Higher Education and Research Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:

Amendment 301, in clause 69, page 41, line 36, after “have” insert “particular”.

See explanatory statement for amendment 299.

Amendment 162, in clause 77, page 46, line 5, at end insert—

“academic freedom’ has the same meaning as is given in section 43 of the Education (No.2) Act 1986.”

The 1986 Act provides a robust definition which should be referenced in the Bill.

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

I rise to speak to amendment 162. One interesting thing about the Bill is that in a number of provisions—clauses 2, 35, 66 and 69 and schedule 1—it seeks to include some protection for academic freedom. It says that

“the Secretary of State must have regard to the need to protect academic freedom, including, in particular, the freedom of English higher education providers…to determine the content of particular courses and the manner in which they are taught, supervised and assessed…to determine the criteria for the selection, appointment and dismissal of academic staff and apply those criteria in particular cases, and…to determine the criteria for the admission of students and apply those criteria in particular cases.”

That is all very well, but this set of circumstances is interesting in that it is very limited and therefore does not embrace the whole of academic activity.

The reason why I have tabled the amendment, which is actually to clause 77, is to ensure that there is a definition of what the Government mean by “academic freedom” in the Bill. It may be that the Minister thinks that that is clear enough or it has been dealt with elsewhere. I am suggesting with the amendment that academic freedom could be defined by using section 43 of the Education (No. 2 Act) 1986, because it says:

“(1) Every individual and body of persons concerned in the government of any establishment to which this section applies”—

that includes universities—

“shall take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers.

(2) The duty imposed by subsection (1) above includes…the duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the use of any premises of the establishment is not denied to any individual or body of persons on any ground connected with—

(a) the beliefs or views of that individual or of any member of that body; or

(b) the policy or objectives of that body.”

The Minister may not like that definition, but I am very open to his bringing forward other definitions. The point that I am trying to make is that the set of circumstances described in the Bill is too narrow to give sufficient reassurance to all academics and visiting lecturers that they will have some protection for academic freedom.

I appreciate that this is a difficult area, and it is becoming more and more difficult because universities have to balance protecting academic freedom with ensuring that there is no incitement to hatred on any of the grounds that are unlawful. I appreciate that it is not easy, but when we are talking about academic freedom in primary legislation, we must all be clear about what we mean by academic freedom and the totality of the circumstances to which it will be applied.

I also say to the Minister that many academics, particularly from European countries, are feeling very anxious. They are particularly concerned at the moment that their activities will be subject to a level of scrutiny that perhaps will not apply to others and that it might be grounds for asking them to leave. They are just feeling very insecure, so anything that the Minister can do to help them to feel more secure, to balance the very difficult situation that I have identified and to put something helpful in the Bill, would be very much welcomed.

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

Academic freedom is one of the fundamental strengths of our higher education system. I understand the desire of the hon. Member for Blackpool South to find the best way of protecting it, and I sympathise with the motivation behind amendments 299 and 301, which seek to enhance the protections for academic freedom already in the Bill.

The language used in the Bill is based on the protections in the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which have successfully ensured for nearly a quarter of a century that HE institutions can develop and teach entirely free from political interference. That approach has proved to be robust over time and, in our view, it is the best way of ensuring that academic freedom is protected in the future. The Bill preserves academic freedom as a broad general principle, with specific areas of protection explicitly and unequivocally set out. By contrast, defining academic freedom too tightly would risk limiting its meaning and, by extension, limiting the Bill’s protections.

The Bill imposes the first statutory duty on the Secretary of State to

“have regard to the need to protect academic freedom”

whenever he or she issues guidance, conditions of grant or directions to the office for students. It introduces a set of protections for academic freedom that apply comprehensively to the ways in which the Government can influence how the OFS operates. It refreshes and reinforces the current protections for academic freedom, ensuring that they are fit for our HE system today and are sufficiently robust to last for decades into the future. Although I completely agree with the intention behind the amendments, I do not think that they add anything practical to the Bill’s thorough and comprehensive approach to protecting academic freedom.

The hon. Member for Blackpool South raised the question of staff. The Bill supports the academic freedom of staff at HE institutions by giving the OFS the power to impose a public interest governance condition on registered providers, as we discussed when we debated clause 14. Providers subject to such a condition will have to ensure that their governing documents include the principle that academic staff have freedom within the law to question received wisdom and to put forward new ideas and controversial opinions without fear of losing their job or their privileges. As the hon. Gentleman said, that is a vital principle, which is exactly why the Government have ensured that it must be included as a component of the condition set out in clause 14.

Amendment 162 would define academic freedom differently, by referencing section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, which is a provision about freedom of speech and in particular about the obligation of certain HE institutions to

“take…steps…to ensure that freedom of speech…is secured for…students and employees…and for visiting speakers.”

Defining academic freedom in that way would introduce a lack of clarity and would not adequately capture what the Bill seeks to protect.

Our approach in the Bill is absolutely clear that academic freedom must be protected. It also sets out comprehensively the areas in which the Government must not interfere:

“the content of particular courses and the manner in which they are taught, supervised and assessed…the criteria for the selection, appointment and dismissal of…staff…the criteria for the admission of students”

and the application of those criteria in particular cases.

