Universities: Compulsory Redundancies

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Viscount Hanworth]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of (1) threats of compulsory redundancies in the university sector, and (2) the potential impact of any such redundancies on teaching and research.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I draw attention to my association with the University of Leicester, which is currently enacting a spate of compulsory redundancies among its academic staff.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, higher education providers are independent institutions, responsible for their own staffing issues, including how they structure themselves to deliver research and teaching priorities. Where it is necessary to reshape their activities, it is important that universities carefully consider the impact of job losses on staff and students and on the overall sustainability of teaching and research in this country. The Office for Students requires English higher education providers to maintain academic quality and standards.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

The Government have led universities to compete for students by embarking on capital expenditures to create attractive amenities. To address the resulting financial difficulties, they have begun to sack their academic staff at a time when large numbers of European nationals are leaving academic posts as a consequence of Brexit. The long periods of training, the job insecurities and the penurious salaries are preventing native British people joining the academic profession. This will lead to the demise of our university sector. What remedies, if any, do the Government propose?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we are all proud of our world-leading higher education sector, which is a tribute to those who work in it and have done over many years. We have four of the world’s top 10 universities and 17 of the top 100. Many universities are able to combine academic excellence with commercial success, so I do not quite recognise the dichotomy that the noble Viscount paints. However, we recognise the challenges of the past year and a half, during the pandemic, which is why, alongside access to the business support schemes available to all businesses, we brought forward more than £2 billion of tuition fee payments, provided £280 million of grant funding for research and established a loan scheme to cover up to 80% of universities’ income losses from international students for the current academic year.