Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

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

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

made a declaration of interest as a member of the advisory panel for the University Partnerships Programme Foundation.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

asked whether there had been any discussions about how the change in the machinery of government would affect the Bill, given that it would be split between two Departments.

[Joseph Johnson]

stated that the machinery of Government changes had gone through in July and that the lines of ownership were clear.

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[The Chair]

Q Does any member of the panel have a view that is different from that?

Witnesses indicated dissent.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q I think the UK leads in the league table of Nobel prize winners, so we need to protect that.

On the split between education and research, do you think there is enough protection for, for example, postgraduates who do some of both? What are your views on the split between the two departments?

Paul Kirkham: I think some consideration should be given to how those two arms of the regulatory system will work together.

Pam Tatlow: We are at risk of forgetting that HEFCE has funded postgraduate students and undertakes the research excellence framework exercise. There are implications for the devolved Administrations as well. There has to be on the face of the Bill a very clear idea of joint working, because some things are not referred to. The section on UKRI very much concentrates on what are currently the research councils. We have to do better on what we think those responsibilities are.

One final thing is that I have no idea why students should not be on the board of UKRI as well. I do not agree with the idea that students have no interest in it. We want not only the great and good scientists there, but people who deliver innovation and who are very engaged.

Gordon McKenzie: I agree with that. There is an opportunity to make it clearer on the face of the Bill that both the office for students and UKRI have a joint responsibility for the sector as a whole.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q A quick question about clause 2, which is on general duties. Subsection (1)(c) refers to

“the need to promote value for money”.

Do you know what that means and do you think it would help to include a public interest amendment there?

Professor Simon Gaskell: That covers a lot of things. I think universities absolutely do know the value for money. Certainly my finance and investment committee is very keen on value for money and we work on that all the time. In a sense, this addresses a general point—the fiction that the universities do not work in a competitive environment. The current environment is highly competitive. Talk to my colleagues who worked like Trojans a couple of weeks ago on confirmation and clearing—hugely competitive. All this adds up to a very significant current demand for value for money. So, yes, universities do understand what that means.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Q This is about seeing if we can have new providers in the sector. Mr Proudfoot, what is your assessment of the level of demand for new providers?

Alex Proudfoot: The level of demand is clearly significant because already between 250,000 and 300,000 students are currently studying with alternative providers. I do not foresee a deluge of new providers opening up the day after the Bill passes. At the moment we have 700 institutions in the UK which are not considered part of the mainstream framework. We need to be able to bring them into the mainstream framework and provide effective regulation for the benefit of students and taxpayers and provide information that students can use to make choices between the providers.

I think there will be some new providers interested in coming into the sector and some interesting innovations. Already we have seen in the past few years, for example, large employers starting their own colleges and higher education programmes, simply because they were not finding the graduates they needed to take the jobs they had available. That should be encouraged and the opening of overseas higher education institutions could, of course, be a positive effect.

Professor Joy Carter: Current demand requires an environment where bold, innovative, new higher education flourishes. The Bill allows us to do that, but we have to maintain the reputation of UK higher education and the autonomy which leads to that reputation.

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[The Chair]

Order. I apologise, Sir Alan, but we have very limited time and a number of Members wish to ask questions. Does any other member of the panel wish to respond to Amanda Milling’s points?

Professor Quintin McKellar: I support Sir Alan in what he said, and would say essentially the same things, with one exception—perhaps not an exception, but I emphasise that the Bill looks at too granular a level, in the sense of looking at courses within universities. We develop our own courses according to their popularity and according to the expertise within our institutions. Having the autonomy to develop those courses has helped our institutions become great, if I am allowed to say that, so I think removing it at that level would be a mistake.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: If you remove that ability, you remove the ability of institutions to innovate and to remain at the cutting edge. It is therefore important to retain that right at the autonomous institutional level; it is also right to scrutinise it to make sure that it is appropriately continued. The powers seem a little over the top at times in relation to what is going on, because most institutions could not continue courses that were not financially viable.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q To touch on the split between research and education—you have made your views clear—is there anything that would help the collaboration between the two parts? Obviously, there is still a big gap about where postgraduates fit between the two. We would like people, rather than having lots of discussions and meetings, to just get on and do their work. This is not a leading question, but is it your view—this is to all of you—that it would be better if it sits in one Department?

