Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Amanda Milling

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Milling]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question. I am afraid that I will not be able to talk about future sanction designations on the Floor of the House as that would undermine their role.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

13. What steps she is taking to support flood relief efforts in Pakistan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Amanda Milling

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Milling]

Afghanistan faces one of the largest food security crises in the world. We are aware that the crisis is approaching levels where there is severe, acute malnutrition, which is why we have doubled UK aid for Afghanistan to £286 million this year. In addition, between April and November this year we have disbursed more than £55 million, including life-saving humanitarian support for emergency food, health, nutrition, shelter and water sanitation. We are providing a lot of support.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

As well as the Prime Minister’s promise to bring vulnerable Afghans to refuge in this country, other Ministers suggested that they travel to neighbouring countries as the first step. I have constituents who took those Ministers at their word, but the Afghanistan resettlement scheme is not open, as we have noted, and those who fled are told to apply for expensive visas, with prohibitive salary requirements. Will the Minister at least agree to speak to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister and urge them to fulfil their promises without delay?

Higher Education and Research Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Amanda Milling

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

[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.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Amanda Milling

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

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.