Schools: Climate Change Strike

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as I said in my Answer, it will be for the head teachers of the schools affected to consider whether the absences are authorised. On the other part of the noble Lord’s question, our efforts on climate change are a tremendous success story. According to PwC, we are the fastest G20 country to decarbonise since 2000 and, according to a Drax report, we have been independently assessed as leading the world in decarbonising electricity since 2008 and as being one of the fastest countries to phase out coal-powered generation. All those things will benefit the next generation.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, could the Government be more creative in their thinking and interpret the strike as an encouraging example of young people’s active citizenship and civic engagement, the implications of which could usefully be explored in citizenship education classes?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I do not accept that taking time off school in the middle of term is useful for children. All the evidence suggests that time off school affects their education. We have made tremendous progress in attendance levels over the last 10 years, and in any way validating this sort of behaviour does not help children.

Manifesto to Strengthen Families

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, as I mentioned, the Government are actively considering the recommendations set out in my noble friend’s manifesto. In my preparation for this Question, I spoke to an official in Downing Street who had had at least six conversations with my noble friend. Officials are treating this very seriously. The model of a specific brief—such as an equalities brief—being attached to a Cabinet Minister is a good one and deserves careful scrutiny. We shall continue to engage with my noble friend on this issue. I know he has also recently met my honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families Nadhim Zahawi and discussed elements of the recommendations with him.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, we know that the stress created by poverty and hardship can undermine families. Can the Minister explain what the Government’s policy of abolishing benefits—tax credits and universal credit for children after the second child—will do to strengthen families?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, since the coalition and this Government took office, we have focused on the more disadvantaged families. For example, the troubled families programme is budgeted to spend £920 million helping nearly 290,000 families in most need. What is interesting is that the number of children defined as children in need has declined by 14% after they have been involved in this programme for 12 months.

Social Mobility Commission

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lennie]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made on the appointment of the new Chair and members of the Social Mobility Commission.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

On behalf of my noble friend Lord Lennie, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the recruitment of a new chair of the commission is well under way. Applications have now closed and I am pleased to report that we have had a strong response. We will recruit new commissioners as soon as possible after the appointment of the new chair to allow him or her to provide input. These are public appointments, and the process will be completed following the governance code for public appointments.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, it is now nearly five months since the commission resigned en masse because it had been reduced to a rump of four from 10, and felt that it was not being listened to. As the Conservative chair of the Education Committee observed, this seemed extraordinary in light of the Prime Minister’s concern to fight burning injustices, and given that the commission’s final report warned that there is no overall national strategy to tackle the social economic and geographic divisions facing the country. What steps are the Government now taking as a matter of urgency to develop such a strategy and to reconstitute a strengthened commission to oversee it, as recommended by the Education Committee?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the national strategy for social mobility is focused on removing barriers to opportunity for all, including disadvantaged people and places—whether it is through education, using the pupil premium, in which the Government have invested £13 billion since 2011, closing the attainment gap, which has narrowed by 10% in the last seven years, or increasing the national living wage by 4.4% at the beginning of this month, and by £2,000 a year since April 2016. The recommendations of the Education Select Committee are being considered by the Government, but our commitment to improving the lot, particularly of the least advantaged, remains paramount.

Schools: Free Lunches and Milk

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the free school meal mechanism was designed for those in the most serious stages of poverty, and with the transition to universal credit we have been very careful to ensure that the number of children who benefit from free school meals is retained. We have made an absolute commitment that during the transition period, any child eligible for free school meals will retain his or her entitlement, and that will continue if they are in the school system beyond the rollout period.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, last week the Minister told the House that only some £450 million of the total £3 billion cost of extending free school meals to all on universal credit would go on the meals themselves—a tiny fraction. Most of the cash will go on the pupil premium, which is linked to free school meal eligibility. Given that an income threshold would undermine the cardinal universal credit principle of making work pay and leave some children hungry, would it not make sense to go ahead with the threshold for the premium but provide free school meals for all children on universal credit, who are by definition in some need? Why do they have to be linked?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, if we did not have a cap on the eligibility for free school meals but relied purely on universal credit, over half of children would end up being eligible. We have a number of recipients on universal credit earning in excess of £40,000 a year.

I believe that the pupil premium has been a tremendous success. We have closed the attainment gap by 10% since it was introduced in 2011, and invested more than £11 billion in schools to encourage them to recruit pupils from the poorest backgrounds.

Free School Lunches and Milk, and School and Early Years Finance (Amendments Relating to Universal Credit) (England) Regulations 2018

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Freud, because it fits well with what I want to say—but first I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Bassam for his powerful introduction.

The Government have prayed in aid the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee to suggest that there is not a problem about work incentives. Last week in Oral Questions the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said that when SSAC looked at the issue it found that there was no rigorous research evidence to show that the provision of passported benefits acted as a work disincentive. I am not sure whether the Ministers have read the report—I have it here; it is a right door- stopper—but it actually says that very little is known, which is slightly different.