Sir Alan Langlands: I think it may well be better if it sits in one Department. There have been instances in the past where the educational activity in higher education has been in one place, and science and research has been in another place, but not since 1992 have the questions of funding for teaching and quality-related funding for research been separated. That would be a big thing, and something that we have to be careful of. The Government are very clear about wanting to protect dual support, and that is welcome. We are dealing not just with quality-related funding for research. 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.

[The Chair]

Does any other member of the panel wish to comment on that?

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: May I just comment—

[The Chair]

Professor McKellar first.

Professor Quintin McKellar: Can I emphasise that while we have, to some extent, focused on the contribution that research makes to postgraduate teaching, it also makes a huge contribution to undergraduate teaching? We must not forget that. Ensuring that there is an appropriate relationship between UKRI and the office for students is going to be critically important. I cannot answer your question about whether it is important at a departmental level, but certainly at the level of the organisations it is going to be absolutely critical. We have suggested that there be commonality in membership between the two.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: That is the point that I was going to make. If the two Secretaries of State can work together, this can be made to work, but it requires an awful lot of collaborative work between those two versions. Continually scrutinising it is going to be an important issue for Select Committees and other bodies.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q Briefly, on science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, there is a great opportunity to put things into this Bill to protect certain subjects. You do not operate on a basis on which you can make a profit on things like that, because all those subjects operate at a deficit. There are laboratory issues that you have to work with, and medicine is a long degree. What can we do that is not already in the Bill to protect those subjects? To the best of your knowledge, how can we protect the strategically important vulnerable subjects—for example, chemistry and physics?

Sir Alan Langlands: We probably should not get into the funding argument, but there is, I think, a funding shortfall in the top-up for STEM subjects, and that should be registered very clearly. I think people are aware of that. You struck an important point in focusing on the health of subjects. That is where the research community and those who oversee it and the education community need to come together. If you want to worry about the health of physics and chemistry, or other subjects, such as foreign languages, in the UK higher education sector, you need to do so from an educational and a research perspective. The two things have to work hand in hand. That is why the office for students and UKRI have to work together. At the moment, HEFCE is able to fulfil that role, but often it does so with reference to the wider research community and the charitable community.

[The Chair]

Order. I must remind the Committee that five Members have indicated that they wish to ask questions and we have 16 minutes left before I have to call order, so we need brief questions and answers.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Second sitting)

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

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

[Mr Marsden]

Q Are you concerned that the specific and technical nature of the clauses that have been put in regarding where you sit in relation to the OFS and the Secretary of State do not give that clarity at the moment?

Professor Les Ebdon: I am concerned that there should be clarity in those clauses to make it clear that the responsibility, particularly for deciding on an access plan and approving it, should rest with the director for fair access and participation. There should be absolute clarity about the responsibility. The expression used in the Bill at the moment is “report”; I understand from lawyers that a report is a narrative exercise and the report could describe a good or a bad situation. I want to see words like “responsibility” and “accountable for” in there.

When it comes to the delegation of authority, as far as access and participation are concerned, that should be exclusively delegated to the director for access and participation, so that there is clarity about that particular role—and indeed, a greater power there—and the progress that we have made in recent years through OFFA can be sustained and, indeed, we can make further and faster progress.

Alison Goddard: I come to this as an observer, rather than a player in the higher education game. I applaud the aim of the Bill in putting students at the heart of the system; however, I have concerns that it will fail to do so. I have concerns especially about the funding of the office for students. It strikes me as being much more of an office for higher education. At the moment, it is funded almost entirely by universities. There may be some role for Government funding. If the office for students is to regulate properly the university system, it cannot be funded by those universities themselves.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Q I want to pick up on some points that you have made. I have not got the feel of a definitive answer from any of you as to whether the Bill puts students at its heart. Professor Ebdon, you have been doing the job around fair access. My view is that students think they are paying £27,000 net for higher education, and yet they are receiving bills for £45,000, which comes as a great shock to them. Also, I cannot see anything about lifelong learning here—the value of education throughout one’s life. Could you be a bit more definitive about whether you think this is a good, necessary Bill and whether it fulfils the function of putting students at the heart of it?

