Higher Education

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, last year, as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, I spoke at the QS world university rankings conference in India. I spoke with pride as, with less than 1% of the world’s population, the UK has four of the top 10 universities in the world. The latest QS rankings show Cambridge and Oxford second and third. I declare my interests as an honorary fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; an ambassador for the Cambridge Judge Business School, where I am conducting research as we speak; and a Bynum Tudor fellow at Kellogg College of the University of Oxford. His Majesty the King is a Bynum Tudor fellow, as was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I am also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation at Saïd Business School in Oxford.

The QS rankings go further: 17 of the top 100 universities in the world—including the University of Birmingham, where I am proud to be chancellor—are British. This is fantastic, yet this Government have frozen fees at £9,250 for many years, so the real value of those fees is about £6,000. Inflation has meant that costs have gone up, but we are still meant to produce the best universities in the world with our hands tied behind our backs.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for his brilliant opening speech and for initiating this debate. Universities UK states very clearly that:

“The higher education sector creates enormous economic impact across the country… contributing over £130 billion”,


that universities “support more than … 768,000” jobs, and that

“UK higher education providers … educated approximately 2.9 million students”.

This is a really important part of our economy. In October 2023, there was a report written as part of the Economy 2030 inquiry by the Resolution Foundation and Nuffield Foundation—the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, was also involved. It set out how higher education can improve productivity and drive economic growth, with four groups of benefits that higher education can offer individuals and society, including longer life expectancy, better health, higher earnings, less likelihood to be unemployed, lower crime rate, being more likely to volunteer and vote, more tax receipts and increased exporting. This is music to my ears.

Some 24% of students enrolling in higher education institutions in 2021-22 were non-UK. We now have over 600,000 international students—which I will come back to. Business and management is the popular subject, with 19% of all students studying it. I am patron of the Small Business Charter—I took over from the noble Lord, Lord Young—and we accredit business schools around the country with the Chartered Association of Business Schools to be able to teach SMEs. I am also on the council of the Help to Grow management scheme, which provides mini MBAs for businesses where they pay only £750. This is the value of our business schools.

The British Academy, in a report, said in relation to higher education entrepreneurship that many higher education institutions are incubating future economic disruptors across all disciplines. I came up with the idea for Cobra Beer when I was studying law at Cambridge University. The innovation mindset is foundational to UK higher education. Some 80% of UK higher education research is assessed as world-leading and internationally excellent. The return on investment for public and private R&D is estimated at 20%; the sector was responsible for 25% of UK R&D. This is amazing, yet we as a country spend only 1.7% of GDP on R&D and innovation, versus America’s 3.2%—just imagine if we spent more.

Just a week ago, Bhaskar Vira, the pro-vice-chancellor for education at the University of Cambridge, showed me the brilliant report The Economic Impact of the University of Cambridge, which sets out how the university contributes nearly £30 billion to the UK economy and supports more than 86,000 jobs across the economy.

Before I conclude, as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Students, president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs—UKCISA—and a former international student myself, I must touch on international students. HEPI pointed out last year that international students bring in £42 billion to our economy. I remember fighting in this House in 2007 to bring in the two-year post-graduation work visa. It was brought in in 2008 by a Labour Government, taken away in 2012 by Theresa May as Home Secretary, and brought back in by Boris Johnson in 2021. Just look at how the number of international students has rocketed; yet this Government seem to have an anti-international student attitude—an anti-immigration attitude. We need to take international students out of the net migration figures. It would almost halve that figure.

This is the strongest element of soft power that we have in this country: 25% of world leaders have been educated at UK universities, 25% at US universities, and the other 50% across all the other countries in the world put together. Let us celebrate international students and celebrate our universities. Our universities are the jewel in this nation’s crown.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on the energy he has put into this issue during the process of scrutinising the Bill. The debates we have had on it have made it absolutely clear that on all sides of the House we strongly support legitimate overseas students coming to Britain to study, because it enhances the academic experience of British students, it is good for the overseas students, and it is a great British export.

What the Minister said in signalling again that the policy remains to attract legitimate overseas students was rather more welcome than the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, accepted, although I fully realise why he made the observations that he did. He says that statistics are not the crucial issue and statistics are less important than policy. However, the point we heard a moment ago from the Minister about this new exercise on statistics has considerable potential value. Aside from all the general arguments, one of the frustrations about this debate is a genuine empirical disagreement about how many students from abroad overstay in this country. A lot of the debate and attitudes in Whitehall are shaped by a view that we have a problem of a lot of overstayers. If there is such a problem, we need to tighten the regime. If, however, there is not a problem of overstayers, and it can be established authoritatively that there is not, that would be a significant contribution to the debate.

