Higher Education and Research Bill

Paul Blomfield 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

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I echo the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) in welcoming the fact that the Minister survived the ministerial cull and is still in his place, because I think he has brought a—[Interruption.] He is defying my words at the moment; I was going to say how good he is at listening. I am over here!

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Will the Front Benchers take note of this? The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) is making reference to the Front Benchers, and they appear to be having a conversation. I am sure that everybody wants to hear what the hon. Gentleman wants to say.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend was trying to be nice.

[Paul Blomfield]

I will continue to be nice, because I recognise the thought and effort that the Minister has put into developing the Bill. I commend him for the way in which he has listened to those across the sector and other stakeholders in shifting thinking, as discourse has moved forward. There is a lot more listening to do, because there are still a number of reservations.

The Bill raises some very important issues: on teaching quality, clearly; on widening participation; on reopening the debate on credit accumulation and transfer; and on several other areas. Sadly, however, as other hon. Members have highlighted, those are not necessarily the key challenges for the sector right now. The Secretary of State was right to say in her opening remarks that our university system punches above its weight. Our universities are hugely important in the transformational impact they have on those who study in them, in building the skills base of our country and in contributing over £11 billion to our export earnings, and this hugely successful sector of course contributes through research and innovation to the wider development of our economy. We have one of the world’s best university systems, but universities face real challenges, many of which, frankly, are not covered by the Bill.

Let me turn back to Brexit. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds said that we should look at the opportunities of Brexit. Whether we describe them as opportunities or as challenges, there are real issues to face. She highlighted the fact that we are in the top 10 for research. One reason for that is the enormous funding we have had through FP7—Horizon 2020, as it is now—from the European Union. The EU is spending about £70 billion through Horizon 2020, and until 23 June more was allocated to British-led partnerships than to any other member state. Without that, our research capacity will be deeply affected, with huge economic consequences.

The Minister will recall that I asked him, just days after the Brexit vote, what action he was taking to protect that funding. Reassuringly, he said that we should not worry about anything for the next couple of years because we would still be in the European Union and fully accessing Horizon 2020. That was not an unreasonable answer at that moment—I would have probably given the same one—but when I talked to the vice-chancellors of my two universities in Sheffield two days later, they both reported that locally led research teams had been asked to pull out of trans-European projects bidding for Horizon 2020, because a UK research teams would be a drag on securing funding, given all the associated uncertainty. Mike Galsworthy, who is the director of Scientists for EU, has been trying to monitor the impact on research. He reports that already—just a couple of weeks on—of the 378 responses he has received from research teams, over a quarter are reporting difficulties because everyone fears the risk of having a team from non-EU Britain as a partner.

The Government therefore need, and I hope that the Minister will address this when he winds up, to consider urgently—more urgently than many of the other issues covered by the Bill—what he intends to do to offset the impact we are already seeing. He should commit to underwriting all Horizon 2020 funding to give research teams the reassurance that they can go forward confidently without letting down their partners. He should also talk to those quite close to him—[Interruption] I was thinking of a different form of relationship, but that one will do—about making an early commitment to putting Horizon 2020 at the top of the agenda in our negotiations on what post-Brexit Britain will look like.

The second issue is about recruiting and retaining talent. Between our two universities in Sheffield, there are 406 EU nationals on a salary of less than £35,000. That figure is important because it means that they would not meet the criteria for successful tier 2 visa applications. These are early-career academics—the talent of the future—who will be driving the research and the teaching quality of the future in our universities. Unless we can give them the confidence that they and their successors from European countries can come to this country to work, teach and research in our universities, we will be severely weakening our talent base.

Such issues are not addressed in the Bill, but it threatens to do more damage in the third area of concern in universities, which is international students—an issue on which the Minister and I agree, and about which many Government Members have made the same point. As the right hon. Member for East Devon (Mr Swire) pointed out, the Home Office has done enormous damage to our ability to compete in the growing international marketplace to recruit international students. Brexit threatens greater damage in relation not just to the 185,000 EU students who are here, but to the 320,000 or so non-EU students. Hobsons, the major international student recruitment consultants, reported just a couple of weeks before the Brexit vote that about a third of non-EU nationals considering coming to the UK would find Britain a less attractive place to study if it exited the European Union, and one can understand why.

The Bill could make the situation worse by undermining the strength of the UK’s university brand through the teaching excellence framework. A one-level TEF might not have that consequence, because it would be a straightforward exercise that, subject to ticking certain boxes, most universities would glide through. However, the subsequent grading system creates a risk of brand damage, because we are developing it unilaterally. If we were measuring our universities equitably in parallel and in partnership with every country in the world, perhaps it would be different, but we are not. We are stepping outside what our competitors are doing and saying that we will spotlight our universities in a very different way. We will say that some are okay, some are outstanding and some are excellent. That will send out the message about those that do not reach the very top grade that international students ought to think twice about going there. I appreciate that that is not the Government’s intention, but it is a potential consequence that they need to consider closely. We already have a quality assurance system through the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education that is widely respected around the world.

If the Government are going down the TEF route, let us get it right. The thinking on this is significantly underdeveloped. I welcome the way in which, during the discussion about teaching quality, the Minister has moved away from an overdependence on quantitative metrics towards a more qualitative approach that involves institutions in the assessment process. However, there is still a focus on quantitative metrics that, as other Members have highlighted, are deeply flawed.

Employment destination is a key metric, but we all know that that is an unsatisfactory way of measuring teaching quality. Someone who comes from the right family, goes to the right school, goes to the right university and comes out with a passable degree will get a good job, because they have the contacts. [Interruption.] I did not catch the Minister’s observation, but I have no doubt he will make his point later. Employment destination might be a measure of the privilege someone was born into, but it is not a measure of teaching quality. We know that privately educated students are more likely to get a good degree than state educated students. We also know that graduate destination can be affected by the regional economy, so it is a very unsatisfactory metric.

In trying to widen participation, I admire the Government’s focus not simply on entry to university, but on success at university and beyond. However, using retention as a metric is potentially flawed, because the easiest way—I am not for a moment suggesting that any of our universities would do this—to get a good retention score is not to accept students who are likely to fail.

[Jo Churchill]

I agree with that point. A problem with the lack of flexibility in the system is that it does not allow those who have more disconnected lives to be iterative with a degree by going out and back in. That is a problem if Members across the House want to improve social mobility. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to be more flexible to allow those whose lives do not conform to the three-year pattern to have access?

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[Paul Blomfield]

I agree with the hon. Lady—I thank her for her intervention, which, like much of the rest of the debate, reflects cross-party concern about the detail of the Bill.

Other hon. Members referred to the research excellence framework as a model for the TEF, but the research excellence framework took time to develop—there was trial and error, remodelling and rethinking. The research excellence framework was not put together with the pace that the TEF has been put together, and nor was it put together without trialling or in a way that creates such risks. That is why, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) said, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee said that the Government needed to do more to demonstrate that the metrics relate to teaching quality. Until they do, we cannot be confident that we will get this right.

The Secretary of State said that there was limited thinking among the Opposition, in that we thought that new providers could not possibly be as good as traditional universities. I do not accept that. Equally, I hope the Government accept that there are risks. In the last Parliament, they got their fingers burnt with new providers. We have seen in the higher education landscape in the United States, which some fear is the model the Government are looking to, the damage caused by an insufficiently well regulated system, in which commercial operators come in, milk the public funds provided through the federal loans system without regard to the quality of education offered or the consequences for those who go through it, and leave them to pick up the debt. Everybody was misled at each stage of the process, which is why so many private providers face federal and state prosecution in the United States. Unless we get the regulatory framework right in the Bill, there will be risks.

I know the Minister is committed to getting the regulatory framework right, but the problem is that we do not know what it will look like. I have asked written questions about it, but we still do not know. He can correct me if I am wrong, but in response to a recent written question, he indicated that we will not know what the regulatory portal and subsequent framework look like in detail until the Bill passes. That is not good enough.

I am conscious of the time and of other Members’ desire to contribute. There is so much more in the Bill, but I will leave my remarks there.

Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

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

[Mr Marsden]

made the point that the Government’s failure even to consider students’ presence in the evidence sessions before being pressed to do so was deplorable, and that they could have accommodated students on the Thursday, as they had the SNP at late notice.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

commented that it was odd not to have witnesses representing students, either from the NUS or those who had participated in QAA audits.

[Joseph Johnson]

thanked hon. Members for their comments and said that he did not want the Committee to think that the Government had not been engaging with students.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q Would the panel accept that, if we are looking at another playing field, we should consider something beyond regulation and maybe have a set of expectations about what institutions are actually delivering, so that, if it is a level playing field, it goes beyond regulation?

Professor Simon Gaskell: We certainly favour inclusion in the Bill of a clause that indicates that there is a responsibility for the public good of institutions that wish to call themselves universities.

Pam Tatlow: This is properly addressed in terms of the general duties of OFS. For example, we have proposed a reference to confidence and the public interest. In other words, we know that Ministers are very clear that they want a more competitive market. The risk is that we just see students as consumers. Students, and we ourselves, see students as much more than that, and higher education has got a wider purpose.

One way to address the issue would be to knock off what I call some of the hard edges around the general duties of OFS to ensure that there is a wider commitment, which I am convinced Ministers actually have.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q Can I press a little further on the regulatory framework? I think there is a consensus that we need a new regulatory framework and it is welcome that the Government are bringing forward a Bill to enable us to debate that. The Bill has also been brought forward in the context of trying to change the terrain of higher education and encourage greater diversity of providers. In that context, do you think that the regulatory framework as presented in the Bill is fit for purpose? Are there any risks involved in the proposals before us?

Gordon McKenzie: I think it is broadly fit for purpose. There are risks in some of the detail. Although I know the Government released some further information yesterday evening, which I have still to look at in detail, I do not think the Government are yet saying enough about how they will ensure that the new entrants to the market and sector are high quality.

I do not think the Government are yet convincing about their proposal that some people may be able to have the power to award their own degrees on a probationary basis, because I do not think that the Government have yet answered the question of what happens to the students if the provider fails probation. Who awards their degree? What have they got for their three years?

I think there are elements of the detail that require scrutiny. I do have concerns that at the moment the promised role of the office for students as taking an overview of the sector is not really there or enabled by the Bill. I think those things could be fixed—so it is basically fit for purpose, but with further work.

[The Chair]

As there are six members of the panel and time is limited, could you give relatively succinct answers? We have other Members who wish to ask questions.

Professor Joy Carter: I echo what Gordon said. For me the risks are in three broad categories. One is speed: are we moving too quickly to give the power to award degrees—the provisional degree-awarding powers and so on? The second category is around university title and the notion that we have already discussed about academic community and public engagement. The third category of risks is about autonomy and the power of the office for students and the power of the Secretary of State in relation to autonomous and successful universities.

Paul Kirkham: I would say that there is greater risk in leaving it as it is and not adjusting this right now. There are significant risks to student and taxpayer of a very static, non-changing universe of providers and way too much emphasis on the three-year, on-campus degree.

The biggest risk for me in the Bill is that it has not properly addressed the issue of student financing. We currently have a student loan system, which is essentially based around a calendar year and predicated primarily on the traditional three-year degree system. Until such time as we have proper reform of the finance system, we will not get proper innovation into the sector. I personally advocate some form of credit-based financing, which will give students much more flexibility, and when combined with more effective credit transfer will also give them much more mobility across the sector.

Pam Tatlow: I simply refer to clause 2, which we think extends the Secretary of State’s powers; we have an explanation around that if the Committee wants a supplementary submission on it. We have particular reservations around OFS being a validator and a provider. In other words, it seems almost to be the validator of last resort. You can’t have it both ways—the OFS being a regulator of the sector as well as a validator and provider. That is a contradiction in terms. We have specific queries around that.

We welcome part 2 on a sharia-compliant loan system, but it does absolutely nothing if you want to deliver accelerated degrees, for example. It is a missed opportunity.

Alex Proudfoot: Briefly, I think the OFS needs to have a power reserved in order to validate degrees because, unfortunately, the current validation system in the UK is so broken. That would not be necessary if the autonomous institutions in the UK that currently validate new provision acted as if they had a public interest in diversifying the landscape of higher education and making new provision available to students. Unfortunately, we find that, quite rightly within their own autonomous priorities and strategies, some institutions draw back from validation, leaving institutions and students high and dry. We see institutions blocking new courses from being validated because they compete with one of their own courses or, indeed, one of their own partner’s courses. Unfortunately, we see a very high cost and very limited transparency in the process across the sector.

We are currently doing some work to try to improve the situation, but it is important that the OFS has this as validation of last resort, as Pam referred to it. If nothing else, it should encourage validating institutions to take their responsibility seriously.

Pam Tatlow: May I come back on that? More than 100 institutions can validate throughout England. If you cannot be validated as an independent provider by one of those, what is the matter with what you are delivering? That is the point. This is not a closed shop.

Alex Proudfoot: In some cases, the matter—

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[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Q Moving to a slightly different area, do you think the reforms in the Bill will help to drive social mobility and widen participation? I am particularly interested in capturing the more mature people in our workforce to ensure skills are kept up throughout a working life.

Professor Quintin McKellar: We would specifically hope that the Bill might include not only elements that drive competition but those that drive collaboration, because we think that collaborative activity can help us with our widening participation. To give one example, black and minority ethnic students have currently got an attainment disadvantage across the sector and we are working together collaboratively across the sector to try to address that. Without that sort of collaboration—if we were simply competing with each other—it is very difficult. Collaboration is hugely important, particularly in regard to social mobility.

Mary Curnock Cook: While the arrangements for making data from UCAS, for example, available to researchers will not change social mobility in itself, it does open up the opportunity to look specifically at different aspects of social mobility.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: One potential advantage that we must recognise of the move of some of the education and OFS to the Department for Education is that it may well begin to address the continuum of education and the attainment shortfalls that largely reside within the secondary schools. If that promotes greater interaction between the requirements for entry into higher education and a greater understanding of that within secondary education and more cohesion at that level, that could be a real help towards closing the attainment gap of BME students.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q May I pursue the issue of the regulatory framework a little further? Obviously, this is the first major discussion we have had on this for some time and it is important that we get it right. It is in the context of a Bill that is also seeking to encourage new providers. What thoughts do members of the panel have on how we should get it right and whether there are any ways in which the Bill could be improved in relation to the entry point of the new providers, the overall oversight of the system and the potential for market failure?

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: This is a difficult issue. I think the provision of diversity in the sector is something that has stood British higher education well. Different institutions have different goals and directions and cater for different needs for higher education within the sector, from mature students at one end, to vocational courses, to those operating in a very academic sphere.

New providers have to be looked at in the context of what is the positive contribution they can make. Two important issues will be the demand from the sector for this new provision and, secondly, the standards under which those institutions are recognised. From my point of view there is a third which is very important: high standards have to be set for the sustainability of new providers in the sector. It is no good an operation starting with an income stream that is predicated on a business plan of recruitment without a sufficient resource to ensure that those entering in year one will be able to complete their studies and end up with a degree that is actually worth something when facing employers. Otherwise, this is something that becomes not helpful and potentially very detrimental to the achievement and attainment of those individual students. That is the one area on which I would like to see rather more stress paid; the sustainability of the provision by a new provider.

Professor Quintin McKellar: We would support the diversity and competition that new providers would bring to the sector. The concern we have is one that has been raised already: that they cherry-pick subjects. In terms of continuing to provide across the board STEM subjects of engineering, mathematics and so on, it is unlikely that the new providers will enter those areas, and that could be a risk for the rest of us.

Sir Alan Langlands: I think the Bill does try to strike the balance between rigour in relation to new entries and streamlining the system a bit. We have to be careful that we are not driven too much in the direction of streamlining without the rigour. The rigour has to be on quality and standards, access and participation, good governance. Linking to Professor Borysiewicz’s point, it is hugely important that financial sustainability is seen alongside academic sustainability. This has got to be a long-term effort, if you are developing a new universe.

Mary Curnock Cook: Briefly, I would like to echo the points about sustainability, because I think it is absolutely catastrophic for students if their provider is forced to exit the market. A lot of higher education is very local. A lot of students go to university within a few miles of where they live, and there are not necessarily other providers where they could continue their studies if their institution fails.

The only other point I would make is about university title. I do not want to start a debate about “What is a university?”, but I think that most people, their parents, advisers, teachers and everyone else involved has a clear idea about what they think a university is. It would be of concern if students were applying to something that they thought was a university in the general understanding of the issue and found that it was something quite different.

[The Chair]

Three Members, 10 minutes.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Second sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

Okay Mr Lewis, thank you very much. You have made your point in a very articulate way, but lots of people want to ask questions.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Q Can I probe Chris a little bit more on the teaching excellence framework? When we conducted an inquiry on the Select Committee into teaching quality, there was uniform agreement that it is good for the Government to focus on teaching excellence, but concern about the metrics. It is welcome that Government thinking has been evolving and did so during the course of our inquiry. You were suggesting there is room for further evolution. I am thinking particularly about how satisfied you are with the pretty crude metrics around employment retention and the national student survey. There is also the balance between the quantitative metrics and qualitative assessment.

Professor Chris Husbands: My brief is to deliver the TEF in a transparent, robust and reliable way. What I said and what I would defend is that the three broad areas—teaching quality, learning environment, student destinations—are absolutely the right place to look. I am also comfortable with the fact that we have started with already existing datasets: essentially, the national student survey and the destination of leavers from higher education. That gives us a purchase on what are some really difficult issues.

My professional judgment is that, as we go forward, we will refine the metrics within those broad indicators. The TEF will work by getting the initial fix on institutional performance from the core metrics. There is then a providers’ submission, which allows providers to draw on a range of quantitative and qualitative data that will allow them to gloss those data or throw further light on them in ways that paint the institutional picture.

I am broadly comfortable that this is a very difficult task that we have started in broadly the right place. As ever in these things, as you take the logic of applying this technically, bringing professional judgment into play, we can deliver this in a way that does what it is intended to do—providing better information for students; encouraging an institutional focus on teaching quality; and drawing all that together in a frame that looks at student outcomes.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q You mentioned earlier a comparison with the REF. To get to the current stage with the REF took a considerable amount of time. Do you think we are rushing it with the TEF before moving on to stages two and three?

Professor Chris Husbands: At the risk of giving a slightly technical answer, the REF always began with peer review and it has increasingly supplemented that with metrics. Given the range and amount of data we now have across the sector, the TEF is doing this the other way around, starting with metrics and supplementing it with peer judgments.

We have a published timetable. We look at institutional judgment in year 2; judgments that we will reach in the early part of next year. We will then work with the sector to work out how we can most effectively move that to institution level and probably at a slightly later date move that to incorporate postgraduate teaching quality as well. I am broadly comfortable with the timetable, while accepting that these are technically difficult questions.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q Will you be able to take account of the work that HEFCE is doing on value added?

Professor Chris Husbands: We will certainly be able to take account of the HEFCE learning-gain work. There is some really interesting stuff coming out of that.

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[Ben Howlett]

Any comments from anyone else?

Neil Bates: I just wanted to pick up on the gender issue as it is a real issue. We always start by asking, “What is the problem that we are trying to solve?” As a practical example, in the rail industry there is a huge shortage of technician engineers, partly the result of having an ageing workforce that is about to retire without the investment in training over the last decade, and they are finding it extremely difficult. Yet at the same time there are no more women working in the rail industry than there were at the end of the first world war: only 4% of women are technician engineers. We need to be saying to employers, “You’ve got to play your part. There is 50% of the workforce that you are largely ignoring.” We can do some of that work in producing those pathways for young women to go through into that industry because we are connected to the local economy.

Professor Philip Wilson: One thing that alternative providers do very well is the recruitment of students from a very wide, diverse background. It is not death by UCAS points, because we are smaller. To judge an 18-year-old on 16 hours—which is eight exams on four A levels—is short-sighted, because they have been on the planet for 18 years, and we look at people with a holistic approach. In the same way, if you apply for a job your degree or your postgraduate qualification gets you in through the door but you are employed based on who you are as an individual, and that is what employers look for.

We do very well on that: we have got 94% employability for our graduates. On the day of graduation last year, 90% of our graduates already had a job. That is because we recruit people who are suitable for the industry because we ask the industry and then fold that back into the way we recruit the students, so we work on being work ready for day one. That encourages people from very diverse backgrounds.

I would probably also touch on the reporting of the ranking of how institutions are perceived. Take what is called “good honours”—first class degrees and 2:1 degrees. If we are going to look at wider participation, then the dichotomy is that we get clobbered at the other end by having students with lots of 2:1s, 2:2s and thirds. For me, the impact on an institution is: what does that institution do for a young person for three years in their building? If you have a good public institution that recruits people with straight As and they all go through an automatic path and get first class degrees, where is the impact? If you get students from a wider participation background and they get a 2:2, that could be the absolute pinnacle of their academic achievement, and will change their life. So the way that educational success is understood needs to be examined at the other end of the process.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q You made a very powerful point, and contributed to the discussion that we have been having around the TEF and its metrics. I wanted to raise a different point which is around part-time students, because whatever the other impacts of the 2012 changes to fees and student funding, which we could debate, the consequences for part-time students have been devastating—I think everybody agrees on that. Do you see anything in the Bill that addresses that issue?

Dame Ruth Silver: It depends on who else you let into the sector. The Bill is predicated on a very traditional model of HE. It is not systematic or systemic reform. So bringing in new providers, particularly colleges, is quite important. It is easier for FE students locally to manage some of the costs. There is quite a gap to be caught up with since 2012, and it has been difficult for part-timers to do this. Full-timers are much easier to serve. So there is a real catch-up there, but this notion of “local is easier, flexible is easier, part-time is easier” will, on the whole, happen in non-traditional HE.

Neil Bates: I do not have the exact figures, but if you looked at participation at levels 4 and 5 in FE some 10 years ago, you would have seen large numbers of people who were in work, coming into their FE colleges in the evenings, attending twilight sessions to get their HNCs and HNDs and so on. That whole system evaporated as colleges were driven towards full-time students and away from workforce training. We are living with the consequences of that now.

Dame Ruth Silver: May I comment on the disconnect between the skills world and the reforms going on there? There are 3 million apprentices to be trained: those are high-level, in great part. The Institute for Apprenticeships is about to start as well. That is not connected to this. It is a traditional model but it is also a very closed system of higher education, and it is in the other areas where you find a more flexible, responsive curriculum on offer. That responsiveness is key to dealing with the long problem we have had here relating to technicians in the economy and also high-level skills qualifications.

[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.

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[Ben Howlett]

Q Going back to some of the points raised earlier by Professor Ebdon in relation to the independence of OFFA, how does the Bill deliver true independence and actually enhance independence?

Professor Les Ebdon: I am not arguing for independence in the sense that we have independence now. I quite value the coherence that bringing the Office for Fair Access activity into the office for students brings. I am concerned about the authority of the director for access and participation. Based on my experience, you need to have the authority to sign off or not to sign off on an access agreement and for that to be untrammelled, other than the usual opportunity to appeal against a totally unreasonable decision. That does not guarantee it.

I also think that it is important, if you are going to get a high-profile director for access and participation, that that authority is enshrined. The responsibility lies with the director. One of the reasons I can be successful is that I am a former vice-chancellor. I know most of the tricks; in fact, I invented one or two. Therefore, that gives me greater authority in dealing with universities. That is my concern.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q I was going to ask much the same question as Ben, so perhaps I could drive that home a bit further. Since you were not an uncontroversial appointment by David Willetts, you have been extremely successful. What do we have to hang on to from that success, in integrating the Office for Fair Access into the office for students?

Professor Les Ebdon: A single focus. I do not have to worry about things other than access and participation. We need to ensure there is independence; that the role is not trammelled by an interfering chief executive or chair of OFS, for example—or indeed, dare I say it here, a Secretary of State or Minister.

You need somebody who is going to be a champion of fair access, keeping it high up on the agenda. One reason we are successful now is because it is recognised as a vitally important aspect of modern society that we build a fairer, more inclusive society. That is all about championing fair access and participation.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Third sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

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

I thank the Minister for responding positively to our request.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I also thank the Minister. This is an extremely positive step. I wondered, however, whether we could squeeze the session with the Minister, for whom I have high regard and with whom I am looking forward to having many debates, so that we could have more time with the NUS and the QAA.

[The Chair]

Before the Minister responds, are there any other comments on the motion?