I remind the Committee what Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, vice-chancellor of Cambridge, stated in his evidence on this point:

“I also particularly like the implicit and explicit recognition of autonomy”.––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 22-23, Q32.]

Amendment 162—inadvertently, I am sure—would actually weaken the protection the Bill provides for academic freedom. I ask the hon. Member for Blackpool South to withdraw his amendment.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his considered and measured response to amendment 299. It was helpful of him to elaborate some of those key issues in the way he did. As I have said previously, I am mindful of the fact that these things are extremely difficult to define comprehensively on the face of a Bill, but I welcome the direction of travel in respect of the issue we have raised. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham can speak for herself, but the Minister is right to say that she has raised a separate issue. As I am satisfied with the Minister’s response to my amendments, I am content to withdraw them.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I listened to what the Minister had to say. I am not particularly allied to that specific form of words, but, as the Bill mentions academic freedom so much, there should be something in it about what it encompasses. I leave the Minister to reflect on that.

I have one further question. The clauses that refer to academic freedom mention the courses and

“the manner in which they are taught, supervised or assessed”.

If they are taught in part through a programme of visiting lecturers, does freedom of speech apply to those lectures? The point of my question was to ascertain whether the Bill should to go beyond academic freedom to include freedom of speech. If the intention was to limit that because of other legislation, which is absolutely right and fair, there should be some clarity from the Government on that.

[Joseph Johnson]

I assure the hon. Lady that, yes, the Bill would cover the circumstances she described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

I beg to move amendment 107, in clause 71, page 42, line 38, leave out “in” and insert “for”.

This amendment clarifies the language in relation to qualifying research.

The amendment is minor and technical. It ensures that the language in the clause reflects the clear intention to use application-to-acceptance data for the purpose of qualifying research as defined in subsection (4). That is consistent with our stated policy intention.

Amendment 107 agreed to.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I beg to move amendment 306, in clause 71, page 43, line 13, after “Secretary of State” insert

“providing that it demonstrates a potential public benefit.”

This amendment means that the Secretary of State can only require a body to provide research if is in the public interest to do so.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 307, in clause 71, page 43, line 14, after “may” insert

“, so far as is reasonable having regard to the frequency of requests, the availability of information from other sources, the form in which the information is held by the body and the volume of the information requested,”.

This amendment ensures that any information requests made to bodies must be reasonable in terms of the time given and the requested form/manner.

Amendment 308, in clause 71, page 43, line 16, at end insert—

“(5A) Unless otherwise specified, the body shall provide the information by way of a single annual submission to either the Secretary of State and/or an approved body.”

This amendment sets out the way in which bodies required by the Secretary of State to provide research should do so unless otherwise specified.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The amendments deal with the requirements and responsibilities that may be placed on a body providing services to one or more English higher education providers relating to applications for admission to higher education courses, as described in subsection (2). The amendments seek to ensure that safeguards are put in place so that the burdens placed on UCAS—the clause primarily affects UCAS at the moment—will not interfere with its wider responsibilities for processing student applications.

I have a couple of concerns on which I would welcome reassurance from the Minister. The first is that the requirements in the clause would put too great a burden on UCAS. Secondly, I am concerned about what the data supplied will be used for and how not only UCAS’s workload but its reputation may be impacted if for some reason it is not able to provide that data in a sufficiently timely manner.

I will address first the issue of the clause being burdensome on UCAS. If it is required by the Secretary of State to provide data to approved persons other than those who use the Administrative Data Research Network—ADRN—UCAS may have to re-engineer systems and even employ additional staff. That would clearly be financially punitive for UCAS unless it was able somehow to recover those additional costs. It is therefore important that the clause is amended, or at least that some reassurances are given to UCAS that only reasonable requests will be made of it and it will not be prevented from carrying out its other responsibilities to the best of its ability by having to deal with a large volume of complex requests for information in new and differing formats.

At this point in time, as the Minister will know given that he heard UCAS give us the evidence, UCAS does not have the capacity, resources or infrastructure to offer a service providing that information. Also, UCAS does not want the quality of the service it provides to students, which is its primary function, to be impeded by its duties to provide information.

I know that UCAS will provide an annual set of application-to-acceptance data, to quote the ADRN and the Government, and for much of the research that bodies want to carry out, the data they need will already be provided to the ADRN. So, the point UCAS makes is that the information is already there; it is there in a particular format. Provided that people accept it in that format, that should be okay; however, if people do not, there is a problem.

Amendments 307 and 308 would simply ensure that researchers use the existing means of gathering data rather than burdening UCAS. They would also ensure that when researchers need to go to UCAS, their requests are not unmanageable and that they will not put too much strain on UCAS. The Minister may say to me that Government amendment 107 deals with that particular matter, because it is qualifying research, but again I would like some reassurance.

The second concern about clause 71 is that it allows for the opening up of student data and that it will possibly take the data outside current research protocols. We need to ensure that this issue is addressed in a way that will protect students, so that UCAS can provide reassurances to them that their data are being used only for the public good and not just being given to any body that says it is undertaking research, without there being any thought for the consequences.