However, the response to SSAC from the coalition Government was interesting. It said in its introduction to the report:

“The coalition Government endorses the SSAC’s view that the design of passported benefits under Universal Credit can have a key impact on incentives to work ... SSAC notes that there is mixed evidence about the impact of passported benefits on work incentives. However, it is important to highlight that the responses gathered in the review focus on the impact of passported benefits within the current benefits and tax credit system rather than the impact under Universal Credit. This is an important distinction as, currently, at the point some passported benefits are withdrawn, recipients often receive an increase in working tax credits that helps compensate for the loss of the value of the passported benefits”.


Quite—as my noble friend Lady Sherlock pointed out. But this was ignored by the Secretary of State when last week he told the House of Commons that there had always been a cliff edge. He seemed to interpret that as meaning “meal or no meal”.

SSAC’s fears have been borne out by the analysis by Professor Jonathan Bradshaw and Dr Antonia Keung, the Children’s Society and the Child Poverty Action Group—I declare an interest as its honorary president—which has already been referred to. I look to that report also to address a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. We have always known that what is happening currently is an interim arrangement, that is true, but the SSAC report was six years ago, in 2012. It is not surprising that some noble Lords have forgotten about that, because it was a long time ago.

However, the Government also said then that they would consult on new criteria that year to put in place the new system in October 2013. We have had to wait six years. What took them so long? I suspect that it was because they could not find a way round the cliff- edge problem, because SSAC repeatedly drew attention to the fact that if you go down the route of introducing an income threshold it creates a cliff-edge problem. It did not have an answer to it because there is no answer if you are not prepared to pay for free school meals for all those on universal credit. As has already been said, that undermines the foundational principle of universal credit. Perhaps that is why the noble Lord, Lord Freud—who did so much work on that benefit—is so concerned.

Yes, the Government made this clear in 2012—but the living standards landscape is very different from what it was then. For example, we did not know then that there was going to be a two-child limit on benefits for families. We did not know then that universal credit was going to be subjected to cut after cut. The CPAG has suggested that the average loss for working families on universal credit will be more than £400 a year. We did not know then that working age benefits were going to be frozen. Child benefit is particularly relevant here. Professor Jonathan Bradshaw kindly did some calculations for me—I am not very good at calculations—and calculated that for a two-child family child benefit is worth £2.66 a week less than it was in 2012 when the Government first suggested that they were not going to give it to everyone on universal credit. It is £5.44 less if we go back to 2010. That is in the context of the Resolution Foundation pointing out that for a two-child-plus family, child benefit is less generous than at any point since it was fully introduced in 1979. So, as they say, when the facts change, perhaps the policy should change as well.

Many of these matters come down to how things work in practice, so perhaps I may ask a few practical questions. We know that the earnings of people at the lower end of the labour market fluctuate repeatedly. The Government have addressed how they are going to estimate what those earnings are, but if they are going to be recalculated every month—as in the briefing referred to by the right reverend Prelate from the representatives of the Children’s Society—this will be an absolute nightmare. I cannot see any reference to what will happen to people on zero-hours contracts or self-employed people. Can the Minister explain how their earnings will be calculated?

On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, have the Government given any consideration to decoupling free school meals eligibility from pupil premium eligibility? As I understand it, it is the latter that costs so much, not free school meals. So it would be possible to pay for free school meals for everyone on universal credit at not a huge extra cost and treat the pupil premium separately.

Finally—I hope this is not too cheeky—when the Minister responds, will he respond to what has actually been said here today? Last week in Oral Questions I got the sense that officials had expected us to say the same things that had been said in the House of Commons the day before. We did not, but that was what the response was to.

I say the same to the noble Lord, Lord Patten. My noble friend Lord Bassam made it very clear what he was talking about. He produced facts from the Children’s Commissioner which showed that the facts that the Government have been presenting over and over again—that 50,000 children will be better off—are fake facts, to quote a certain President. So let us get our facts right and address what people are saying in this House rather than what we expect them to say.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. His words about his experiences and circumstances as a child were very moving. However, change is often difficult to deliver. As George Bernard Shaw said, progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

The introduction of universal credit transforms the benefits system by making work pay. At the same time, public resources can be targeted at the families most in need, and that must include setting a threshold for free school meals.

I was particularly struck by the contribution to the debate in the Commons by my honourable friend the vice-chairman of the Conservative party Maria Caulfield. She too talked about her experiences of being brought up in a working-class background where there was no hope and no ambition for working-class kids other than a future life on benefits. Universal credit, I am sure noble Lords will agree, will help such families and such individuals. I will not repeat the arguments made and the reply to the Labour smears of last week; suffice it to say that as a result of the changes we are told—facts—that 50,000 extra children will get free school meals by 2022. I have called them facts; we cannot call them facts because only in 2022 will we know the real facts on any of the projections, but those will be as a result of changes brought about by the Government. As Maria went on to say last week, what some Labour Members did was to spread fear in a political, point-scoring way and use working-class families, shamefully, as a political football. That was clear. It was clear if you read what was in the press.