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[Ben Howlett]

As long as it works in practice.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q May I ask two unrelated questions? The first is about distribution of research funding across the sector. Professor Nelson, you talked about working together better. I wonder whether you are looking at working together more consistently as well, because it is fair to say that there is a difference of approach by research councils in terms of how effectively they enable every part of the sector to compete equitably for research funding. In many senses, Horizon 2020 and FP7 before it have been more successful in doing that. What thoughts do you have on how the new framework can enable that?

Professor Philip Nelson: It should help us resolve some of those differences that have developed over the years that we appreciate are unhelpful. We need to resolve some of that. There are very often small differences in policy that have a disproportionate effect, so we need to work at that. We have a lot of work under way already in trying to think that through. Some of it gets entangled. Certainly the new organisation with a single accounting officer who can just turn around and say, “Right, we are going to do it this way” will be helpful, if I can put it as bluntly as that. So I think that will enable us to resolve those things, or many of them at least. So that is another good feature of the proposed reform.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q My second, unrelated question is about the office for students, which is there to ensure we get the best learning experience for all our students. The narrative and discourse around the Bill so far is inevitably around undergraduate and postgraduate taught students. What responsibility do you see the office for students having in ensuring the best learning experience for postgraduate research students?

Professor Philip Nelson: I think that is an important issue, absolutely. For example, we in the research councils have three main ways of supporting PhD students across the sector. We do interact with HEFCE on that currently. I think it will be very important—the point has already been made in evidence to this Committee—that the OFS and the UKRI connection is carefully made. In that particular area, there is clear overlap of responsibility. It will be down to ensuring that that connectivity is well and truly in place.

Professor Ottoline Leyser: I agree. I think this is very important across the board for a number of reasons. There are a couple of points I would like to make. One is that one of the opportunities generated by UKRI would be the possibility to have more integrated research into teaching and research training. One of the things that the cross-council pot could do would be to consider whether we could develop better understanding of the most effective ways to do research training and teaching. That is one opportunity that is more difficult within a single research council.

I would like to connect that a little bit back to this diversity point. I think there is a concern about the narrative of “the best teaching”, because by definition different people work in different ways and the system has to support diversity of provision. Any system that is set in place at any level—whether undergraduate, graduate or graduate research—has got to have on tap different options for different kinds of students with different kinds of learning styles and different kinds of goals for what they want to get out of that learning. There is a danger of winding up with too much of an assessment-driven, individual metric-driven approach for assessing across the board. You canalise into a rather narrow range of provision that will not suit the diversity of students.

[The Chair]

Q Professor McKernan, do you want to add anything?

Dr Ruth McKernan: I do not have anything more to add.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

To ask the final question, I call Paul Blomfield.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q The NUS has put student representation at every level of the system at the heart of its submission. Can you explain in practical terms why that is important?

Sorana Vieru: We cannot talk about working for the benefit of students without involving students themselves. There is a bit of doublespeak in saying, “We’re introducing a single regulatory framework because we need to keep up with how the sector is looking currently. However, on the board of the office for students, we don’t require someone who has current experience and could reflect what being a student is like right now.” It could be anyone—someone who graduated 20 years ago. If our regulatory framework is mirroring the state of higher education institutions right now—

Douglas Blackstock: A useful model would be to look at what we have done over the last decade. We have embedded student engagement through all of our work. Students are on our review teams and are involved in all the developmental processes. There are two students on our board. There is a student advisory board of 20 students who we recruit through public advertisement to give strategic advice to the board. I think that would be a useful model for the Committee to look at.

[The Chair]

I thank the witnesses. I am sorry to have rushed them, but time is limited; I am bound by the programme motion.

Examination of Witness

Joseph Johnson gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey]

Q Minister, why should institutions treat students as informed consumers?

Joseph Johnson: They are required to by the Consumer Rights Act 2015. That is the first thing. They are required to by law. Universities are governed by consumer legislation in this country, so that is a starting point. Questioning whether this is a market completely misses the point. It is a market by law.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q You really do not seem to have lamented the lack of part-time education. Part-time student numbers have obviously collapsed since the funding arrangements changed in 2012. What do you think the Bill does to address that?

Joseph Johnson: It does a lot. It builds on measures that we have been taking over recent months. As you know, we have introduced maintenance loans for part-time students with effect from 2017-18. That is an important provision that will facilitate access to part-time education. That built in turn on access to tuition fee loans that we introduced just before. We have extended the equivalent or lower qualifications exemption so that more people can take a second degree on a part-time basis in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. The bigger picture is that by allowing new providers into the system, we are more likely to get providers who are providing part-time provision. Alternative providers, as they are known, have a much higher proportion of part-time students in their student cohort than traditional providers. It follows therefore that allowing a greater diversity of providers into the system will benefit part-time students and people who want to study later in life.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q It is good to see you Minister. Presumably the Secretaries of State didn’t think that this was an important meeting, so they sent you along, but this is within your expertise, isn’t it?

Higher Education and Research Bill (Fourth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Joseph Johnson)]

I echo the hon. Lady’s pleasure at serving under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson.

I shall move straight to the points raised by the amendment, with which I fundamentally disagree. I do, though, appreciate the hon. Lady’s efforts to be helpful and am pleased to have a chance to address the points she made. The Bill sets out a programme of reforms for higher education that will improve quality and choice for students. It will encourage competition and allow for consistent and fair oversight.

As I said when I gave evidence to the Committee this morning, there have been several significant changes to the higher education system since the last legislation was introduced to overhaul the regulation of the sector, all the way back in 1992. The majority of funding for the system used to come directly from the Government, in the form of grants. We have now moved to a system in which students themselves fund their studies.

The regulation of the sector clearly needs to keep pace with developments if confidence, as well as our international reputation and standing, are to be maintained, so we need an HE regulator that is focused on protecting students’ interests, promoting fair access and ensuring the value for money of their investment in higher education. That has been a central tenet of Government reforms since the publication of the 2011 White Paper, “Students at the Heart of the System”. Ensuring that the student interest is at the centre of the sector’s systems and structures is a cardinal principle of our approach.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way; it is probably the first of many occasions. I wonder whether he could not give some reassurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South on the issues she is raising by indicating that he views our amendments sympathetically. They would give life to what he just talked about—putting students at the heart of the system—by providing for effective student representation both at the top on the OFS board and throughout the system.

[Joseph Johnson]

Yes, I will certainly come on to that issue, which is the subject of a number of later amendments, but I will happily touch on it in answering the hon. Gentleman.

In its written evidence, University Alliance states that:

“As the organisation responsible for regulating the higher education sector, the OfS will need to ensure that institutions operate in the interests of students.”

That point was reiterated by Professor Quintin McKellar, vice-chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire in his evidence to this Committee, when he said that

“the Government’s idea to have an office for students that would primarily be interested in student wellbeing and the student experience is a good thing.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 22, Q31.]

We also heard from Alan Langlands, vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds, who concurred when he said:

“I think the Government have struck a reasonable balance, and putting students at the centre is sensible”.––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 27, Q41.]

The creation of the office for students is about putting students at the heart of the system. It has been a consistent theme of Conservative and, formerly, coalition policy for a considerable time. The OFS will, for the first time, have statutory duties focused on the interests of students and equality of opportunity when using the range of powers given by the Bill.

In addition, unlike appointments to the HEFCE board, the Secretary of State must “have regard” to the desirability of the OFS’s members having proven experience of representing the interests of students when appointing the OFS board. That goes straight to the point that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central raised. Schedule 1 of the Bill captures the intent of many of the amendments that have been tabled for later clauses. We feel that schedule 1 fully meets those intentions of ensuring that the OFS board has people with the experience of representing student interests.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

Given the nature of the role of board members, those people would not be token; they would in fact have serious duties and responsibilities, and their voices and valuable perspectives would be heard at the heart of discussions. I might argue, by the way, that patient interests really ought to be represented on the board of the Care Quality Commission, but that is certainly outside the scope of the Bill. I have a serious point: I urge the hon. Gentleman and the Minister to agree with the new Prime Minister, who has said some interesting things since her elevation to the highest office about the importance of having worker and consumer representatives on company boards. That is an interesting point that ought to be addressed at the heart of the Bill.

Whether we believe that students are consumers of higher education or we prefer to see them as co-producers, both those visions would be served by these amendments, because students’ voices would be heard on the board of the office for students. I propose that there should be two student representatives, because I found—particularly in the higher education sector—that it was often helpful for there to be someone else who shared my perspective and experience when I was sat at the table with people who had often been around for some time, had been through the mill and had a great deal of experience. That principle has been supported by the evidence that the Committee has gathered. It is regrettable that we had only one NUS representative in, and for only 15 minutes. We had two GuildHE representatives in for an hour. In fact, we heard a whole range of perspectives from just the universities represented during our evidence gathering, but there was very limited time for students. I hope that we do not make the same mistake with the architecture of the higher education system.

Placing students on the board of the office for students would bring to life the Minister’s commitment that the new body will place students at the heart of its work. We might have a debate about the best mechanism for that and the appointments process. I have suggested, for example, that the board itself should appoint student representatives, there might be some chopping and changing as a result of turnover or churn, and the Secretary of State may not want to get bogged down in annual or biannual appointments.

We can debate implementation and perhaps even tidy it up on Report, but at this stage I would like the Government to commit to including students on the board of the office for students. That is not much to ask. It would not have a great cost, but there would be an opportunity cost of excluding students. Students have a valuable perspective to offer. There are countless examples of NUS representatives, student union representatives and students themselves making valuable contributions to university governing bodies and higher education bodies and enhancing the quality of our higher education sector as a result. I commend these amendments to the Committee and hope for a favourable hearing from the Minister.

[Paul Blomfield]

To make up for failing to do so earlier, may I say what a pleasure it is to serve on this Committee under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson? I look forward to several weeks of debating with the Minister, who through the process of this Bill being brought together has proved to be a very listening Minister. He has ensured that proposals have developed and responded to concerns that have been raised. I hope we can continue to do that as we debate. While there will be a few dividing lines between each side of the Committee, there are also many things on which we can agree. Many of the amendments have been tabled genuinely to be helpful—this is one such amendment—and I hope there will be space for us to reach some understanding around them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

We have made it clear that we want the student voice prominently represented in the governance structures of the main regulatory body. We would not want to set out in legislation that the holders of particular positions in the NUS or other student unions had ex officio places on the board of the office for students. That would tie the hands of the board of the OFS in a way that would be entirely undesirable in primary legislation.

I want to pick up on one or two points that the hon. Member for City of Durham made. She said that the way in which the higher education market had evolved to cause students to be regarded as consumers was regrettable, and she also regretted the withdrawal of the state from the financing of higher education. I would like to point out that that is not true: the taxpayer still makes a considerable contribution to the funding of the system. Taxpayers fund it directly, and also often subsidise the loans that underwrite students’ studies. That is a critical feature of a progressive higher education system that has enabled many people from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to university and benefit from it.

As I was saying, schedule 1 is progress. It includes a requirement that is not found in current legislation. The student voice and the student interest will be represented in the main regulatory body; that has not previously been the case. The Committee should welcome that, even if some want the types and specific characteristics of the student representatives to be set down even more clearly.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for giving way again. He has explained his aspiration to engage students. The first OFS board will set the tone; it will set an operating framework that will be maintained over many years. Under the Bill, would the Minister expect that first board to include a current, or at least very recent, student, so that that particular experience could complement its work?

[Joseph Johnson]

I would not want that to be explicit in primary legislation. It will be for the Secretary of State to have regard to the duty to think about the desirability of student representation, but I do not want the Bill to be clear now as to whether it would be a current student or someone who had just finished studying. It could be either of those, or people with a number of other characteristics. The key thing is that there will be people on the OFS board who will be capable of representing the wider student interest.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I rise to support the amendment and the excellent case that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South has made. On Tuesday, we heard from the director of fair access, Professor Les Ebdon, about how important it is that the Bill protects the interests of not only current students but future students. I cannot overstate the importance of the Bill providing a robust framework for fair access to universities, and I am concerned that it may water down some of the director of fair access’s powers to hold universities to account on widening access.

That issue was raised by Professor Ebdon in his evidence, during which he said:

“The concern that I would have is around whether it actually gives more power to the director of fair access or not.”

He was speaking about the new role of director for fair access and participation. He added:

“At the moment, the director of fair access has the sole authority for deciding whether an access plan is sufficient and universities have done what is sufficient to promote and safeguard the interests of students. I know there would be a number of universities that, if they had somebody else—another chief executive above me—to go to, would take my decision to them, because they argue long and hard with me about the decisions I make.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 57, Q86.]

The point of the amendment—this may address the point made by the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds—is that it seeks to ensure that the final responsibility for decisions relating to fair access and participation rests solely with the director for fair access and participation, not with other members of the board or a chief executive who might be in the structure above the director. The amendment seeks to address the concerns expressed by OFFA by ensuring that responsibility for holding universities to account rests solely with the director for fair access and participation, and that universities cannot try to undermine the authority of the director by going above his or—at some time in the future—her head to a higher authority.

There is a danger that without the amendment, the good progress that we are making on widening access could be slowed down as universities delay taking action on failings in their access programmes, believing that they can rely on complaining or appealing to someone else to overturn what has been requested of them by the director for fair access and participation, and that they may not ultimately have to take the actions that he or she suggests.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. If he does not like the wording of the amendment, we would be happy for him to come back with another form of words that would ensure that there is no watering down of directives that might be given by the new director for fair access and participation.

[Paul Blomfield]

I rise to speak to my amendments, which in an extraordinary example of excellent co-ordination say much the same thing but in a slightly different way. Amendment 156 tries to address what I see as a flaw in the schedule as drafted, which makes the director for fair access and participation responsible simply for reporting. The amendment seeks to clarify that he or she is not responsible simply for reporting but for that function and reporting on it. I think that is a helpful additional drafting point.

Amendment 157 clarifies the point about delegation and that the director should not be bypassed by his or her responsibilities being delegated to somebody else. The way that we deal with the matter could set the tone for discussions over the next few weeks. There is complete agreement on trying to achieve widening participation and enormous progress has been made. The Government have shown commendable ambition to make further progress. With these amendments we are considering ways to help that along.

I am sure my colleague the hon. Member for Cannock Chase will acknowledge that when we considered this issue in the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills there were, despite the one area of disagreement, many areas of agreement. One was fair access. Changing the institutional architecture of the sector, which has merits, by bringing the Office for Fair Access into the OFS, also has risks unless we protect the autonomy and authority of that function within the office. That was a key recommendation of the Select Committee report, agreed by all Members. It also relates to the next group of amendments and I will say more about it then. We are simply seeking to ensure that that function has the authority to deal with universities, to get the sort of change of culture and practice that we are all trying to achieve.

I was a supporter of David Willetts’s appointment of the current director, which was not uncontroversial at the time. That was a signal from the previous Government that there was an intention to see change and Professor Ebdon has assisted that process enormously. He has been a very impressive director of fair access and we should listen closely to the evidence that he gave us on Tuesday. He is clear that this sort of definition is required to ensure that the director has the authority to help the Government achieve their objectives in negotiating the deals with the universities.

I hope the Minister will say he is happy to bring back some different form of wording, if not to accept the amendments, picking and choosing between mine and those tabled by my Front Benchers. I hope he will be able to make an amendment that reflects that suggestion, in which case I would be happy not to press mine to a vote.

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank hon. Members for their helpful and extremely interesting amendments. Although I was less able to be accommodating on previous amendments, I would like to signal that we are giving these amendments very careful thought. There is obviously agreement on both sides that social mobility is a huge priority, all the more so now for this Government. Widening access and participation in higher education is one of the key drivers of that.

I agree strongly with the hon. Member for Sheffield Central that the current director of fair access, whom I played a part in reappointing last year, has done a superb job and continues to be exemplary in the way he discharges his functions in that critical role.

Through our reforms, we are keen to ensure that promoting the success of disadvantaged students will be a central part of the OFS’s remit. Through the Bill, the OFS will bring together the responsibilities for widening participation currently undertaken by the director for fair access and HEFCE. Bringing those functions together in one body will ensure greater co-ordination of activities and funding at national level. That should allow greater strategic focus on those areas identified as a priority. In establishing the OFS, we have been clear that we are creating a single body, whose members will, in effect, operate as a board responsible for a range of functions, including access and participation. It will be the responsibility of the OFS to ensure that all its functions are being fulfilled.

Let me reassure Members the intention is that the OFS will give responsibility to the director for fair access and participation for activities in this area. The intention is that the OFS will give responsibility to him for these matters. We envisage that in practice that will mean that the other OFS members will agree a broad remit with the future director for fair access and participation and that the DFAP will report back to them on those activities. As such, the DFAP would have responsibility for those important access and participation activities, including—critically—agreeing the access and participation plan on a day-to-day basis with higher education institutions.

Amendment 134 would place in legislation details of how the OFS members will operate when considering delegation of functions. It would not, however, be appropriate to put that kind of detail into statute. Rather, we would expect the OFS, once established, to confirm how it will operate and exercise its delegation powers taking account of guidance from the Secretary of State. However, let me repeat and attempt to reassure hon. Members that the intention is for the OFS to give responsibility for access and participation to the director for fair access and participation.

The work of the DFAP does not need to be separated from the rest of the work of the OFS. The reforms mean that access and participation will be considered in the context of everything that the regulator does, with the Secretary of State’s directly appointed champion in the form of the director for fair access and participation. The Government are serious about social mobility and that is exactly what the measures will help to drive. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Blackpool South to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

We know from all of the evidence that exists that fair access to higher education is not simply the responsibility of universities; it stretches back far earlier, in terms of both the education system and broader aspects of social policy. In that context, it is important to give all Members an opportunity to look carefully at the issues contained therein. Given that, I hope the amendments will receive a favourable hearing from the Minister and that he can consider them as he will be considering the amendments we have just debated.

[Paul Blomfield]

I will only make a brief contribution, which is to follow up on the point I was making about the Select Committee report on this specific point. I will share the brief recommendation we made as a Committee, with the endorsement of every member of the Committee:

“In order to best promote widening participation, and to help the Government meet its own targets, we believe it important that the decisions of the Director for Fair Access are seen as fully independent and not subject to being overruled by any higher authority within the same organisation. The ability for this post to report direct to the Minister and to Parliament should therefore be built into the new higher education architecture.”

I think that crystallises the point made powerfully a moment ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North when moving his amendments. I hope, and I am sure, that we can reach the same accommodation if the Minister is able to respond in the same terms as he did to the previous group of amendments.

[Mr Marsden]

The generic points the Opposition Front Benchers would like to make in this area have been amply covered by my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Central and for Ilford North. I will briefly touch on amendment 128. I say again that we entirely endorse and think it is of huge importance that that report should come to Parliament on a regular basis. Although this is not part of any of the amendments, it is taken for granted that it should also go to the relevant Select Committees. It is in that context of closing the circle that we wanted to clarify with a probing amendment that the director would report to the board members of the OFS on his performance.

To go back to the point that the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds made earlier, we do not want the director to sit in a bubble. I can imagine that the OFS board, once it gets going, will have myriad things to consider at its meetings and it is important therefore that we flag up that there is a regular slot for the board members to receive that report from the director for fair access and participation. That would be of benefit to the board as a whole and to the director in maintaining his strong relationship with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we are at such a critical juncture in developing widening participation targets and strategies that it is a risky time for them to be completely subsumed? I would not challenge for a moment the Minister’s genuine intent, but there is a risk in organisations that what the Minister described as “mainstreaming” sometimes means that functions get subsumed, and we have to take care that the particular function of widening participation is not.

[Wes Streeting]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend; his point reinforces the recommendation of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. When the Minister goes away to reflect on these issues, he should consider not just what is being said here but the view of that Committee. Parliamentary accountability is important, and as my hon. Friend warns, there is sometimes a risk that mainstreaming leads to a lack of focus. I do not think we are anywhere near where we need to be as a country on social mobility—on ensuring that people’s backgrounds and the circumstances of their birth do not determine their destiny in life. Higher education has a critical role to play. We know from looking around the Palace of Westminster and from looking at the top of business and civil society that the levers of social, political and economic power tend to be pulled by people who went to university—often to the same universities.

It is important that we keep a close eye on this matter, because it goes beyond the question of value to higher education; it is in the national interest. That is why there is such interest in parliamentary debates on these issues, and why I think parliamentary accountability is important. However, I am mindful of what the Minister said about considering these issues further and so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Sixth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I wonder if he could help me, because I am struggling to understand his point on this issue of collaboration. He says that he does not want to be prescriptive. He speaks highly of collaboration and of competition. Competition is on the face of the Bill. Can the Minister explain to me why he is prepared to be prescriptive in that context, but not in this one?

[Joseph Johnson]

We believe strongly that there is a need for competition to generate the driving forces that push up the quality of provision in the HE system and enable a more meaningful range of choices for students. We think that that would be in the student interest. Our overarching purpose is to make sure that the OFS operates in the student interest. We believe that that overriding goal captures many of the benefits that collaboration could achieve, and therefore putting collaboration on the face of the Bill would be redundant. When collaboration is in the interests of students it would already be covered by the OFS’s overarching duty in clause 2.

I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I can assure him that we will of course make clear in our guidance to the OFS that having regard to collaboration is part of its general role in having an overview of the sector and of the role of providers. We will make clear in the guidance that collaboration is compatible with competition when it is in the interests of students. The OFS does not need a separate duty to promote collaboration; it has a general duty to have regard to the student interest and can therefore support collaboration when it is in that student interest.

We know that there is a continuing entrenchment of the same model of higher education in this country. The share of undergraduate students in English higher education institutions doing typical full-time first degrees has increased from 65% in 2010-11 to 78% in 2014-15. It is important that the OFS has a focus on supporting a competitive and more innovative market. This will have the effect of making it easier for new providers to enter the market and expand, helping to drive up teaching standards overall, enhance the life chances of students, drive economic growth, and be a catalyst for social mobility. Competition will incentivise providers to raise their game, fostering innovation, which has been stifled for too long under the current system.

I concur with the hon. Gentleman about a lack of innovation. In my view, promoting innovation, like collaboration, does not require a separate duty. When it is in the student interest, the OFS will be fully able to support it, because the student interest is at the very heart of the OFS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

I am reassured by what the Minister says, not least because the provision is de minimis and the OFS will be able to vary the period. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5

The initial and general ongoing registration conditions

[Paul Blomfield]

I beg to move amendment 165, in clause 5, page 4, line 8, at end insert—

“(2A) Subject to subsection (2C), initial registration conditions of all providers under paragraph (1)(a) must include a requirement that every provider—

(a) provides all eligible students with the opportunity to opt in to be added to the electoral register through the process of enrolling with that provider, and

(b) enter into a data sharing agreement with the local electoral registration officer to add those students to the electoral register.

(2B) For the purposes of subsection (2A)—

(a) a “data sharing agreement” is an agreement between the higher education provider and their local authority whereby the provider shares—

(i) the name,

(ii) address,

(iii) nationality,

(iv) date of birth, and

(v) national insurance data

of all eligible students enrolling and/or enrolled with the provider who opt in within the meaning of subsection (2A)(a);

(b) “eligible” means those persons who are—

(i) entitled to vote in accordance with section 1 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, and

(ii) a resident in the same local authority as the higher education provider.

(2C) Subsection (2A) does not apply to the Open University and other distance-learning institutions.”

This amendment would ensure that the OfS includes as a registration condition for higher education providers the integration of electoral registration into the student enrolment process. Distance-learning providers are exempt.

I am pleased to introduce amendment 165, because although it is in my name alone, I know it enjoys cross-party support. That is not surprising, because it seeks to introduce a requirement on universities in line with the Cabinet Office’s work on electoral registration. The Cabinet Office has endorsed my approach and has been encouraging.

The amendment simply requires universities to make a minor change to their student enrolment systems to provide new students who enrol with the opportunity to have their names added to the electoral register in a seamless process. Like the Cabinet Office, Universities UK has endorsed the system and has been encouraging. The issue is certainly topical; today, to the comfort or discomfort of hon. Members, new boundaries have been published based on an electoral register that we all agree could have significantly more people registered on it.

Let me put the amendment in context. Members will recognise that when individual electoral registration was introduced in 2014, it created a substantial culture change, not least for universities. Before IER, universities used their role as head of household to block-register students who lived in their accommodation—a practice that was well established throughout the sector. When IER removed that opportunity for universities, there was a real concern that hundreds of thousands of eligible students would disappear from the electoral register, and that proved to be the case.

