Higher Education Students: Statutory Duty of Care

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be called first and to contribute under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I congratulate the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on his contribution in opening the debate. Like him, I thank everyone who signed the petition, which ensured that we had this discussion today. I particularly thank the bereaved parents who have driven the campaign. I cannot imagine anything worse than their loss—sending a child off to university, full of expectations and hope, as Lee Fryatt described at the pre-debate evidence session, and then finding that that journey and excitement ends in the tragedy of suicide.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group for students, which was set up to provide a voice in this place for those studying in further and higher education, and I have followed the issue very carefully. I was pleased to join the recent LEARN Network event in Parliament and listen to all the powerful personal testimonies, particularly those from parents. I was also pleased to be invited to join the Petitions Committee’s pre-debate evidence session, and I have read the transcript of the part of the session that I missed. All that I have learned convinces me that today’s debate is necessary.

The number of suicides in this country is mercifully low, and it is much lower among students—across all age groups—than among the population as a whole, but even one suicide is clearly one too many. As Ged Flynn from PAPYRUS emphasised at the pre-debate session, suicide is very much a preventable death. That should focus us acutely. Everything must be done to save lives, and the action that we take makes the crucial difference. We should be asking what more our universities can do, and indeed what more the Government can do, recognising that we face a mental health crisis, particularly among young people.

At this stage, we need to recognise that not all of the 2.8 million students in this country fit the conventional model of young people going away from home to university. A quarter of them are commuter students travelling from home. Half a million are over 30, and half a million are part time. Many are postgraduates, international students and so on. However, the focus of much of this discussion has been on that younger cohort, and we need to recognise that last year, 25% of 17 to 19-year-olds in England were experiencing poor mental health. That figure is growing as a result of many factors, and it is up significantly from 10% six years ago.

One thing that shocked me on becoming an MP 13 years ago, was that when I went into schools, as I do every year, to talk to young people about what they think my priorities should be as their Member of Parliament, I was told that access to mental health support was their top issue. That has been repeated almost every year. Those young people emphasise the inadequacy of the support available to them. There is too little in schools, and where schools are acting to provide support, money is diverted from teaching budgets. It takes too long to get a first appointment with child and adolescent mental health services after referral, and even when they get into CAMHS, there is too little treatment because of the way the sessions are capped. It is therefore probably no surprise that so many students are entering university with mental health problems. UCAS estimates that over 70,000 students enter higher education every year with a mental health condition, but around half of them told UCAS in a survey that they had not shared that information prior to entry.

Universities have responded. I think they have been learning, but not consistently and perhaps not quickly enough. In 2017, the mentally healthy universities framework was launched. That formed the basis of the university mental health charter created by Student Minds, with whom the all-party parliamentary group has worked. The charter framework rightly provides an approach of improving the support available to students and addressing the determinants of student wellbeing, including aspects of the academic process that might have an impact on wellbeing, such as assessment, fitness to study and dismissal. The problem is that not every university has signed up, and clearly more should be done to ensure that they do.

The responsibility does not just fall on universities. In the pre-debate evidence session, National Union of Students vice-president Chloe Field said that

“universities have become almost the only port of call for students if they are suffering from mental health, because of the failures of the NHS and the long waiting lists that the NHS has. Students struggle to get through to that NHS service. There is a huge number of students who try to access that support.”

She also pointed out the many factors that were exacerbating poor mental health, including academic and financial pressures. Because of the financial pressures, people face difficulties in juggling so many jobs just to see themselves through university, as well as meeting their academic commitments.

I highlight all of that not to diminish the responsibility of universities, but to illustrate—as we were told several times in the pre-debate session—that there is no silver bullet. What more could universities do? Mark Shanahan made a really useful contribution. His son took his life in Sheffield, in one of the two universities that I am pleased to represent. He drew a comparison between the teaching excellence framework and the research excellence framework, which provide a disciplined approach of expectations on universities, and he asked why we do not have a student support excellence framework. Professor Steve West, who gave evidence on behalf of Universities UK, took up that point, acknowledging that there was not sufficient and consistent best practice, but we should not talk about this as best practice; we should be talking about it as basic practice across universities.

I am not convinced that a duty of care will do the job that those advocating it want, and it may indeed have unintended consequences, but there need to be clear expectations—not encouragement, not a willingness to do well, but clear expectations—on universities to up their game consistently across the sector. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will set out how he thinks that might be delivered; I am conscious that he has already done that to a significant degree in the letter he circulated to us today. Clearly, it should not be a one-size-fits-all solution, but there should be consistent expectations.

I also hope that in winding up, the Minister will recognise—even if it is not his responsibility—the other factors contributing to the mental health crisis. Will he share with us what he will do with colleagues across Government, particularly Health Ministers and, in this context, probably the Chancellor, to make available the sort of support working alongside universities that is really necessary to tackle this crisis? As I said, I do not think that there is a one-size-fits-all solution, given the diversity of our student population, but there must be a real commitment from Government, from the sector and from all of us in this place to reducing student suicide.