I was absolutely sure that it must be right that free school meals are intended for the most disadvantaged families on low incomes. Thus, targeting taxpayers’ money at those most in need is the right thing to do. I support the Government’s position, which is good for all, and I remind those who will not accept change of the words of the late Harold Wilson:

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it will depend on the circumstances of the family at that time.

I turn to the comments about the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, which published a briefing which assumed that the number of 50,000 more pupils who will benefit from free school meals does not take into account population growth. This is incorrect. Our analysis compares 2022 under a universal credit system to 2022 under the legacy benefits system, and population growth is by definition captured within this comparison. Furthermore, the Government have just published an updated equalities impact assessment, on 7 February. The majority of respondents to the consultation agreed with us that there would be no adverse impact on those with protected characteristics.

It is important to add that the £7,400 threshold relates to earned income. It does not include additional income through universal credit. A typical family earning around this threshold, depending on their exact circumstances, would have a total annual household income of between £18,000 and £24,000 once benefits are taken into account.

I take this opportunity to bust a myth. Some have claimed that these reforms will take away free school meals from 1 million children. This is simply not true. As my noble friend Lord Patten said, Channel 4 made this clear in its FactCheck article. It highlighted that this claim is based on an entirely hypothetical scenario in which universal credit was to continue being an automatic eligibility criteria. This was never going to be the case. Contrary to some people’s claims, this Government’s plan will result in more children benefiting, not fewer, and is more generous than the old system.

I also acknowledge the report published by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on 1 March this year. We have listened to the committee’s comments and have responded to its report requesting that we publish the methodology supporting the modelling of the 50,000 children who will benefit by 2022. This has been published as part of the report.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, expressed concern about fluctuating income. We recognise that some households see their earnings fluctuate on a regular basis and have written into regulations that earnings should be checked over a period lasting up to three months, where the assessment period data is available. We are also exploring ways to ensure that families with very low incomes can receive free school meals during the initial assessment period for universal credit.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

What will happen with self-employed people and those on zero-hours contracts? I could not find that in the document.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

As I mentioned, we are assessing those who are on very low incomes to ensure that they can receive free school meals. That information will become available in due course.

I hope your Lordships will agree when I state the importance of targeting public resources where they are needed the most. If free school meals were extended to all families on universal credit, as some suggest, this would mean that by the end of the rollout around half of all pupils would become eligible. Some universal credit households are on middle incomes, sometimes exceeding £40,000 a year. We estimate that extending free school meals to all these families would cost in excess of £3 billion more a year by 2022, including the cost of the extra meals and associated school deprivation funding. The additional meals alone would cost in excess of £450 million a year. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, fairness requires Government to direct resources to where they are needed most. These are not the low-income families that we want to target with free school meals, and this is not a sensible or indeed fair use of public money.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, was concerned about the decoupling of free school meals from the pupil premium. The Government are very committed to providing equality of opportunity so every pupil, irrespective of their background, can realise their academic potential. Since the introduction of the pupil premium in 2011, the difference in the relative attainment of disadvantaged children and their peers has reduced across both the primary and secondary phases. It has narrowed by 10.5% at key stage 2 and 10% at key stage 4. This means better prospects for disadvantaged pupils and a more prosperous life as an adult.

Concerns were raised about conditionality and the use of sanctions. Sanctions are only ever used as a last resort. When considering whether a sanction is appropriate, a decision-maker will take all the claimant’s individual circumstances, including any health conditions or disabilities, and any evidence of good cause, into account before deciding whether a sanction is warranted.

I want to address some of the comments made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth and the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Lister, dealing with cliff edges. Universal credit is designed to be more generous to claimants who take on additional hours, and the smooth taper rate gives incentives to do so because, unlike under the old system, people see more money in their pocket for every extra hour that they work. As my noble friend Lord Polak said, change does involve some disruption, but in general we are seeing a better system for people who want to achieve more and to work harder or to be able to have the opportunity to work. In addition, the well-established links between employment and improved health and well-being mean that there are considerable non-economic benefits for parents who increase their working hours.

Children in Need

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness raises a very good point. The number of children in need during that period remained fairly constant. We are doing a great deal of work reforming social care to try to ensure that the money is better spent.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, in her recent report on vulnerable children the Children’s Commissioner drew attention to the role of child poverty in that vulnerability. What are the Government doing to reduce child poverty—and will the Minister please not simply say “moving families into paid work”, because we know that that is not necessarily a route out of poverty for low-income families?

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this amendment has wide support across the House, and I look forward to hearing the comments from others who have joined my noble friend Lord Dubs’s amendment. My noble friend apologises to the House for being unable to be present, but he has been asked to be the guest of honour at a Holocaust memorial service in Reading and felt that he could not stand up that occasion. I am sure the House will be sympathetic.

