Office for Fair Access

Debate between Vince Cable and James Clappison

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills if he will make a statement on the appointment of director of the Office for Fair Access.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for giving me the opportunity to tell the House why the Government think that Professor Ebdon is the right candidate for the post of director of fair access. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science would happily have been here to respond, but he is currently in Antarctica.

First, I would like to pay tribute to the work of the current director, Sir Martin Harris. Sir Martin has been the director of fair access since the post was created in 2004. Under his leadership, universities have committed themselves to a 50% increase in spend on access by 2015-16. In recruiting Sir Martin’s replacement, we were looking for someone who could build on that achievement. There is much that remains to be done. Progress over the last few years in securing fair access to the most selective universities remains limited. Only around 50 pupils out of the 80,000 on free school meals currently make it to Oxbridge. All parts of the education sector need to work together to ensure that all with the potential to succeed are identified and nurtured.

We conducted the search for a replacement for Martin Harris in a fair, competitive and transparent way. Professor Ebdon has considerable experience. He is a prize-winning analytical chemist with a PhD from Imperial, and he transformed the finances and the quality of his own university for the better. We undertook two long, thorough searches to ensure that we found the right candidate for the post. I have no doubt that Professor Ebdon has the qualities and determination to help students from low-income and under-represented groups to secure the places in higher education that their attainments and potential show they deserve.

Following receipt of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills report, which raised questions about Professor Ebdon’s presentation skills, Ministers considered carefully whether the report presented any new, relevant facts about the candidate’s suitability for the post. As the Chair of the Select Committee—I think he is here now—has said today:

“It is clear that both Vince Cable and David Willetts feel Professor Ebdon is the right man for the job.”

He has also said today:

“The committee’s report was advisory only; the secretary of state was under no obligation to follow our recommendations.

I am pleased to note that both Mr Cable and Professor Ebdon have taken the committee’s concerns seriously and strongly agree that Professor Ebdon should appear before the committee at regular intervals,”

as he will. After due consideration, I have decided to proceed with the appointment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clappison]

Let me make it clear that, in the questions that I want to ask, I in no way want to express any disrespect for Professor Ebdon, who is an academic of great distinction. However, there are questions to be answered.

I think the Secretary of State has rather tiptoed around the question of the Select Committee’s approach, because my understanding is that the Committee did not express confidence in Professor Ebdon and suggested that the advertising process—indeed, the whole process—be reopened with a view to appointing a different candidate as the director of OFFA. Is the Secretary of State aware that this is only the second time that a Select Committee has been overruled in this way? The first such occasion did not set a particularly happy precedent. What effect does he think his decision will have on the authority and standing of Select Committees of this House, and on the confirmation processes that they carry out? Although he may technically have the power to overrule the Select Committee, is it not deeply unsatisfactory for him to have done so with this appointment?

What confidence can students, universities and parents have in this appointee if the Select Committee does not have confidence in him? What confidence can the public have in the appointment, when the Select Committee says in its conclusion that

“we were not convinced by Professor Ebdon’s descriptions of the root causes of the obstacles to accessing universities”—

something that is rather more fundamental than the presentational skills to which the Secretary of State referred?

Would not the implementation of the views expressed by Professor Ebdon, to the Select Committee and elsewhere, have serious consequences for the achievement of high standards in our universities? How can the Secretary of State say that he believes in the principles of university autonomy and admissions on merit when his appointee says that he is prepared to threaten universities with what he chose to describe as the “nuclear option” of fines and deprivation if they do not meet his centrally decreed targets?

Finally, may I gently remind the Secretary of State, and his Liberal Democrat colleagues who are here today, of what he and they promised in their 2010 manifesto, when they said that they would

“Strengthen the House of Commons to increase accountability,”

and

“increase Parliamentary scrutiny…of government appointments”?

How does he square what he has done in this case with that promise? Or is it the case that his hands were tied by the coalition and he has been forced to carry out this process?

[Vince Cable]

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s positive and generous introductory comments about Professor Ebdon, which were absolutely right. I also congratulate him on a report that he and three of his colleagues produced this morning, entitled “Achieving Fair Access: Removing Barriers, Realising Potential”. I agree with much of it. We are all concerned with the same objectives; the issue is one of how this should be done and the balance between the responsibilities of universities and those of schools, but we have much in common in terms of what we are trying to achieve.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the authority of the Select Committee, whose Chairman I have quoted. The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) is right to say that we must treat Select Committees with respect, and we do so. The obligation on me, as Secretary of State, was to establish whether any new evidence had emerged from the hearings, and I found that none had. Had the report been unanimous and based on cross-party consensus, we might have responded differently to it, but it was not.

The hon. Gentleman has been very eloquent on this subject, and I know that he is anxious that we should not introduce prescriptive quotas for admission to universities. That is his primary concern. Let me be clear that that is not Government policy and it is not the policy of OFFA. The independence of universities in regard to admissions is enshrined in law, and Professor Ebdon has gone firmly on record as saying that he will respect the diversity of the sector and its institutional autonomy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vince Cable and James Clappison

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

In the light of the excellent question from my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson), surely it is a matter for universities to decide who to admit on individual merit, not for us to have a central Government control model—a command and control model—that inevitably produces unfair discrimination. We are trying to build a big society, not recreate the Soviet Union, are we not?

[Vince Cable]

There is no command and control. Indeed, we are seeking to free universities from the complex, rather Stalinist system that we inherited. None the less, it is right that the Office for Fair Access should judge universities that wish to charge the top rate according to its access criteria.