Professor Les Ebdon: The Bill is not fundamentally about funding the system and that is not my responsibility. Parliament decides on the level of fees and I believe you may soon have a vote on that matter. I am concerned that we continue to make progress in fair access so that people from all parts of the country, all groups, can get to university.

We have seen a 65% increase in the numbers of students from the most disadvantaged communities in our universities since 2006, in the first 10 years of access agreements. The entry rate has gone up by some 65% for the most disadvantaged 20%. I want to see us building on that and increasing that dimension and I think that we can do that. We have found in access agreements a way of doing that. Incidentally, the application rate is up by 76%. If we could turn that increase in application rate into an increase in acceptances, we would be doing even better.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q I sometimes get responses like this from the Minister, who says lots of people are doing it, but if you drill down into the figures, that is not quite what I was asking you. I was asking, is the Bill necessary, does it put students at its heart, and does it address the issue of lifelong learning? After all, that is what education is about. We do not just do it at university, we go on—for example, the diversity, the part-time learning, that kind of thing. I do not want to deal with Brexit that much, but there is a change. We also have a change in the machinery of government. Are all those issues really addressed in the Bill?

Alison Goddard: My answer to that question is no, but that is at least in part because it is a very difficult thing to do. When you try to put students at the heart of the system, your first question is, what do we mean by students? We heard from the previous panel how parents very much value the way in which children grow up at university. The person who arrives is not the person who leaves at the end. You have the elements of lifelong learning.

I would say the Bill does not take on lifelong learning and it really cannot put students right at the heart of the system, not least because students are evolving the whole time, they are a diverse bunch of people and the institutions at the heart of this are the universities, which are ancient institutions that have a very strong track record of providing high-quality, world-class higher education and research. So, at present, the university is very much in the driving seat.

Sally Hunt: My answer is no, I do not think the Bill is going to address the points you have made, Valerie. Although you said that you do not want to explore in depth the issues surrounding Brexit, the changes in where higher education and further education in particular sit within the government function mean you really do have to think about that because the timelines that we are talking about with the Bill are exact when you look at the timelines that you are talking about with the implementation of the Brexit vote. That is just reality. The reality is also that, as a result of that, we have a system that, while having to perform at a very high level and maintain the high quality that we expect of it through the work it does, is going to be put under severe pressure. So I think there is an issue there. I put that in the UCU submission and I would ask you to reflect on that.

Does the Bill put students at the heart of it? Every single measure I have ever heard from any Government has always said that students are at the heart of it. That, again, is fact. It is also rather sad that, if we are talking about this issue, we do not have the National Union of Students giving evidence to you in some way, shape or form because I think it has a view that reflects the student body. The NUS is not here. I am, and I represent the people who teach students and undertake research with them. What I think this does is introduce a further justification for higher fees. What I think this does is introduce a rationale for extending the system and access to public funds for profit. What I think this does is introduce a further complication to quality through TEF, which is not necessarily going to hit the nail. Since those seem to be the key pointers in the Bill, I do not see that it actually addresses what it should be doing, which is, what is the great experience that every student should have at university? That is about the teacher and the students in the lecture hall, in the seminar or in the one-to-one interaction that they should have. That is something that does not need this Bill, but it does need a lot of discussion and a lot of thought about what actually drives that and makes it better.

[Alex Chalk]

Q May I ask about social mobility? Professor Ebdon, you rightly said that since 2006 there had been a 65% increase. This Bill contains a number of provisions requiring providers to publish more information about all sorts of metrics. Do you think it provides the architecture for us to move to the next phase of improving social mobility between now and the end of this decade?

Professor Les Ebdon: With the amendments that you should make to ensure that you properly empower the director of access and participation, I think the Bill can make a contribution. Of course it will be backed by a number of regulations, which I hope will reflect a recognition that postgraduate education represents almost a double glazed glass ceiling these days. We have made good progress on access at undergraduate level, but we need to make progress at postgraduate level. How can we do that? Perhaps there is an opportunity in this legislation to make progress on postgraduate education. If we really want this concept of social mobility to permeate the OFS, we should make it one of the criteria for appointment of the board. Strangely it has dropped out, but I think it should be one of the criteria so that people focus on it. It would also help to have an annual report to Parliament on progress, as we do at the moment.

