Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made in implementing the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, including progress against commitments made by ministers during its passage through Parliament.

The government has made good progress on implementing the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA).

To date, we have laid five pieces of secondary legislation. They have established the Office for Students (OfS) and given it powers to run the new regulatory system. They will also enable OfS to run the current system in the transitional period, which started on 1 April 2018 and will end on 31 July 2019. The new system will be fully operational on 1 August 2019, which will allow for a smooth transition between regulators.

Since the act gained royal assent, the government has carried out a wide range of consultations for the OfS. This resulted in the publication by OfS of ‘Securing student success: regulatory framework for higher education in England’. This regulatory framework, attached, is an important element of delivering the reforms promised by HERA. These consultations also met many of the non-legislative commitments made during the passage of HERA through Parliament.

The attached table outlines non-legislative commitments made during the passage of HERA that have been met to date.