The statistics at the moment are very unreliable. If someone comes here to study and tells someone doing one of the surveys that they are here to study, stays on and works for a time, then leaves, answering the question, “What have you been doing?”, with, “I’ve been working”, they count as a leaving worker, not as a leaving student. If someone comes here to study, thinking that they will be here for more than a year, but end up leaving Britain after being here for 11 months—many master’s courses are advertised as a year long but you can complete them in 11 months—they do not count as one of those one-year students departing. There are lots of problems like this in the statistics, which have proved a bane in the debate about overseas students and their numbers. I very much hope that the important initiative which the Minister announced today, which was discussed in the other House yesterday, will enable us to get to the bottom of those types of empirical questions. That would be an important contribution to the debate, and I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that those type of questions will be within the scope of this exercise and that we will learn more about it.

I also hope, thinking of all the time that we have spent on attracting overseas students to this country, that we might briefly remind the Government of the importance of encouraging British students to study abroad. Of course, dare one say it, if they were to study abroad for more than a year, it would reduce net migration—not that that is the most important reason for promoting it. However, when one looks at half a million students coming from abroad to study in Britain and 30,000 British students going to study abroad, especially if we are to be a dynamic global presence, even post Brexit, we need to do better at promoting and encouraging British students to go abroad. One way to do that is to make it easier for them to take out loans to finance their study abroad. I hope that we will look at that.

Finally, as this will be my last intervention on the Bill, I congratulate the ministerial team that has successfully brought the Bill to a conclusion. My noble friend Lord Younger has been courteous throughout this debate, and Jo Johnson has been extraordinarily diligent in spending time in this Chamber observing our debates. This is a substantial piece of legislation. We legislate on higher education only once a generation, and this legislation finally puts in place a regulatory regime that matches the realities of higher education in Britain. We could not have carried on with the old grant-giving body being a kind of informal regulator, using its power of the purse to regulate the sector. This is a much better, more lucid, more transparent and more rule-based system.

In our debates in this House, on all sides, it has been clear that we care passionately about the autonomy of higher education institutions and universities, and the provisions, including the new ones we have debated today, enhance that autonomy. Looking back on this debate, one of my regrets is that while we have tended to look at this from an English perspective. From the conversations I have with vice-chancellors, it is clear to me where the biggest threats to autonomy in our universities lie, and it is not in England. The relationship between the Scottish Government and their universities is far more intrusive and overbearing than anything that would be acceptable in England. We have sometimes had an English Minister with English teaching responsibilities facing challenges about autonomy for which he is not responsible. I hope that in the future we will be avid in securing, scrutinising and protecting the autonomy of Scottish universities, which matters enormously in Scotland and more widely. Therefore, we have a better regulatory regime, we have spoken up for autonomy, and, significantly, the focus on teaching has reminded us of the importance of the educational experience in university. After so much attention has been given to research over the years, it is excellent that we have spent so much of our time focusing on teaching.

I therefore thank the Ministers, and I thank their Bill team for the way in which it has engaged with many of us as we have had questions to make sense of specific proposals and try to engage with them. Indeed, this has been a cross-party debate. We have had excellent interventions from experts on the Cross Benches, people who work in and understand higher education, which has enormously enhanced our debate. We have heard from the Opposition Benches—I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, made an important contribution from the Opposition Front Bench—and from the Lib Dem Benches. Occasionally I had to remind myself that we had worked on this together in coalition and that some of the measures that were now proving so controversial could trace their origins to a Government in whom there was even a Secretary of State I worked with who belonged to a certain party opposite. However, all parties have worked together on this, and we can be proud of the Bill that is now going forward.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I echo much of what the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said, but I want to start with the reference that the Prime Minister made to the “unelected House of Lords” when she announced the election. This unelected House is at its best when it does what it has done with this Bill. It is probably one of the most amended Bills in the history of Parliament, with more than 500 amendments, and that is because of the expertise that exists across the board in this House—a breadth and depth of expertise that no other Chamber in the world comes anywhere close to by a factor of maybe 10. A former Universities Minister has just spoken and we have heard from chancellors and vice-chancellors of universities, former vice-chancellors of universities such as Cambridge and the heads of Oxbridge colleges—and I could go on. Where in the world would you get that? We have had it with this Bill.