Very briefly, because I am sure others will make the point, the amendment deals with people who are in a bit of a lacuna as far as support for loans and maintenance is concerned. Currently, people with refugee status in the UK are classified as having home fee status for purposes of higher education as well as being able to access student finance. However, other potential university students who have either been given a different form of protection or who, after claiming asylum, have been granted a type of leave other than refugee status encounter restrictions and delays in accessing home fee status and student finance. Therefore, they face a barrier to education that is often insurmountable.

The amendment would rectify this arrangement so that all refugees resettled to the UK, as well as people seeking asylum granted forms of leave other than refugee status, can access student finance and home fees. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment, to which I was pleased to add my name. Access to higher education represents a potentially important avenue to the integration and strengthening of the life chances of young people forced to flee their home countries by increasing their employability, career prospects and earning potential, and integrating them into the community of students.

These are young people who are likely to be in this country for some time. Access to higher education can enhance the contribution they can make and wish to make to British society. If they are eventually able to return to their home countries, would we begrudge them being able to use what they have learned to contribute to those countries?

When this was debated on Report in the Commons, Paul Blomfield MP, who moved the amendment, suggested there had been some discomfort on the Government Benches when it was voted down in Committee. I believe that the Minister’s arguments there were not found to be exactly convincing. Mr Blomfield focused in particular on the treatment of Syrian refugees resettled under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme who are granted five years’ humanitarian protection rather than refugee status, thereby denying them the access to student support enjoyed by those with refugee status. Earlier in Committee, he commented that the Government have never explained why this is so. Since then, however, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, explained in an oral answer to me that,

“what we have is people in acute need and we want to get them here as quickly as possible. Humanitarian protection is the vehicle by which we can do so. If we first have to go all the way through the route of establishing refugee status for a lot of people who have no identification papers, it means they are at risk for longer. That is why we have chosen to take that particular route, to ensure that we can get people here and give them the help they need as quickly as possible”.—[Official Report, 10/1/17; col. 1859.]

I can see the logic in that, but it raises the question of why it is not possible to treat humanitarian protection as an interim status that can be, in effect, upgraded to refugee status once it is possible to establish that that is appropriate. The problems caused by the current position were raised by the Public Accounts Committee in its recent report on the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. It noted the undue stress that those problems cause.

The Government have tended to argue that humanitarian protection is broadly the same thing as refugee status, but among other things, as we have already heard, it does not provide the same access to student support, hence this amendment. When giving oral evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, Paul Morrison, director of the Syrian VPRS, said that they are now aware of these issues and are working closely with DfE officials and others to look at them, and are keeping them under active review. I am not sure who will reply to the debate, but I suspect the noble Viscount will not be in a position to throw any light on what progress has been made in these discussions now. I ask him to relay our concern about the particular implications for access to higher education. If he is able to enlighten us, perhaps at Report or in one of his many epistles, that would be very helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

Obviously these amendments are relevant to the debate we have just had, and I do not want to speak at length, but I endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has said. I want to pick up just two points, one of which was made by the noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Rees, earlier. It is the huge importance of international students, international academics and postgraduates to the quality of our universities.

The university I know best recently came top of the league tables for universities. We were pleased about that—and of course we believed the methodology wholeheartedly. In previous years, when we did not believe the methodology quite so enthusiastically, we had come second to Caltech. There are more American students at Oxford than at Caltech. Our great universities would not be able to do the spectacular research they do without the academic staff from other countries, without postgraduates in particular, and we are delighted to have so many students from other countries.

The points that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made are really important to the quality and the vitality of our universities, and that is where Brexit is decidedly relevant. Some people say that we have been ridiculously emotional about the impact of Brexit on our universities. You try talking to an academic from Europe or elsewhere at the university I know best and tell him or her that they are really not citizens of the world or that citizens of the world are second class because they do not really understand where they have come from.

Brexit sent a chill through our universities. We were talking about perception earlier. It is really important to give people the confidence that we are not going to change the rules about students and academics coming here during the discussions on Brexit in the years ahead. It is really vital to the quality of our universities. If Ministers do not understand that in the months and years ahead then we will all be in very big trouble. I think at the moment we are probably underestimating the impact of Brexit on our universities. It is not particularly the money—although that matters. It is not just the research collaboration—although that matters hugely. It is the people. It is whether we are able to attract the postgraduates and undergraduates to our universities because they are an enormously important part of our higher education system and have been ever since the 13th century.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, although I do not have the details with me, I should like to support what the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, said with an anecdote from my university—Loughborough. Immediately after Brexit, an email was circulated around my department, social sciences, with the permission of a prospective postgraduate student from a country within the European Union—I forget which one— who had been offered a very good studentship at Loughborough, which he had accepted. After Brexit, he emailed to say that he did not feel that he could come because he would no longer feel welcome in the UK. That was very sad because it was a loss to our university and a loss to the student. I suspect that such ripple effects are happening all over the place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I regret that I have to challenge the view that has been put forward by Members here whose views in general I respect greatly, but I pin my remarks to a phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Patten, just moments ago. He said that students come from overseas to this country for a great education in a liberal, plural society. Unfortunately, great damage is being done to precisely that concept. In no way would I dissent from a view expressed that freedom of speech within the law must be allowed. Non-lawful speech—and there are lots of statutes, whether you like it or not, that make speech illegal—should not be allowed, but the universities are not doing their duty.