As the Member of Parliament who represents more students than any other, I have been keenly focused on the issue. In anticipation of the problem, I worked with the University of Sheffield and the Sheffield electoral registration officer. We looked into developing a seamless system at the point at which the university collected the data that the electoral registration officer needed to put people on the register. We piloted the system for the 2014 entry, and it was extremely successful. It turned a negative into a positive, reaching out not only to those students who might otherwise have been registered by virtue of living in university accommodation, but to all students. We managed to achieve a registration level of 65% of eligible students.

The success of the pilot led to its endorsement by Universities UK and the Cabinet Office. A number of other universities followed up on it in the 2015 intake, by changing their student enrolment systems, with even greater success than Sheffield. I think that Cardiff hit over 70% registration, De Montfort’s level was approaching 90%, and there have been one or two other examples. However, the sector has been slow to take the pilot up, and it seemed that this Bill, provided an opportunity to embed good practice across the sector, in terms of conditions for registration. That is what this amendment seeks to do.

[Wes Streeting]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hanson. I will speak briefly in support of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central. There are genuine issues around the registration of students. As many hon. and right hon. Members will be aware, effectively students can choose to cast their vote in their traditional home constituency or in the constituency in which they are studying, if those two constituencies are different. There is a good reason for that rule. Students spend much of the year away from home, and often find themselves away from home during a general election, local election or indeed the occasional referendum.

There are real issues about the way that individual electoral registration has disfranchised significant numbers of students. It is regrettable that the principled motivations behind individual electoral registration got rid of common-sense measures, such as university vice-chancellors being able to block-register students in university-run accommodation. The vice-chancellors clearly know who the students are; they clearly know that the students are resident at the university; and with the law of unintended consequences being what it is, individual electoral registration has led to additional bureaucracy and people missing out on being able to make their voice heard.

The duty proposed by the amendment is common sense. It would be welcomed by the sector, including by students unions, and probably by lots of electoral registration officers in local authorities up and down the country, who could probably do with some assistance in getting people registered. In and of itself, it will not address the broader challenge, which is that once students are registered to vote, how on earth do we get them to turn out at the polling stations? It is a perennial frustration of mine, having run all sorts of student voter registration campaigns over the years, that students and young people generally do not cast their vote in the same numbers and proportions as older residents, which has an impact on public policy. This amendment would not solve that particular challenge, but it would at least help more people to engage in our democracy and to exercise their democratic right to vote. Surely that can only be a good thing. I hope that the Minister will give us a favourable response.

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[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central for his amendment, which he was kind enough to flag to me last week. The Government fully share his aim of increasing the number of younger people registered to vote. Participating in elections at all levels is essential if we are to have a healthy democracy. Indeed, the Government have demonstrated their commitment to that aim by supporting and contributing financially to the pilot project of the University of Sheffield, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, as he mentioned.

The pilot project sought to integrate electoral registration with student enrolment. I congratulate the University of Sheffield on its commitment to devising a workable solution to the problem. It achieved the successful outcome of integrating online electoral registration and university enrolment using the university’s bespoke in-house enrolment software. The vice-chancellor should be commended as the driving force behind the successful pilot. However, this is not a case of one size fits all. Integrated registration is just one option that the Government will consider alongside others in determining how best to increase student registration. Those options will include working in partnership with student-facing organisations and local authorities.

The process should be voluntary. It would not be right to force all providers on the register to adopt such an arrangement. Administering such an arrangement will incur costs, which larger institutions such as the University of Sheffield may find easier to accommodate than smaller specialist providers. Moreover, it would not be appropriate to include such a condition in the Bill. The conditions of registration are primarily to provide proportionate safeguards for students and the taxpayer, and to take forward social mobility policies. Requiring providers to carry out electoral registration, particularly when there are other means of students enrolling on the electoral register, is not the best way forward.

In addition, the introduction of online electoral registration by the previous Government has made it simpler and easier than ever to register to vote. Since the introduction of individual electoral registration in June 2014, there have been more than 20 million applications to register. Some 78% of electors currently apply to register online, and that figure rises to 86% for the 18 to 24 age group. That demonstrates that the way in which electors engage with electoral registration is evolving.

The Government are looking at modernising and streamlining the annual registration canvass. Impacts on students from the current process will be picked up as part of the modernising electoral registration programme. We are looking at the lessons learned from enrolment pilot schemes, such as the one conducted successfully at the University of Sheffield, to see whether they have wider application. We are also considering other options to increase student registration, including as part of the Government’s democratic engagement strategy, and we expect to set that out early in 2017. Ahead of that, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Paul Blomfield]

I note the Minister’s points and I am grateful for his acknowledgement of the role that the University of Sheffield has played. I endorse it and reiterate how grateful we were for the support, both in encouraging the pilot and getting it off the ground financially.

The Minister highlighted the fact that the University of Sheffield used the opportunity to tweak its bespoke software, which is right. In a sense, that makes it not easier, but more challenging for the university, because the overwhelming majority of providers buy off-the-shelf software that is designed in partnership with user groups, and it is relatively easy to tweak that off-the-shelf software to minimise the cost for individual institutions.

The Minister said that the process should be voluntary. The important thing that should be voluntary in the process is students having the choice of whether to register. That is the important voluntary element, and that is what this system provides for. It simply draws students’ attention, when they are enrolling, to the opportunity to register and explains a little bit about that. They tick one box, which leads to another stage of providing a national insurance number. The important principle of voluntary engagement with the democratic process is at the heart of this system. I do not think it is unreasonable to expect providers to make such a minor adjustment when we are all committed to the principle.

The Minister makes the very fair point that this is not central to the purposes of the Bill, but I reflect back to him that the Government—and previous Governments—have on occasion been known to bung stuff into a Bill that was not central to its purposes when there was a convenient opportunity to do something that we all wanted to do. This is something that we all want to do.

Notwithstanding those reservations, if the Minister would commit to meeting me and the relevant Cabinet Office Minister to talk a little about how we can move this forward, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

[Joseph Johnson]

I am happy to discuss further with the hon. Gentleman how we can involve the Cabinet Office. We have already had quite detailed discussions with Cabinet Office Ministers who are sighted on the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. They are aware of the status of our Bill, but I am happy to discuss this further outside the Committee.

[Paul Blomfield]

On the basis that we can meet with the Cabinet Office Minister responsible, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Gordon Marsden]

I beg to move amendment 146, in clause 5, page 4, line 11, leave out

“if it appears to it appropriate to do so”

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[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister will recognise that the director of fair access said in his evidence to us that his ability to sign off loans was a critical transformative element. Given our welcome of the impact he has had, is it not inconsistent of us to not give him the same power in relation to providers, who will, through the student support mechanism, be able to access substantial public funds?

[Joseph Johnson]

No, the intention is that these are statements that the providers accessing the basic amount of fee loans support for their students put up on their own initiative. They will be required to have them, but they will not be signed off by the director for fair access and participation. We do not think that that would be a proportionate requirement.

Through our planned transparency duty, we intend that these providers will, through these statements, be required to publish data on student application, offer and drop-out rates. These statements are to be broken down by the ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background of the student bodies. The publication of more data will help the sector to support everybody in fulfilling their potential, regardless of their background. It is our intention that the OFS will look at requiring this access and participation statement as part of the conditions of registration.

I expect the OFS to consult when it determines for the first time what the initial and ongoing conditions should be, and a wide range of interested parties representing the interests of students and providers is to have the opportunity to feed in their views through this consultation. This would include details of the various conditions that providers would have to meet, including on access and participation. Widening access and participation are central to our reforms, and I believe that the requirements we are laying on providers in that respect, including the innovation of access and participation statements, are balanced and fair. I ask the hon. Member for Blackpool South to consider withdrawing amendment 166.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friends and my own amendment 164. This is a straightforward amendment to clause 9 which, in the first instance, seeks clarity from the Minister. I am not sure whether under subsection (2) the OFS will have to publish the information provided to it by higher education providers, or whether it is simply the institutions themselves that will have to do so. If it is the institutions themselves, it would be helpful if all the information was collated in one place. UCAS seems to be the obvious place to do that, if it is not the OFS. The point of the amendment is to ensure that somewhere, either through the OFS or UCAS, all the information is provided in one place. That would be much easier for the sector at large and for prospective students, rather than people having to trawl through every higher education provider’s publication.

[Paul Blomfield]

Amendment 176, which stands in my name, seeks granular information to assist the Government’s own ambitions in relation to the achievement of both applicants and those who are at different stages of the process through higher education. In the past, so much of our debate has been focused simply on getting people to university. The Government are right, in their ambitions for widening participation, to be looking not only at that but at how people achieve and are supported through their time at university. In that context we are looking for a requirement to publish further information, not just on those who have accepted offers, but those who accepted an offer and then did not begin their course; accepted an offer but did not complete their course; or accepted an offer and completed their course but with different levels of attainment. I expect the Minister agrees that that sort of information will be help the pursuit of our shared objectives in relation to widening participation, so I hope he feels able to accept the amendment.

[Joseph Johnson]

This Government are serious about social mobility and improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged. We want a country that works for everyone. Following our decision to remove student number caps, we have seen entry rates for BME students at record levels, with participation rates up across all groups, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Universities are already playing their part and they are expected to spend £833 million on access agreements in the 2017-18 academic year, as I have mentioned, but we recognise that there is more to do, which is why we have a transparency duty in the Bill. We believe that transparency is one of the best tools we have at our disposal. Institutions will be expected to publish application, offer and drop-out rates for students broken down by ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background. The duty will allow us to shine a spotlight on institutions that need to go further.

Amendment 19 would require the publication of contextual data. It is not easy to set out what weight is attached to that sort of information against a personal statement or an interview, in what are typically holistic assessments of an individual’s application. Amendment 21 relates to the transparency condition applying to all registered providers. Throughout the Bill we have tried to take a proportionate approach. We think that the condition should apply only to providers whose students benefit from access to public funds. We know that diversity in admissions is largely an issue at the most selective institutions. The requirement is already captured by the condition in the Bill that applies to providers whose students can claim tuition fees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

Amendment 6 would mean that private higher education providers must have a students union to remain on the OFS register. There is nothing in the Bill or current legislation to prevent an HE provider, private or otherwise, from having a students union, and no higher education provider is currently required to have a students union.

As the hon. Gentleman made clear, students unions provide valuable welfare services to their members, but a students union, as defined in the Education Act 1994, is not the only way in which students can be supported by their higher education institution or be engaged in decision making. Alex Proudfoot of Independent Higher Education, formerly Study UK, told the Committee during the evidence sessions:

“Students at alternative providers tend not to engage in formal students unions; they tend often to be professionals or mature students or to have responsibilities outside their studies. For that reason, it is difficult to require representation, but it should be encouraged.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 7, Q2.]

[Paul Blomfield]

Does the Minister agree that Mr Proudfoot’s description of the sort of students who are likely to be attracted to alternative providers describes exactly students at the Open University? Does he agree that the Open University Students Association enriches the experience of its students and the work of the Open University?

Higher Education and Research Bill (Eighth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 8th Sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 15th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

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

I beg to move amendment 178, in clause 13, page 8, line 17, at end insert—

“(f) a condition relating to the provision of access to a range of cultural activities including, but not restricted to, the opportunity to undertake sport and recreation and access to a range of student societies and organisations;

(g) a condition relating to the provision of student support and wellbeing services including specialist learning support;

(h) a condition relating to the provision of volunteering and exchange opportunities;

(i) a condition relating to the opportunity to join a students’ union.”

This amendment ensures that all aspects of a positive student experience are considered relevant to the inclusion of a Higher Education institution on the register.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. This amendment takes us back to the thorny issue of what a university is and how we ensure that the measures in the Bill do not allow for or enable the dumbing down of the sector as a whole. I want to pose a series of questions to the Minister about why clause 13 does not provide a list of the sorts of service and the range of amenities that the Minister might expect a university to have in order to be deemed a university. The amendment sets out a whole range of conditions that should be included in the clause, so that something called a university actually is a university. I will be interested to hear why the Minister thinks that is not important.

As we all know, students do not only go to university to get a degree. Of course they go to university to get a degree, but along the way, they join lots of clubs and societies. They take part in cultural events. They might have a drama club. They often, as in the case of Durham University, have a theatre and put on performances—really good ones—that local people go along to. That is an incredibly important aspect of the cultural activities at Durham. At the weekend, we often go along to watch the university teams compete against other universities or in local leagues. It is incredibly important that students, particularly those who have done so at school, can take up sport at university.

Students join a whole range of clubs and societies that enhance not only their wellbeing but that of the wider community. In that respect, I point out the particular importance of providing volunteering opportunities for students, which can often help them with future employment and give back massively to the local community through community service. Indeed, I was at a luncheon club in my constituency just a couple of weeks ago that had been started up by students in a disadvantaged area of Durham. They have a volunteering rota to keep the club up and running.

We would normally equate those sorts of activity with the university experience, along with being able to join the students union, which I will not mention again because we discussed it a couple of days ago, but that is clearly a very important aspect of what students can do when they go to university.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the thrust of the Government’s policy here is enhancing the learning experience, and that the sorts of activities that she describes are not simply important in giving students the widest opportunities in their lives, but provide them with opportunities to learn team and leadership skills, and are very much part of that broader learning experience?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the way in which the wider experience of university contributes to the overall student experience. Indeed, a necessary part of that student experience is universities ensuring that there is adequate student support and a range of wellbeing services, and that specialist learning or special needs are met through the university learning support system. It seems a little odd, to put it mildly, that in the list of “other initial and ongoing registration conditions” in clause 13, there is absolutely nothing about the range of services that an institution should provide; it is all about regulation. It is important that the sector is properly regulated, but that is not sufficient.

A few months ago, I was standing where my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South is sitting now, questioning the Housing Minister about starter homes. I made the point to him—this is directly relevant—that a starter home was not affordable housing just because the Government legislated for it to be affordable housing or thought that it was affordable housing. Clearly, a £450,000 house in London, or a £250,000 house outside London, is simply not affordable. Alas, that Minister did not take my advice and went ahead with legislation that said that such houses were affordable, when clearly they are not. Now, of course, the Government are having to revisit that legislation and what they are doing on starter homes, because it was absolutely obvious that they could not simply legislate for something to be what it is not. I fear that the same will happen with the Bill, and the Government will say about a college or specialist provider, “It is a university if it meets these regulation conditions,” when in any other context it would be considered not a university but a specialist provider.

I am trying to help the Minister to avoid falling into the same trap of legislating for something that clearly is not what the Government try to make it out to be by suggesting that it would help us all in our deliberations—indeed, it would help some of us to negotiate our way through the clauses dealing with registration conditions—if the Minister clarified what he thought a university should be and the range of services that an institution should provide before it is able to use “university” in its title. We really do not want students to think that an institution provides a certain range of services when it clearly does not and has no intention of ever providing the range of services or opportunities that one would normally associate with a university.

It would be helpful to hear what the Minister thinks a university is and what range of services he would like to see universities normally provide. Can he reassure us that no institution will be able to call itself a university when it clearly is not one?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I do not wish to detain the Committee unduly, but the Minister will be well aware that Universities UK has, in its written evidence to the Committee and, I am sure, in person with him, expressed some real concerns about how the concepts of quality and standards are being applied in this legislation.

In the written evidence, Universities UK pointed out to the Committee that the way in which standards should be assessed is not being set out clearly enough, nor has enough clarity been given to the difference between what is meant by “quality” and “standards” throughout the Bill. Universities UK states:

“The quality of higher education provided is clearly a key consideration in the regulation of the sector, although at present the bill makes the relevant condition one which may be applied rather than one which is a mandatory condition of any institution seeking to be included on the register of higher education providers.”

It points out that all the clauses subsequent to clause 13 that deal with assessing quality and standards should make the distinction between “quality” and “standards” much clearer.

On that point, clause 23(3) as drafted states:

“‘Standards’ has the same meaning as in section 13(1)(a).”

Clause 13(1)(a) states that

“a condition relating to the quality of, or the standards applied to, the higher education provided by the provider (including requiring the quality to be of a particular level or particular standards to be applied);”.

That does not seem to be a particularly helpful or clear definition.

Will the Minister, from clause 13 onwards and in clauses 23, 25 and 27, assist the Committee in its deliberations by agreeing to put more clarity in the Bill or in regulations?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is shared by the Russell Group in its evidence. It is concerned that the definition as it stands would require the OFS to be involved in decisions about appropriate standards that are properly for universities themselves to make as autonomous institutions? There is widespread concern, which the Government need to address.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. The Minister has had many representations on this issue. I have not yet heard from him how he will address those concerns, but I am sure I am about to.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Seventh sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 7th Sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 15th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Gordon Marsden]

Absolutely. Who is going to argue with that? No one is arguing against that. With all due respect to the Minister, I have known Steve Smith a great deal longer than he has. I have known Steve Smith for about 15 years and he has always been a doughty defender of all of these aspects. Yet again, the quote the Minister gives is simply about the principle of the teaching excellence framework. That I think is the point my hon. Friend wishes to intervene on.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to intervene. My intervention is sharpened by the Minister’s comments. Does my hon. Friend recognise that Professor Smith was actually saying that this gives us an opportunity to draw additional income to invest in teaching, in effect because it is the only show in town? Does he also recognise that when the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills took evidence from the university sector on the point of the TEF and the link, there was uniform opposition to the link at that stage?

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to the work of the Select Committee in that respect. Of course university vice-chancellors are pragmatic people; they have to be. It is rather like when the late lamented Chancellor of the Exchequer said there could be any form of new structure for combined authorities as long as there were mayors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

That is a perfectly reasonable and sagacious thing for the Select Committee to say, and it is to be expected. The Select Committee did not endorse this specific mechanism introduced in this specific way. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but we are going to have to disagree, though I am fairly sure that the record will bear me out on that. If the Minister wishes to demonstrate otherwise, he is able to do so.

I will move on as I am conscious of time, and we need to get some movement. I will talk about one or two other areas related to the linkage between TEF and fees. We will reserve the concerns of Cambridge and other universities about TEF for a later stage. We should also consider where this proposal will take a university’s position with regard to the students it wants to attract.

I want to quote Professor David Phoenix, chair of MillionPlus and the vice-chancellor—since we are quoting vice-chancellors this morning—of London South Bank University. When the Government’s Green Paper was produced, he rightly said:

“A focus on quality, continuous improvement and the incentivisation of excellent teaching is at the centre of every university’s ambitions for its students.”

He welcomed the Green Paper and, for the avoidance of doubt, the opportunity to highlight the many strengths and benefits of UK universities and their teaching, but he said this:

“Linking fee increases with a Teaching Excellence Framework…based on metrics that are proxies for teaching quality”—

that is the hub of the discussion, debate and aeration on the Minister’s part this morning: the automatic assumption that teaching quality equals his TEF—

“is unlikely to provide students or employers with an accurate picture of the rich and varied teaching and learning environments that universities provide. This risks damaging the reputation of the higher education sector in the UK and is why we recommend that the government defer the introduction of a multi-level TEF in 2018 until further work has been completed to determine the best way to promote teaching excellence.”

Since that Green Paper was published, there has been a lot of iteration and discussion, and I return to what I said at the beginning: I understand why the Minister has listened to the sector and not introduced the TEF in all its glory—if that is what it is to be—with the implications he wants for fees. Fees could go down, although I think it is unlikely. They are far more likely to go up, but that does not cancel out the points we have made all along.

We are not the only ones with concerns on these issues. We will talk about the cost of the teaching framework at another time, but the University and College Union, Unison and a range of other organisations oppose the Government’s plans to raise tuition fees and link variable rises to a rating system. That is precisely because they are concerned that those plans will further alienate young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and put them off going to those universities. In the process, that will affect those groups’ members. It will affect their members’ ability to have jobs, whether those are teaching jobs or all the other jobs done by the people needed to make universities work.

One of the things that depresses me most about the Government’s approach to the Bill thus far, certainly in Committee, is that they seem to have a blind spot about anything other than the mechanics of producing the legislation to do these things. Every time we table an amendment that would include students and members of the workforce, they fight shy of putting it in the Bill. I will leave that point there.

I need to touch what the situation will be if leading universities opt out of the TEF, which was the subject of an article in Times Higher Education at the beginning of September. Reference was made to various issues, including Russell Group universities perhaps not wanting to take part because:

“They fear that taking part in the TEF will become such an administratively burdensome activity that the cost of participation will become so expensive that it will outweigh the value of an inflationary increase in tuition fees.”

We should be concerned about that not only because it is causing Russell Group vice-chancellors to agonise but because it threatens both the future of the TEF—I repeat, we want to see a proper TEF succeed—and future access for the sorts of students whom every member of the Committee, no matter whether they are Government or Opposition, wants to see at university. We all want to improve access to participation.

It is extremely important that the process in this matter is not a repetition of the precedent from before the summer recess. The issues are extremely important. People are so frustrated about the teaching excellence framework not being debated on the Floor of the House and in the context of the Bill, because that will enable the Government to evade detailed scrutiny of all the issues and of that process subsequently.

We have already seen how the Government did not choose to address the 2.8% increase in fees on Second Reading. We seek an assurance that if there are any major issues related to the TEF, including what the Government wish to do or not to do on fees, it will not simply be left to ministerial guidance or, with all due respect, shuffled down to a Delegated Legislation Committee, which will not allow all Members of this House to engage with the important and potentially very beneficial development of properly recognising teaching in our universities and higher education institutions.

[Paul Blomfield]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I rise to make some relatively brief remarks on the principle of the fees link. The Minister is understandably but deliberately confusing the issues of teaching excellence and fee increases. The inquiry by the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills received a considerable amount of evidence on this issue. When the Government were still thinking about the issue, the overwhelming bulk of evidence from universities was that, while they celebrated the Government’s intention to put teaching quality at the heart of the agenda—the Minister has quoted the evidence that they did so—and welcomed the opportunity provided by a teaching excellence framework, the measure would be wrong, could have perverse outcomes and certainly would not assist the Government’s objective of linking the teaching excellence framework to fee increases.

Many Opposition Members disagree with the current funding regime in our universities and want to see different approaches that adequately fund our universities so they can continue to be among the best in the world without some of the other consequences of the current regime.

[Amanda Milling]

As a fellow Select Committee member, the hon. Gentleman will recall that at the time there was a lot of discussion about the TEF and the metrics. A lot of progress has been made. The discussion about the metrics and the link with fees created some of that debate. Does he agree that the Government and the Minister have been listening and that a lot of progress has been made on developing the TEF and the metrics, both qualitative and quantitative, that will be included?

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Lady and I have spent many happy hours debating these issues in the Select Committee. I agree that the Government have been listening on the metrics, and we will have an opportunity to debate those metrics more fully at a later stage. My point is simply that, even once the Government have got it right, and they are not quite there yet—we will debate that later—linking the measurement of teaching quality with fees is fundamentally wrong. That was the overwhelming evidence that our inquiry received from across the sector.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Why does my hon. Friend think the Government have chosen to serve provider interests through this mechanism, by allowing institutions to increase fees as part of quality enhancement, rather than serving the students’ interests? At every stage in Committee they have resisted any measure to improve student representation, the student voice and the consumer, user and student demand side of quality enhancement.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend highlights an interesting contradiction. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase has pointed out that the Government are in listening mode, and I had hoped that we might have some more positive statements during our proceedings on student representation—if not accepting the amendment, at least giving greater clarity on the role that the student voice will have in the system.

We are asked in schedule 2 to endorse the principle of linking fees to a quality system, which we have not yet debated. There are still major reservations about it, and there is scant information about it in the Bill. The Select Committee agreed that the Government’s proposed metrics are flawed. I appreciate that we are coming to that debate, but it is worth highlighting those concerns briefly.

[Amanda Milling]

I am not sure I entirely agree that we said the metrics were flawed. I recall that we could see a role for them and for other metrics, too. We said that there was a need to develop the metrics over time. The Government—again, in listening mode—talked about the phasing in of the TEF in recognition of that.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which helps us clarify what the Select Committee agreed. The report goes through the metrics, expressing reservations about employment. It is concerned that a narrow focus on employment will not demonstrate teaching quality. The truth is that if someone goes to the right public school and Oxbridge, however good the teaching quality at Oxbridge, they will get a good job because they know the right people and have got the right contacts. In itself, employment is no measure of teaching quality, and nor is retention.

I appreciate the Government’s initiative to improve retention as part of the widening participation agenda. It is positive, but the retention metric is open to university gaming: the best way of getting a good retention metric is by not taking students who are likely to struggle in university. It runs counter to the Government’s objectives, and there are similar concerns about the crudeness of the national student survey as a metric in itself.