I thank the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for having always been polite and decent, and for having listened. We may not be where a lot of us want to be, but the Government have listened and there has been a lot of movement. I, too, acknowledge the commitment of the Minister, Jo Johnson. I have never seen a Minister so assiduous in attending the stages of a Bill in the way that he has with this one, and it shows visibly that he is listening. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the initiative that he has taken on this amendment. He is a former pro-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, where today I am proud to be chancellor.

Normally, you are not meant to repeat things at various stages of a Bill—you cannot make another Second Reading speech later on. However, in this case new information and new reports have been coming out at every stage. For example, the UUK report suddenly revealed that the contribution of international students is much higher than we had ever thought. Figures of £13 billion or £14 billion were quoted, but the figure is actually £26 billion a year. That is new information to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was trying to do with this amendment. On top of that, we have had, hot off the press, the Education Committee’s report entitled Exiting the EU: Challenges and Opportunities for Higher Education, dated 25 April.

Before I go any further, there is a unanimous consensus around the country—let alone in this House, where we won this amendment by close to 100 votes—that international students should not be included in the net migration figures. The National Union of Students has stated:

“We are concerned that—as long as international students are included within net migration statistics—policies that adversely impact international students owing to the Government’s desire to reduce levels of immigration will only exacerbate”.


It also said:

“The Government’s abject failure to offer anything substantial on removing international students from net migration targets is”,


in its words,

“outrageous. There is immense support for doing so, from cross-party parliamentarians, from UK students and from the general public. It is unacceptable that the government continues to ignore this support”.

I come to the House of Commons Education Committee’s report, which no one has spoken about and which has just been published—on 25 April. It contains a whole section on international students and the migration target. It says very clearly that the 100,000 target still exists, yet we all know that the latest figure for overall net migration is 273,000. The excuse that the Government give every time we challenge them to remove international students from the net migration figures is that the UN rules mean that we have to include them and treat them as immigrants—and those are indeed the UN rules.

The Government’s other answer is always, “There is no cap on the number of international students. Any number is welcome”. However, the danger lies in the perception that is created by continuing to include them in the figure and treat them as immigrants. The Home Secretary at the Conservative Party conference spoke about possibly reducing the number of international students. That is scary—and it is a message that goes to the outside world. The Commons Education Committee said the majority of its written evidence and witnesses at its meetings were very clear that international students should be removed from the net migration target, which would,

“help offset risks to higher education from leaving the EU”.

It continued:

“Our evidence was unanimous in saying that international students were a positive force”,


for education, contributing £25.8 billion a year and creating more than 200,000 jobs, and contributing to the richness of our universities, as well as to the UK’s soft power.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I take note of what the noble Lord has said. I will be saying more about this in a moment. I understand the concerns on this issue. I say again that the Government are not complacent about the concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and others have. We have explicitly committed to consider the ratings and their international impact as part of the lessons learned exercise. Not all providers will be able to get a bronze award. The Government have listened to the concerns raised by this House and noble Lords and I am pleased to announce that the Office for Students will label providers without a quality assessment as, “ineligible for a teaching excellence award” on both the register and in key information for students. Let me be quite clear that this indicates to students, parents and employers that there is a level that sits below bronze.

In contrast, the implication of this amendment is that the vast majority of the sector will end up being labelled wrongly as “meets expectations”—unless the intention is that much of the sector will actually be termed a failure, as in pass or fail. Without clear differentiation it is impossible to tell students where the best teaching can be found. GuildHE and Universities UK wrote to noble Lords last week expressing their support for the Government’s approach. Steve Smith, vice-chancellor of Exeter University, said:

“Some of the most controversial aspects of the TEF are … essential to its success. Genuine, clear differentiation is critical if we are truly to incentivise teaching”.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he confirm that when the Government carried out the consultation on the teaching excellence framework, one of the questions asked was: do you agree with the descriptions of the different TEF ratings proposed? Will he also confirm that an overwhelming 55% said no? On the basis of that, the Government came up with the gold, silver and bronze. Now the Minister is hearing unanimously from noble Lords and university leaders that this will not work for universities, will damage the sector and will create the wrong perception. So surely the Government should listen again. If they have listened before, they can listen now.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We continue to listen, and I have said that we are beefing up our lessons-learned exercise. To come back to the point that the noble Lord raised, it is true that we consulted everybody, and a number of ideas were put forward, including pass and fail and the one to 10 rating. It is not true to say that everyone was against the gold, silver and bronze system. We have come to this decision and think that it is right to go ahead on this basis. It is not just the higher education providers who believe that differentiated assessment is the right methodology. Alex Neill, director of policy and campaigns at Which?, said:

“Our research has shown that students struggle to obtain the information they need to make informed decisions about university choices. We welcome measures to give students more insight into student experience, teaching standards and value for money. These proposals could not only drive up standards, but could also empower students ahead of one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives”.