Mary Curnock Cook, the CEO of UCAS, referred to that issue in her oral evidence to the Committee, saying that

“the Bill gives powers to the Secretary of State to provide those data from us or organisations like us to other parties, and we are very keen that that is done in a way that offers the same protections to students, particularly over their personal data.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 16 September 2016; c.24.]

I completely agree with Mary on this issue. We should be able to guarantee to students that personally identifiable data are protected and that research can only be carried out if there is a clear public benefit.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope I have given Opposition Members sufficient assurance that this process will help us to deliver better policies to promote social mobility, with all the safeguards for students that they rightly want and expect.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I started off being a little bit concerned about this, and now I am getting quite anxious. We all want better use of data. We want the best use possible to be made of UCAS data to inform any policies on social mobility or widening access to universities and to understand what leads students to apply to one institution and not another. That is all very useful information. As the Minister said, it might also help us understand the economic benefit attached to a higher education experience. However, all the examples that he gave were easily understandable as being in the public interest, so I cannot understand why the Government will not make that more explicit on the face of the Bill. That would give a lot of reassurance to people who are very concerned about how the data might be used and for what purposes.

I do not think anybody is against more flexible use of the data or them being passed over to researchers more frequently than annually, but the point UCAS has made is that it is not resourced to do this. Its primary function is to get students admitted to university and the course they want to study. This is an add-on. If we keep adding things to the information that UCAS has to pass on, there will be a resource issue. The Government have to address that, one way or another.

The other point I would like the Minister to concentrate on is that there is already a body that covers people wanting to use these sorts of data: the Administrative Data Research Network. People have to sign up to be a member of that network and agree to protocols. I suppose my question is, why not just make it a requirement? If he does not want researchers to have to join that network, at least we would be clear about the sorts of protocols to which people would have to sign up to ensure that they use the data correctly and that there will be a clear public benefit.

We are moving to a world of greater marketisation of higher education and there is no longer any guarantee that people might request that information simply for the public benefit. In fact, it is likely that a number of bodies will want it for a whole variety of commercial reasons that might not be in the student interest at all and that might not sufficiently protect individual data and individual information. I hope the Minister will take this away and have another look to see whether sufficient safeguards are in place.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 71, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 72 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 73

Higher Education Funding Council for England

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Gordon Marsden]

The Minister will be relieved to know that I do not rise to oppose the principle that the Higher Education Funding Council for England should cease to exist, as that would blow a large hole in the Bill—I am sure he would not wish that to happen, and I would not necessarily wish it to happen, either—but I want to tease out some of the implications of that process.

I refer all members of the Committee back to the original White Paper, which was produced in May. Chapter 3 was intriguingly titled “Architecture”—whether it is classical or brutalist I leave for future generations to judge—and the chapter summary included a rather arresting phrase:

“The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Office for Fair Access (OFFA)”—

the Committee will be relieved to know that I am not going to talk about the Office for Fair Access—

“will be dissolved following creation of the OfS.”

Leaving aside the image of mad scientists and test tubes created by the dissolution, I want to raise a serious and practical point in the context of what the White Paper said at an earlier point, on page 51, about the teaching excellence framework.

What are the implications of what I can only describe as the interesting ménage à trois, which will continue for some time, between HEFCE, the QAA and the OFS—with OFFA being a peeping Tom, if we want to continue the metaphor? What will that mean in practical terms for the administration of these important processes?

This is for illustration—let us not reopen the debate about the TEF—but paragraph 20 states:

“In Year One, where the TEF does not involve a separate assessment process, the Government will publish a list of…eligible providers who have had a successful QA assessment and therefore have achieved a rating of Meets Expectations.”

Of course, that has now been changed. Paragraph 20 continues:

“From Year Two onwards, TEF will be delivered by HEFCE working in collaboration with QAA, until such time as the OfS is established. After this point, the OfS will deliver TEF.”

It is the process over those three years and what the relationship between all these various bodies will be in practical terms that concerns me most. The process would concern me in any case, whatever the broader political context—I am sorry if the Minister inwardly groans when I refer to Brexit again—but I am concerned about that two-and-a-half or three-year period. I assume, although he might wish to correct me, that it is expected that the OFS will deliver TEF from 2019. That is how it looks at the moment but, as has already been discussed—most people, whatever their views, recognise this—those two or three years will be a period of considerable turmoil for our institutions and the way they are regarded in the outside world in the context of the Brexit negotiations, which may very well mirror that period.

I am deeply concerned, as are others—this has been mentioned to me by numerous vice-chancellors and other people who are concerned—that if we do not have a bit more clarity about how the relationship between HEFCE and the OFS is going to work in the transition period and where the QAA stands in all of this, that will not be good for the reputation of our universities internationally or for establishing the OFS on a clear footing. I appreciate that the Minister does not want to give a long exegesis on this today, but would be helpful if he gave at least some indication of how he sees those bodies interacting in that period and, in particular, what the implications are for the staffing and the resources of those different organisations, given the conversations and discussions we had earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[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”—