Higher Education and Research Bill

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Let me begin by welcoming the new Secretary of State to her post. It is a great pleasure to see her on the Front Bench, and I think that she has a wonderful job. When she was describing her experience of being the first member of her family to go to university, I was reminded of the fact that the same was true of me. I remember heading down from Northumberland to Nottingham, thinking that I was going fairly far south until I met students who were arriving in Nottingham, but had travelled north. I was quite intrigued by that.

I enjoyed my time at university, as did the Secretary of State. As she said, getting to university really does matter, and for those who do, it is a fabulous experience. The point of our debate today is really to ensure that more people can do it, and more can be successful.

I also welcome the creation of a large “super-Department for Education”. It always struck me as absolutely barmy that the last Government but one, Gordon Brown’s Government, severed the Department and created a wasteland for post-16s. We never quite knew who was doing what, how it was being done, or who was funding it—quite apart from the fact that the link between schools, colleges and universities was effectively broken. The creation of this new Department is, I think, a fabulous step in the right direction. I remember discussing these issues with my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), and I think he would concur with what I have just said. As a former Secretary of State for Education, he is well placed to do that.

So here we are, with the right kind of Department. As Chair of the Education Committee, I am also pleased to note that I have even more to do, because the sector that we are discussing today is so very important. There is nothing more important than ensuring that the higher education sector thrives and prospers. I will give several reasons for that, but the obvious one is connected with social mobility and social justice. The brutal fact is that it is an abhorrent waste that there are people who could go to university in other circumstances but who cannot do so. That is completely unacceptable. We must have a society in which people who can, should and do want to go somewhere can go there. That is our job. It is not acceptable for groups of people, or individuals among groups of people, to be trapped.

[Jo Stevens]

On that basis, how does the hon. Gentleman justify the removal of national health service bursaries?

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that productivity is also linked to research and development, in particular R and D projects with Europe? There is a concern. The vice-chancellor of Warwick University thinks that withdrawal from Europe might have an impact on some of the projects it gets finance for. Will the hon. Gentleman’s Committee look at that, or has it already looked at that consequence?

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is essential that we have R and D, and if we look at the comparators between ourselves and other countries that we are competing with we find some areas where we could and should be doing better—so the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

I want to make a point about productivity. The important point about the German economy, which according to the OECD is 28% more productive than ours, is that businesses, companies and professions understand that human resources—people—are the things that really matter. I shall give an example to show how I know that. I once went to a car factory in Lower Saxony, east Germany. It had been built from the ashes of the collapse of the communist regime, and it was producing Porsche cars. I asked the factory manager what the supply chain looked like, and he said, “I can show you”. He showed me the typical things from Bosch and Pirelli and all the rest, but colleges and universities—people—were also part of the supply chain. That is a very important point, because it shows that if we are really going to be productive and drive through the growth we need, we must consider the human resources. In making sure that we do so, this Bill is a huge step in the right direction.

[James Cleverly]

My alma mater, the University of West London, has relentlessly nurtured a relationship with the industries into which its graduates go. It tailors its courses to the needs of those industries and there is a real symbiotic relationship between the industries and the university. Is that a model we should be looking to expand across our higher education sector?

[Neil Carmichael]

That is a very good point and I was going to loop that in with devolution and so forth. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point: it is very important that our universities are connected to businesses and professions. I would make two further points. First, through devolution and making sure universities become dominant the partners of cities and other regions, they will be able to make those links, develop those stakeholding opportunities and contribute to the world of research and development that is so important beyond the university itself.

Secondly, we must recognise that businesses and professions have an interest in investing in universities and we should encourage them to do so both in the traditional way of supplying capital and in the most sensible way, which is supporting students to go to university, stay at university and develop research opportunities. There are steps in this Bill to make that happen, which is why I welcome it.

I like the idea that the office of students will be able to start helping to shape the new universities and create access to the degree subjects we need. That chimes with the knowledge I and everybody else now has that certain skill sectors are woefully undersupplied. We need to develop the university sector to help put that right. It is important that we develop that relationship.

I also welcome the fact that this Bill is saluting the Nurse review, which is an important contribution to the debate. I can see an opportunity for the Education Committee to have yet another hearing on who might be in charge of UK Research and Innovation, and I look forward to that given our recent experience. That structure needs to be user-friendly in the sense that it must engage with the world of research and all those interested in science, because we must remember that getting IP in the right place is important, as is recognising the value of IP and that there are sometimes questions about who owns IP and who is going to benefit from it. We need to set up a system that looks good and is able to deliver that structure.

I also want to talk about the question of destinations. We think about it all the time when we think of schools because increasingly it is destinations from schools that matter, rather than just qualifications and assessments. Destinations should definitely have a place. That is why I am pleased about the teaching framework, as I think it will help us shape the destination issue in a very interesting way.

[Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that part of that process could be further education or regional colleges, as opposed to just universities, and that they have an important part to play in their relationship not only with schools, but with universities, so that teaching can be upgraded in some of them?

[Neil Carmichael]

Yes, of course I do. Colleges do produce foundation degrees, for example, and that has a logical link and extension to universities. The relationship between larger colleges and universities should be allowed to develop and be encouraged, because that is exactly the kind of fluid way in which we can address the question of getting the skills we need.

I want to end on a subject that is also critical: making sure we think about the world of education in a linear way, from start to finish. That is why I am so pleased to welcome the creation of this new Department. I wrote about it a few years ago, and hoped it would happen, and now it has. There were several reasons why I hoped it would happen. One of them is that we do need to see universities and colleges thinking more about what their relationship is with schools and academies. That is a key issue, and the direction of travel goes the other way, too. That will help us understand more about what the labour market and the skills requirements are.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend the Chairman of the Select Committee is making, as ever, a compelling argument. I want to associate myself with the point he has just made about universities and higher education institutions playing more of a role in our schools. Does he agree that the leadership shown by Baroness Alison Wolf in ensuring that King’s College, London sponsors a maths school—an outstanding new free school—is exactly the model other universities should seek to emulate, and that if vice-chancellors want to show they are committed to social inclusion and social mobility they should sponsor more free schools and academies?

[Neil Carmichael]

That is an interesting intervention and I was coming on to that area, because the world of education is not just boxed up into different sections; it is linear. We need to see more mixing up of people within the sector. There is value in vice-chancellors knowing more about schools and academies and in lecturers getting more involved in schools. I also want to emphasise the value of businesses and professions going along as well. That will mean we get an education system that knows more about what is needed out in the world, that is more comfortable with itself in delivering those things, and that is reaching out to the people who most desperately need to be reached out to—those whom I described as being locked into places where they should not be and being deprived of opportunity and hope. That is what we have to put right on this journey we are embarking upon with the Second Reading of this Bill.

The Committee I chair will look at a lot of issues raised by the Opposition; I have taken note of one or two of them, because I want my Committee and this House to get this Bill right, as it is an important Bill. If viewed through the prism of Brexit the Bill is even more important. Brexit is a call to arms for our education system. We will have to provide more of the skills that we need because we will not necessarily be able to rely on the European Union to do that for us, and that must be in the back of our mind when we think about higher education, or indeed about all education.