I know that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, raised student opposition to the TEF—I think that he may have indicated that no students were in favour—but students are not opposed to the principle of differentiation and ratings, which, as he knows, rests at the heart of the TEF. For example, in a survey for Times Higher Education, 84% of university applicants said that a good score in the TEF would definitely make them consider choosing a particular institution. So there is another side to this argument.

Furthermore, without differentiation, there will be no incentive for the vast majority of higher education providers to improve. Retesting whether providers “meet expectations” does nothing to encourage excellence beyond this—

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly address Amendments 2 and 8, which talk about part-time, adult and distance learning. When I am presiding over degree ceremonies as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, it gives me such pleasure when we have not just mature students but really mature students—students in their 60s—coming up to graduate. Whatever we do in this Bill, we must encourage lifelong learning and adult education. From 2005 to 2010, I was the youngest university chancellor in the country, as chancellor of Thames Valley University, which is now the University of West London. There, we had a motto: “further and higher”. The Bill must encourage progression, so that once people are exposed to higher education, they have the opportunity to go further. Quite often, it is just a question of experiencing it.

Finally, Amendment 87 is about access and participation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has spoken about. It is crucial that this is reported on and acknowledged fundamentally in the Bill. I have seen this first hand at the University of Cambridge, where the GEEMA programme brings to a summer school ethnic minority students who have no background of university education in their families. When they attend this course, they are exposed to Cambridge—somewhere they probably would never have even considered. The reality is that the majority end up going to university, and quite a few of them end up going to Cambridge. This must be encouraged, and it is crucial that it is part of the Bill.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly to my amendment on mental health and also support the comments that have been made on young people with dyslexia or disabilities. I preface my remarks by reminding us all how much progress has been made on mental health over the past decade or so. In fact, this Government, like the previous one, recognise the issue and have done an incredible amount of work.

We have had various debates on this, and I am sure that all noble Lords who have declared an interest as a chancellor would want to ensure that when young people go to their universities, they are given all the support that they need. For many young people, it is a huge step to go to university. You would therefore expect that while they are away at university, that support would be there for them. In schools, teachers are in loco parentis. Of course, it is young adults who attend university, but many of them still need the support that they would get at home. As parents, therefore, we would be devastated if that support was not available when there was a mental health problem. This simple amendment to say that mental health support should be available and that students should know of it is therefore vital.

Many universities provide incredible support and do stunning work for young people. However, there are many that do not. In Committee, I gave a personal example of a family friend with two girls at two separate universities. Their father very suddenly and tragically died. One university gave no support at all to that young girl, who was going through anguish and mental trauma—she was not even seen by her personal tutor. The other university could not do enough to help. That is the reason for this amendment: we must make sure that that support is there for all students and it is not just left to the university itself.

Of course this is not just about students, it is about the staff as well. We put great pressure on the people working in higher education and, therefore, support for them should be in place. Perhaps personal tutors could be trained to identify when there are mental health problems and are able to advise the student where to go. So I hope that, in his reply, the Minister will make some positive sounds about this important issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, hearing the words “TEF metrics” made me come to my feet, because a consistent theme to run through our debates on the Bill has been the developing understanding that the metrics are wholly inadequate and, in particular, that the national student survey is not the basis for any judgments on teaching quality.

I am glad that the Government have moved as far as they have on the NSS and the metrics—now we are getting a thorough review; the metrics related to the NSS are being officially described as the least important of the metrics before us; for smaller institutions more scope is being given; and so on. That is all good news, but what seems knocking on bizarre is to plough on with bringing in this link between fees and the TEF before we have got the TEF right. It would be logical to get the TEF right first, see whether the metrics can be made to work and get them all in some sort of order, and then, when you have done that, you can seriously consider whether to have a link with fees. But when the TEF is such a self-evident mess, why put all your money on having the fees link, which will make people even angrier at the effects of the TEF? Why not show a little patience? The Government believe in linking the TEF and fees; others in this House do not. The Government would give themselves the best chance of proving themselves right and the sceptics wrong if they gave time for the TEF to settle down before they brought in the fees link.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I remind your Lordships that when the Browne report came out at the beginning of the coalition Government, the change was introduced to increase fees from £3,000 to £9,000 in one go and to convert to a loan system. I remember tabling a regret Motion at the time. The argument then was that a market would be created so that students would go for universities and courses that were better value for them, but what I highlighted in my Motion was that the Government were withdrawing funding on the one hand and tripling the fees on the other. In the five years since the change was implemented, there has been no market; universities across the board have had to increase their fees virtually to the maximum £9,000, because funding was withdrawn at the other end. For students, it was a double whammy. Their fees were tripled in one go—I suggested that it should have been phased in—and they are now saddled with loans of tens of thousands of pounds that they have to pay off. On the other hand, for the universities, there is a £9,000 figure which for some subjects—science and engineering, let alone medicine—is nowhere near enough to provide that type of teaching.