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[The Chair]

The wind-ups are starting in the main Chamber and I do not want to keep our witnesses waiting through a Division, so perhaps we will carry on until the Division and perhaps we can have some quick questions and answers.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q Dr Kingman, you are obviously quite interested in the science side of things and preserving that. I want to focus on the research element of UKRI and the teaching element given that postgraduates have to do the two. Do you think it will work having it separated like that?

Dr John Kingman: I am very confident about this. In my role so far I have obviously had a great deal to do with colleagues in HEFCE because there are very important links, as you say. All that dialogue has been incredibly constructive and helpful. I think it is quite clear that this whole structure could not be made to work unless these two bodies work hand in glove. I have no doubt whatever about our ability to do that.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q You will know the understanding and definition of dual funding. That definition has slightly changed in the Bill in clause 95, where it is called balanced funding. Do you understand that to mean exactly the same thing as dual funding and preserving dual funding?

Dr John Kingman: Yes, and for what it is worth I have always been a very strong supporter of a dual support system.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q Why do you think there has been a change in wording?

Dr John Kingman: I am afraid I do not think that I am qualified to answer that. It is probably a legal question. [Laughter.]

[Valerie Vaz]

It is not actually funny, because it is not a legal question. This person will be the head of an institution that is going to try to understand what that is, so it is not funny. It is about money going to certain areas of science research. With the greatest respect, you should understand the difference.

Dr John Kingman: What I believe very strongly and what—

[Valerie Vaz]

You were involved in the White Paper, weren’t you? Were you involved in the White Paper?

[The Chair]

Order. This is not a personal conversation, so let’s have an answer for the room.

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[Valerie Vaz]

He is a witness and I am entitled to ask the witness a question.

[The Chair]

Would you like to answer the question, then?

Dr John Kingman: What I believe very strongly is that it is a huge strength of the UK support system for science that we have both project-specific support within research and institution-specific support. If that were to change, I think it would be a huge step backwards. I intend to preserve it, but even if I did not intend to preserve it, I think the Bill ensures that I have to preserve it.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q I understand your commitment absolutely and appreciate that. My question was why was there a difference in the terminology and do you understand the difference to be the same? Are you convinced that the change of words is going to protect dual funding?

Dr John Kingman: I am absolutely confident of that and that is how I understand it.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q One last question. I know you are a Treasury man. If I was a researcher I would be a bit terrified of this. You hope that the aim is making sure that we invest every pound wisely. Do you believe that is currently not taking place in UK research?

Dr John Kingman: I go back to Paul Nurse’s report, which I think sets the agenda for the organisation I have been asked to lead. It does not describe a broken system, but it does describe a system where certain things are lacking. One is strategic prioritisation between disciplines across the system, particularly when it comes to interdisciplinary work, which is becoming ever more important; another is a perspective across the system and an ability to speak for the system. I think the organisation I have been asked to set up is one that needs to be very clearly focused on those specific roles and not, as it were, attempt to throw up in the air the institutional arrangements underneath it which broadly speaking, I think, do an excellent job.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q Do you think the measures in the Bill are sufficient to protect the excellence of research in the UK and enhance it, if that is possible, post-Brexit?

Professor Jonathan Seckl: The concern I have is about the potential for emasculation of the research councils which have served us so well. It has been well aired here I am sure, and it is well aired in the press that the UK is No. 1 pound for pound in delivery of research excellence on the globe. We do this really well. The academic community—the Royal Society of Edinburgh has to reflect that—has concerns about this. There is some reassurance, but it will be interesting to see how it works out.

The research councils are highly trusted by their constituents and it would be terrible to see their ability to drive forward research in their communities being lost. I fully endorse the inter-disciplinary argument—we have enormous opportunities to become more inter-disciplinary, but we must not do that at the expense of losing our existing world-class disciplinary expertise.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Third sitting)

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

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

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q On that point, do you think the teaching excellence framework will raise teaching standards, or will it simply lead to a very complicated fee system in which we will get different levels of fees across courses and institutions over time and they will change constantly?

Douglas Blackstock: I think the teaching excellence framework has real potential to raise teaching standards in UK HE.