The hon. Lady is right. We expressed those reservations and recognised that the Government were listening and were trying to move on them, but the Select Committee said very clearly that we wanted metrics with a proven link to teaching quality. The Government have not got those metrics yet. We will have that debate later.

The second point of concern in relation to the fees link is that the Government are rightly moving in the further stages of the TEF to subject-based assessment. Now, subject-based assessment is a good step because universities are large institutions within which there is a huge range of subjects and a great diversity of teaching quality, but to link a fee with an institutional assessment masks that range of teaching quality. People studying in a department where the teaching quality is not as good as in others will be paying higher fees. This flawed proposal does not enhance the Government’s objective and should be rejected.

[Joseph Johnson]

This has been a more heated debate than those that preceded it. I anticipated that it would be, and I hope we can move on to more consensual areas of the Bill shortly so that we can recover our composure. I am glad we are having this crucial debate, because this issue is clearly of huge concern to many Members. It highlights the big differences between what the Government are trying to achieve and what the Opposition would have us do.

Schedule 2 is crucial, in that it provides the mechanism for the setting of fee caps, which are central to fair and sustainable higher education funding. It replicates the provisions put in place by the Labour Government more than a decade ago with one difference, which I will come to later. First, I want to set out why the current funding system not only works for the sector but is crucial to its continued competitiveness.

The system we have established and are updating through the Bill, building on the measures put in place by the previous Labour Government, will ensure the sustainability of the HE sector and drive up the value to students by linking quality with fees. Our approach has been recognised by the OECD, which praised England as one of the few countries to have figured out a sustainable approach to higher education finance.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister will acknowledge that the quotes that he is giving—he may have reservations about them—are in relation to the fee system. The OECD has made no comment on the fees link.

[Joseph Johnson]

The OECD has made its comments and it is of the view that we have the most sustainable funding system of any country in the world. We are developing it further with our teaching excellence framework.

Despite what the Labour party said at the time, students have not been deterred from going into higher education and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have not been put off from going to university. We now have entry rates, as I have said, at record levels of 18.5% in 2015, up from 13.6% in 2009-10. In fact, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds are now 36% more likely to go to university than they were when the Conservatives came into office in 2010. Our student funding system is fair and sustainable. It removes financial barriers to anyone hoping to study, and is backed by the taxpayer, with outstanding debt written off after 30 years. That is a deliberate, conscious decision by Government to invest in the skills base of the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

I have been invited to carry on and speak about schedule 2, so I will press on for a minute. I will give way once I have made a bit more progress, if I can.

Tuition fees have been frozen since 2012 at £9,000 a year. That means that the fees have already fallen in real terms to £8,500 as things stand today. If we leave them unchanged they will be worth £8,000 in those terms by the end of the Parliament. It is not right or realistic to expect providers to continue to deliver high-quality teaching year in, year out with continually decreasing resources. The Committee heard that point made clearly by Chris Husbands, vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, which is close to the constituency of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, when he gave evidence. He said clearly that it would be completely inappropriate for the university sector still to be stuck on £9,000 in 20 or 30 years’ time because no Government had the guts to allow fees to rise with inflation. That is precisely what we are doing.

[Paul Blomfield]

I welcome the Minister’s coming to the core issue of schedule 2, but his quote from the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University referred to the case for a fees increase. Schedule 2 is about linking it to the teaching excellence framework. The Minister has yet to make the case, or even mention that link. Will he do so now?

[Joseph Johnson]

Happily. The hon. Gentleman is deluding himself if he thinks that the chair of the teaching excellent framework does not understand the fee link that he himself is implementing. He does his fellow Sheffielder something of a disservice in casting that sort of aspersion on him.

What we are doing in schedule 2 for the first time is ensuring that only those providers who can demonstrate high-quality provision can maintain their fees in line with inflation. The ability to raise fees with inflation was provided for by the last Labour Government in 2004, but without any reference at all to quality or the student experience. Through schedule 2, we are doing better than that. The TEF fee link, in particular, as Government Members have already noted, was endorsed earlier this year by the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, which said that

“we support the principle of a more sophisticated link…between teaching quality and fee level”.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Tenth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Gordon Marsden]

Amendment 207 picks up on a theme that we discussed earlier, which is the essential need to strengthen the access and participation of part-time and mature students, particularly given the decline in their numbers in recent years.

The amendment requires universities and other higher education providers to include a policy for part-time and mature students in their access and participation plan. It would also require the office for students to consider appointing a director for part-time and mature students to its board. The amendment was suggested by the Sutton Trust, but a large body of opinion in the lifelong learning area believes that it is important—as we have said in relation to other groups—that when the office for students is established, the importance of part-time and mature students is recognised, particularly in access and participation plans.

The discussions that we have had so far have included many references to the Open University. That is not surprising: the Open University is a huge success story for the UK; it is an international institution based in Britain and it has the largest number of adult students and so on. But several other institutions, of greater longevity than the Open University, also have concerns in these areas. For example, Birkbeck College of the University of London has made a couple of points about this. When the Minister was talking about cockney universities, I cannot remember if Birkbeck was one of them, but it is of the same vintage. It was founded in 1823 as the London Mechanics’ Institute with the express remit to open up higher and university education to working people.

Birkbeck has a teaching model with a flexible course structure, allowing students to complete a degree in the same length of time as regular students studying in the daytime at other universities. Some Members here may even have members of their staff who have done exactly that sort of thing at Birkbeck. It is a very broad-based and world class research-intensive institution and has very good statistics in that respect. But Birkbeck is concerned about a number of issues in the Bill, not in terms of commission but of omission. It says:

“The vast majority of our students are aged over 21, most choose evening study because they work full-time or have family commitments during the daytime. Provision for part-time and mature learners is important for social mobility. Part-time study is frequently the route into higher education for most non-traditional and mature students. Part-time study is also, by definition, local. In 2015-16 one in five undergraduate entrants in England from low participation neighbourhoods chose or have no option but to study part-time, while 38% of all undergraduate students from disadvantaged groups are mature. Part-time study also cannot be ignored if we want to see economic growth. In 2011-12, there were nearly half a million people in the UK studying part-time at undergraduate level, but the decision to withdraw funding from universities in England and introduce a student loans system led to the tuition fee increase that we know about and to the very significant and dramatic downturn in part-time student numbers.”

The Minister will no doubt be relieved to know that I do not intend to bash the Government over the head any further on the matter at this point in time, but merely to make the observation that whatever the circumstances, we are where we are with those numbers. The Government have taken a number of relatively modest steps to try to address the issue, but that will not happen overnight. That strengthens the need to include the emphasis on the issue as part of the remit of the OFS on the face of the Bill. That is why Birkbeck and others believe that it is important that the duties of the proposed office for students are expanded explicitly to promote adult, part-time and lifelong learning. They have already said that they would like to see a clearer commitment to part-time provision through a requirement—not a “hope” or a “we’ll see about it”—that the OFS board includes expertise in part-time learning among its members, and to think also about the diversity of the UK student body as a whole.

The Minister will be familiar with this argument because he has employed it himself. If we are to succeed and prosper economically and socially, and if we are to fulfil people’s life chances, we are going to need to focus more and more on mature students, many of whom will be part time. The reasons for that are clear and demographic, and are repeated in the Government’s White Paper. I do not intend to repeat them further today, but they sharpen the focus on why we need this provision in the Bill.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak to my amendment 287 with you in the chair, Mr Hanson. The amendment complements the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South by adding a responsibility on the OFS to report on access to and participation in part-time study.

I echo some of my hon. Friend’s points. One of the many things that distinguishes our great higher education system in this country is the large number of part-time students, which is something like 40% at postgraduate level and 20% at undergraduate level. Many of them are of course studying in the Open University, to which my hon. Friend has rightly drawn attention as a great success story of British higher education.

We need to focus on the issue of part-time students in the context of the Government’s ambition for higher education and for social mobility within higher education. I think the Government’s own vision is that we need to move away from conventional models of higher education, and that is partly behind some of the thinking—that the Opposition do not fully agree with—on some of the new sorts of providers that the Government have in mind.

The vision of a higher education system that moves beyond the conventional route of leave school, go to university, study full time for a number of years, come out with a degree and then leave it behind, is no longer relevant in the challenges that people face in today’s economy. We need to talk confidently about a system of lifelong learning in which part-time study has an increasingly important role, which will not simply be provided for by the new providers that the Minister has spoken of in the past. We should be deeply concerned that, following the introduction of the new fees structure through to 2014, part-time student numbers dropped by 50%. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission described that as

“an astonishing and deeply worrying trend”.

It is one that we should really look to address.

In the case of part-time study, funding is key. The Minister spoke eloquently earlier about the number of students still applying to higher education from disadvantaged backgrounds, despite the funding changes, and I accept those figures, although the changes have had an impact on choice in higher education and work is needed on how some students from disadvantaged backgrounds have limited their choices by going to universities closer to home to keep their costs down. Nevertheless, we know that for part-time students, funding is key and we know that partly because the Labour Government made mistakes on that. The introduction of equivalent or lower qualifications, and limiting options for people to take second and subsequent degrees based on earlier qualifications, led to a significant reduction in part-time students in the past. I welcome the fact that the Government have learned from those lessons and are changing their position on ELQs.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting this important issue. He is right to draw on some of the shortcomings of policy under the last Labour Government on ELQs. Does he also agree with me that aspects of the coalition Government’s student finance reforms should have been beneficial for part-time students, but did not necessarily lead to the increase in participation that was intended? Because of the complexity governing part-time students, and the law of unintended consequences, it is even more important to have a specific focus on part-time students in the report to the Secretary of State from the director of fair access and the OFS.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. In fact, the changes in the coalition Government’s proposals that he cites were used by some in the Government to celebrate the progressive nature of those proposals—we would not wholly agree with that. We need to understand, though, the difference between the impact of funding changes on school students, who may well have been—and certainly seem to be—willing to take on debt, compared with those who are in mid-career or later in life.

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

We have been doing some work on this in the Women and Equalities Committee. One thing that is clear is the lack of data. Many hypothetical scenarios have been analysed, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is an opportunity here to get to the nitty-gritty of the argument and find out the data behind the reasons why participation levels are falling among part-time students, particularly for older workers? In some instances, it might be the fact that there are other options available to them, such as apprenticeships and all the other Government schemes. In other instances it might be the provision of finance. We need an assurance from the Minister about what proposals he has to create more data, to analyse the subject more.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and, indeed, for the work we do together on the all-party parliamentary group on students. That is a fair point. I was concentrating on some of the funding factors. For older students, the fact that they have mortgages and families, or that they are at albeit modest salary levels that trigger immediate repayment, are apparent disincentives. Matching the introduction of the new funding regime and the cliff-edge drop in the numbers of part-time students would suggest that there is a relationship. He is absolutely right that we should be looking at all the data and doing research properly to understand what is happening. I agree with him, and that is at the heart of my amendment: the OFS should have the responsibility to think deeply about part-time participation and draw up recommendations to address that.

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for his amendment. Does he—and, indeed, the hon. Member for Bath—agree that we do have indications of how the process affects older people in particular, though it is not exactly anecdotal? We have those indications from what has happened with the take-up at 24-plus of advanced learning loans, which are designed for students at level 3 and above. That was presaged, in my mind, by the discussions I had on that process; I talked to many women who said that they would not have progressed if they had had to take out loans at that juncture rather than having grants.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point to which we should pay attention, and he is absolutely right. Earlier, he cited Birkbeck’s important role in creating opportunities for social mobility through modes of part-time learning over many years. He—and, I hope, the Minister—may have seen the Gresham lecture given earlier this year by the long-time Master of Birkbeck, Baroness Blackstone, in which she focused on some of these exact issues with funding and proposed radical solutions, which at least deserve attention. For example, recognising the strategic importance of part-time learning, in the same way as we recognise the strategic importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, she argued that perhaps we need to look again at the funding model to provide support for the delivery of part-time education, which in many ways is more expensive for universities than conventional learning. For example, she argued that maybe we could look at incentives through adjustments to the national insurance system.

A number of interventions made today deserve serious consideration, but I simply propose my amendment in the spirit of the comments made by the hon. Member for Bath. We need to do much more work on this issue, which should be a central responsibility of the OFS.

[Joseph Johnson]

I am sympathetic to the aims of the amendments and grateful again for the chance to discuss them. I have always been clear that fair and equal access to HE is vital. Everyone with the potential to benefit from education in every form should be able to do so. Studying part-time and later in life brings enormous benefits for individuals, employers and the economy, so let me reassure the Committee that the Government are acting to support part-time students and part-time provision. Funding, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central said, is obviously important. Over the course of the past few years, the Government and the predecessor coalition Government have taken significant steps to transform the funding available for part-time study. Going back to moves made in 2012-13, we started to offer tuition fee loans for part-time students so that how learners of all ages choose to study does not affect the tuition support available. Looking forward to 2018-19, we will, for the first time ever, provide financial support to part-time students, comparable to the maintenance support we give to full-time students with the introduction of part-time maintenance loans.

As the hon. Gentleman said, other factors are also an important part of the picture of what is happening in part-time provision. He was gracious enough to allude to the Labour party’s introduction of the equivalent and lower qualification restriction, which has undoubtedly also been a contributory factor to the decline in numbers. We have started to lift this restriction, principally by providing financial support from Government for a second degree if people wishing to study retrain part time in a STEM subject from September next year. This will allow more people of all ages to retrain in key STEM subjects.

Amendment 207 relates to providers including part-time and mature students’ provision in access and participation plans. Let me reassure the Committee that we agree that a focus on part-time and mature students in access and participation plans is important. That is why our recent guidance letter to the director of fair access in February this year asked him to provide a renewed focus on part-time study in his guidance to institutions on their access agreements for 2017-18. This should be of particular benefit to mature learners.

I am pleased to be able to tell the Committee that mature learner numbers, which dipped following the change in the fee regime in the middle of the last Parliament, have now recovered significantly and were at record levels at around 83,000 in 2015—compared with the previous high of 81,000 that they touched in 2009 and the 2006 levels of about 56,000 to 57,000—so they are now moving back in the right direction.

The Bill will help further by giving the OFS the flexibility to ask providers to focus on key areas that are important to widening participation and social mobility, in the same way that the Secretary of State’s guidance to the director of fair access currently allows. Clause 31 covers the general provisions that might be required by regulations. These arrangements provide flexibility in access and participation agreements so that they can focus on widening participation for different groups of students. I therefore believe that the Bill already delivers the aim of this amendment.

I turn to the amendment on the OFS’s duty to report on part-time higher education provision. The OFS has a duty requiring it to consider the need to promote greater choice and opportunities for students in the provision of HE in England, and a duty to cover equality of opportunity. It must prepare a report on the performance of its functions during each financial year, which will be laid before Parliament. The Bill also contains powers under clause 36(1)(b) for the Secretary of State to direct the OFS to report specifically on matters relating to equality of opportunity. That could of course include part-time learners.

[Paul Blomfield]

I welcome the direction of travel of the Minister’s comments. Could he share with the Committee whether he would expect the OFS specifically to look in that work at the issue of part-time students as an early priority?

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

I have heard what the Minister has to say. The direction of travel, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central says, is extremely welcome as are, indeed, the figures that the Minister quoted, but I would gently remind him that, for all the demographic reasons that I have spoken about, we need to speed up that expansion of participation. However, I hear what he has to say, will look forward to further discussions on it in this Bill and possibly subsequently and, with that, I am content to withdraw our amendment.

[Paul Blomfield]

Equally, I welcome the statement made by the Minister, particularly in relation to his expectations of the OFS, and specifically in relation to part-time study and I will not press my amendment to a vote.

[Gordon Marsden]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: 74, in clause 31, page 19, line 7, after “include” insert

“education provided by means of”.—(Joseph Johnson.)

This amendment makes the language used in clause 31(5)(b) (the definition of references to “higher education” in that clause) consistent with that used in the definition of “higher education” in clause 75(1).

Clause 31, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 32 and 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 34

Advice on good practice

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

Obviously the Minister has a slightly more expansive view of what the Bill allows or expects to do than perhaps we do, but we hear what he has to say. He has put the importance of these issues and conditions straightforwardly on the record and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Paul Blomfield]

I beg to move amendment 288, in clause 36, page 20, line 18, at end insert—

‘(3A) The Secretary of State may require a report under subsection (1) on the establishment of a national credit rating and transfer service as a means of improving access to and participation in higher education.”

This amendment would allow the Secretary of State to require the OfS to look into establishing a national credit rating and transfer service for recognition of prior learning to encourage student mobility.

The amendment may deal with another matter on which we are very much on the same page as the Government: using the opportunity to develop more innovative approaches to both study and routes through higher education through the development of more effective systems of credit accumulation and transfer. Those in higher education have talked about doing this for many years. I remember a period about 20 years ago when many universities were restructuring the way they delivered their courses, moving away from an October to June programme to look at semesterised and modularised structures. The underlying objective of that restructuring was to facilitate more effective credit accumulation and transfer, but the development did not progress, often because of resistance on the part of some universities to recognising properly the value of taught modules in other institutions. If we are to move forward, we need a more effective strategy driven by Government.

I recognise, as I am sure the Minister is about to remind me, that the Government launched a consultation earlier this year that concluded in July. The objectives of that consultation were described in the summary:

“We’re interested in how switching university or degree course can be made easier”.

That is precisely what the amendment is about. I appreciate that the Government have not had the opportunity to consider the results of the consultation, or perhaps the Minister will surprise us by sharing some thoughts that have come out of it.

Such a system would be important at different levels. First, it would give us an opportunity to move beyond a conventional approach to pursuing a course in university. It would enable people to build up in different ways a programme of study leading to a degree. Crucially, it would give people the opportunity, which I am sure the Minister would welcome, to switch between workplace-based learning and institution-based learning and to consider a range of higher education opportunities in accumulating a degree.

The Minister cited earlier the report published last year by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Higher Education Academy, which said—he will correct me if I have got the number wrong—that something like 30% of students currently on courses in universities would have opted for a different programme of study if they had known then what they know now. That is a hugely significant statistic. Currently, our system of higher education militates against students being able to fulfil their ambitions. A properly developed system of credit accumulation and transfer would enable them, at the point when they think, “Perhaps my study is heading in the wrong direction,” to realign it, put together a different programme of modules and move between universities.

A second reason that we ought to look at this system relates to market failure, as we discussed previously. If the Government move in the direction they wish to with the Bill, it is important to look at how we protect students from market failure. Financial compensation is only one part of that. Students who have invested time and energy and accumulated credits through study at an institution can have the rug pulled from under their feet. If we had a properly developed system of credit accumulation and transfer, it would be possible for people to use the learning they have already achieved to move to another institution—not in the way that has sometimes happened in the past, where the Government or the Higher Education Funding Council for England have had to step in to barter and negotiate between institutions, but in a recognised way. Students could then say, “I have these credits. I want to progress my learning in this way at this different institution.” There may be a way of linking that with student protection plans.

This is a probing amendment, to see where the Government are moving on this issue and to see if we cannot use the opportunity of the Bill to kick-start attempts made in the past to create a more innovative approach to people’s learning programmes through a properly recognised and organised system of credit accumulation and transfer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

That is an important point that the TEF panel assessors will take into account. It has been factored into the development of the teaching excellence framework metric, but that is obviously an important point to bear in mind.

Although I understand the reason for the amendment, there are powers already in the Bill that allow the Secretary of State to require the office for students to report on matters relating to equality of opportunity in either its annual report or the special report that I mentioned before, and any such report would have to be laid before Parliament, so there is no need explicitly to require reporting on the establishment of a national credit rating and transfer service as a means of improving access to and participation in higher education. The measures in the Bill support our ambitions on widening participation in general. As I said, we are giving the call for evidence responses very careful thought. In the meantime, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for his remarks. I think we share a similar ambition. Although I understand it, I am a little anxious about his caution about what he described as homogenising. I do not think anyone wants that. People celebrate the diversity of the sector and would not want in any way to undermine it, but we need to find some way in which universities that may be reluctant to embrace a system such as the one we are discussing are enabled and encouraged to do so more actively than they have been in the past. The enormous energy that went into modularising and semesterising programmes, with the objective of encouraging CATS, failed precisely because of that issue. I hope that when the Minister has had the opportunity to look at the impressive number of responses to the consultation, he will be willing to think radically about how we can embed that sort of system within our higher education terrain. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 36 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 37

Financial support for registered higher education providers

Amendment made: 241, in clause 37, page 21, line 7, at end insert—

“but also includes a 16 to 19 Academy (as defined in section 1B(3) of the Academies Act 2010).”—(Joseph Johnson.)

This amendment ensures that the definition of “school” used in clause 37 of the Bill includes 16 to 19 Academies.

Clause 37, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 38 and 39 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 40

Authorisation to grant degrees etc

[Gordon Marsden]

I beg to move amendment 213, in clause 40, page 22, line 4, leave out “or research awards or both”

See amendment 214.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I rise to speak to new clause 9, fairly briefly. I do not want to repeat the concerns that have been ably outlined by my hon. Friends, but I want discuss one particular problem. The Minister is deeply conscious of the risks presented by some potential new providers. We have discussed those risks outside of the Committee, and he recognises the importance of having a robust regulatory framework.

New clause 9 would deal with a specific problem of which the Minister will be aware in relation to some private providers in this country and, in particular, in the United States, where the terrain is similar to the one that he is, arguably, trying to create through the Bill. One problem in the United States—this is also true in Australia to a significant degree, as the Minister knows, because he has looked at the system there—is that a business model has developed for some avaricious companies that see the opportunity to milk the public funds that are available to support students through loans.

Those companies are less concerned than others with the quality of the offer they make, and they have no long-term commitment to students. Theirs is a model in which companies offer a product, and students are then attracted by aggressive marketing, draw down a loan, are let down by the quality of provision, end up with a degree with questionable value, and face enormous debts to repay. It is a model that neither I nor the Minister want, but it has been encouraged, in some cases, by the transfer of ownership once degree-awarding powers have been given. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South mentioned BPP and Apollo, but the Minister is also aware of the problem in the United States.

The new clause would ensure that the regulatory portal for entry to degree-awarding powers will be triggered if an institution changes ownership, because the culture, commitment and quality of provision can change substantially when that happens. Likewise, if restrictions have been imposed in another jurisdiction on the owner of an institution with degree-awarding powers—we know that many companies in the sector operate across countries—that should be a sufficient signal to us to be worried and to review any decision on degree-awarding powers for that owner in our jurisdiction. In those two respects, the new clause would simply provide a trigger to re-open the decision to give degree-awarding powers, which I would have thought the Minister would agree with. I hope he will either support the amendment or reassure me about how he intends to address the issue.

[Joseph Johnson]

I am still reeling from the hilarious image that the hon. Member for Blackpool South conjured up of Martin Wolf as an aspiring Conservative Member of Parliament. I worked with Martin for 13 years at the Financial Times and I have no doubt that that characterisation of his career plans is very wide of the mark. Judging by some of his contributions to the debate over the future of HE in this country, he might be more likely to seek to become master of an Oxford college. But a Conservative MP? I think not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

Of course we want high-quality provision to expand, whether through the entry of new institutions or the expansion of existing institutions that do well in the quality assurance frameworks that we have in our system—the research excellence framework and the TEF that we are introducing for teaching. They will get more resources and will be able to expand high-quality research and teaching activities. That is how we see the market developing in this country.

The system needs to have informed student choice and competition among high-quality institutions at its heart. Competition between providers in higher education—indeed, in any market—incentivises them to raise their game, offering consumers a greater choice of more innovative and better-quality products and services. The Competition and Markets Authority concluded in its recent report on competition in the HE sector that aspects of the current system could be holding back competition among providers, which needed to be addressed. That is what we are doing with the provisions in this and later clauses, including those covering validation.

[Paul Blomfield]

I would be grateful if the Minister could share with us the work that the Department has done on comparing the impact of private providers in other countries with developed higher education systems. My understanding is that there is very limited evidence to suggest that increased competition has contributed to innovation, higher quality or lower prices within the countries that the Department has looked at. Could he share the evidence?

