Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Roger Mullin

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

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

That seems a bit convoluted.

A number of universities are still raising issues. We have just heard from the University of Cambridge, which says that

“the Bill itself does not contain any specific duty on the OfS to consult with UKRI towards the award of research DAPs. We believe that this should be specifically provided for in the Bill.”

I agree. I think that we would all like the Minister to include a specific requirement for the OFS to consult the UKRI and other bodies before granting degree-awarding powers. That, we think, would be a major step towards ensuring that decisions are effective and appropriate.

Amendment 59 suggests that one way of ensuring that the OFS and UKRI work together would be to establish a joint committee consisting of representatives of both organisations and requiring them to produce an annual report on the health of the higher education sector. They would have to report on, for instance, post-graduate training, research funding, shared facilities, skills development, and the strength of the sector. The amendment is intended to obtain—even at this late stage—a bit more information from the Minister about how he envisages the two organisations working together, and, in particular, how he will ensure that there is holistic oversight. That issue arose again and again in Committee. There was widespread concern, expressed in our amendments, that the split into two organisations would lose some of what HEFCE had provided for the sector. This amendment suggests just one way in which the two could be made to work together more effectively; there are others.

The Minister has provided us—rather late in the day—with framework documents that help to establish how the Government envisage collaboration between the organisations, and I thank him for that. I found it interesting reading. I hope that the Minister appreciates that I read the document immediately. It sets out a number of things that the OFS and UKRI may do. It says, for example, that the OFS and UKRI may co-operate with one another in exercising any of their functions and that the OFS may provide information to the UKRI. I just reiterate the point—why not just say “must” or “shall” where appropriate, and then we are all absolutely clear that those two organisations have to work together in a particular way?

I want to emphasise one thing about the amendment. At the end of it, it says that the UKRI and the OFS should have to publish a report on

“measures taken to act in the public interest.”

I am not going to go through again all the things we would expect to see from two organisations working in the public interest, but it would be helpful to have some understanding from the Minister about how the UKRI and the OFS are going to comment and report on the public interest as expressed by institutions and the work that they are carrying out.

On amendment (a) to Government amendment 17, the Minister is right that clause 104 says that the social sciences should be covered by the term “sciences” and arts by the term “humanities”. I tabled amendment (a) so that I could ask why, as only a few additional words would have to be added, “social sciences” cannot be added to the provision. We will all remember that arts is covered by humanities and social sciences by sciences because we are considering the Bill, but once the list is out there will be a danger of both the arts and social sciences falling out of everyone’s memory. I make a plea to the Minister: may we have the words “arts” and “social sciences” added to the provision?

[Roger Mullin]

I hope not to detain the House for terribly long, but I would like to make several points. The Minister said in relation to our amendment 55, “The Secretary of State would not agree to the varying of money”. That strikes me as the nub of the problem. Although the Minister is someone who I know to be honourable, absolutely committed to the university sector and assiduous in his work—he has listened to us, hence the modest changes he has made, which are welcome—he will not be there forever and in future we may get someone with much less stable characteristics, like his brother, for example. Can you imagine the havoc that could be wreaked if his brother were to replace him? Therefore, we need to ensure that some of the requirements are enshrined in statute.

When we look at the needs of the different Administrations, we see that there is a great difference between the needs of the economies in Wales, in Northern Ireland and in Scotland and the needs in England, particularly the south of England. I have had the great pleasure of working in Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University at different times, as well as in many Scottish universities and a few in England. The differences can be profound.

Take one of the universities in Scotland—the University of the Highlands and Islands, a multi-campus university that has grown out of the college sector and has research interests that are not shared by any other university in the UK. The same is true of Ulster University and, I am sure, although it is many years since I was there, Bangor University. There is a great variation is research interest. More than that, there is a profound difference economically, to which they have to respond. Their interests diverge in many ways. We only need to look at the debate about exiting the EU in Scotland, where 62% voted to stay. We and others are working hard to have as close a relationship as possible with the EU and all that that would bring. Look at the debate taking place in other parts of the UK, where precisely the opposite view is being taken. That will have profound economic consequences that need to be reflected, and they will not be unless there is proper consultation with the devolved bodies.

The Minister talked about bringing together, which I would welcome, research, innovation, the academic community and the business community and all that that involves. In the vast majority of cases, I would agree with him, but let me put in a word of caution. Some years ago, when I was chair of the joint departmental research ethics committee at the University of Stirling, we were faced with a situation where research programmes into smoking were being challenged by business, which was trying to get access through legal means to the original data that the academics had used, so that the tobacco companies could twist them for their own interests. Therefore, it is not always the case that there is a coincidence between academic and business interests. That is another reason why there needs to be much greater co-operation. The devolved Government in Scotland would have been much more sensitive to that matter than any other part of the UK.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Roger Mullin

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

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q I want to return to the student issue. The sell of this Bill, and I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, is that opening up the sector will provide more diversity and more choice for students and that the TEF will deliver more information to students to help them make up their mind about where to go, which will add some transparency on the quality of teaching and provide a mechanism to relate it to fees. We know what the possible positives are, but the risks to students from the Bill are less clear. Have any of you thought through what some of the risks could be?