This is a Hobson’s choice. You can understand the students’ point of view—they are already paying £9,000; they were paying £3,000 and they got the loans; they do not want the fees to go up—and you can understand the universities’ point of view: they want to provide the best possible research, teaching and facilities for their students, but they have had no increase in their fees for five years. In real terms, the £9,000 is already down to just over £8,000. Now we have this further linkage with teaching.

I want your Lordships to understand that this is not easy. Universities operate in a challenging environment. We are competing with the whole world. We have the best universities in the world along with the United States of America. Our research is fantastic. I am proud of our universities, but in many ways we have our hands tied behind our backs. I applaud our students and our universities.

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, I can see why the Government want to link the quality of teaching to fees. I assume that behind it is that they need a kind of sanction to do something about those universities which are not providing adequate teaching. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that the best teaching is not necessarily provided by those universities which do the best research; in other words, the high-status universities. Some of the new universities have excellent teaching quality, where some of the best research universities do not give it enough attention.

I support what my noble friend Lord Lipsey said. It is not the right time to attach the decision about the fees that can be charged to the TEF, because we do not have a TEF that is yet suitable and up to scratch in how it will operate. It is putting the cart before the horse. There may be some date in the future when it might be appropriate for the ability to increase fees to be related to the quality of teaching, but we have not reached that point. We really need to get our metrics right and provide a TEF that is fit for the job that it is being asked to do.

Armed Forces: Capability

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, not one member of the UK Armed Forces was killed in operations in 2016, thankfully. It was the first time since 1968 that no one had died, although sadly there were deaths on exercises. And yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said with crystal clarity in his brilliant opening speech—and I thank him for leading this debate—the challenges that we face globally are, in his words, a “bonfire of certainties”.

The head of the Defence Select Committee, Julian Lewis, said that the last time this country faced a threatening Russia as well as a major terrorist campaign, the UK invested between 4.3% and 5.1% of GDP in defence. A measure of just how low our expectations have fallen is that here we are celebrating the minimum of 2%, and there are debates about how this 2% is measured. He suggests that 3% would be a much better level of spending. Does the Minister agree?

General Sir Richard Barrons, retired head of the UK’s Joint Forces Command, said that we are “dangerously squeezed” in manpower. Can the Minister confirm that there is a shortfall of 22% in our Maritime Reserves and 12% in the Army Reserves? As far as the Defence Medical Services are concerned, we no longer have military hospitals and what exists now is within the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham—attached to the University of Birmingham medical school, where I am proud to be chancellor of the university. There is a shortage of medical doctors being recruited, retained and motivated. Such undermanning has led to a reliance on Reserve Forces, which are also underrecruited. Can the Minister confirm this? This negatively impacts our capability.

Sir Richard Barrons also said in 2016 that the UK and its NATO allies had,

“no effective plan for defending Europe from a Russian attack because of splits in the alliance”.

He said that, while Russia could,

“deploy tens of thousands of troops into NATO territory within 48 hours, backed by warplanes and ships”,

NATO would take “months” to do that.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers of RUSI has said that the overall capability in defence and diplomacy has been severely restricted after Brexit. As we have heard before, RUSI also said that the position we have held as number 2 in NATO for more than 60 years could be transferred to another EU member to retain links to the EU. Can the Minister give his view on that?

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Walker, spoke about the EU army. We have had the best of both worlds being part of the European Union. We are not in Schengen, we are not in the euro, and we are not into any further integration. There is no way we would have been into an EU army; it would have been a bridge far too far. And yet, we have to acknowledge that the peace for the last 70 years has not been because of NATO alone; it has been because of the existence of the European Union and NATO.

We are the fifth largest economy in the world—we were the fifth largest economy in the world, but because of the uncertainty the world sees before we leave the EU and the devaluation of the pound, we are no longer fifth. India has overtaken the UK as the fifth largest economy in the world and will soon overtake the UK as the fifth largest defence spender as well.