[Joseph Johnson]

First, I would encourage the hon. Gentleman not to try to compare apples and pears by talking about the US experience. Many of the parallels that he is attempting to draw with the so-called private sector in the US are not really relevant to our environment here in the UK. US private providers are subject to little state control. We have a strong, and increasingly strong, regulatory framework in place to ensure appropriate oversight. I again encourage Opposition Members not to disparage institutions that they describe as for-profit or private providers. Let us remember first that all higher education institutions are private to begin with—every single one of them. Let us try to get that straight in our minds right away.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

I will shortly come on to the single-subject degree-awarding powers measures that we are proposing, and yes, I obviously believe that specialist provision is to the advantage of the higher-education system, because it will help us address many of the skills shortages that the country faces. We can point, for example, to the New Model in Technology and Engineering institution in Hereford, which will be a specialist STEM provider in an HE cold spot. That is precisely the kind of new entry that we want to encourage into the system.

Competition expands the market and widens choice to the benefit of students. That is generally, although not universally, accepted. It is certainly accepted by the sector itself.

[Paul Blomfield]

Will the Minister give way?

[Joseph Johnson]

I am going to make some progress, because I have got a fair amount to get through.

Universities UK, the representative body, has said it welcomes the Government’s intention to allow new providers in the system to secure greater choice for students and to ensure appropriate competition in the higher education sector. Paul Kirkham pointed out in a speech earlier this year that

“there are many reputable APs out there, providing specialist, bespoke education and training to students who, lest we forget, consciously choose such an alternative.”

The story of those new entrants and of diversity and provision has been one of widening participation. We want them to be able to compete on a level playing field.

As we discussed earlier, the world is changing fast, and the higher education sector needs to change too if it is to meet the needs of 21st-century learners, yet in a 2015 survey of vice-chancellors and university leavers 70% of respondents said that they expected higher education to look the same in 2030 as it does now—largely focused around the full-time three-year degree. The risk is that, given their position, that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We know, for example, that the share of undergraduate students in English higher education institutions studying full-time first-year degrees—the traditional model—has increased from 65% in 2010-11 to 78% in 2014-15. Allowing the vested interests of incumbents to continue to protect what is effectively a one-product system that promotes only the three-year, full-time, on-campus undergraduate university course as the gold standard comes with considerable risk. It is a high-cost and inflexible approach, and given that in excess of 50% of the population wish to engage in higher education, it cannot be the only solution. That system of validation is curbing innovation and entrenching the same model of higher education.

As Paul Kirkham said in evidence to the Committee:

“There are significant risks to student and taxpayer of a very static, non-changing universe of providers and way too much emphasis on the three-year, on-campus degree.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 13, Q15.]

As Roxanne Stockwell, the principal of Pearson College, said in her submission:

“It is clear that the dominance of the one-size-fits-all model of university education is over. Fee rises have transformed students into more critical consumers and the government is right to recognise this in their reform package. Students are calling out for pioneering institutions offering alternative education models and an increased focus on skills that will prepare them for the careers of the future—with the mind-set and agility to fulfil roles that may not even exist yet.”

We must not be constrained by our historical successes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I want to say briefly to the Minister that I do not think that it should be easy to get degree-awarding powers in this country. If we are really serious about upholding the quality and excellence of higher education, there should be a rigorous system and, because of the Minister’s remarks and the lack of safeguards for students and the public, I wish to press amendment 234 to a vote.

[Paul Blomfield]

I am sorry that the Minister sought to characterise our concerns in the way that he did. There are good examples in many countries across a diverse range of higher education providers, but he will also recognise that there are examples of unscrupulous operators who have caused real problems, not just in the United States—also in Australia. In the US, it has led the federal authorities to take legal action on behalf of students against some of the providers. All we are seeking to do is to ensure that a robust framework is in place to protect us from that situation in this country.

On new clause 9, I was reassured to some degree by the Minister’s comments on change of ownership, but I would welcome clarification on whether the review process that he would expect would be as robust as the initial regulatory entry. He did not address my concerns on the restrictions being imposed on providers in other jurisdictions, which is the second part of new clause 9, and whether that would also trigger the sort of review I am seeking through the new clause.

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his reasoned approach. The approach that the OFS would take would depend on the circumstances of any transfer of ownership. The whole philosophy of the OFS is that it is a risk-based regulator that seeks to act in a proportionate, reasonable way. Given that core approach to the way that it will regulate the sector, we would not expect it to have a one-size-fits-all policy response to every particular circumstance that might arise. I think the answer is that the OFS would evaluate the situation in light of all its duties and take a decision on how to proceed on that basis. That would include circumstances such as those covered by the other part of the new clause relating to other jurisdictions and legal environments outside this country. The OFS would evaluate it and take a view.

[Paul Blomfield]

I will not press the new clause to a vote at this stage but I will seek future assurances, particularly in relation to that second part about action in other jurisdictions. Does the Minister not agree that if we are considering circumstances in which providers are known to have transgressed in other countries we would expect a significant review of their operation in this country?

[The Chair]

We must now reach a conclusion on amendment 216.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

We return to the criteria that we expect providers to meet in order to obtain a university title, which we discussed quite extensively at an earlier stage in the proceedings. As I have said before, we only want providers with full degree-awarding powers to be eligible for a university title. That process tests, among other things, academic standards and whether there is a cohesive academic community. It is a high bar that only high-quality providers will be able to meet. We are clear that we want to maintain that high bar in the future.

The amendment highlights the breadth of opportunities offered by participation in a higher education course. I welcome the idea behind it, but I do not believe such a prescription is desirable in legislation. There are many examples of extracurricular activities and experiences offered by higher education institutions, such as sporting groups, the arts, associations and exchange opportunities, and many providers play an important role in their local communities in that respect. I agree that in many cases these activities contribute greatly to a student’s learning and personal and professional development and can be as much a part of their education as traditional lectures. When a student is deciding where to study, they are making a decision based on many factors, for example, the qualification they will receive, the cultural and social opportunities, the student organisations they could join and what support is available to them. One size does not fit all and student populations vary hugely in their requirements, as we discussed before. As independent and autonomous organisations, higher education institutions are themselves best placed to decide what experiences they may offer to students and what relationships they have with other local organisations, without prescription from central Government.

[Paul Blomfield]

In response to an earlier remark I made, the Minister said that he expected all universities to provide services to support students’ mental health. Does he stand by that remark in this context?

[Joseph Johnson]

That is their duty under the Equality Act 2010—they have to ensure that students are not discriminated against if they have mental health issues and so on—and also their duty of care. That is an important part of what universities do in supporting students, who they have autonomously admitted, through their studies. Having taken that decision, it is important that universities make sure that those students have the academic and the counselling support to enable them to get through their courses of study.

As now, we intend to set out in guidance the detailed criteria and processes for gaining university title, and we plan to consult on the detail before publication. The OFS will then make decisions having regard to that guidance. I therefore ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Ninth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 9th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Joseph Johnson]

I turn now to a relatively large group of minor and technical amendments, which will provide consistency of language and drafting across the Bill as well as additional clarity on specific points.

I do not wish to spend a lot of the Committee’s time on these, as they are purely technical amendments that do not change the core policy. All of them, except for amendments 56 and 65, ensure the language is consistent across clauses 23, 25, 26 and schedule 4.

Amendment 56 clarifies that when the Secretary of State removes a quality body’s designation, she must set out all of the reasons for the decision. Amendment 65 clarifies that “graduate”, for the purposes of schedule 4, means a graduate of a higher education course provided in England. As the designated body will be undertaking functions only in England, it was important to clarify that we were talking only about graduates of a course provided in England.

Amendment 38 agreed to.

Amendments made: 39, in clause 25, page 15, line 15, leave out second “the”.

This amendment ensures that the language of clause 25 is consistent with clause 23 and clarifies that a scheme can cover some or all of the education provided by a provider.

Amendment 40, in clause 25, page 15, line 16, after “rating” insert “, and

(a) to higher education providers in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, in respect of whom the appropriate consent is given, regarding the quality of, and the standards applied to, higher education that they provide where they apply for such a rating.

‘(1A) “The appropriate consent” means—

(a) in the case of a higher education provider in Wales, the consent of the Welsh Ministers to the application of subsection (1) to the provider;

(b) in the case of a higher education provider in Scotland, the consent of the Scottish Ministers to the application of subsection (1) to the provider;

(c) in the case of a higher education provider in Northern Ireland, the consent of the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland to the application of subsection (1) to the provider.

(1B) Such consent—

(a) may be given either generally in respect of all providers or in respect of providers of a particular description or named providers,

(b) is given by notifying the Chair of the OfS, and

(c) is valid until it is revoked by notifying the Chair.

(1C) For the purposes of applying the definition of “higher education provider” in section 75(1) to subsections (1)(b) and (1A), the reference to “higher education” in that definition—

(a) in the case of an institution in Wales, has the meaning given in section 75(1);

(b) in the case of an institution in Scotland, has the same meaning as in section 38 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 1992;

(c) in the case of an institution in Northern Ireland, has the same meaning as in Article 2(2) of the Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (S.I. 1997/1772 (N.I. 15));

and the reference to “higher education” in subsection (1)(b) is to be read accordingly.”

This amendment and amendment 41 extend the power of the OfS to make arrangements under clause 25 for a scheme for giving ratings to English higher education providers regarding the quality of, and the standards applied to, higher education that they provide so as to also include Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish higher education providers where the relevant devolved administration consents and the provider applies for a rating. Amendments 108, 112 and 113 are related amendments.

Amendment 41, in clause 25, page 15, line 17, at end insert—

‘(3) For the purposes of applying that definition of “standards” to subsection (1)(b), the reference to a “higher education course” in that definition—

(a) in the case of an institution in Wales, has the meaning given in section75(1);

(b) in the case of an institution in Scotland, means a course falling within section 38 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 1992;

(c) in the case of an institution in Northern Ireland, means a course of any description mentioned in Schedule 1 to the Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (S.I. 1997/1772 (N.I. 15)).”—(Joseph Johnson.)

See the explanatory statement for amendment 40.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 286, in clause 25, page 15, line 17, at end insert—

‘(3) In making arrangements under subsection (1), the OfS must, after a period of consultation, make—

(a) an assessment of the evidence that any proposed metric for assessing teaching quality is in fact linked to teaching quality; and

(b) an assessment of potential unintended consequences which could arise from an institution seeking to optimise its score on each metric, with proposals on how these risks can best be mitigated.

(4) The assessment under subsection (3) must be made public.”

This amendment would require an assessment of the evidence of the reliability of the TEF metrics to be made and for the assessment to be published.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I hope this is a proposal on which we can find agreement across the Committee. With this amendment, I am seeking to reflect the recommendation made unanimously by the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, when we looked at teaching quality in our recent report. There were some areas where we robustly did not agree, but this is a matter on which we did, and I am sure that if I deviate from that consensus, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase will pick me up on it. Although we fully endorsed the Government’s focus on teaching excellence, in the light of evidence we heard we were concerned about getting the arrangements right. The metrics being proposed were not, as the Government recognised, measures of teaching quality; they were rough proxies.

The three key metrics are employment, retention and the national student survey. We discussed employment briefly under earlier clauses. In all the evidence we received, and certainly across the Committee, it was recognised that employment destination, although important, is not a satisfactory measure of teaching quality. That is an important point, and it is an issue that the Government are concerned about in relation to their work on social mobility and creating opportunities, on which the Prime Minister has put great emphasis. If someone comes from the right school and the right family and goes to the right Oxbridge college, it does not matter how well they are taught; they will probably end up in a good job; that is widely recognised. Employment destination is not a measure of teaching quality. The Select Committee were concerned that that is a flawed metric for measuring teaching excellence. That is not controversial; it is something on which we find cross-party agreement.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Even allowing for benchmarking, universities experience very different local labour markets that students can easily move into. Does he agree that that has not been sufficiently taken on board by the Minister?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend highlights a point made to our Select Committee: a simple, crude focus on people’s salary and employment outcomes fails to recognise the enormous difference between regions. As someone who represents a Sheffield constituency and both Sheffield universities, I am very conscious of that, and it is a point that has been made powerfully to me. We felt as a Select Committee that the employment metric was flawed.

On the retention metric, although the Committee celebrated the Government’s intention to focus on retention, in the work on access and widening participation the focus should be not simply on getting people to university, but on ensuring that they succeed there and have good outcomes after graduation. The focus on retention is welcome, but we were not convinced that it was right as a metric for measuring teaching quality. We have seen in school league tables and how we measure schools’ performance that such a focus can lead to unintended and perverse outcomes. The easiest way to up a retention score would be to ensure that the intake of students did not include too many people who would struggle to succeed. That clearly is not what the Government want, and it is not what any of us want.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

That runs completely counter to what the Government say their social mobility agenda is, because it will make universities less likely to take people who they think are higher risk—mature students, perhaps, or students who have a range of problems. That would be a really unfortunate consequence of the way the legislation is drafted.

[Paul Blomfield]

Our Select Committee was very focused on the Government’s welcome and ambitious targets to improve the representation of those from less advantaged backgrounds in higher education, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that this metric could lead to exactly those unintended and perverse outcomes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising another dimension of precisely the problem that we were concerned about: that although well intentioned, the retention metric could lead to gaming, unintended consequences, and outcomes that run counter to the Government’s own objectives.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

We discussed this issue at great length in the Select Committee. The hon. Gentleman is going through each of the metrics individually, but actually they make up a basket of metrics and they need to be looked at as such. Does he agree that one thing that came out of the Select Committee was that we have these quantitative metrics, but there are also the qualitative metrics? We will be looking at things more in the round. Although there are the metrics that the hon. Gentleman is going through individually, they need to be looked at as a basket and as ones that will be developing over time. Learning gain was another metric that we considered. The sector should be engaging in this process.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Lady knows that I completely agree that the metrics should be developed over time. We have heard on many occasions the teaching excellence framework compared with the research excellence framework. Getting the REF right has taken several years. My concern—shared by the Select Committee, I think—is that we should not blunder into a scheme that will measure universities inaccurately when it is such an important flagship for the Government’s policies. I also agree that there is a basket of metrics, but the Government’s focus in all their publications and all the commentary has been on just three. I was simply highlighting the concerns that I think she will agree the Select Committee had about those three, which are at the heart of the basket.

The third metric, of course, is the national student survey. I will say at the outset that I think the NSS has been an extremely positive tool to engage universities in focusing on teaching quality, and I think it is fine to build on it in many ways. For example, universities’ consistently poor rating for assessment and feedback in the NSS has led to real change in the relationship between teachers and students. The NSS itself is quite positive, but in the Committee we heard clearly that there is, as I think everyone in the room would recognise, a difference between measuring general satisfaction and measuring teaching quality. There is a difference between the satisfaction of students and knowing confidently that they are well taught.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. As a former teacher, I know well that what comes back in such surveys can often be personality driven and has no bearing on the quality of teaching. We have to look at student satisfaction with a degree of caution.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Lady is right. As we all know from our university days and school days, there can be a huge difference between enjoying a class—having a great time with a particular teacher and liking that person enormously—and being well taught.

[Roger Mullin]

To give one example, when I was teaching at Stirling University about 30 years ago, my feedback from one student said “Nice eyes and a gorgeous bum.” [Laughter.]

[Paul Blomfield]

Even from my position sitting in this Committee Room, I would not wish to assess that evaluation, but I understand why the hon. Gentleman might want to share that with the Committee. It highlights in a particularly graphic way how we know the NSS does not provide a satisfactory metric in that respect. However, as the Government said, these are proxies.

The amendment would ensure, as the Select Committee recommended, that the office for students has a responsibility, in overseeing the metrics, to ensure that they can confidently and accurately measure teaching quality and nothing else—not the personal features of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, not employment outcomes based on family background and school connections, but teaching quality. On that we are all agreed, and I therefore hope the Government will feel able to accept the amendment.

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for tabling the amendment on a subject that he and I have discussed on many occasions over the last year or so. I am sure we will continue to do so for some time to come.

The summary of our position is that excellent teaching can occur in many forms. There is no one-size-fits-all definition of teaching excellence, but great teaching, defined broadly, increases the likelihood of good outcomes, and metrics are crucial to measuring those outcomes. Chris Husbands, the TEF chair and vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam, has noted that the TEF’s approach is realistic about the difficulty of assessing teaching quality. He wrote:

“It does not pretend to be a direct audit of the quality of teaching. Instead, it uses a range of evidence to construct a framework within which to make an assessment—looking at a range of data on teaching quality, learning environments and student outcomes.”

In developing the metrics, we and the Higher Education Funding Council for England have listened carefully to the consultation feedback. We have used a set of criteria to decide which metrics to use: that they must be robust, valid, comprehensive, credible and current. We wanted to use tried and tested data sets that are already widely established in the sector, not least to avoid the need to collect new data and impose a burden on institutions. There is currently a limited set of metrics that meet those criteria, but those metrics do allow for differentiation across providers. For example, on retention and student outcomes, many providers are well above or below the current sector-accepted benchmark. Quality teaching clearly makes a difference. To quote Chris Husbands again, his

“sense is that as the system matures, the metrics will also mature, but it is difficult to argue that teaching quality, learning environment and student outcomes are not the right places to look to make an assessment.”

We consulted extensively on the metrics as part of the year 2 technical consultation and made further improvements to the way the metrics were handled. The sector has welcomed our changes. For example, on the publication of the TEF year 2 documentation, Maddalaine Ansell, the chief executive of University Alliance, said:

“There are decisions here that we strongly welcome, such as a broader approach to benchmarking…and a more granular system for looking at performance differences… We remain confident that we can work with government to shape the TEF so it works well as it develops.”



Let me turn to some of the specific points that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central and other hon. Members made on the metrics proposed and on widening participation. Essentially, the question was, “Won’t the TEF metrics and the TEF process itself encourage providers not to take people from disadvantaged groups?” The answer to that question is clearly no. Providers will be required to demonstrate their commitment to widening participation as a precondition of taking part in the TEF. Assessors will consider how the provider performs across all modes of delivery and its effectiveness at meeting the needs of students from different backgrounds. The assessment process will, however, explicitly look at the extent to which the provider achieves positive outcomes for disadvantaged groups, and the metrics will be benchmarked to prevent the TEF being gamed and to ensure that no institution is penalised for having a large cohort of disadvantaged students.

It is worthwhile reflecting on what a current vice-chancellor says about this aspect of the TEF in relation to widening participation. Edward Peck, the vice-chancellor of Nottingham Trent, recently wrote:

“Emphasising widening access, selecting these metrics, and connecting TEF and fee flexibility will prompt, if pursued rigorously, ever more serious consideration within universities of the ways in which young people from poorer backgrounds get in, are supported in staying, and get decent jobs when they leave. These are just the conversations that we ought to be having in universities more often and with greater results.”

[Joseph Johnson]

I think the hon. Lady is trying to present the TEF metric as being in conflict with widening participation. It is not; it is supportive of it. It is a precondition of participating in the TEF that institutions need an access agreement, and that sets an increasingly high bar for their commitment to widening participation. Research by the Social Market Foundation, for example, has found that there is no link between increased widening participation and worsening continuation rates. The hon. Lady and her colleague are setting up an Aunt Sally or a straw man; there is no evidence of the link that they are asking the Committee to consider.

While non-continuation rates are higher among the most disadvantaged students, some institutions are clearly successful at keeping those low as well. This cannot just be because some institutions are selective and have enrolled the most qualified and motivated students from disadvantaged groups. The Social Market Foundation research points to a number of institutions, with different profiles, that are making a success of the student experience. They include City University, St Mary’s Twickenham, Aston, Bishop Grosseteste, Lincoln and Kingston, which have among the highest retention rates of all institutions for the most disadvantaged students.

It is also worth hon. Members listening to what Les Ebdon, the director of fair access, had to say on this matter, because he probably knows more about it than anybody in the business. To quote his response to the TEF year 2 publication:

“The minister has made it clear that he sees fair access as being integral to the TEF, and I welcome the publication of the year 2 specification. The links to fair access have been further strengthened, following clear support from the sector in their consultation responses. It is especially pleasing to see specific measures on positive outcomes for disadvantaged students, and clear instructions to TEF panellists that they should consider disadvantaged students at every stage.”

[Paul Blomfield]

I want to raise a slightly different point on retention. The Minister will be aware of the recent publication by the Higher Education Policy Institute of a report produced by Poppy Brown that discusses the crisis in mental health in our universities, the growing concern across the sector and the investment of some institutions in, and different responses to, the challenge. What are his thoughts on the effect that growing crisis in mental health might have on achieving successful outcomes in retention and what support universities might need in doing that?

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that subject. I commend the vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, Anthony Seldon, for leading a campaign to raise awareness of this important issue across the HE sector. It is vital that universities take full responsibility for the wellbeing of their students, towards whom they have a duty of care. Ensuring that students are supported throughout their studies, including during difficult periods relating to mental health or other issues that cause them to need counselling services, is an important part of a university’s overall pastoral role.

The hon. Member for City of Durham asked about regional employment variations across the system and how they will be taken into consideration in the TEF. That is an important point to which the Department has been giving considerable thought in developing the TEF. The TEF assessors will be able to take local employment into account when they assess providers’ qualitative submissions. If providers believe it is relevant to provide regional employment maps alongside their data on outcomes through the destination of leavers from higher education survey, the panel of assessors will be ready to take any such points into consideration. Of course, it is worth bearing in mind that students are mobile to a great extent and that we live in a national labour market. Regional employment maps will not be the only factor that assessors take into account, but they will take them into account in making their broad, rounded assessment of a university’s contribution to good outcomes.

In our consultation on the TEF metrics we received strong support for our proposals, with more than 70% of respondents welcoming our approach to contextualising data and the provider submissions. We will continue to review the metrics in use, and where there is a strong case to do so, we will add new metrics to future rounds of the TEF. We have taken and will continue to take a reasoned approach to the metrics. We have thought carefully, consulted widely and commissioned expert advice. Given the co-regulatory approach I have described, we expect the OFS to take a similar approach in future. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Sheffield Central to withdraw his amendment.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for his remarks. He is right to say that we have discussed this issue at length on many occasions, and no doubt we will continue to do so. I have also discussed it at length with Chris Husbands, whom the Minister cites extensively.

I do not want to take up the Committee’s time by critiquing the Minister’s remarks. He said much with which I agree, although I disagree with some points. I simply ask that we focus on what the amendment says, because I do not think it contradicts anything that he has just said. It simply says that

“the OfS must, after a period of consultation, make…an assessment of the evidence that any proposed metric for assessing teaching quality is in fact linked to teaching quality”.

If he would like to say where he disagrees with the idea that metrics on teaching quality should demonstrate teaching quality, I would be happy to take an intervention. In the absence of that, I feel that I should press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. HEFCE has been developing the TEF on behalf of the Department and will have undertaken considerable analysis of how it will operate across the system. We are clear that the ratings are the reflection of the tough quality standards that we expect of our providers. We have a world-class HE system. The ratings will provide recognition on top of the tough quality standards that are imposed on all providers in return for securing entry into the system. I would not agree with any assessment that a bronze rating would be lowly; it would be a significant achievement.

[Paul Blomfield]

The relationship between the TEF and the financial sustainability of the sector is important, so I want to press the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham. The Minister will agree with me on the importance of international students as a source of revenue, and I am sure we were both disappointed by the Home Secretary’s comments last week. What consideration has been given to the impact of the TEF on international student recruitment? If it was part of an international move, that would be fine, but if we are unilaterally choosing to grade our universities and say that some are not as good as others, does the Minister not recognise that that is potentially a significant disincentive, at a time when we are already losing market share?

Higher Education and Research Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 11th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Joseph Johnson]

These are questions that will be covered extensively in the consultation that the OFS will hold on the fee structure that it will implement in due course. Questions relating to the weighting of the fee according to the size of the provider will certainly be an important part of the consultation.

We recognise the importance of working collaboratively with the sector to shape the final design of the charging structure. That is why we have not set out the detail of the fee regime in the Bill. We intend to consult, as I have said, in the autumn, so this will be developed with HE providers and other interested parties in due course.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I seek clarification. The Minister said in his earlier remarks, if I heard him right, that the Government are seeking to replicate existing arrangements as far as possible. The comparison between HEFCE and the OFS is obvious, and yet there seems to be a new financial arrangement being put in place where universities share the running costs, so the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham that we are imposing that as an additional cost on students are valid. Have I misunderstood that? Will the Minister confirm whether that is the case?

[Joseph Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman has got it right. We are asking the sector to share in the running costs of the regulatory structure, as is common in many other regulated sectors of the economy. It is in the students’ interest—

[Paul Blomfield]

Will the Minister give way again?

[Joseph Johnson]

No, I am going to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, if I can.

