Higher Education and Research Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mark Pawsey]

Q Do your members think that once the Bill is implemented, they are more likely to get the kind of graduates that they need than they would have had previously?

Neil Carberry: I think broadly that is the case. We would like to see a move on part-time. We would also like to make sure that the development of the TEF is an inclusive process that includes business throughout its development. As Chris has just said, it is a long path. I think broadly business feels we have got to a very positive place on the REF now. We would like to go in the same direction on this.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Q Returning to the TEF, do you think it is going to raise teaching standards or is it going to provide a mechanism to increase fees? Could we end up with a very complicated system of fees, where the levels are changing from one course to another or from one year to another, leaving quite a difficult situation for students to comprehend?

Professor Chris Husbands: The policy intention is to provide clearer information for students. The question some way down the track—I do not think the sector has begun to think this one through—is whether once you move to discipline level TEF you end up with discipline variability in fees. There is experience on this. If you look at the postgraduate or international market, which are unregulated in terms of fees, there tends not to be, with one or two exceptions, institutional differentiation—intra-institutional differentiation—on fees, so I think that is unlikely.

As I said earlier, at some point, the reality of higher education economics is that we have to have a framework for increasing the fee basis. We cannot be here in 30 or 40 years’ time on £9,000 fees when prices are considerably higher. The challenge for me and the panel is to make sure that as those fees increase, the institutions are appropriately focused on developing and further enhancing teaching quality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q I wonder if it is entirely accurate to categorise universities as boarding schools, having no links with business and not having employability as part of their agenda. The picture of HE is actually quite diverse, and that is creating a bit of a problem for the TEF. I wonder whether some of the issues that you are raising could be addressed by making employability, for example, central to the TEF.

Dame Ruth Silver: It depends which part of the UK you look at. I know you have got colleagues coming from Scotland where the third highest number of graduates come through the FE sector and come through a relationship jointly with universities called articulation at high-level skills qualifications. Wales is different as well. It varies; there are national variations in what is going on.

What has happened with all the reforms in universities is that today it is easier to take more and more bachelor degree, full-time younger people. There is an impact. It depends where you are looking for impact. I am very focused on access and social mobility and those are the things that universities are not strong at, certainly in England. They are very closely connected to employers in postgraduate roles and in research.

[Mark Pawsey]

Q I want to ask the representatives of the independent sector here today how representative are you of the sector? How much bigger could the independent sector be once the Bill is enacted? Are you the tip of the iceberg, or are you just going to be able to grow a little bigger and do a little bit more than you used to be able to do?

Professor Philip Wilson: The majority of the independent sector are specialist in a narrow field, in which case there is a glass ceiling of how many people want to work in a certain industry, whether it be in the arts or within our degree portfolio. I think there will be a natural point where, because employability will be everything, we as an institution have to be very careful of market saturation.

We have actually self-imposed a cap for the number of students we will take in the UK because of that. The majority of the independent sector have no ambition to become the University of Manchester with 30,000 students. With an independent HE hat on, anyone who says different to that is maybe not representative of what the independent sector feels.

Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mark Pawsey]

Q Does the Bill make that more explicit? If so, does that help students who are applying to your organisation to understand more?

Mary Curnock Cook: I think it does and, in particular for us anyway, the register of providers, which sets out very clearly the status of each provider, is important, because a lot of providers want to be listed on UCAS, because it gives them a sort of credibility, and to be honest some of the providers who apply to us to use UCAS services are quite shocking in terms of how small they are, how parlous their finances are and so on. It will be very helpful for us to have that kind of regulatory support for who comes into the UCAS service.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q One of the things that the Bill does is open up student data, including individual-level data, to a wider range of people, possibly taking the use of that data outside current research protocols. Do you see that as a problem and something that we should address as a Committee? Also, would it be helpful to have all the data in one place? There are lots of requirements on individual institutions to produce data, but would it be helpful to have all that data available in one place, for example in UCAS?

Mary Curnock Cook: Yes. We broadly welcome clauses 71 and 72, which require UCAS or potentially other organisations like UCAS to share admissions data for research purposes. Indeed, we have recently signed an agreement with the Administrative Data Research Network, and we will make a very large deposit of data going back to 2007, which will be available to researchers under clearly controlled conditions, including that they only have access to de-identified data, but then they can also link it to other administrative data sets.

We have proposed some amendments to the Bill because the Bill gives powers to the Secretary of State to provide those data from us or organisations like us to other parties, and we are very keen that that is done in a way that offers the same protections to students, particularly over their personal data. Some of the amendments that we have put forward suggest that it is made very clear that access to these data is for researchers and particularly only for public benefit.

UCAS is a charity and our trustees are concerned that UCAS should not have a sort of blank check available, such that data requests could be made on us at any time for multiple purposes, which would obviously increase our costs very considerably and those increased costs would inevitably have to be passed on to students and higher education providers.

High Streets

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

That is undoubtedly one reason why the number of gambling operations on our high street is increasing, but I do not think it is the only reason.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I make some progress. I will let him intervene later.