Alison Goddard: I have thought through some of those risks, and I am afraid that to my eye they extend far wider than risks to students. There are also risks to the future economic success and the cultural, scientific and diplomatic strengths of this nation. What we have here in the UK is a world-class system of higher education and research, which has taken hundreds of years to emerge—its roots lie before the formation of the modern state. Fundamental to that success is institutional autonomy. At the moment, universities are answerable to Parliament. Creating the office for students and enabling it essentially to override existing royal charters and previous Acts of Parliament will allow what is essentially a Government body to remove from universities the right to call themselves universities or to award degrees; it will make those Government functions.

If I can draw a parallel, the BBC is also protected by a royal charter at the moment. The Bill appears to enable removal of the protections of the royal charter; if that applied to the BBC, it would essentially make the BBC a body within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I really worry that, if the Bill is passed unamended, it will allow future Administrations to interfere with institutions and universities to the extent of damaging the future prosperity of the whole nation.

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

Q I am going to dare to ask a question similar to one that was asked of an earlier panel and that led to some hilarity. I have deep concern about the applied managerialist approach in the Bill. If you look at the institutional architecture and the metrics that are being used, I do not see how they are going to contribute very much to true quality enhancement, either for students or for research. Would you like to comment on that?

Sally Hunt: I will probably be picking up on some of the points Dr Blackman-Woods was asking about as well. If we are looking at a risk matrix, which is the same point phrased in a different way—“What does this actually do to enhance the sector or our ability to contribute to our nation’s economy or to a world-class reputation within higher education?”—there are real risks. If you start from where the student is being given information and the university is being given the funding stream, those become very narrowed by the Bill. They become narrowed for the student because the questions they are being schooled to ask—“What is your employability? What is the drop-out rate?”—are very narrow and do not necessarily give the right indications. To me, those things do not tell you the quality of the course; they tell you that there might be differences in your ability to go through three years, depending on your class, your type of university and the student intake, but that is not the same as saying whether the course is good or bad at providing a good foundation. They are too narrow and too opaque. They do not ask us to encourage the student to say, “What is the level of the teacher who will be giving me the education and the teaching I have signed up for?”

I think someone made the same point earlier: as the student, you are not being told at any point how many of the people who will be teaching you are on casual contracts, how many can guarantee they will be there in a year’s time, or how many will be able to say, “I have been paid enough that I can do proper preparation, teaching, feedback and all the stuff I ought to be doing to enable you to be confident of getting what you signed up for.” None of that is in the Bill as it stands.

There are some very practical points at issue. Alison’s point is really important. I think you should all be very concerned about the issues of governance and the lack of oversight given to Parliament by the Bill, because that is going to strip away the ability for us to guarantee and protect academic freedom, which is fundamental to student choice and student education and is important for our ability to develop critical thinking and difficult and challenging research areas. That is not there in the Bill. As it stands, the office for students is very much Government-driven; it does not have staff representation or enough student representation on it. All of these points need to be teased out. As I said at the beginning, that is set against a really stressful time for universities. They do not have the answers about student funding or about the stability of their staff, and they have big questions about their ability to deliver against the current environment, let alone if this is put in place. There are real problems alongside opportunities. We should all say that these opportunities are positive. We should all say that we are looking to increase quality, increase choice and increase knowledge, but I am not sure that the Bill is delivering at this point. I hope that that covers both the points.

Professor Les Ebdon: I am not sure that I entirely recognise the picture that has been painted. For a start, you can make a very strong case that increased transparency is not inimical to freedom. I welcome the requirements for increased transparency of data. You might argue with the particular data points specified in the legislation, but they are just indicative of the points that could be asked for. I have no problem with that transparency of data.

Of course, there is clear recognition within the Bill of the importance of academic freedom. The way that we approach access agreements at the moment is a good indication of how you can work with the grain, using the context of institutions. This could involve getting the institutions themselves to set their own challenging targets and negotiating with them to do this, and also giving them support, particularly through enhanced research and evaluation of what is happening. This would go with the grain of the institutions and build on the great strengths of our universities in terms of researchers and their interest in finding out what works to achieve the kind of success that we have. I do not see a tremendous threat to academic freedom in anything related to access and participation which, clearly, are the parts of the legislation that I have studied in detail.