I shall give a few examples. Jihadi John was a university graduate; Michael Adebolajo—Lee Rigby’s murderer—was at the University of Greenwich; the underpants bomber, Abdulmutallab, was at UCL. There are numerous other examples of killers who were radicalised at university right here. That is because, although the Prevent duty guidance requires such speech that we disapprove of to be balanced, this is not happening. Speakers are turning up and giving speeches to audiences that are not allowed to challenge them. At best, they can only write down their questions. There are tens of such visiting speakers every year—there are organisations that keep tabs. Just over a year ago, at London South Bank University, a speaker claimed that Muslim women are not allowed to marry Kafir and that apostates should be killed. A speaker at Kingston University declared homosexuality as unnatural and harmful, and another—a student—claimed that the Government were seeking to engineer a government-sanctioned Islam and that the security services were harassing Muslims, using Jihadi John and Michael Adebolajo as examples. The problem is not only coming from that area; it is the English Defence League turning up to present its unpalatable views too.

It is incomprehensible to me that the National Union of Students opposes the Prevent policy and has an organised campaign to call it racist—a “spying” policy and an inhibitor of freedom of speech. These are the same students and lecturers—the ones who oppose Prevent—who have been supine in the face of student censorship and the visits of extremist speakers and who will not allow, for example, Germaine Greer or Peter Tatchell to speak, but sit back and do nothing when speakers turn up who say that homosexuals should be killed.

The Home Affairs Select Committee and the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism have identified universities as vulnerable sectors for this sort of thing. Universities are targeted by extremist activists from Islamist and far-right groups. Very often they are preaching against women’s rights and gay people’s rights, and suggest that there is a western war on Islam. They express extreme intolerance—even death—for non-believers, and place religious law above democracy.

Some misguided student unions and the pro-terrorist lobby group CAGE are uniting to silence criticism of their illegal activities. There is no evidence of lecturers spying on students or gathering intelligence on people not committing terrorist offences. Students are conspiring to undermine the policy; they ignore its application to far-right extremists, just as to far left, if there is a difference, and spread the misunderstanding that it targets political radicalism.

The Prevent guidance is necessary, but needs to be limited to non-lawful speech, which is a very wide concept and of course includes the counterterrorism Act, but I would not suggest for a moment that now is the time to lift it, especially when in its most recent report HEFCE claimed that more and more universities —though not all of them—were getting to grips with and applying the Prevent guidance in a reasonable way. I therefore oppose the amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I support the amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, asked me to pass on her apologies, because she had another engagement and could not stay for the debate. During Committee on the then Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, I moved a number of amendments on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, two of which would have excluded higher education institutions from the statutory Prevent duty. I thought it worth reminding noble Lords of the debates that we had then. I was a member of the JCHR at the time. The amendment stemmed from the JCHR’s conclusion—my noble friend Lord Stevenson has already quoted it, but it bears repetition—that,

“because of the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom in the context of university education, the entire legal framework which rests on the new ‘prevent’ duty is not appropriate for application to universities”.

The JCHR warned that terms such as “non-violent extremism” or views “conducive to terrorism” are not capable of being defined with sufficient precision to enable universities to know with sufficient certainty whether they risk being found in breach of the new duty, and feared that this would have a seriously inhibiting effect on bona fide academic debate in universities. We have heard some of the problems with trying to define that in the guidance.

On Report, I summed up the mood in Committee, saying:

“In Committee, the consensus in favour of amending this part of the Bill was striking. Noble Lords did not consider that the Government had made a persuasive case for putting a statutory duty on higher education institutions—moving ‘from co-operation to co-option’, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, put it”—


and we miss her wise counsel. I continued:

“Where was the evidence base? Until the evidence for the necessity of such a statutory duty is marshalled, to use the Minister’s phrase, it is not possible to assess it. Concerns were raised on grounds of both practice and principle. Warnings were given on unintended consequences and counterproductive effects, including the erosion of trust between staff and students, which could undermine any attempts to engage with students who might be tempted down the road towards terrorism. I do not think that anyone was reassured by ministerial assertions that academic freedom and freedom of speech would not be endangered. Indeed, I think that it is fair to say that the majority of those who spoke were in favour of the total exclusion of the HE sector”.—[Official Report, 4/2/15; cols. 679-80.]