We know from information recently produced by the Local Data Company that there has been an improvement in occupancy rates. That is a good thing, but before Government Members get too excited I must point out that the vacancy rate has fallen from 14.2% to 14.1%, so one in seven shops are still standing empty, which is hardly a cause for celebration. That average figure also hides some large regional disparities. For example, Blackburn has a huge vacancy rate of 26.9%, with one in four shops lying empty.

The report also shows that in some areas vacancy rates remain stubbornly high. Since August 2010, the national average for empty shops has been above 14%, with a significant number being long-term sick with little or no prospect of being reoccupied as shops. Areas of improvement undoubtedly exist, but overall the recovery on our high streets leaves much to be desired.

The Government have responded to this major problem in their usual way: they have taken a piecemeal approach, fragmented the response and, when all else has failed, blamed the planning system. We now have a plethora of initiatives intent on improving the high street: Portas pilots, town team partners, the future high streets forum, a high street innovation fund, the high street renewal award and a fund for business improvement districts.

[Mark Pawsey]

On vacancy rates and betting shops, given the choice would the hon. Lady rather see a unit occupied by a betting shop or left vacant as a hole in the high street?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Gentleman needs to consider the fact that too many shops of a particular type crowd out other shops that might be more desirable.

Regeneration

Debate between Mark Pawsey and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow a fellow Select Committee member, the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander). As a new member of the Committee, let me say what a pleasure it is to serve under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). This is the first report in which I have been involved. Much of our discussion was based on what regeneration entailed. It is clear that regeneration affects many areas of life, not just housing—there was a bit of a preoccupation about housing among many of the people who gave evidence to us—but tackling a combination of aims that are social, economic, physical and environmental. We became familiar with those terms in our subsequent report on the national planning policy framework.

The previous Government used the most widely used definition for regeneration. They said that it was

“the broad process of reversing physical, economic and social decline in an area where market forces will not do this without intervention.”

The last bit of that definition is the most critical. Later, I will speak about what the alternative mechanisms might be.

While we were taking evidence for our report, there was a real sense, even an assumption, that any form of regeneration is necessarily reliant on large-scale public investment. That view was articulated most by those in the regeneration industry to whom the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) referred. They are the planners, designers and architects who have become totally dependent and reliant on a substantial flow of public funds to deal with this serious issue. The sector is struggling to come to terms with the new reality of the economic situation that we face.

Regeneration always has a local dimension. I am pleased that we in Rugby understand the need for regeneration, and I am delighted that the hon. Member for Lewisham East has drawn attention to how hard my community are working to deal with the consequences of the current state of the economy. In 2010, our local strategic partnership produced a regeneration strategy on behalf of Rugby borough council, setting out a robust framework for regeneration activity in our borough and considering indices such as income, health, education, housing conditions and environmental quality for areas within my constituency that, despite her words, were identified as needing regeneration activity. We are working hard locally to bring together strategies for dealing with them.

My comments will deal with four issues, the first of which is public investment, as opposed to private, and where funding might come from. We have not yet heard a great deal today about the influence of the recently announced national planning policy framework, which will set a new context for regeneration. We have not heard enough about what action the Government are taking. I will return to my assessment of some earlier regeneration projects.

In his tour de force, my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) reminded us all of the truism that less public money is available—not for regeneration, but for all the great things that we expect our Government to do for us. I am concerned about the great weight that the classic definition places on the need for public funding. The classic approach to regeneration involves a simple and potentially divisive claim that the market cannot regenerate, on the basis that the market caused the problem in the first place. If the market caused the problem, the conclusion seems to be that the market can in no way help with the solution. That is not always true. As we heard from the National Housing Federation, we are bringing in both private and public investment in regeneration. Each £1 spent on construction generates £2.80 in economic activity. There are good reasons to encourage both public and private investment.

One point that emerged from our evidence that runs contrary to the evidence provided by some of my colleagues on the Select Committee is that public sector involvement can occasionally discourage private investment, simply because if it is known that public money will be made available, the private sector sits back and waits for that to happen. There is evidence from the Department that tagging an area for regeneration can raise land prices, because if people expect a load of public money to come into the area, prices are driven up. That increases the risk for private sector investors and, in many cases, discourages them. Another issue with some of the regeneration that has taken place is how much public sector money has got lost in bureaucracy and the administration of projects. It is estimated that between 5% and 7% of some budgets have been lost in administration.

It is not true that the private sector always fails. For example, UK Regeneration— a private company with a programme for 20,000 homes by 2020, backed by Barclays Capital—is offering finance and a group of experts to shape the regeneration of key sites for private rented homes within mixed-use developments. The Wellcome Trust recently set up a high street fund to offer assistance to firms facing financial difficulties in the wake of the August riots.

In addition, the Government have announced schemes to stimulate the housing market, particularly the new build housing market, including the NewBuy mortgage indemnity scheme and the build now, pay later scheme, all of which will benefit areas where regeneration is taking place. It is interesting that the Select Committee is working on a report about getting private funding for social housing, which will also contribute to regeneration.