It is in the students’ interest that institutions are properly regulated through an efficient and cost-effective system, which is what we are setting out to deliver through these reforms. This is in line, as I have said, with other regulated sectors where consumers indirectly fund the cost of regulation. For example, Ofgem recovers its costs from the licensed companies that it regulates, which pass on costs to consumers through their energy bills. The crucial thing is that we have made it very clear throughout that any fee should be fair and proportionate, not creating disproportionate barriers to entry and not disadvantaging any category of provider.

We will therefore explore options for the use of Government funding to supplement the registration fee income. For example, there may be an argument for the Government to help meet a new provider’s regulatory costs in its early years and to cover the transitional cost, as I have already said, of moving to the new regulatory structure. The Government have already committed to fund the teaching excellence framework—the TEF—that the OFS will operate. So it is in the students’ interests that providers are properly regulated through an efficient and cost-effective system, which is what we are setting out to deliver.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 12th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

We have seen the damaging impact that spiralling student debt has had on state pupils’ ability to access university, and as living costs are a growing concern for many students, the end of the maintenance grant will make it far more difficult for many students to get by. Luckily, in this room today the Committee has the power to reverse this change. I sincerely hope that Members on both sides of the Committee will join us in doing that when it comes to the vote.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I think this is the first opportunity I have had in this sitting to say what a delight it is to contribute with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I will speak on new clauses 10 and 11 and say a few words on some of the other new clauses in the group.

We are in agreement on the objective of widening participation and new clause 10 seeks to strengthen the Government’s intention in driving forward widening participation by ensuring that changes that may be made in funding arrangements do not have consequences that cut against the drive of that policy. It requires the OFS to review the impact of any changes that have been made recently or that will be made in the future subsequent to the Bill. For example, on maintenance grants for poorer students, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne spoke powerfully, the Government will no doubt come up with a defence but there is a need to do some serious work looking at the impact of those changes.

I remember, as will other Members here, when the 2012 funding changes were introduced. In previous sittings the Minister has spoken about how they did not have the anticipated impact on widening participation, but he will also remember how his predecessor David Willetts and other Ministers said on occasion after occasion that one of the principles they could be proud of in the proposals was having maintenance grants for poorer students. Indeed, the Minister is willing to parade the numbers of students from disadvantaged homes participating in higher education, but if I were to accept the argument his predecessor made at face value, maintenance grants for poorer students must have played a significant part in achieving those numbers.

It is important that we carry out some serious research and put a responsibility on the office for students to carry out research on that change and on other changes to see how far they might pull the rug from under the feet of the Government’s intentions on widening participation. Another example is on disabled students allowance and the changes due in that area.

The Minister has spoken previously of the introduction of maintenance loans for part-time students. I think that is a measure people would uniformly welcome, but we need to be sure those changes are sufficient to achieve the objectives of reversing the cliff-edge fall in part-time student numbers that followed the Government’s changes in 2012. It is absolutely clear from the way those numbers can be tracked that it was those funding changes that had that impact. I hope the proposals the Government are now bringing will reverse those changes, but we need to look at them, assess them and then put that responsibility on the office for students.

The introduction of sharia-compliant loans is a welcome move. We should also evaluate and make sure we got that right, and if we did not, we should change that policy. The amendment embeds looking at all of those sort of issues as they arise, evaluating them properly and making proper recommendations to Government into the responsibilities of the office for students, to ensure we achieve the objectives we all want to achieve on widening participation.

New clause 11 is really an extension of the arguments I made in an earlier debate about credit accumulation and transfer, which I know the Minister is supportive of in principle and which the Government are encouraging. Again, it tries to address the concerns over the fall-off in part-time student numbers. As I said a moment ago, we know that fall-off was heavily influenced by the changes in the funding arrangements. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, as it was then, commissioned YouGov last September to do some work entitled, “Perceptions of Part-Time Higher Education”. As the Minister knows, that work concluded that one of the leading barriers to engaging in part-time education for 33% of the people YouGov spoke to was financial issues relating to funding and fees. That affected those from socioeconomic groups C2, D and E much more so than those from the A, B and C1 groups, so it absolutely cuts across the Government’s objectives on widening participation.

[Gordon Marsden]

I am delighted my hon. Friend is pursuing the broad principle he outlined when speaking to previous amendments and on which we had a significant debate under clause 36. Does he agree with me, and pursuant to YouGov’s findings, that one of the things people need, particularly older people in their 30s, 40s and 50s who have never had any exposure to higher education before, is to be able to go one step at a time and so be able to juggle their financial and personal and family needs? With the right safeguards and guarantees, that is exactly what a greater focus on modular funding would achieve.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. The Open University is clearly a hugely valuable reference point in this given its world-leading success in part-time education. Its assessment of the collapse in part-time student numbers and evaluation of the 2012 reforms was:

“Since the reforms, prospective part-time students in England are giving greater consideration to the whole learning pathway they are going to take. They must now consider the end qualification they are aiming for at the very outset of their HE learning journey if they want a loan (given loans are only an option for those with a stated intention to study for a degree or other HE qualification). Prior to the reforms, part-time students were more likely to try out higher education and perhaps study on a module-by-module basis, and at a lower intensity, without committing to a degree or other HE qualification.”

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne make a powerful case on how disgracefully students have been treated by the Government. The Open University had to change the way in which it deals with part-time students by making them register for a course in order to be able to get student loans. That seems to be the height of inflexibility and not the flexibility that the Minister says he wants to usher in. Perhaps one of the things he could do this afternoon, in addition to reversing all the changes to maintenance loans and so on, is to put much more flexibility into the loans system.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Minister could give serious consideration to such a proposal; I very much hope that he will.

As the Open University illustrates, all the evidence shows that shifting towards the requirement for loans to be given for a whole-course commitment was one that tipped too many people over the edge. The change in the arrangements that my hon. Friend has just outlined tipped too many people over the edge and contributed enormously to the dramatic decline in part-time student numbers. This issue is about widening participation. It is about the discussions we had earlier on credit accumulation and transfer. It is about giving people different entry routes into higher education. As the Minister keeps making the point validly, it is about having a more creative, more innovative, more wide-ranging view of our higher education system, but that requires exactly the sort of flexibility that my hon. Friend talks about, which the Open University was driven away from. I do hope the Minister will give serious consideration to the proposal in new clause 11 for module by module loans.

I will speak briefly to new clauses 13 and 14. I have the privilege of representing more students than any other Member of Parliament—I regularly make that point; I can see the weary faces—and it is a great privilege. I was hit with a wall of outrage when the Government introduced the retrospective changes. They were met with outrage and incredulity from many of the 36,000 students that I represent. Rachel Mercer wrote to me:

“I have been at University since 2014 and think it is completely outrageous—if true—”

because she did not believe the Government could do something like this—

“that my loan may be rewritten....I have not seen anything which confirms these rumours...but the students I am friends with are all very worried and very angry!”

Emily Reed wrote:

“During my time”—

[The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury (David Evennett) (Con)]

A Jeremy Corbyn approach.

[Paul Blomfield]

I think we can apply every approach. [Interruption.] I have got three more. Where were we? Emily Reed wrote:

“During my time as an undergraduate at Sheffield University, I volunteered with local young people who were considering university as an option. As many were from less privileged backgrounds, money was obviously a huge concern for them. These young people will be the worst affected by the proposed plans.”

And she makes the point that this is on top of the scrapping of maintenance grants. It makes me feel immense guilt for having potentially encouraged young people who trusted in university advice and Government dependability to aim beyond their means. James Dawkins made the point echoed this afternoon by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, that

“Neither banks nor lending companies would be allowed to get away with such a modification to their terms and conditions after a contract had already been signed, so how can the Government expect to do the same?”

This is the nub of the issue. In any other walk of life, this would be considered to be what it is: fraudulent behaviour that undermines confidence in a funding system, in Government and in our democracy at a time when we need to encourage that confidence among young people. I wholly endorse new clauses 13, 14 and 15 and hope that the Government will give them serious consideration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

You won’t goad me into giving way. The Chair has indicated that he wants us to make progress, and that is only fair to him after a long day.

The current procedure already allows Parliament to debate and vote on all this. New clauses 14 and 15 address the issue of the FCA. We do not believe that we need to change the arrangements, which, since the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, have enabled the loans to be exempt from consumer credit legislation. Parliament confirmed the exemption from regulation under consumer credit legislation in 2008, when the then Labour Government passed the Sale of Student Loans Act 2008. The factors that led Parliament to that decision remain valid today, and the current system of parliamentary oversight is the most appropriate for this statutory loan scheme.

New clause 15 relates to equal treatment for borrowers whose loans have been sold. I am glad to be able to reassure the Committee that borrowers whose loans have been sold are protected by the Sale of Student Loans Act 2008. I can also confirm that for the planned sale of pre-2012 income-contingent loans, purchasers will have no powers to change the loan terms in any way and will have no direct contact with borrowers.

New clause 15 would also require the repayment threshold for all income-contingent student loans to increase in line with average earnings. The precise value of the repayment threshold is a key factor in determining the long-term sustainability of the loan system, and in particular the extent to which taxpayers—many of whom are not graduates—subsidise loans. Any Government have to be able to balance the interests of taxpayers and graduates in the light of the prevailing economic circumstances. The decision last year to freeze the threshold was taken precisely because economic circumstances had changed, with the result that the taxpayer would have had to pay substantially more to subsidise the loans than was originally intended.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister says the terms were changed because of changed economic circumstances. Is it not the case that the reason was flawed planning by the Government? He will recall that when the changes were introduced in 2012, the Minister at the time, now Lord Willetts, was arguing that the resource accounting and budgeting charge—the non-repayable debt facing the Government—would be around 28%. Many of us, including independent experts, argued that that was not credible and that it would be much higher.

Gradually, over a period of years, the Government’s projections shifted from 32% to 36% to 38%, moving up to the mid 40%s and at one stage modelling—not confirming—a RAB charge of more than 50%. At that point, the new system became more expensive to the public purse than the one it replaced, as well as imposing additional debt on students. Was the Government’s incompetence on this not the reason?

Higher Education and Research Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 13th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Gordon Marsden]

I thank the Minister for his positive and proactive response to the amendments which, as he knows, are probing amendments. I am encouraged by his recognition of the importance of getting such things right at the beginning. No list, in any Bill, whether drawn up by a university body or by Opposition Members, could possibly compete with the perfect list for ever and a day, for the next 20 years. However, if I may use a term that I often use, such lists are points of entry to provoke further discussion. I am encouraged by the Minister’s focus on the issues. There will be other opportunities in other places to discuss the matter further, and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 304, page 92, line 16, after “chair” insert “and the House of Commons Select Committees”.

This amendment would ensure that the relevant House of Commons Select Committees are consulted before any appointments are made.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham took the initiative in drafting the amendment, but she cannot be here today because she is leading for the Front Bench in another Bill Committee. [Interruption.] We multitask.

The amendment goes with the flow of the Government’s intention in other areas. It is intended to ensure that before appointing the chief executive, chief finance officer and other members of UKRI the Secretary of State should consult not only its chair but the relevant House of Commons Select Committees. That would be consistent with the approach suggested by the Minister to OFS appointments.

In the Committee’s oral evidence sessions, the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge and former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, Professor Borysiewicz, told us that

“the choice of members of that committee will be absolutely vital.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 26, Q40.]

It is therefore important that the Secretary of State should consult with others to make sure that the membership is the best possible.

Such broad consultation would enhance the scrutiny of the choices that were made, and therefore improve the likelihood of the best person being appointed, because it would require the Secretary of State to make a clear, strong case for choosing particular candidates. We saw the importance of that during the evidence sessions, because a number of witnesses made forceful points about who should be on the board of UKRI. Alastair Sim, director of Universities Scotland, suggested that membership should be

“expertise-based but it should also be based on geographic balance so as to have people with experience from across the UK sitting on UKRI and on the councils within it.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 68, Q106.]

Professor Borysiewicz suggested that UKRI should be made up of

“individuals who are broadly respected across the devolved Administrations, the different elements of research across industry and the different players”.––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 26, Q40.]

It is important to take into account those and other perspectives on appointments. We would all have confidence and agree across the House that consultation with Select Committees would make it more likely that a full and diverse range of opinions is taken into account before appointments are made.

In relation to appointments with the OFS, the Minister assured us that

“we fully intend to actively involve the Select Committee or Select Committees, as appropriate, in the appointment process”.––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 8 September 2016; c. 75.]

If that is good for the OFS, given the critical importance of UKRI, I assume it would be good in that case too and I am confident the Minister will be able to reassure me of that.

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central for the amendment and the chance to discuss the involvement of Select Committees in UKRI appointments. The establishment of UKRI involves a number of particularly important public appointments. For all of these, subject to parliamentary approval in the passage of this Bill, we will run an open and competitive process in line with the guidance of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. This will apply to the permanent chair, CEO, CFO, other independent UKRI board members and the executive chairs of each council. I am happy to confirm that a pre-appointment hearing will be held in the House of Commons by the Select Committee on Science and Technology for the permanent chair of UKRI. That is in line with Cabinet Office guidance and, in keeping with this practice, the current interim chair, Sir John Kingman, has just appeared before the Committee.

Given the scale and importance of UKRI, I assure the Committee that I agree that it is appropriate to offer a pre-appointment hearing by the Science and Technology Committee with the chief executive officer. For other key positions, we intend to continue the current approach, which I believe works well.

Although it is not a statutory requirement for prospective research council chairs to appear before a Select Committee, it is common practice. I assure the Committee that we expect this practice to continue with any new executive chairs of the UKRI councils. This will ensure that the appropriate Select Committees are engaged in the appointment process for key leadership positions in UKRI. I hope that I have provided the hon. Gentleman with the assurances he is looking for and I urge him to withdraw the amendment.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for his assurances, which go some way towards meeting the points made in the amendment. I ask him to reflect on the opportunities to cast the net slightly wider to other Select Committees as appropriate in the way that it suggests. With the hope that he will reflect on that, and reassured by his comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 186, page 92, line 18, after “experience” insert

“in the higher education sector in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland”.

This amendment would ensure that the new research body, UKRI, would include appropriate membership from the devolved nations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

If I can find them in this bagatelle list which sends one diving across the paper, I rise to speak in support of our amendments, which are amendment 315, 317, 316, 318, 319, 320, 321 and 322.

Let me start by welcoming the technical amendments tabled by the Minister. As someone who has taught humanities, I was interested in his clarification that the arts were included in the humanities. I do not propose to have an etymological discussion about it, but I was also interested that social sciences— if I understand the Minister rightly—are included under the definition of sciences. I pause to think for a moment about the Minister’s first degree. Perhaps he might like to comment on whether he thought at the time that he was doing a science degree or a humanities degree. That is a little jeu d’esprit but nevertheless, it illustrates that this is a hazy area. Without being too pedantic, it is of merit to try to get some of the clarifications right so I welcome what the Minister has said.

Our amendments 317 and 318 would insert “social sciences” and “the arts” after “humanities”. I appreciate that there might be some overlap between what we have tabled and what the Government have tabled but obviously we did not necessarily consult them. The principle is straightforward: first, to ensure that UKRI’s functions extend across the whole breadth of research; and, secondly and not unimportantly given that this is a major change—this comes back to what I have said previously—to give reassurance to those in those areas that their interests are being properly and carefully catered for.

Amendment 319 is part and parcel of the same process although this time, after “technology”, we are inserting the words “humanities”, “social sciences” and “arts”. The amendments we tabled to clause 85, which include the words “basic”, “applied” and “strategic”, are intended also to reflect concerns expressed by both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and probably other bodies too that basic science is essential for a good research system—often laying the ground for future applications — and that its funding should be a core function for UKRI. The royal charters of the research councils protected such fundamental research by requiring that basic strategic and applied research were all funded, hence their use in our amendments, but there is no commitment as such in the Bill, hence the suggestion that these amendments should be moved to include a commitment to supporting those issues.

Amendments 320 to 322 follow the same argument, inserting the words “social sciences” and “arts” after “the humanities”. Likewise, amendments to clause 87 insert a reference to social and cultural wellbeing after the word “life”, ensuring that the Bill includes a focus on the full breadth of research and innovation and their benefits for humanity. Without starting a philosophical discussion, I wish to be clear that we understand that much research and innovation does not always have an immediate practical application. Indeed that is not required, and that should not be the case. That is one of the elements of tension in this Bill between the effects of various changes, which we will be discussing later in terms of their structure and architecture.

At a time when people are bombarded—not least in the popular media—by sometimes highly contentious claims for research, it is important that we place in the Bill a recognition that research and innovation significantly benefits the man and woman in the street, either by the words suggested here or by other appropriate mechanisms. At a time of continued austerity and continued arguments over funding, which no doubt will tighten up during the Brexit process, it is important that that is made clear in the corridors of Government, not just to the general public.

[Paul Blomfield]

I will speak to amendment 336, recognising and welcoming the fact that Government amendment 256 covers a significant part of what we were trying to achieve with this amendment. I wanted to probe a little further on going beyond reference to the humanities, and looking at arts and social sciences. That is covered in the footnote, but I would like further clarification on the Government’s view of their inclusion more generally. The Minister will recognise the value of the creative industries and social sciences to the economy and to our culture, and this amendment seeks to recognise arts and social sciences within the legislation.

A number of organisations submitting evidence to us, including MillionPlus and Goldsmiths College—part of the University of London—have raised concerns about the Bill’s lack of provision for the arts, emphasising that the legislation must work for all subjects. In their written evidence, Goldsmiths College made the point that,

“we also believe excluding the words ‘arts’ from the description of the UKRI remit could jeopardise future funding for arts research. We believe this also to be the case for the social sciences, which could be overlooked in favour of more traditional science subjects. As well as signalling a commitment to these important disciplines, this would also fully reflect the objectives of the research council’s reporting into the UKRI.”

The point on which I am seeking reassurance is that the Government do regard the arts and social sciences as being of important academic worth.

[Joseph Johnson]

I welcome the amendments supported by the hon. Members for Blackpool South and for Ashton-under-Lyne, who are sitting in the absence of the hon. Member for City of Durham, which seek the same ends as the Government’s amendments. As hon. Members have said, it is absolutely right that UKRI should be able to take full advantage of the advancements that the UK research sector makes in the humanities, including the arts. In response to the point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, I repeat that clause 102 makes it clear that “‘humanities’ includes the arts” and “‘science’ includes social science.”

I turn to the other tabled amendments to clause 85, which seek to spell out explicitly that the research UKRI may carry out should include “basic, applied and strategic” research. I welcome the opportunity to assure hon. Members that it is absolutely the Government’s intention that UKRI will support all forms of research, including “basic, applied and strategic” research, as hon. Members have put it. However, it is not necessary to be prescriptive in that way. The reference to research in clause 85(1) is drafted to be broad enough to include those types of research, and it is right that research experts, not politicians, decide what specific projects are supported.

I welcome the intention behind amendment 322 to clause 87(4). It seeks to require the councils to have regard to improving “social and cultural wellbeing”, in addition to the currently drafted “improving quality of life”, when exercising their functions. While I agree that the potential human benefits of research are wide-ranging, I am certain the current duty on councils to consider the desirability of improving quality of life is sufficient to cover those. I therefore ask hon. Members to withdraw their amendments.

Amendment 247 agreed to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

I thank the Minister for his response and for the opportunity to have a broader discussion of the circumstances in which UKRI would develop. I think I made it clear that on looking at the drafting of the provision we thought there was already a requirement for an affirmative resolution, but I am grateful to the Minister for confirming that, with reference to clause 107. At the end of the day, the list of people whom the Minister must satisfy includes not just the Opposition but the whole academic and scientific community. I am glad that he recognises that, and beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 84 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 85

UK research and innovation functions

Amendment made: 256, in clause 85, page 52, line 12, leave out “and new ideas” and insert

“, new ideas and advancements in humanities”.—(Joseph Johnson.)

This amendment provides that UKRI may facilitate, encourage and support the development and exploitation of advancements in humanities (including the arts), as well as the development and exploitation of science, technology and new ideas.

[Paul Blomfield]

I beg to move amendment 289, in clause 85, page 52, line 18, at end insert—

“(h) provide postgraduate training and skills development, working together with the OfS.”

This amendment would ensure UKRI reflects the current activities of the Research Councils as set out in their Royal Charters in respect of the learning experience of postgraduate research students, and would require joint working on this with the OfS.

I welcome the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South in his opening comments and I am pleased to be able to give the Minister an opportunity to clarify an area that our discussions have not so far touched on much, but which I think we will all agree is of some importance. The proposal for the office for students is at the heart of the Bill, and it deals primarily with the learning experience of undergraduates. It goes on to talk about the learning experience for postgraduate taught students, but fails to address a third, important category: postgraduate research students. Clearly they have a very different learning experience; nevertheless it is crucial for them because they are not only learners but teachers.

I am sure the Minister will agree that there is a number of issues relating to postgraduate research students, and although there is good practice across the sector, there are also areas where such students are occasionally let down. A crucial relationship for them is with their supervisor. Although there is much excellent supervision, there are also areas, such as feedback, where supervisors can get things wrong. Feedback and assessment are crucial to every student’s learning experience, but get them wrong and, given the particular intimacy of the relationship between a supervisor and a postgraduate research student, that can be quite destructive.

I recently saw comments that an early academic had written in The Guardian based on their own experience, making the point that feedback

“can take the form of constructive feedback for improvement, or demoralising sarcasm. I have experienced the full range, and it has had a direct impact on my research.”

Unfortunately there are examples of supervision being interrupted by:

“Unannounced departures for conferences, holidays and research projects.”

Those of us with experience of the sector will know about problems with the sudden retirement of supervisors. That could be halfway through a programme of work for a postgraduate research student, but I have known cases where people accepted a place based on a particular supervisor’s expertise, but found on arriving at university that that person was no longer in place. There is a whole range of issues there.

There is also the relationship between research and teaching. Two or three years ago the National Union of Students published a very useful report highlighting the challenges for postgraduate research students in taking on teaching responsibilities, the difficulty that there often is in getting the balance right between the two, and the pressure that is sometimes put on them to undertake teaching work, which can be to the detriment of their research and own learning experience.

The third area, which will be close to the Minister’s heart—I know the other two will be as well—is the issue of access and widening participation, because we need to be clear that those opportunities exist at every level of our higher education system. The initial focus was on undergraduate access and the Government have taken some welcome steps to address issues relating to postgraduate taught programmes, but we also need to have a focus on postgraduate research opportunities.

The amendment gives UKRI a clear responsibility for postgraduate training and skills development—it is phrased in a way entirely consistent with the royal charters of the current research councils—in conjunction with the office for students. As the Minister will remember, I raised this point with some of the expert witnesses at our oral evidence session. Professor Philip Nelson, the chair of Research Councils UK, agreed that this was an “important issue”. He went on to say that

“we in the research councils have three main ways of supporting PhD students across the sector. We do interact with HEFCE on that currently. I think it will be very important—the point has already been made in evidence to this Committee—that the OFS and the UKRI connection is carefully made.”

Professor Ottoline Leyser from the University of Cambridge agreed that that was an important point and went on to say that

“one of the opportunities generated by UKRI would be the possibility to have more integrated research into teaching and research training…we could develop better understanding of the most effective ways to do research training and teaching. That is one opportunity that is more difficult within a single research council.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 8 September 2016; c. 87, Q137.]

There are issues with how to address the learning experience of postgraduate research students. We are supported in the sector; there are problems that we are all aware of. Can the Minister reassure me on how he sees the roles of the two bodies? Will the OFS’s role in relation to postgraduate students include the regulation and assurance of quality, information needs for PGR students and their access to and participation in student protections? How does he see UKRI exercising its responsibility for the learning experience of PGR students, in conjunction with the OFS?

[Joseph Johnson]

I welcome the opportunity to set out the importance of postgraduate training and skills development to the future of our economy, and in particular to the strength of our research and innovation sectors. That is reflected in the provisions of the Bill that ensure that UKRI is able to support postgraduate training and work with the OFS on postgraduate and wider skills issues. The OFS and UKRI have been designed to work closely together, but let me offer some thoughts on the division of responsibilities between them and on how they might work together.

The OFS will be the regulator for all students, including postgraduate students, and will monitor the management and governance of HE providers, as well as their overall financial sustainability. The research councils within UKRI will continue to provide research grants for projects. Research England will deliver HEFCE’s current research funding powers, such as the quality-related research funding block grant. The Bill proposes safeguards to protect joint working and

“cooperation and information sharing between OfS and UKRI”,

which reflects the integration of teaching and research that we discussed earlier.