Can the Minister say whether we are doing enough in furthering defence collaboration with universities, particularly with regard to innovation and research? At Birmingham we have a defence club. The noble Lord, Lord West, has spoken there and the CGS General Sir Nick Carter will be speaking there next week. Collaboration would help with our strategic thinking and with our defence manufacturing base. Manufacturing is still 10% of our GDP; we must not lose that. The 2010 SDSR was negligent—thankfully, the 2015 one was much better—as 2010 was all about means before ends.

I conclude on the covenant. We have had a debate on the covenant. The covenant is wonderful; it is the promise that we make as a people to our Armed Forces for the service and sacrifice that they make. But are we doing enough to publicise the covenant within the Army family, within the troops, within the families, within the veterans and, most importantly, with the public so that we never take the Armed Forced for granted?

Finally, we are a strong soft power. We have oodles of soft power, but that soft power is no good without the hard power. The combination of those two makes Britain not a superpower, but definitely a global power, and we must never lose that.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, after the excellent first day in Committee, when we heard from chancellors and former chancellors and current professors, readers and masters, I reflected that nearly all of them had come from what we might regard as a traditional university. When we think of a university, we think of a young person going into the sixth form and leaving at 18 to do a three-year degree course. The importance of university includes going away from home, and campus life. Of course, that is changing dramatically in this country, and it will continue to change as we look at different ways of learning in higher education. That is why the points made by my noble friend Lady Garden are important—we need in this Bill to reflect the importance of part-time and distance learning. That is important particularly, as she rightly said, for young people with disadvantaged backgrounds, who may be living on a council estate in Merseyside or Sheffield and for whom the notion of coming to London is exciting but challenges their ability to afford that higher education opportunity. The figures show that many young people are traditionally going to the university where they live, and many more will start to do part-time study. I know that the Minister will say, “When we use the word university, it is implicit that we mean all forms of higher education”, but, as my noble friend said, we should be clear about the importance of distance and part-time higher education learning.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I shall address the point about part-time and lifelong learning, and speak from my own experience. When I qualified as a chartered accountant, with a degree from India, and with a law degree from Cambridge, I thought that I had had enough education for ever. Then I was introduced to lifelong learning by going to business school and engaging in executive education, which I have since done at Cranfield School of Management, the London Business School and the Harvard Business School. I remember President Clinton saying, “The more you learn, the more you earn”, and one can try to vouch for that.

The encouragement of lifelong learning is so important—it does not stop. Then there is access to lifelong learning for those who missed out on it, for whatever reason. I was the youngest university chancellor in the country when I was made chancellor of Thames Valley University, now the University of West London. At that university, which is one of the modern universities, a huge proportion of the students were mature students and learning part-time. You cannot equate a university such as that with an Oxford or a Cambridge. It is a completely different model, offering access and focusing on—and promoting the concept of—lifelong learning, mature students and part-time learning. Sadly, the funding for part-time learning needs to be looked at, but it is not a matter for this Bill.

At the other extreme, at the traditional universities, we have MBAs—masters in business administration—which are very popular around the world, but nowadays we also have executive MBAs. The executive MBA programme is getting more and more popular at top business schools around the world, including in our country —I am the chair of the Cambridge Judge Business School. It is part-time learning at the highest level.

I hope that the Bill will address this and encourage part-time learning and learning throughout one’s lifetime. Amendment 41 refers to,

“including access to part-time study and lifelong learning”.

In fact, I would encourage it; it is crucial.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I welcome this brief debate. It is crucial that we should turn our attention to different forms of access and to lifelong learning in its widest sense. The publication from the four years that I was Education and Employment Secretary that I remain most proud of is The Learning Age Green Paper. I am proud of the commitment of the then Government to the whole range of opportunities for lifelong learning.

I deeply regret that universities as a whole in this country countenanced the demise of their extramural outreach at a time when more utilitarian delivery was uppermost in people’s minds. I pay tribute to Sheffield Hallam University for its outreach, embracing those from a whole range of disadvantaged backgrounds. I declare an interest: I have a close relationship with the University of Sheffield, where I hopefully deliver some pearls of wisdom and experience from a lifetime engaged in education, and I welcome its renewed commitment to lifelong learning. However, universities using resources, expertise and facilities to reach out is still in embryo.

Digital platforms now allow us to communicate at a distance. Over past decades, the Open University has been able to link that effectively to collective study and engagement; that is a crucial part of a rounded education that we can all welcome. I hope that when the Minister responds, he will, in a wider sense than just this Bill, encourage and support universities to use those resources to reach out and become essential parts of their own community, as well reaching out internationally.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, we are effectively talking about the criteria that will be used by the relevant offices to register, deregister and reregister universities. There is not much in the Bill that tells us what the criteria are—I have an amendment later that will bear on this question. If, for example, a university put considerable and unusual effort into access provision, or indeed did nothing at all, would that affect the need to reregister, or would it enhance the position of a new institution wanting to register as participating in the whole higher education system? This is a plea for more information. Who will provide advice to the relevant offices, whether it is the Office for Fair Access or the Office for Students, in the work they carry out? This could be a crucial way of extending access.