I did not pursue that amendment on exclusion of the sector and focused instead on ensuring that there was a proper duty to protect freedom of speech and academic freedom, but it is clear that, despite what has just been said, the application of the Prevent duty to universities continued to cause real concern.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a few questions stemming from annexe B, which the Minister circulated last week but which unfortunately I did not see until after our debate. I apologise that I was not able to attend the briefings that officials provided; I might have got the answers then. My first question relates to the point made by my noble friend Lord Lipsey. The note that was circulated said that the assessment framework stresses to assessors that they should not overweight the NSS, but of course the only metrics on actual teaching quality—this follows on from the points just made—relate to the National Student Survey. My noble friend suggested looking, therefore, at individual submissions from providers for that evidence of teaching quality, but those submissions are going to be up to only 15 pages for a whole institution. I would be grateful if the Minister would give us some indication of what kind of evidence it is anticipated that providers will present in those submissions that will focus precisely on the quality of teaching.

My second question relates to the statement immediately following—that the assessment framework mitigates the risk that courses could be dumbed down to encourage providers trying to gain the NSS. The document says that, to ensure that does not happen, the Government have included rigour and stretch as one of the criteria for the TEF and explicitly warned assessors that this may be inversely correlated with the providers’ NSS scores. I am delighted: I think it is absolutely right that rigour and stretch should be included. I remember teaching a course on theory and concepts in social policy and I think the students felt they were being stretched like elastic bands and did not always appreciate it. I think it is really important that we stretch students to think critically and assess what they are being taught, but how is this going to be assessed? It is not clear to me. It is very important but how is it going to be assessed?

My final question is: how frequently will this assessment process be carried out? We heard last week about the gold, silver and bronze system and many of us had problems with it. The Minister was not really able to satisfy our concerns. Although the Minister presented bronze as if it was the equivalent of a bronze medal in the Olympics, noble Lords here saw it as the equivalent of failure, because there is nothing underneath it—no kind of “tin” assessment or anything. If someone is classified as bronze, they may well want to try to climb out of bronze into silver as soon as they can. How quickly will it be open to them to have another go and be able to show that they have improved the quality of teaching and can then be reassessed as silver or gold? Has the Minister had the chance to reflect on what was said about the gold, silver and bronze categorisation last week? All we got was the answer that the Government think this is right. That smacked to me a bit of “I told you so” and there was no real explanation as to why, if bronze is the lowest, it will not be seen—to the outside world at least, and to potential students, here and overseas—as something to be avoided.

[Baroness Deech]

I am glad to support the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I have the National Student Survey in front of me. It raises profound questions about what higher education is and how it has become perverted, in that we see the student now as a consumer, because the student is paying at least £9,000.

I draw attention to some statements in the survey. One says that the workload on the student’s course is manageable. We ought to think about what that means: manageable for whom, whether you are a lazy student or an avid one? Another says that the course does not apply unnecessary pressure on the student. I am not sure about that either. There is another that says that all the compulsory modules are relevant to the student’s course. Even now, 50 years after completing a law degree, I am still pondering whether Roman law was really relevant to my course, but I yield to those who thought it was. That was long before we joined the European Union, which in a way made Roman law and the continental system more relevant. These questions would be better addressed to someone going on a package holiday. I am not sure that as it stands this student survey should play a part in the most profound questions that we face—about what a university is, what sort of young people we wish to turn out and by what process. So I hope that the survey will not be included, or that if it is it is thoroughly revised, bearing in mind the outcomes for which we are looking.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I will have to check Hansard, but I believe I was speaking about the current system and how it is working now. I should stress that there is no quota and it could well be that these percentages are different when operated under the TEF. There is no particular expectation. I believe I was answering the question about how it might be likely to be very different.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for answering my third question, but I had two other questions specifically on the measurement of teaching quality. Can the Minister answer them in his next letter, which we are so eagerly awaiting?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, of course. I reassure the noble Baroness that I will add her points and I will look at Hansard again closely on the issues that she has raised and address them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendments submitted by my noble friend and I have one that I believe complements his amendments. I remind your Lordships’ House of the amendment on the role of the Director for Fair Access and Participation, when we were debating—and I used as an illustration—the responsibility of the director for ensuring that the responsibilities regarding disabled students were being appropriately delivered by institutions.

It is worth reminding ourselves, going back nearly two years to when the Government began their consultation on the cutting of funding for disabled students’ allowance and transferring some of the funding to institutions, that at the time this was heralded a great thing for better targeting disabled student support. Many of the specialist organisations that work with disabled students provided evidence to the contrary at that consultation. The National Deaf Children’s Society gave a case study of Isla, a young woman at the University of Edinburgh who asked the disability office repeatedly before she arrived for support. The case study says:

“She arrived early for lectures and asked tutors to wear the loop-system microphone, but found that microphones rarely worked or tutors forgot to use them. In a laboratory session she asked to be allowed to sit near the front so she could lipread, but the tutor was not supportive”.