Research England, within UKRI, will lead on quality-related funding, the allocation for which currently includes an element that recognises research degree supervision. UKRI will fund postgraduate research, as research councils do now. HEFCE currently provides some funding from the teaching grant to support masters-level PGT; all teaching grant responsibilities and associated responsibilities will transfer to the office for students.

UKRI and the OFS will work together on monitoring and evidence gathering on the pipeline of talent from undergraduate study to postgraduate study, early career research and beyond. That underscores our intention for the OFS and UKRI to work closely together to ensure that there are no gaps between their respective roles. We want there to be no difference from the current situation in which an institution may receive funding from a research council but is still subject to HEFCE’s oversight of the sector. In practice, individual students will have little, if any, exposure to either body, since their interactions normally take place at an institutional level.

The Bill is a legal framework for these reforms, with the functions of UKRI broadly defined, as are the current functions of the existing bodies. They are drafted to be inclusive and permissive, and to ensure that the functions currently performed by the existing nine funding bodies can continue.

[Paul Blomfield]

A number of the Minister’s comments are reassuring. In describing the architecture and exercise of functions, he is talking largely in the context of continuity. The Bill has, at its heart, a drive to improve teaching excellence. Does he also see it as an opportunity to improve the learning experience of postgraduate research students? Should that be as much at the heart of what we are trying to do with the bodies we are creating as it is for the TEF?

[Joseph Johnson]

We see the research quality assurance process, through the REF, and the teaching excellence framework—the teaching quality assurance process that we are introducing—as being mutually reinforcing, as I have previously indicated. We want institutions to consider how they promote research-led teaching in their submissions, and Lord Stern’s review of the REF recommended that academics be rewarded for the impact on teaching of the excellence of their research. We will ensure that the two processes are co-ordinated and that timescales and deadlines have flexibility so that institutions can plan for the demands of the two systems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

In answer to the question from the hon. Member for Sheffield Central on the teaching excellence framework and postgrad research, in the first instance, no, it will not deal with the postgrad experience; it focuses on undergrad and part-time. The Bill sets out clear responsibilities for UKRI and the OFS, with the OFS being the regulator for all students, including at postgraduate level.

There are a number of areas that will require close co-operation between UKRI and the OFS, including on postgraduates, and it is vital that they are empowered to work together. The Bill does that through clause 103, which enables and ensures joint working, co-operation and the sharing of information. An emphasis on working together will run through the leadership and management of both organisations, supported by a legal framework that will be sufficiently flexible to deal effectively with areas of shared interest.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for taking an intervention before he concludes, because I want to push a little further on the point I made earlier. The Bill seeks to improve the learning experience of taught students. Does he see that this is also an opportunity to improve the learning experience of postgraduate research students? Does he hope that the OFS and UKRI will work together to do that?

[Joseph Johnson]

Yes. We obviously recognise that our intention to drive up opportunities for informed choice and for students to receive a higher-quality experience in HE applies to all levels of study and all modes of provision. We certainly want to see postgraduate research included in that.

In the initial phase of the teaching excellence framework, as it develops and as it is trialled, we are focusing on undergraduate provision in the first instance, but we hope that in time it will be able to capture aspects of postgraduate provision, including postgraduate teaching. That is not something that we anticipate happening in the first three years of the new teaching excellence framework, but it could be something that we put into practice in the years that follow.

I conclude by reassuring hon. Members that I recognise the importance of postgraduate training and skills development in ensuring the continued strength of research and innovation in the UK, which is reflected in the Bill. I therefore ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for his reassurance. I say in passing to the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds that I was not suggesting that teaching is to the detriment of research. Teaching is vital to the learning experience of many PGR students, but it is sometimes a question of getting the balance right, as it is when dealing with some of the other issues and challenges that postgraduate research students face.

On the basis of the reassurance the Minister has given that he sees the OFS and UKRI as having a role in ensuring we enhance the learning experience of PGR students, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[The Chair]

We are coming to the end of our allotted time. It might be convenient to draw stumps before we start consideration of the next amendment. I apologise that I will not be here this afternoon for the last sitting. Appropriate words will be said at the end, but I thank Mr Marsden for his dogged perseverance in holding the Government to account and the Minister for defending the Government.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(David Evennett.)

Higher Education and Research Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee Debate: 14th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 310, in clause 85, page 52, line 21, at end insert—

“(2A) The functions conferred by paragraphs (a) – (e) of subsection (1) may be carried out in partnership with other funding bodies”.

This amendment allows other funding bodies to work with the UKRI.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government amendments 111, 272, 273, 114 and 115.

Government new clause 3—Joint working.

Government new clause 17—Advice to Northern Ireland departments.

[Paul Blomfield]

It goes without saying what an enormous pleasure it is contribute to this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. We are all aware of the significant amount of research done in the UK that is co-funded through partnerships with other organisations, and particularly those in the charitable sector. For example, the British Heart Foundation spends £9.1 million on projects with the local research council, and the Association of Medical Research Charities provides £1.4 billion of research funding overall.

As one of the primary roles of UKRI is to “facilitate, encourage and support research” within the sciences and many other fields, amendment 310 seeks to ensure that research funded by other funding bodies, and particularly charities, can continue unaffected by the creation of UKRI. At the moment, the Bill does not fully explain how collaborations and partnerships will occur when UKRI is established. It is unclear whether contracts will be formed directly with UKRI or whether that function will be delegated to research councils, in which case partnerships may become more complicated and time-consuming to establish.

It was surprising that in the Government’s document outlining the case for the existence of UKRI and their recently issued document on UKRI’s visions, principles and governance, there is no mention of charities, let alone any description of how charities are supposed to work with Government once UKRI is formed. I appreciate —I am sure the Minister does as well—that a whole range of charitable organisations are concerned about the lack of clarity and the potential impact on research. The Royal Society, the Association of Medical Research Charities and the British Heart Foundation raised significant worries in their written evidence to the Committee. When charities with such strong contributions to make to research say they are concerned in this way, we need to stop and listen.

Ensuring a simple and clear process for charities to jointly fund research with Government is, I am sure we all agree, important. The vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds, Sir Alan Langlands, whom the Minister has regularly quoted, explained in his oral evidence to the Committee why this clarity is necessary:

“At the moment in HEFCE, there is funding related to charity support, support for research degrees, and businesses research and innovation. All those things need to be resolved. It needs to be very clear between UKRI and the Government who is doing what in those areas.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 28, Q42.]

Professor Borysiewicz of the University of Cambridge also raised concerns about how charitable bodies will continue to fund research, saying:

“one has to remember that of the research funders in the UK, UKRI merely looks after the Government component side of the funding. For instance, 30% of funding sits with the charitable sector. What is important with UKRI, which is fine as is currently laid out, is that the support and the safeguards proposed in relationship to Research England are also very good. It has to be a body that takes into account the whole of the United Kingdom in its purview. It also has to work closely with other funders and other organisations that have a say in this important area”.––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 37, Q25.]

That demonstrates the concerns within the charity sector, and I hope the Minister will respond to the issues raised through the amendment by giving some reassurance.

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central for raising these concerns on behalf of the hon. Member for City of Durham. The Government are keen, like the hon. Gentleman, that UKRI should be able to collaborate with any organisation if doing so would result in better outcomes. As I will make clear shortly, there are specific instances where it is necessary to put powers on the face of the Bill to allow joint working with the devolved Administrations and with the office for students. However, in all other instances I can reassure the Committee that UKRI will not need specific provision to be able to work jointly with other bodies.

Through clause 96, UKRI must look to be as efficient and effective as possible. In many instances, collaboration with other funding bodies will further its ability to achieve this aim. That will be supported by UKRI’s supplementary powers under paragraph 16 of schedule 9. The UK research base is internationally renowned for being highly collaborative and has a strong track record in successful partnerships with other funding bodies. I am therefore confident that not only are such opportunities possible, but that they will be actively sought as part of UKRI’s normal practice.

Government amendments 111, 114 and 115, new clause 3 and new clause 17 relate to joint working. Higher education and block funding of universities for research—so-called quality-related funding—are both devolved matters, but this has not meant that HEFCE has operated in isolation. In fact, HEFCE works closely with its devolved equivalents, such as the Scottish Funding Council, on areas such as the research excellence framework. The office for students and UKRI will take over HEFCE’s responsibilities for funding teaching and research and it is very important that such effective joint working can continue. That is why we, in consultation with the devolved Administrations, have prepared new clause 3, which enables the office for students, UKRI, the devolved funding bodies and Ministers, to work together where it enables them to exercise their functions more effectively or efficiently.

In addition to the new joint working clause, I have also tabled new clause 17, which gives the OFS and UKRI powers equivalent to the existing power for HEFCE to provide advice to the Northern Ireland Executive, as set out in section 69(3) of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This is an important power to preserve, as there is no funding council in Northern Ireland, where they have instead found it more effective to rely on advice and support from the English and Welsh funding councils, such as on quality reviews, on terms that all parties agree.

Amendments 272 and 273 are minor and consequential amendments that ensure that any references to UKRI predecessor bodies within the Government of Wales Act 2006 are corrected. I therefore ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw amendment 310.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for his assurances on the issue and beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 85, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 86 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 87

Exercise of functions by science and humanities Councils

[Joseph Johnson]

I beg to move amendment 257, in clause 87, page 53, line 11, leave out “Economic and other”.

This is a drafting amendment to simplify the way the field of activity of the Economic and Social Research Council is expressed.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Paul Blomfield]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

This may be the last topic we debate as part of our proceedings, but it is by no means the least. If carried, the new clause would not affect many people, but it would have a profound impact on those who were affected. It would allow all refugees resettled to the UK, as well as those young people who, having made an application for asylum, are granted a form of leave other than refugee status, to access student finance and home fees. That would be of particular benefit to the Syrian refugees who are being resettled in this country under the Government’s own plans. Only small numbers are affected, but those of us who represent universities will have dealt with cases in which people have tragically been denied opportunities to fulfil their potential in our university system. The provision would have a huge impact on individuals.

Let me explain the context. Currently, individuals with refugee status are able to access student finance and to qualify for home fees status from the moment they are awarded their protection. However, those with the slightly different status of humanitarian protection are treated differently. To receive financial support they have to be able to show that they have been ordinarily resident for at least three years at the start of the academic year. The group most affected are the Syrian refugees currently being resettled in the UK under the vulnerable person resettlement programme, because they are granted humanitarian protection rather than refugee status.

The result of the current position is that a young Syrian refugee arriving in the UK today does not qualify for student finance until the start of the 2020 academic year. The only exception is if they are resettled in Scotland, where the Scottish Government have introduced a special fees status for resettled Syrians, which allows them immediately to access student support. I commend them for that. Subsection (2)(a) of the new clause would ensure that all resettled refugees, no matter what status they are given or which nation of the UK they live in, would be able to access student support immediately. Subsection (2)(b) would make student finance available for those granted humanitarian protection after making an application for asylum.

As set out in the immigration rules, humanitarian protection is granted to people who would face a real risk of suffering harm if they were to return to their home country, including the risks of death, torture and inhumane treatment, or their life being at risk due to armed conflict. The future of those granted humanitarian protection after applying for asylum is clearly in the UK—this is where they will build their lives—so they should be allowed to access university education, not simply so that they can build their lives here but so that they can contribute fully to the society of which they will be part.

Subsection (2)(b) would also provide access to student finance and home fees status to people who have applied for asylum and then been granted another form of immigration leave. In such cases, the Government have accepted that the immediate future of those individuals is in the UK. They should be given every opportunity to contribute and to develop, yet they currently face significant hurdles in doing so because in 2012 the Government changed the rules so that potential university students in that situation could no longer get the student finance they had previously been able to access. They were also reclassified as international students, meaning that they would face—and have faced—much higher fees.

The Supreme Court found the rules discriminatory and as a result a new criterion of long residence was introduced. However, young people who have gone through the asylum process, including those who arrived as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, are unlikely to meet the long residence criterion and will have to watch while their school peers go off to university, leaving them behind with no opportunities. New clause 12 is not about creating special circumstances for refugees and other young people who have arrived in the UK seeking asylum. It would simply remove existing barriers that prevent young people who come to the UK seeking protection and who are capable of attending university from fulfilling their potential. It is a wrong we should right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

I also thank the hon. Member for Sheffield Central for tabling this new clause, which relates to access to support for students recognised as needing protection. I agree with the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and recognise his commitment to this issue. It is one that is already addressed, however, within the student support regulations.

I am pleased to say that those who come to this country and obtain international protection are already able to access student support. Our regulations have for some time included provision for those granted refugee status or humanitarian protection and their family members. In addition, we have recently amended the regulations to allow those who have been in the UK as a matter of fact for at least half their lives or at least 20 years to access student support after three years of lawful residence.

Those persons entering the UK under the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme and granted humanitarian protection will be eligible, like UK nationals, to obtain student support and home fees status after only three years’ residence in the UK. Those with refugee status are uniquely allowed to access student support immediately—a privilege not afforded to UK nationals or those granted other forms of leave. There is a distinction in international law between such status and those in need of humanitarian protection.

Recently the Supreme Court upheld the Government’s policy of requiring most persons, including UK citizens, to be ordinarily lawfully resident in the UK for at least three years immediately prior to starting their course in order to be eligible for student support. That important rule establishes that generally the student has a solid connection with the UK before they are entitled to support and home fee rates. The second part of the amendment would, in effect, break that long-established policy by extending support to asylum seekers who have been granted temporary leave to remain only and who have only a recently established and potentially temporary connection to the UK. I therefore ask that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central withdraw the motion.

[Paul Blomfield]

I am disappointed by the Government’s response. The Minister accurately described the position, which is that those who are granted refugee status gain eligibility from day one and those granted humanitarian protection have to wait three years. Until recently, the UK gave very few people humanitarian protection. The default option was refugee status. However, when the Government introduced the Syrian resettlement programme, they decided to give people five years’ humanitarian protection instead of refugee status, with the rights that that would previously have given them. The Government have never explained why. Humanitarian protection is usually given to those who do not quite meet the strict criteria of the refugee convention, but for whom it is not safe to return home. It cannot be the case that that applies to people brought here under the Government’s own programme for Syrian refugees.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the three-year rule not only holds up the educational progress of people who have often fled some of the most unimaginable situations but is no good for the UK? While their lives are on hold and they are unable to progress through education, they are not able to give something back, so this approach is self-defeating for the UK as well as for the individuals concerned.

[Paul Blomfield]

I very much agree: it is completely self-defeating. These are people who are going to make their lives here. The sooner they can start that process, the better. If it had not been for the Government’s move away from granting them refugee status, which in the past would have been the default norm, we would not be facing this problem.

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

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Some of these young people have had their education disrupted, tragically, by the whole conflict situation, and the sooner they can get back into full-time education, the better—not only for them, but for us as a country.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are not talking about very many people at all. It is a tiny number, but the opportunity to rebuild their lives after the tragedies they have lived through is extremely important to them.

[Gordon Marsden]

I place on record the Opposition’s support for my hon. Friend’s proposal and for the measured and dignified way in which he introduced it. I have no doubt that he could have cited a number of other harrowing stories. Does he share my distress at the Minister simply repeating what he said about leaving people in limbo, potentially for three years? Have the Minister and his officials nothing else to suggest to assist these young people to continue their education?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend is right. This limbo situation serves nobody. I would be happy to withdraw the new clause if the Minister could show us a different way forward that would address our concerns, but I am disappointed to hear the Government say simply that that limbo—that three-year delay, that position imposed on people simply because they have been given a technical classification of humanitarian protection rather than refugee status—is acceptable. I do not know whether the Minister wishes to intervene to suggest any movement on the issue.

[Joseph Johnson]

indicated dissent.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister is shaking his head. I therefore wish to press new clause 12 to a vote.

Question put, That the Clause be read a Second time.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I rise to speak on new clause 7 and amendments 49 to 51, which are in my name. New clause 7 and amendments 50 and 51 cover ground we discussed at length in Committee so I will refer briefly to those points then talk a little longer on amendment 49.

New clause 7 provides for automatic review of degree-awarding powers where ownership of a university changes. This is rooted in experience of the sort of system the Minister is seeking to create in the United States, where a number of institutions with a reasonably well-established reputation changed ownership and fundamentally changed the product and service delivered to students. We need to learn from the mistakes made in the States by ensuring that, should we find ourselves in this new terrain with institutions in this country with degree-awarding powers changing ownership, that should automatically trigger a review of their status. I would welcome some reassurance from the Minister on how he intends to deal with that issue, if not through this new clause. Otherwise we could find ourselves in the same situation as the States, and not only have the reputation of the sector damaged, but students let down and still carrying a fee-debt. So this is a crucial issue that we need some clarification on.

Amendment 51 covers terrain I have discussed with the Minister on a number of occasions. It simply seeks to require universities to introduce the integrated student enrolment system with voter registration, which is recommended by Universities UK, supported by the Cabinet Office and was originally and very successfully piloted by—I have to get this reference in—the University of Sheffield.

The Minister and I share a common objective of trying to improve the levels of voter registration among students. This has been a demonstrably effective way of doing that where we rolled it out not only as a pilot in Sheffield, with the support of the Cabinet Office, but in other universities—Cardiff, de Montfort and many others, which have gone on to introduce it. This seems like a good opportunity, as we are looking at the registration requirements of universities, to roll it out across the country to achieve objectives we both share.

I have discussed this with the Minister and also his colleague from the Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore). There was due to be a roundtable at which we were going to discuss it further tomorrow, but that has been cancelled and kicked into the long grass of sometime in the new year, I was told last week. Given the shared objectives in this area, I would like to hear from the Minister why we cannot simply use this opportunity to get this matter sorted out.

Amendment 50 reflects concern over the reliability of the metrics used to measure teaching excellence. I emphasise, as I did many times in Committee, that we all welcome the Government’s focus on teaching excellence, and we can all work effectively together on the principle of the teaching excellence framework. However, the metrics on employment outcomes, on retention and on the national student satisfaction survey have been identified by the Government themselves as a proxy for teaching excellence.

The amendment simply seeks to add to the Bill a requirement that the metrics used by the Government to determine teaching quality should have a demonstrable link to teaching excellence. This was the unanimous recommendation of the then Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, of which I was a member. We all agree that employment outcomes do not necessarily demonstrate teaching excellence. There are also enormous regional variations in employment outcomes and salary levels. The Minister will know that someone who comes from the right family and goes to the right school and university could have an awful teaching experience but still get a decent job. The converse is also true. People who do not come from the right family and who do not go to what many see as the right university could have an excellent teaching experience but not command such high salary levels. So employment outcomes are a crude and almost perverse proxy measure of teaching excellence. I would therefore welcome the Minister’s observations on why this simple amendment to introduce a demonstrable link between the metrics and teaching excellence would not strengthen the Bill and will not be accepted by the Government.

[Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Should the demonstrable link involve a recognition of the experience and qualifications of lecturers? What does my hon. Friend have in mind when it comes to proving that teaching quality exists?

[Paul Blomfield]

Measuring teaching quality is difficult, but if we are going to do it, and if we are going to link fee increases to it, we should do it well rather than badly. For example, the Higher Education Funding Council for England is piloting some work on value added to determine how it can be demonstrated that good teaching has contributed to students’ learning outcomes during a particular period. That is the kind of research we should be looking at before we rush into establishing a teaching excellence framework that might end up measuring everything but teaching excellence.

[Roger Mullin]

Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree with Professor Jack Dowie’s view that the teaching excellence framework measures what it measures but does not measure the quality of teaching excellence?

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman has expressed my concern exactly. This is the reason behind my amendment. There should be agreement across the House that the teaching excellence framework should measure the quality of teaching. That does not seem controversial to me, and I am therefore disappointed that the Government were unable to accept the unanimous recommendation of the BIS Committee. I want to press the Minister further today to find out his reasoning for this.

Amendment 49 raises new concerns that became clear only as the Bill progressed through Committee. It is apparently the Government’s intention—although I recognise that it might not be the Minister’s wish—to link the visa regime for international students to quality measures. There are Members present on both sides of the House who share my concern, so let me put it in context. The Minister will agree that international students are hugely beneficial to this country and to our universities. They enrich the learning environment of our campuses. In an even smaller world, in which we need to understand each other better than ever, it is a huge advantage for British students to learn in our classrooms and laboratories alongside students from around the world. International students add hugely to our universities’ research capacity, also strengthening local businesses, as I know from my experience in Sheffield.

We should add to that the huge benefits of the lasting relationships that we build with those who study here. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, 55 world leaders from 51 countries studied here. That leads to the sort of soft power that is the envy of other countries—political influence, commercial contracts, and so on.

[Dr Huq]

I am loth to interrupt my hon. Friend because he is in full flow and making a powerful point, but does he agree that the Bill was conceived before Brexit and that the world has changed since then? I am holding a Westminster Hall debate on this subject on Wednesday and have received emails from academics and students from all over the country saying that this entire thing should be scrapped because the context is so different and everything has changed for higher education since the decision on 23 June.

[Paul Blomfield]

I look forward to joining my hon. Friend in Westminster Hall on Wednesday, because she makes a valid point—one that a number of us made in Committee. This pre-Brexit vision should have been parked and rethought as a result of the decision on 23 June because the challenge facing our universities is fundamentally different and of enormous proportions. We need to reconsider the proposals.

[Mr Hendrick]

On that point, many mainland European universities now offer courses in English. Our leaving the European Union will significantly disadvantage British universities in attracting foreign students, because degrees in some European countries are now offered in English, not necessarily in French, German or the native language.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend highlights a new dimension to the challenge facing our universities as a result of Brexit. My wider point about international students existed before 23 June, but we now face a situation in which the 185,000 international students, of some 500,000, from EU countries may no longer choose to come here. However—this is crucial in relation to my hon. Friend’s intervention—30% of the non-EU students who were polled before 23 June said that the UK would be a less attractive destination if we chose to leave the European Union. Our competitors in Europe, adding to the competition that we already get from Australia, Canada and the United States, are seizing the opportunity to teach English-language courses, which will become very attractive.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Coventry has two universities. A big concern following Brexit is that international students, in particular from countries such as India, are now looking at north America, given the difficulty they will have in coming to this country when they are treated as immigrants. They should be removed from immigration figures, because the benefits amount to just under £10 billion coming into this country. I hope the Government are taking that seriously.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is certainly testing my patience. It is one thing to come in and then ask a question, but it is another thing to stretch it into a speech. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central is being generous with interventions, but we do not want to get into a Brexit debate.

[Paul Blomfield]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I appreciate the intervention of my hon. Friend, because he is a strong champion of the two universities in Coventry and he makes, on every occasion, this strong point about the importance of international students. He is right. Many universities around the country will be in crisis if there is a significant drop in the number of international students. It will mean not only that their incomes will drop, but that many of their postgraduate taught courses, which are viable only because of the levels of income that are brought through our international students, will cease to be viable, cease to exist and cease to be available for UK students. It is a hugely important issue.

[Mark Field]

The hon. Gentleman will know that I entirely accept his last point about a number of these postgraduate courses. In an ideal world, as he knows, I would not have students in the immigration figures, but we are where we are and they will remain in those figures. Surely one of the lessons of Brexit is that this issue is of massive concern to many of our fellow countrymen. Therefore, it is incumbent on universities to ensure that we get high-quality students from abroad, and that is really the focus of what the Government are trying to achieve here. We need to ensure that those students who come here are the crème de la crème and will add the sort of experience to which he referred earlier in his contribution. By having a group of high-quality students, we will command the confidence of the public that we are getting only the brightest and the best, rather than a volume operation in our universities.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He and I have worked closely on a number of these issues, and we do agree that international students should be taken out of net migration targets. On the point that he raises, I disagree with him. I know that we would come together in saying that our universities are a great British export industry, but I am genuinely puzzled why the Government do not see them as an industry in other terms. We do not put in measures to seek to discourage the automobile industry from selling cars; we try to encourage it to sell more cars. Similarly, on the point that he raises, we do not say, “Well, we just want you to sell Rolls-Royce cars. We don’t want you to sell Minis.” It is nonsense economically for our country and for the local economies that we all represent. That is the nub of the problem.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the way in which these issues are viewed by the public. International students are not viewed as a threat or as an issue on which the Government should be taking action. A recent poll showed that 75% of people wanted to see the numbers of international students either stay the same or go up, but the Government strategy, as he knows, is moving us in the other direction.

The Home Secretary, albeit against her will, made a speech to the Conservative party conference in which she put international students at the centre of her plans to cut migration—I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that she was wrong to do that. She introduced a new tool, to which he has alluded, with which she planned to do it. It is by linking visa approval to the quality of courses. We need to reflect on that, because it is a very significant development, as we now have a policy objective of reducing international students—the Government did it by default in the previous Parliament.