Sorana Vieru: I do not think it is a secret that we do not think the metrics in the teaching excellence framework are robust enough. We welcome a focus on teaching quality and a way to improve that, but given the way the teaching excellence framework has been proposed, it is not likely to achieve that, due to the metrics not actually matching teaching excellence.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Q Is there sufficient clarity in the Bill on where postgraduates sit, or returning students, or students who are perhaps—as my colleague mentioned—slightly older and do not fit the profile of a normal young student?

Douglas Blackstock: In the current arrangements—it is certainly covered in the UK quality code and QA reviews—postgraduate research students and postgraduate taught students are part of that. We recently published a characteristics statement of what a doctoral degree looks like. We are working on a similar statement of what a degree apprenticeship looks like. I think that is captured in there, and we, with the office for students, should continue to have responsibility for ensuring that all students get a good quality education.

[Valerie Vaz]

Q Can you say specifically where in the Bill it is captured?

Douglas Blackstock: I would need to go back to it. I can come back and follow up on that.

Sorana Vieru: I have already mentioned the issue with postgraduate research responsibilities falling through the cracks. With UKRI still funding research degrees, it will obviously have an interest in ensuring the quality of provision for those degrees, with the office for students overseeing student experience as a whole. That muddies the waters a little bit. On the point of lifelong learning, there is something to be said about the student loan system currently being quite inflexible and working on an annual basis. If we are talking about mature students, we need to look at very flexible and part-time provision and a different kind of loan system that is not annually based and works on different—

[The Chair]

To ask the final question, I call Paul Blomfield.

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[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?

[The Chair]

Forty seconds, Valerie.

[Valerie Vaz]

I had to get that on the record. Minister, you have said you have been working on this for 14 months. Every single person who presented the Bill has now changed—

Joseph Johnson: Apart from me.

[Valerie Vaz]

Apart from you—you are the only one who is left. Everybody else has changed. Given that we now have two Secretaries of State and machinery of government changes, that we had an important vote on 23 June, and that, as you have heard, there are 150 amendments, is this not a good time to pause the Bill?

Joseph Johnson: Ms Vaz, you are pretty much alone in wanting that. The sector bodies are not calling for this Bill to be paused—

Higher Education and Research Bill (Fourth sitting)

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. To curry favour from the start, I should say that Members may, if they so wish, take off their jackets. I remind Members that mobile phones should be switched to silent or turned off.

As a matter of form, I also remind Members that my fellow Chair Sir Edward Leigh and I do not intend to call starred amendments. The required notice for Public Bill Committee amendments is three days, which in effect means that amendments should be tabled by the rise of the House on Monday for consideration on Thursday, and by the rise of the House on Thursday for consideration on the following Tuesday. The Clerks will circulate a note shortly on the arrangements that will apply during the forthcoming recess.

The selection list for today’s amendments is available in the room and on the website. It shows the selection of amendments that I have made, and their groupings. Today, I intend to call first the Member who has put his or her name to the leading amendment in the group. Other Members are then free to catch my eye accordingly. Members may speak more than once in a single debate, should they so wish.

At the end of the debate, I shall again call the Member who moved the leading amendment in the group. Before any such Members sit down, they will need to indicate to me whether they intend to withdraw the amendment or to press it to a decision by the Committee. Any Member who wishes to press any other amendment or new clause in a group to a vote needs to let me know, because some amendments are not decided on in the order of their consideration in Committee, but are taken at a later date, as are new clauses that have been grouped. Let me know at that stage if any amendments in the group are to be taken further, and they will be dealt with at the appropriate point in the Bill or at the end. Decisions on new clauses, as I have said, will be taken at the end of the Bill, so after consideration of clause 113.

I shall use my discretion to determine whether we are to have clause stand part debates following the initial debates on amendments.

Clause 1

The Office for Students

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 119, in clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out “Office for Students” and insert “Office for Higher Education”.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 120, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “OfS” and insert “OfHE”.

Amendment 121, in clause 1, page 1, line 7, leave out “OfS” and insert “OfHE”.

[Valerie Vaz]

Thank you, Mr Hanson. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. My amendment is intended to be helpful; obviously, if Members do not like what I say, they can just trash me in the press. “Office for Students” is a misnomer. First, this body is not about being an office for students; as various clauses make clear, the body is about registration and regulation—a registration procedure—and not about students. It is certainly not about having students as part of the office for students.