Isla said:

“She said to me, ‘Well, you’ll just have to sit through it for this tutorial, this lab, but for the next time I’ll have you down the front’. Next time I went in, she still hadn’t changed it. I was raging. I was like really angry”.


The case study continues:

“As time went by, Isla realised that she was missing out on most of the content of her course. She dropped out at Christmas”.


Isla said:

“We had a couple of big papers coming up. I had started them. I had no idea where I was going with it. I e-mailed my tutor and said, ‘Look, I’m not coming back. I can’t. I can’t hear anybody, so I can’t’. He said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that’. That was it”.


That may be one example but I know from my time working in an institution some years ago that a lecturer refused to wear a microphone so a deaf student could hear, on the grounds that she might record the lecture and so infringe his personal copyright. I am pleased to say that the university dealt with that matter expeditiously. Putting the responsibilities on universities and reducing funding cause problems. That is why I support the comments made by my noble friend that we are now two terms into the new system and there is no clear guidance for institutions. That is deplorable and lies at the hands of the Government.

I want to go back a step from that to our responsibilities as a state. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is very clear about the responsibilities that we have as a state and as education institutions to provide support for students. It notes a:

“Lack of disaggregated data and research (both of which are necessary for accountability and programme development), which impedes the development of effective policies and interventions to promote inclusive and quality education”.


It also notes that there are:

“Inappropriate and inadequate funding mechanisms to provide incentives and reasonable accommodations for the inclusion of students with disabilities, interministerial coordination, support and sustainability”.


I worry that we are moving into that world at the moment where we do not quite know what is going on between institutions and the department. But the department has already handed over the responsibility for the support of disabled students to institutions.

The convention goes on to say at paragraph 12(i):

“Monitoring: as a continuing process, inclusive education must be monitored and evaluated on a regular basis to ensure that neither segregation nor integration are taking place, either formally or informally”.


Isla’s story is segregation writ large. Later on the convention talks about implementation at a national level. This is the responsibility of the Government, even if they choose to devolve the power down. Paragraph 63(d) speaks of:

“A guarantee for students with and without disabilities to the same right to access inclusive learning opportunities within the general education system and, for individual learners, to the necessary support services at all levels”.


Paragraph 63(g) speaks of:

“The introduction of accessible monitoring mechanisms to ensure the implementation of policies and the provision of the requisite investment”.


Finally, on my personal favourite topic of training, paragraph 73 says:

“Authorities at all levels must have the capacity, commitment and resources to implement laws, policies and programmes to support inclusive education. States parties must ensure the development and delivery of training to inform all relevant authorities of their responsibilities under the law and to increase understanding of the rights of persons with disabilities”.


With the introduction of the new system, there are some real concerns among student assessors about the arrangements for professionals under the new quality assurance framework for the non-medical helper support funded through the DSA. Higher education providers are reporting that it can be difficult to find interpreters for sign language due to the new requirement for freelancers and agencies to have to register with the DSA-QAG. This is an important issue and we are already getting comments, such as this anonymous quotation from a discussion forum of student assessors trying to help deaf students before Christmas:

“Already running into problems finding support that meets QAG requirements – I’m already starting to draw a blank for some students who need e.g. specialist note-taker, language support tutor as agencies – despite listing this in their range of support on the QAG site – are saying they can’t recruit people who meet the required qualifications (as set by QAG). Anyone else having this problem? Any possible solutions on the horizon??”.


The silence from the department is deafening. Unfortunately, the impact for students in our system means that it is not working. That is why I repeat my earlier statement, when we discussed the role of the Director for Fair Access and Participation, that there must be a specific role for monitoring support for students with disabilities. These are probing amendments, but they pick up the point about monitoring and evaluation to ensure that our students are not deserted by this nation state in contravention of the United Nations convention.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I support these amendments and would like to speak briefly about the very important points that have been made. For a number of years I chaired the disability and additional needs committee at Loughborough University, and was very aware of the importance of adequate support for disabled students and how difficult it is when that support starts breaking down. I am very out of touch with it now but I was shocked by what was said about the guidance, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give a firm assurance that there will be no further delay in issuing that guidance.

I have a broader point to make about equal opportunities, as some of these amendments go beyond disability. The staff body is as important as the student body. I am prompted to say that by a report, which I think I read last week, about the complete absence of senior black staff in universities. If there are no senior staff and very few lecturing staff, and all the black members of staff are cleaners or porters, what kind of signal does that send to young black people who might be thinking of going to university, if they see those institutions as purely white ones? When we talk about equality of opportunity and access for students, we must bear in mind what is being done in relation to staff in the examples and role models that are being provided.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

I was an academic for 38 years. Luckily, I am not a vice-chancellor or a chancellor or anywhere, so I do not have to defend my university, but we cannot go on thinking that universities are beyond judgment and should be left alone to do whatever they do. Those days are gone.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think anybody is suggesting that universities should just be left to get on with it. I preface my remarks by saying how important I believe teaching to be. I went into higher education halfway through my working life. I had never taught, and I was shocked to discover there was nothing to train me how to teach: it was just assumed that an academic could relay their subject and teach it. That is completely different now. All universities have very good support to ensure that their staff teach well.