We recognise that the actions that the Government can take are limited, but they have done numerous things. One of the biggest initiatives introduced recently is localism, to which many references have been made in the debate. It is a decisive Government initiative to transform regeneration, much like the planning process generally. In the prelude to the national planning policy framework, the Planning Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), said that people felt that planning was something done to them rather than something that they were part of. The remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South bore out the point that it is important that people feel part of the regeneration process, rather than feeling that it is being done to them. When the Select Committee went out and visited communities to take evidence, that was clear from the messages that people gave.

As the hon. Member for Lewisham East pointed out, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It is not simply a matter of allocating a certain sum to an area; every project is different. What is right for regeneration in the north might be completely different from what needs to happen in more deprived areas of London and the south-west. I welcome the Government’s realisation that regeneration should be done locally.

It is useful that that community focus should be seen as a fundamental part of the national planning policy framework. We have heard reference to the importance of local neighbourhood plans in ensuring that individuals and communities have input into the development of their areas. I know that the Minister will reply later, but when he gave evidence, I asked him whether he felt that the previous planning system was a factor in causing many regeneration schemes to stall. He answered:

“Undoubtedly. Planning in this country, as we all know as Members of Parliament in our local patches, is one of the most endlessly complex, needlessly bureaucratic, horribly confrontational systems that you could possibly invent. I know of relatively few people who do not think the system is broken and in need of urgent fixing.”

I hope that the fact that we have fixed it will go some way to creating additional regeneration activity. We have localism, the NPPF and now the community infrastructure levy, which was introduced by the previous Government but implemented by this one. Local authorities can choose to charge the levy on developments in their areas and use the money to fund the infrastructure that the local council, the community and the neighbourhoods want. Therefore, development might be more readily received and undertaken by local authorities, as they will no longer be out of pocket before new building takes place and can build new roads and infrastructure before regeneration starts.

Tax increment financing works by allowing a local authority to borrow money for its infrastructure projects. Time after time when we took evidence, we learned that it was vital to build infrastructure early, as it attracts other development. Interestingly, the importance of tax increment financing is not lost on the British Property Federation—the body that we will ask to carry out development in regeneration areas. The BPF says:

“TIF can offer a solution for regeneration projects which depend on the delivery of a piece of infrastructure for which funding cannot be found from other, public or private, sources. TIF allows more upfront money to be raised by committing incremental business rates…to be used to repay that initial investment… it will allow some stalled schemes to go ahead.”

Stalled schemes were raised with the Committee time after time when we took evidence.

My final question is this: does regeneration always work? It is important to remember that many parts of regeneration affect certain types of communities, and we need to work hard to support those communities. Generally, regeneration takes place in established urban areas, often in the zone between the city centre and the suburbs that are further away. There is a presumption that regeneration always has to happen, but part of what the Government should do is to look at the provisions that can be made to prevent the need for regeneration in the first place, by paying proper attention to those zones within our urban areas at an earlier stage: prevention is, of course, better than a cure, and if we need to spend and are being asked to spend significant sums of money on regeneration, why do we not act more quickly and remove the need to regenerate in the first place?

When we do take a decision to regenerate, it is vital to get that regeneration right; otherwise, more harm can be done to a community. All the members of the Select Committee who went on site visits will have their own memories. What struck me very strongly was visiting Hulme and seeing a successful regeneration project taking place, but that project was actually a regeneration of a regeneration project that had taken place 20 or 25 years earlier and had failed. In the new project, tower blocks that had been put up in the 1960s and ’70s had been demolished to make way for something that is much more attractive. Perhaps the first regeneration project actually made things worse rather than better. I remember sitting in a room and being shown slides of those tower blocks and walkways between buildings that were completely unsafe. They were in areas where substantial levels of crime and social problems developed as a consequence of doing regeneration badly. As I say, where we do regeneration, let us get it right.

In an earlier intervention, I referred to the evidence that the Select Committee received from the mayor of Newham, who said that his area seemed to be one of perpetual regeneration. The whole point about regeneration is that it is an intervention that changes things, but intervention in Newham during the past 20 or 30 years does not seem to have changed things. According to the mayor’s account, the deprivation index in the area has not shifted at all. Regeneration, far from being something that happens once, has become a permanent state of affairs.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a really interesting point about learning lessons from the past and I wonder whether he will join Labour in pressing the Government to carry out a genuinely large-scale evaluation of previous regeneration initiatives, so that we can learn lessons from them.

[Mark Pawsey]

I am not sure about a large-scale evaluation, but the Select Committee certainly took evidence on such issues, and I am sure that all that evidence is available and in the public domain.

In conclusion, regeneration includes many positive and much-needed programmes to improve run-down areas, but we must not lose sight of the fact that we live in an era with a difficult economic climate and public investment in all sectors—not just regeneration—is being substantially reviewed. Nevertheless, we have an opportunity right now to make a determined push to attract private sector investment into regeneration, so that it no longer needs to be considered as the preserve of the public sector alone.