When I was at the University of Edinburgh, the most important access work that we did was to work with a local further education college and provide a one-year programme taught jointly by the university and the college. Marvellous students went through there, one of whom ended up, interestingly, as the chair of the Scottish Funding Council for higher education. She was someone who went through this programme, came through the university and benefited from it. I should like to think that when we are discussing the quality of the education provided, this is exactly the kind of point that might be brought out and whose significance should be made something of.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, may I request that the Minister reassures us that, when we talk about access, the Bill covers diversity and, in particular, ethnic minority children and students coming to universities? I saw the importance of this for myself at Cambridge University, when we started a summer course called GEEMA. The ethnic minority students who attended the course came primarily from families who had no previous university experience. I remember giving out the certificates for one of the first courses, when 60 students from all over the country attended and were mentored by ethnic minority undergraduate students already at the university. Of the 60, many not only went on to university but went on to the University of Cambridge. Programmes such as this are very effective; are we doing enough to promote that access through the Bill?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and will speak to Amendments 85 and 127 in my name. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I wondered about the linkage with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, but he talked about transparency and accountability, which we are also talking about. The amendments in my name were previously tabled in the Commons by the Liberal Democrats but they reflect numerous debates on this subject in both Houses over the years.

The intention of the amendments is to highlight the very significant impact of international students on UK universities, in particular the contribution they make to the financial health of an individual university. Previous debates and reports in both Houses have rightly concluded that counting international students in migration targets is a poor policy choice, damages the reputation of UK universities and should be reversed. We shall discuss these issues in much more detail when we debate the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, later on.

In connection with the amendments in this group, and to set the context, almost everyone agrees that including students within the net migration target is wrong. The list of those who have spoken out includes: the BIS Select Committee in its 2012 report; 68 university vice-chancellors, who wrote on the subject to David Cameron, warning about the impact on universities’ reputation, also in 2012; the Institute of Directors and other business groups; Philip Hammond, indeed, who suggested conversations were going on in government about this until Theresa May publicly slapped him down; and even David Cameron, who, according to Max Chambers, his former home affairs adviser, had decided to take students out of the immigration target and,

“planned to do so after the EU referendum”—

ah, the best-laid plans of mice, men and politicians.

It is not even a question of public opinion. A YouGov poll from May last year showed that 57% of the public said that foreign students should not be in the figures, compared to only 32% who thought they should. The fact that they are included makes us somewhat of an anathema even among our closest international allies. President Obama has previously spoken about the need for the US to welcome foreign students and Australia, the country with the very points-based immigration system promised—and now abandoned—by the leave campaign, changed its system in 2012 to position Australia as a preferred study destination for international students.

The Government’s justification for the continued policy has been the international rules around reporting of migrant numbers. However, as the Migration Observatory at Oxford has made clear, there is a big difference between the migration statistics and the Government’s self-imposed migration target. The amendments do not, however, seek to override the Government’s decision. They simply ask them to put their money where their mouth is by ensuring that the value of these students to universities is made public each year, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has set out in his amendments, too.

Among my amendments, there is one where the provider would have to provide information about the fees charged to international students and, in Amendment 127, the OfS would have to set out in its report,

“the financial contribution of international students to English higher education providers”.

If the Government want to continue to stand in the way of this consensus, they should be made to do so publicly and in the face of statistics. These amendments would therefore play a minor but important role in informing public debate on this issue.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. I start by declaring my interest as a third-generation former international student in this country: both my grandfathers, my mother and I were, and now my son is, at Cambridge University.

The benefits that international students bring to this country and to our universities are enormous and priceless. It is our biggest element of soft power. There are 30 world leaders at any one time who have been educated at British universities. Generation-long links are built and, most importantly, the international students enrich the experience of our domestic students and universities. Then of course there is the money: directly and indirectly, £14 billion is brought in by international students to our universities and they create employment for 130,000 people. Yet every single time the issue has been debated in this Chamber, we have had unanimous consensus except from the Minister responding. A straight bat is played back to us, with a no.