That said, I accept that it is important that there is some kind of assessment of teaching to balance the research assessment—the REF, as it is now called—to which my noble friend Lord Desai referred. REF is based on a direct assessment of the quality of the research; as I understand it, TEF will not be. I will not repeat the good critique that has been made by colleagues both now and at Second Reading of the metrics currently proposed, and I am not sure what the answer is. I can remember—I cannot remember in which year it was now—something called the TQA, or teaching quality assessment. I can remember quaking in my boots as some independent assessor came in to observe my lectures and tutorials. I am not sure what happened to it. It was a huge bureaucratic burden on the universities, so I am not saying that that is necessarily the answer. I am not sure what the answer is, but it is quite clear from what is being said in the sector, by students and people around the Committee that, as proposed, those metrics are not.

In his summing up, will the Minister explain exactly how he thinks the proposed metrics will tell us anything about actual teaching quality? What will be fed back to individual lecturers about their teaching? At Second Reading he said that,

“The TEF is designed to improve teaching”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; col. 721]


How will it improve teaching? Will he explain that to us? If I were still lecturing, how would I know how to improve my teaching on the basis of the TEF and these metrics? It is not clear to me at all how that will happen.

Given the widespread disquiet and difficulties of doing this, will the Minister reflect on the likely adverse implications of this traffic light system, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on Second Reading called a “ranking system for turkeys”? Perhaps that is appropriate in the consumer culture we are talking about, but it is not appropriate for education.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on some of the remarks about the NSS and perhaps try to address some of the concerns and offer noble Lords on both sides of the Committee a bit of assurance about what is happening here.

I should begin by drawing attention to the fact that I am a visiting professor at King’s College London, which sadly scores rather low on the NSS. I will not detain the Committee with a special pleading of why I think that is a completely misleading picture of the excellent work done at King’s. I also chair the advisory board of the Times Higher, which itself produces university rankings.

Surely what we are trying to do is embark on a journey towards what should be reliable metrics of teaching quality and learning gain. Of course, we do not have those yet. The question is whether we do anything now or wait until we have these superior and trusted metrics. The dilemma that one faces is that, back in 2010, there really was only the NSS, and it has been caricatured as simply a question of a student’s kind of, “What’s it like for you?”. We have already seen changes in the NSS and, if I may get into the technical language, it is becoming much more like the National Survey of Student Engagement which does try to get closer to the academic experience of the student.

The measure that will be used in formulating the TEF is not the generic question, “How was it for you?”. My understanding is that that is not what will appear in the TEF. There will be the earlier questions in the NSS. The NSS has more than 20 questions, and incidentally is completed by hundreds of thousands of students. It is the earlier questions that are closest to engagement that will be the ones used in the TEF. They are particularly questions about teaching on their course and on assessment and feedback.

The noble Lord who spoke for the Opposition when he opened said there had been no evidence that anything had been getting better. I can tell him that the fact that many universities have done disappointingly badly on assessment and feedback has led universities to change their practice and give students much more prompt reactions on their essays or other forms of work than they used to receive. I would argue that assessment and feedback are regarded as having genuine value and significance in the world of universities. Those measures are the measures extracted from the NSS which will be part of the overall metric for the TEF. The others which I think will have higher weight are the learning environment and student outcomes.

These are not perfect measures. We are on a journey, and I look forward to these metrics being revised and replaced by superior metrics in the future. They are not as bad as we have heard in some of the caricatures of them, and in my experience, if we wait until we have a perfect indicator and then start using it, we will have a very long wait. If we use the indicators that we have, however imperfect, people then work hard to improve them. That is the spirit with which we should approach the TEF today.

--- Later in debate ---

I have heard concerns that bronze might be considered a negative award, but this is not the case in other areas. For example, for the Athena SWAN awards, recognising the advancement of gender equality, or for Investors in People, a bronze award is clearly seen as a badge of high quality, just as it will be in the TEF. We are not, however, complacent about this, and are working with the British Council and others to ensure that TEF ratings are communicated effectively internationally, emphasising the overall high quality of UK provision. We will have a joint communication plan with them in place by the time the TEF ratings are published. I believe this demonstrates the quality above the high baseline that we expect in the UK.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I am sorry to interrupt, but can the Minister tell us whether there will there be a sub-bronze level, because otherwise, if bronze is the bottom, it is very difficult to see how it will be seen as representing quality?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

As I mentioned, there has been a full consultation on this. It came down to the best way forward, which we believe is to have three ratings. I should stress, and hope that I have stressed, that bronze is a good level and is highly respected. I want to make that quite clear to the Committee, and I hope that noble Lords will accept what I have said.