Secondly, from the written and oral evidence given to the Committee, the situation of postgraduate students has clearly not been acknowledged or mentioned in setting up this body, and, with the new changes in the Government, we now have two responsible Departments. Postgraduates do a fantastic job of not only research, but teaching, so they are split between the two. There is a gap there, which has been acknowledged. Postgraduate students have to be somewhere in the Bill.

Furthermore, there is nothing about subject-specific support—the strategic and vulnerable subjects, which require a higher level of funding. That is why I say that this body is not about students. There is nothing about skills, the skills deficit or protecting the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths. I liken the office for students to the Care Quality Commission. This is like calling the CQC the “office for patients” when its responsibility is not actually about that, but about regulating healthcare providers.

The office for students appears to set up regulation and registration processes. We can see in the Bill a power to impose monetary penalties and a power for the suspension of registration. Higher education providers will have to pay for the benefit of being part of the register. If we continue to look through the Bill, we see clauses titled “De-registration by the OfS” and “De-registration by the OfS: procedure”. Higher education providers are going to be spending all their time on bureaucracy, and all that money will be taken away from front-line services—away from the students themselves. That is why I say, again, that it is not about students.

According to clause 2(2), the Secretary of State has to give guidance. Again, there is no clarity. We need to change that, because we now have two Secretaries of State. If the OFS was for students it would be about fees protection, because students who were having to face bills of £27,000 are now being provided with invoices for £45,000. It would also be about students’ wellbeing, the skills shortage, retraining, returners, and all those people who do not classify themselves as students as we imagine them to be. Our time as a student is actually a very short part of our lives. There are people who do not fit the student mould, yet who will be students at some stage during their lifetime.

I want to pick up on the Minister’s remarks earlier about my being the only one who wants to pause the Bill. I do so because I am a lawyer, and was a Government lawyer. It is important to have clarity on the face of the Bill. Currently, that is not the case. The Minister helpfully told us that he has been living with the Bill for 14 months. I sympathise with him on that, but there have been a lot of changes, not least the new grammar school policy that might be coming through. What happens at the early stages of education filters up. The abolition of the Office for Fair Access and what happens to young people as they go through the education system will have a great impact. I know that it is not part of the programme motion, and I have been told that we cannot discuss this, but what happened on 23 June is vital. I say again that the machinery of Government changes.

There is no clarity on the face of the Bill. “Office for Students” is a misnomer. I would prefer to work with the Minister to find another way to describe the body, not least because it is not about students.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point. That is right. HEFCE is a brilliant body. As we discussed this morning, it was set up in 1992 as the successor body to the Universities Funding Council. It is in the tradition of being a funding council at a time when the Government no longer principally funds the universities, so it is doing its job in a regulatory environment that reflects a bygone era. We need a regulatory structure that reflects the fact that students are now the primary funders of their education through the student loan system. This is a market, as recognised in law, so we need a market regulator. The office for students is the body that we believe is best placed to do that.

A change of name of the kind that the hon. Member for Walsall South suggests would go against the main principles that we are trying to achieve through these reforms. I note that none of the stakeholders who gave evidence to the Committee on Tuesday or today asked for a change of name.

As a regulator, the OFS will need to build relationships across the sector. Part of its duties will be thinking about the health and sustainability of the HE sector. However, that does not change the fact that the new market regulator should have students at its heart, and I believe that the name of the organisation needs to reflect that. For that reason, I ask that the hon. Lady withdraws her amendment.

[Valerie Vaz]

The stakeholders may not have asked for it, but that does not mean that people cannot have an idea of their own, take soundings or look at the face of the Bill and see what strikes them. I have not missed the point, as the Minister said, because clause 2(1)(b) says that the OFS is needed

“to encourage competition between English higher education providers in connection with the provision of higher education”.

Anything to do with students, universities or higher education is also about collaboration and public good. I wanted to flag up the fact that the name, as it currently stands, does not incorporate the idea of putting students at the heart of it, for reasons that I will not go through again. It is open to very clever civil servants to come up with something that reflects this debate. With that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1

The Office for Students

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 2, in schedule 1, page 63, line 17, leave out “twelve” and insert “ten”.

This amendment would maintain the maximum number of OfS members as twelve when taken together with amendment 3.