debate might not like me using that phrase, but young people are going to seriously assess that. It is not a question of whether they are a poet or a plumber in aspiration. I actually look for a poetical plumber; combining the two might be good, to pinch a phrase from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. Students are entitled to query what they are getting for that investment, given that it is going to take a large chunk of their life to repay it.

It is therefore legitimate for Which? to produce a briefing for today’s debate, for which I commend it. Whether that is consumerisation or not, it is important that we have independent analysis. I do not know whether the Minister has had a chance to look at the briefing, but it says:

“However, it is questionable whether the higher education market is promoting the best interests of students as consumers and more needs to be done to protect them from poor standards … Which? believes that there are a number of changes that need to be addressed to ensure that higher education improves for the benefit of students … There is inadequate information available for prospective students, for example on the nature and quality of the academic experience. Which? wants to see high quality, easily-comparable information on university courses for prospective students”.

And so it goes on. I have not got the time to quote the entire thing. I will end on this point, also made by a noble Lord whose name I have wrong—my apologies—which is that:

“The current regulatory regime does not work in the interests of students”.

It probably does not work in the interests of universities, either. It continues:

“Which? is calling for an examination of the case for a stronger”—

or better—“regulatory framework”. That is a legitimate part of this analysis.

I will set out today the principles which should guide us. These principles are deeply rooted in our history and academic traditions but, more importantly, in a sense of the future. In a world turning east, in which technology is moving faster than ever, we in Britain need new answers to help us collectively earn our way to a better standard of living. The starting point for our principles is a speech that my right honourable friend the Shadow Secretary of State, Chuka Umunna, made to the Engineering Employers’ Federation few weeks ago. In that speech he said that in a country where living standards are under such acute pressure and where the deficit still looms so large, innovation is the only way out of austerity. As he put it:

“We, the Labour Party, are clear about our goal: a high-productivity, high-skilled, innovation-led economy”.

I am sure we can all sign up to that.

That is why our universities are so important. They are, as a number of noble Lords said, the power houses of the knowledge economy. They need to be bigger, stronger and more central to our economy in the years to come. However, they need also to focus on ensuring that the students and the country as a whole get value for money and that all universities are part of their local communities. I believe the right reverend Prelate quoted the number of employees in universities—they are big employers. Whenever I visit a university, I always ask the same question, “How many apprentices do you employ as a university? You are a big employer; you have lots of opportunities and you could work in collaboration with your local colleges”. Perhaps I can have that conversation with the right reverend Prelate afterwards.

As the Royal Society put it so simply and eloquently in 2010, Britain needs to put science and innovation at the heart of a strategy for long-term economic growth.

It is now clear that the student loan system that pays for our universities, voted through by the Lib Dems, is a time bomb. According to the Public Accounts Committee, it is storing up perhaps £70 billion to £80 billion of debts that may never be repaid. Today’s system with tripled fees and big debts for graduates is now as expensive as the system where students were charged a third as much. It has become indefensible, so people should now stop trying to defend it and, as a number of noble Lords have said, we ought to review it.

Another test must be: what is good for our science base—our store of knowledge and wisdom? The Minister alleged that everything is okay on research, but today, while other powers, emerging and established, are investing in science like never before, we are cutting our science spending across government, according to the Campaign for Science and Engineering, to the tune of over £800 million. Nationally, research and development as a percentage of GDP is at its lowest level since the turn of the century. Last year it fell for the first time since 1985. Does the Minister recognise the need to ensure that research spending at least achieves the OECD average?

My next point is about student choice. One of the benefits of these debates is that you get some useful briefings. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and certainly other noble Lords, referred to a need for a more flexible approach. The Association of Colleges produced a useful briefing which talked about a system that allows students to accumulate and transfer course credits. We have heard talk about part-time study and the use of online study, which will certainly impact across education. That point is well worth making. My noble friend Lady Morris, in her fascinating contribution, analysed where the current universities have come from, what their antecedents were and what they now attempt to provide. She also addressed, as did a number of noble Lords, the fact that the league tables do not capture what they need to capture or what so many potential students aspire to do.

Today, while we do a decent job of getting A-level students, or those on an academic route, to university, we do not do a very good job of lifting apprentices up to the same standards. Rolls-Royce, like other great firms, trains 50% of its apprentices to degree-level skills; as a country we manage just 6%—a grand total of 6,000 people. That is not good enough today, and certainly not good enough for the future.

We need to do far more to fix Britain’s skills base when regional skills gaps are opening wide all over Britain. I am a firm believer in education for education’s sake, but I know, too, that a good job is fundamental to the way we flourish, and right now half of graduates—even though they may be in employment—are not in graduate-level jobs.

I will make brief reference to the Minister’s Statement on the disabled students allowance. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, expressed concern about it, and having gone through the Statement I can understand why. Can the Minister reflect on what the level of consultation was—is the recommendation a done deal?—and whether there has been an impact assessment of the proposals that are outlined?

We need to ensure that our higher education system meets the needs of the country, and is challenging and sustainable. We want to make sure that it boosts the science base, diversifies student choice and brings universities and business together to deliver fast enough progress towards social mobility. What we need to do, surely, is to seek to inspire this generation of students. It is a bit worrying that in Plymouth, for example, it has been estimated that only 10% of the university’s 35,000-strong student population plans to use its vote in the upcoming elections. The reason often cited by this is the decision by the coalition to treble university tuition fees. What assurances can the Minister offer to the young people of Plymouth and the young people of this country as a whole, who feel somewhat betrayed and disheartened, that the coalition Government are working in their best interests to ensure a higher education system that is both fair and affordable?