[Joseph Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman should remind himself that international student applications have gone up 14%.

[Paul Blomfield]

Well, I would be interested to hear the Minister intervene again and say over what period, because he will know that, over last Parliament, the numbers flatlined and we lost market share.

[Joseph Johnson]

The answer is since 2010.

[Paul Blomfield]

We will probably disagree on those figures. I think I have heard the Minister say previously—if it was not him then it was his predecessors and previous Immigration Ministers—that there was no damage from the measures that were taken in the last Parliament, because numbers flatlined. From my point of view, flatlining in a growing market is a defeat. We would not say that the world is buying 20% or 30% more cars, but the great news is that our exports are flatlining. It does not make sense. However, I am sure the Minister will agree that international students are an extremely good thing for our economy. It is therefore deeply worrying that the Home Secretary put international students at the centre of her plans to cut migration.

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with everything that my hon. Friend is saying. Can he imagine a scenario where higher education institutions are recruiting UK students on to courses, but sending a message to people from overseas that the courses are not good enough for them? What conclusion will UK students draw? If the courses are not good enough for international students, surely they are not good enough for home students.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes the point that I was about to make. If we were looking at a teaching excellence framework in parallel with our competitors around the world, and if we were together saying that we think the world market in international education needs such a tool and that in that world market it would be helpful to have institutions ranked as gold, silver and bronze, that would be one thing; but for us unilaterally to declare to the world that we are differentiating our institutions and saying that a good two thirds of them, perhaps, are less good than others, that can do nothing other than damage our ability to recruit international students and to earn the money that we do from them, as well as the jobs and support for our economy that that brings.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there may be not just reputational damage at home, but consequences abroad? My own university, Bangor, takes a large number of Chinese students, but its good name in Bangor enables it to have a site in China and a very successful operation there. There would be reputational damage of that sort as well.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is not just the recruitment of students but the brand strength of UK universities, which is extraordinarily high, that is put at risk by the measure.

Last week in Westminster Hall I sought assurances from the Immigration Minister as to whether it is the Home Office’s intention to use the teaching excellence framework measurement of quality as a basis for its visa regime in an attempt to cut down the number of international students. I got no reassurance. I gave the Minister a couple of opportunities to say that the Government did not intend to use the TEF for that purpose and he failed to do so.

The amendment says that until we are clear about the Government’s intention in relation to differentiation by gold, silver and bronze grading, and following a proper economic impact assessment of what that might mean for our universities, we should not seek to differentiate the teaching excellence framework in this way and we should simply have meeting expectations or not meeting expectations ratings. I accept that it is not the Minister’s intention to damage our universities by the introduction of this differentiation, but it could be the unintended consequence of the actions of the Home Office, so we need reassurance on the issue.

As we have heard, these are challenging times for our country. Charting our post-Brexit place in the world will be a big job. We need to win friends, not alienate them. The prime ministerial trade mission to India recently demonstrated that many of those friends will put access to our universities at the heart of any discussion of our future relationship, even on the issue of trade. We will not be able to separate those. We cannot afford to put the sector and the export earnings that we get from international students at risk in this way. I therefore ask the Minister to think again.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I rise to speak to new clause 14 on post-study work visa evaluation, and I reserve the right to push it to a vote, if required.

The SNP continues to press for the reintroduction of the post-study work visa. The new clause would ensure we had an evaluation of how the absence of this key visa has affected the UK economy and how a new visa may be implemented.

As we have heard, the post-study work visa is an important lever for attracting the best international student talent. There is consensus in Scotland among business, education and every political party represented at Holyrood that we need a return of the post-study route to allow these talented students to remain and to contribute to the Scottish economy.

The outcome of the EU referendum makes it even more important that the UK Government honours the recommendation in the Smith report to explore a potential post-study work route to ensure that Scotland continues to attract and retain talent from around the world. The longer we wait for the Government to move on this, the more damage is being done socially and economically.

The current post-study work offer is not adequate for Scotland. We have offered to discuss the reasons behind that with UK Ministers and Home Office officials, but, disappointingly, UK Ministers appear to rule out a return of the post-study work visa— without meeting Scottish Ministers or the cross-party steering group that has been set up at Holyrood.

The current immigration policy poses a significant risk to Scottish universities. Data published in January show that Scotland saw a 2% increase in international entrants in the academic year 2014-15, compared with the previous year. On the face of it, that may appear positive, but by comparison, from 2013-14 to 2014-15 the number of international students entering higher education in the United States increased by 10%. Rather than being able to take advantage of this growth sector and use it to create economic growth locally, our numbers are expected to remain stagnant, which is simply not good enough.

The Home Office released details of a low-risk tier 4 pilot in July this year, which was—maybe “welcomed” is not the correct word—viewed with some interest. However, we are troubled that it was introduced without any consultation with the Scottish Government, Scottish institutions or, indeed, institutions from across the UK. Universities Scotland said:

“we’re disappointed that the opportunity of the pilot has been framed so narrowly to only four universities none of which are in Scotland. We’d argue that a broader pilot, involving a wider group of institutions, would have provided more meaningful lessons from which to build.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I, too, think that BT has a number of strengths as a company, but it is yet to be determined whether it is very good at running a university. We will only know that in due course. If BT runs a university, I want to ensure that it is a university as we would commonly understand it, not simply a company that offers a degree course.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) picked out the issue of five-a-side football, but does my hon. Friend acknowledge that there is a wider issue? This is the first major Bill on higher education for a generation, and it provides an opportunity to extend university title quite widely. Is not the nub of the problem the fact that no attempt is made to define what a university is?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I concur exactly with my hon. Friend. In Committee, the Minister said that he was setting

“a high bar that only high-quality providers will be able to meet.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 11 October 2016; c. 410.]

Unfortunately, at this point in time we have absolutely no idea what is meant by that high bar. I am hoping we will hear from the Minister exactly what he means by a university and what will be in the guidance, and that the quality and breadth of offer of our universities will be protected and will not be got rid of by this Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

The visit to India, which I was honoured to be part of, was a big success in that it gave us numerous opportunities to reiterate our strong message that we welcome genuine students. There is no limit on the number of genuine students who can come and study at our world-class institutions, and there is no better place than the UK to receive a higher education. We want to see more such students coming to study here.

[Paul Blomfield]

I assure the Minister that we are very calm about this issue, but he could calm us further by explaining what the Home Secretary meant when she talked about the use of quality in relation to the visa system, and in particular when she said that she would be

“looking at tougher rules for students on lower quality courses.”

What does that mean?

[Joseph Johnson]

High-quality institutions are compliant institutions. We want compliance to be a strong feature of our system. It is important that the sector should do all it can to be compliant with Home Office regulations. The ability to bring students in on tier 4 visas is a privilege, not a right, and it comes with an obligation to ensure that students who come to this country to study follow the terms of their visas. The sector should welcome that because it wants a high-quality system of international study. The Government will be bringing forward a consultation paper in the coming weeks that will enable everyone across the sector, including the hon. Gentleman, to contribute their views on how best this can be achieved.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister talks about compliance. Why did the Home Secretary not talk about compliance? She talked about

“tougher rules for students on lower quality courses”,

but there was nothing about compliance. What did she mean by that?

[Joseph Johnson]

If the hon. Gentleman reads the Home Secretary’s speech carefully, he will see that she did mention compliance. She mentioned compliance and quality. High-quality institutions are compliant institutions; they are one and the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for the opportunity to move new clause 2 and to speak to the other new clauses concerning student finance.

Millions of people across the UK have been mis-sold loans and will end up paying thousands of pounds more than expected as a result. The perpetrator of the mis-selling scandal is not an unscrupulous high street bank or a payday lender; it is our own Government. The victims are current students and graduates who were sold student loans on the basis of false assumptions and broken promises.

For the vast majority of students in England and the rest of the United Kingdom, Government-backed loans are an essential source of financial support to cover the cost of their tuition fees and the substantial costs associated with their studies, such as the rising cost of university accommodation, food and subsistence, course materials, and making the most of their student experience. In England, students are able to take out a tuition fee loan of up to £9,000 a year and an additional maintenance loan to cover living costs of up to £11,000 a year. As a result, English students now graduate with the highest levels of debt in the western world. Following the Government’s decision to axe non-repayable student grants for the poorest students, those from lowest-income households, scandalously, graduate with the most debt. It is a terrible iniquity in the system and one that I am glad to see the Opposition Front-Bench team addressing this afternoon.

Many students will not have forgotten that the decision to scrap student grants was not taken in this House, but down the corridor and up the stairs through a statutory instrument in a Committee of which most people have never heard. That is not how the Government should take major decisions on student finance. Students and their families were sold loans on the basis of a series of simple promises from Ministers: loans will be repaid only once students have left university; they will be repaid only after graduates start earning over £21,000 a year; graduates will repay 9% of everything earned above £21,000 a year; and the £21,000 figure will be uprated each year in line with average earnings from April 2017.

Around this time last year, however, buried in the fine print of the previous Chancellor’s autumn statement was an announcement that the repayment threshold will remain frozen at £21,000. As a result, graduates will end up paying more each month and thousands of pounds more over the 30-year lifetime of their loans. Worst of all, the change will affect not only future students, who can consciously decide to sign up to those repayment conditions, but thousands of existing students and graduates who took out their loans in good faith on the promise that the repayment threshold would increase from 2017. Not only does that retrospective change fly in the face of the principles of good governance, but it is deeply regressive. It is estimated that around half of graduates will never pay off their loans before their debts are written off by the Government. Such graduates, by definition on lower and middle incomes, will end up paying back thousands more over the lifetime of their loan, whereas the richest graduates will be able to repay their debts more quickly and accrue less interest.

Financial experts and advisers are rightly furious. In an astonishing performance in a Bill Committee evidence session, Money Saving Expert’s Martin Lewis described the Government’s decision to break their commitment to students as “abominable and disgraceful”. The Government will argue that the small print of student finance regulations makes the change entirely permissible and reasonable, but as Martin Lewis told the Committee:

“Looking at students as consumers, if they had borrowed money from a commercial lender, the Financial Conduct Authority would have struck out in a second the idea that, five years after announcing that the repayment threshold would go up from £21,000 in April 2017 with average earnings, that would be frozen.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 38, Q55.]

It is important to bear it in mind that the Government’s promise to students and applicants was not just in the marketing material of Government and of universities, which understandably assumed that the commitments would be lasting, but written in black and white by the former higher education Minister, now Lord Willetts. Having worked with Lord Willetts over a number of years, I have no doubt that he made that undertaking in good faith. He could not have possibly known that a future Chancellor, or a future Government, would not only break that commitment, but apply the change retrospectively.

Banks would not get away with mis-selling on this scale, and neither should our Government. I have teamed up with Martin Lewis to put forward amendments to the Bill. The amendments, which I am delighted to say have cross-party support, will prevent Ministers from making retrospective changes to student loans that would penalise existing students and graduates.

New clause 2 would put in place some architecture through the appointment of three independent advisers, who would look carefully at any proposals that, retroactively, make changes to student loan repayment conditions. They would apply a number of tests: is it to the benefit of the majority of graduates; do the Government believe that to be the case as a result of consultation; have the Government made a case that the proposal would be progressive in effect; and would it help some of the most disadvantaged students or graduates? If those conditions are passed, the Government might be able to proceed, because, clearly, this House would not want to prevent the Government from making positive changes that would benefit graduates. What those tests would do is prevent Ministers from behaving as the previous Chancellor did, which was to make changes in the small print of the autumn statement and apply them retrospectively after commitments have been made in good faith.

New clause 3 would also bring student loans within the scope of the Financial Conduct Authority. Despite the existence of an independent student loans company, Ministers have still found ways to flout regulations for the benefit of the Treasury and to the detriment of students and graduates, which is really quite appalling.

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful case. Does he not think that, had this happened in another context, the behaviour might have been described as fraudulent?

[Wes Streeting]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, which is why the student loans system should be brought within the scope of the Financial Conduct Authority. Had a high street bank or a payday lender behaved in such a way, there would be outrage everywhere, including in this House. The Financial Conduct Authority would mount an investigation. The Treasury Committee, of which I am a member, would ask questions. It seems that a Chancellor can just decide to save a few quid in the autumn statement and make retrospective changes that would penalise existing students and graduates.

This is an issue not just of fairness and equity for existing borrowers, but fundamentally of trust. What is to stop future Governments making changes further down the line about all manner of things, including interest rates, repayment periods, tapers and thresholds? On that basis, how can current or prospective students have confidence that promises being made today will be kept tomorrow? To be honest, this is a very personal issue for me. Some years ago, Martin Lewis, from Money Saving Expert, and I agreed to work with the coalition Government on an independent taskforce on student finance information. Martin was invited to take part because of his widespread reputation as one of the most trusted people in the country when it comes to financial advice and saving consumers money. It was felt, quite rightly by Lord Willetts— then the higher education Minister—that Martin would be an independent voice on those matters and someone whom people could trust. Martin then asked me to work with him as his deputy, with Lord Willetts’ agreement, on the basis that I had recently completed my term as president of the National Union of Students.

Although I opposed the decisions that had been taken by successive Governments around higher education funding and student finance, I believed that it was critical to take part. I thought it would be appalling if a single student was deterred from applying to university on the basis of misunderstanding the information. If students look at the information and the student finance system and decide to make a different choice, that is for them, but I thought that it would be a travesty if a single student was deterred on the basis of misunderstanding and misinformation.

We went round the country visiting schools, colleges and universities and we appeared in the media, promoting the Government system—not on its merit, but on the facts of the system. We served what I thought was an important public duty and purpose, but we were misled—inadvertently—which means that we therefore misled students and graduates up and down the country. We told them that the repayment threshold would go up in line with earnings from April 2017; that is what we were told by Ministers at the time. That is what students, teachers, parents, family members and advisers were also led to believe.

The Government need to reflect very carefully on what message it would send to each of those groups if future Governments can come along and retrospectively change the system to suit the Treasury. It is a terrible, terrible precedent that undermines trust not just in the student finance system, but in politics as a whole. We are not so far from a general election, or indeed from a referendum campaign, to know that trust in politics in this country is at rock bottom. People do not trust politics and they do not trust politicians. From my experience of this place in the past 18 months, I can say that, for all our disagreements, I have great pride in our political system and in the way in which it works. However, when it comes to decisions such as these, I completely understand why politicians are held in such low regard. On too many occasions, politicians have said one thing and done another. On higher education and student finance, politicians have said one thing and done another. Since the coalition Government put their reforms through, with cross-party agreement and with—to be fair to them —concessions to the Liberal Democrats in government, every single concession has been undone. Student grants have been scrapped. The emphasis on widening participation in a number of respects is now weaker. Now we find that many of the actual repayment conditions, which the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) would argue were some of the more progressive elements of the system, are also being undone. This is an issue about trust not just in the student finance system, but fundamentally in politics as a whole. Martin Lewis says:

“If you sign a contract, both sides should keep to it. If you advertise a loan, the lender should be held to the terms it was sold under.”

It is a total disgrace that, although the UK is well regarded around the world for its excellent laws and regulatory environment, there seems to be one exception, which is student loan contracts. That is why I hope that, this week before this change kicks in, the new Chancellor will take the opportunity to reverse the decision in his autumn statement. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister could go some way to rebuilding trust in politics. I also urge the Government to support new clauses 2, 3 and 6, which would ensure that no Government could be tempted to behave in this way again. It is scandalous and unjustifiable and it sets a very dangerous precedent. That is why I hope that we will see some progress on this today.

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“one of the few countries to have figured out a sustainable approach to higher education finance”.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister is talking about the affordability and sustainability of systems. Does he acknowledge that when the proposals to change the student funding system were put to this House back in 2012, it was on the understanding from his predecessor, Lord Willetts, that the resource and budgeting charge—the uncollectable level of student debt—would be at around 28%? That prediction was rubbished by many experts in the sector and from the Opposition Benches, and gradually, over the lifetime of the Parliament, the percentage went up into the 30s and the 40s, to the point where it became unsustainable. The unsustainability of the system that the Government created was then dealt with by imposing that burden on students by varying the charges and the deal on student loans in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) described.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Short interventions, please.

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[Joseph Johnson]

That represents a decrease in the capital value of the loan book.

The cost of uprating by the consumer prices index, as new clause 10 proposes, would be less, but still significant. These costs would need to be paid for by taxpayers, many of whom will be earning less than the graduates who would benefit from the threshold increase.

New clause 10 relates to access to support for students recognised as needing protection. This is an important issue which was raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) in Committee, and is already addressed, as we have discussed, within the student support regulations. I am pleased to say that those who come to this country and obtain international protection are already able to access student support. Our regulations have for some time included provision for those granted refugee status or humanitarian protection, and their family members.

Those persons entering the UK under the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme, and granted humanitarian protection, will be eligible, like UK nationals, to obtain student support and home-fee status after only three years’ residence in the UK. Persons on the programme are not precluded from applying for refugee status if they consider that they meet the criteria. Those with refugee status are uniquely allowed to access student support immediately, a privilege not afforded to UK nationals or those granted other forms of leave. There is a distinction in international law between such status and that of those in need of humanitarian protection.

Recently the Supreme Court upheld the Government’s policy of requiring most persons, including UK citizens, to be ordinarily lawfully resident in the UK for at least three years immediately prior to starting their course in order to be eligible for student support. The amendment would allow people who may subsequently be required to leave the country to access taxpayer funding for their study.

The last group of amendments includes some technical Government amendments relating to alternative student finance. Unless hon. Members show an interest in them, I will move on to my conclusion.

This Government are committed to a sustainable and fair student funding system. We are seeing more people going to university than ever before, and record numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our funding system has enabled us to lift the cap on student numbers and, with it, the cap on aspiration that it represented. I hope the Opposition can see that if their amendments were not pressed, the student funding regime would remain sustainable, working in the best interests of students and taxpayers.

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister briefly addressed new clause 8, although in anticipating it, he understated and, to some degree, misrepresented the actual position. Let me therefore explain the new clause, for which I think there is support on both sides of the House—I think there was some discomfort on the Government Benches in Committee when it was voted down.

New clause 8 would allow all refugees resettled to the UK, as well as those young people who, having made an application for asylum, are granted a form of leave other than refugee status, to access student finance and home fees. It would be of particular benefit to Syrian refugees resettled to the UK under the Government’s own policy, so it is perhaps not surprising that there is support for it on both sides of the House. Only small numbers of people would be affected, but as those of us who have dealt with such cases know, it would have a huge impact for the individuals.

Let me explain the context. Currently, individuals with refugee status can access student finance and qualify for home-fee status from the moment they are awarded their protection. That is where the Minister was economical with the truth in his comments about the new clause, because those with a slightly different status—that of humanitarian protection—are treated differently: they have to be able to show that they have been ordinarily resident for at least three years at the start of the academic year to be able to receive financial support.

The group most affected by that different definition are those Syrian refugees currently being resettled to the UK under the vulnerable persons resettlement programme, as they are granted not refugee status but humanitarian protection. The result is that a young Syrian refugee who arrives in the UK today would not qualify for student finance until the start of the academic year in 2020. The only exception is if they are resettled to Scotland, where the Scottish Government—I commend them for this—have introduced a special fee status for resettled Syrians, allowing them immediate access to student finance.

Subsection 2(a) would ensure that all resettled refugees, no matter what status they are given, and no matter where they live in the UK, could access student support immediately. Subsection 2(b) would make student finance available for those who are granted humanitarian protection after making an application for asylum. As set out in the immigration rules, humanitarian protection is granted to people who face a real risk of suffering harm if they return to their home country. That includes the risk of facing the death penalty, torture or inhumane treatment, or their lives being at risk owing to armed conflict. Now, the future of those who are granted humanitarian protection after applying for asylum is clearly in the UK. If their future is here, they should be enabled to build their lives here. They should be allowed to access university education not simply to build their lives but to contribute fully to our society.

Subsection 2(b) would also provide access to student finance and home-fee status for people who have applied for asylum and then been granted another form of immigration leave. Again, in these cases, the Government have accepted that the immediate future of these individuals is in the UK, so they should be given every opportunity to contribute and develop, yet they face significant hurdles in doing so. The reason is that, in 2012, the last Government changed the rules so potential university students in this situation could no longer access student finance. They would also have been reclassified as international students, meaning they would face higher fees.

Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court found that the Government’s rules were discriminatory. I realise the Government have not been doing very well in the courts recently, but this is a slightly earlier case—the Tigere case. As a result of the Supreme Court ruling against the Government, the Government changed the rules and introduced the new criterion of long residence. What that means is that young people who have gone through the asylum process—including children who arrived as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—and who are unlikely to meet the long residence criterion, will have to watch their school peers go off to university, leaving them behind.

[Wes Streeting]

I have a constituent in just that position. They went through school, they did well, they were ready to go to university and they had a university place secured, but they were told that they had not yet met the residency requirements. They are going to be sitting around for another year or two, waiting until they do meet the residency requirement. That is a waste of their time, a waste of their potential and a waste of everybody else’s time. That is the perverse situation we are in, isn’t it?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not only is this a waste for the individual, but we as a society are cutting off our nose to spite our face. It is a waste of potential for all of us, when we could benefit from that person’s higher education.

New clause 8 is not about creating special circumstances for refugees—the Minister falsely contrasted the position on refugees, humanitarian protection and UK students—and others who have arrived in the UK seeking asylum. Instead, it is about removing the existing barriers preventing young people who came to the UK seeking protection, and who are capable of attending university, from fulfilling their potential, so I urge him to think again.

[John Pugh]

I rise to add a brief footnote to new clause 10, which is in my name, and to say things that other people in the room possibly cannot say.

Liberal Democrats hesitate, for some reason, to talk about university fees. I have no particular embarrassment—I voted against top-up fees under Labour, and I voted against the increases under the coalition. In both cases, though, I made dire predictions about take-up, which certainly were not fulfilled, and take-up in both cases carried on. Unfortunately, I was right in my predictions about the political consequences of breaking our contract with the electorate. I believe we were tricked into that by a very clever Chancellor, and there was very little saving in the end to the Exchequer, contrary to what some of my colleagues supposed at the time.

It was a painful process, and the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who introduced this section of the debate, pointed out that it involved a certain number of 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; there has been a one-sided redefinition of the terms of the loan. In any other context, as Martin Lewis quite correctly said, that 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, very small indeed.

New clause 10 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—the hon. Gentleman mentioned this briefly—the lack of trust, which is absolutely crucial. That, surely, is the way to go.

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[Joseph Johnson]

It will be at least one person with experience of one or more of the devolved Administrations. To be absolutely explicit, the Government have tabled an amendment that places a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the desirability of having at least once such member. For the individual councils, we think it right that UKRI be free to appoint the very best people for these roles, and we expect it to appoint candidates with the highest levels of relevant skills and experience from a diverse range of backgrounds, both nationally and internationally.

On new clause 11, I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) that there must be proper monitoring of the international diversity of the research sector workforce. We already take this very seriously and collect and discuss such data, but let me reiterate the Government’s position on the importance of international researchers. As I have said, we remain fully open to scientists and researchers from across the EU, and we hugely value the contribution of EU and international staff. There has been no change to the rights and status of EU nationals in the UK or of UK citizens in the EU, as a result of the referendum. As the Prime Minister said in her letter copied to Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, only five days after she came into office:

“Our research base is enriched by the best minds from Europe and around the world – providing reassurance to these individuals and to UK researchers working in Europe will be a priority for the Government.”

[Paul Blomfield]

The Minister has articulated exactly the sentiments shared by Opposition Members—for us, too, this issue is a priority—but does he not recognise that in reality the Government are failing in that objective? Around the country, we are receiving reports of EU academics saying, “Our future isn’t here, because we haven’t had the reassurances we need.”

[Joseph Johnson]

There is no higher authority in the Government than the Prime Minister, and we have heard from her that it is absolutely our intention to provide the reassurance that EU scientists and researchers working in this country want and need. The Brexit Secretary has given similar assurances and reminded EU nationals living and working in the UK that those who have been here for five years are already entitled to indefinite leave to remain—I understand from his figures that that relates to about 80% of the group concerned—and that those who have been here for six years are entitled to apply for dual nationality. We want brilliant researchers from other European countries to continue to enrich our universities and student experience, and we have every expectation that they will be able to do so, as long as UK nationals in other EU countries receive reciprocal rights in those countries.