The country does not think that international students are immigrants. The public do not mind international students staying on and working for a while after they finish their studies. This wretched referendum has brought immigration together into one bad thing and the Government insist on categorising international students as immigrants. There may be a UN definition, but when you come to calculate your net migration figures, you do not have to include international students as migrants. Our competitor countries—the United States, Australia and Canada—do not include them.

Statistics are available to show that international students, on the whole, return to their countries; those statistics are not being released. Can the Minister tell us why? I believe these figures show that only 1.5% of international students, if that—it may be 1,500—overstay and do not go back. We have removed the exit checks from our borders, so we do not know who has left our country. We should be scanning every passport, EU and non-EU, into and out of this country. We should introduce visible exit checks at our ports and borders immediately; we would then have that information at our fingertips and we should release it.

I declare an interest as president of UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs, which represents the 450,000 international students at all our educational institutions in this country. We despair that these students who bring this benefit to this country are not acknowledged. In fact, the perception that this creates is terrible. I know for a fact that Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities, is very supportive of international students. I have seen that personally. He is here and I thank him for his support, which I know is genuine. However, I am sorry to be very personal but we have a Prime Minister who, when she was Home Secretary, said that every international student should leave the day that they graduated. The headlines in India were, “Take our money and get out”. That is the perception created.

I have had the Australian high commissioner to India say to me, “What are you doing with your attitude to international students? We have a Minister for International Students in Australia and we welcome them. In fact, if they want to stay on and pass through all the filters, they are welcome because they have paid for their education and will benefit our economy. On the other hand, you are turning them away and turning them to us, for which we are very grateful”. We are being made a laughing stock. There is an increase in international students around the world of 8% a year from countries such as India. As our former Prime Minister David Cameron said, we are in a global race. Well, we are not in that race if this is the attitude and perception that we give out.

If the Prime Minister is not willing to listen and if, sadly, the perception of immigration is so bad that the good people who visit this country—the tourists, business visitors and international students, and in fact the migrants who benefit this country over the generations, and without whom we would not be the successful country we are and the fifth-largest economy in the world—are not appreciated, then the only way to address this is through legislation. An amendment would say, “We must declare and detail the actual benefits and contributions of international students at our universities”. It is the only way that the Government will listen, and if they continue to include international students in the net migration figures then the amendment coming up in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is the only way that we will be able to address this. We will do that down the line and say, “Let’s legislate that they should be excluded when counting net migration figures”. This is very important because it goes to our soft power, to the impression we create around the world as a country and to our economy and universities. It is part of what has made our universities the best in the world and this country so wonderful.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, in supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, perhaps I could give the Committee the benefit of the experience that I have had in the past four years. I have just completed a four-year term as the Prime Minister’s trade and cultural envoy to south-east Asia. In that role, I got to know very well the Education Ministers of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos—all really excellent people who had a tremendous respect for the education system in this country. Over that period of four years, I failed ever to explain our visa policy. I would go further: they were really offended by it. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are not known for the export of terrorism. They are rapidly developing countries and in the case of Vietnam, an important rapidly developing country that sees itself as a world player and which we are prioritising in our post-Brexit determination for a bilateral trade agreement. Try to imagine what it is like to sit in the Cabinet of those countries and be told, “Your students are being grouped as potential terrorists”. It is offensive and it damages us. It is foolish and damages our universities and international reputation. I was deeply ashamed of the arguments that I was forced to put up, all of which were spurious and none of which were defensible.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bragg (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and his colleagues in what promises to be a full-scale and important debate on higher education. It is indeed odd, and even extraordinary, that universities are not mentioned in the Bill. I declare an interest, having been chancellor of Leeds University for the last 16 years.

En passant, I note the spectacularly impressive number of academics of the highest achievement who have expressed serious reservations and opposition to much of the Bill. Surely, in this House more than any other, we believe that the voices of experts, especially of such calibre—many of whom are in this House now—ought to be listened to and recognised as the best wisdom available on the subject.

The Government seem intent on a pincer movement, first introducing free-market rules that could best be described as downmarket options. New colleges called new providers—George Orwell would have loved that—will be able to acquire degree-awarding powers without having to build up a track record by teaching another university’s degree first. None of that boring old research and listening preparation nonsense for this Government, it seems.

The current university system could be called a fine example of the marketplace at its best—there is much talk of the marketplace. There is heavy, open competition for entrance to universities, and heavy competition for lectureships and professorships. When universities put in for grants and funds they realise they are competing with many other universities—sometimes all over the world—and they work out the most competitive as well as the most scholastically satisfactory proposal. This is a marketplace of the mind, but none the less a marketplace and an increasingly key one for the future. Our universities embrace and revel in it.

One of the reasons for this effective balance between learning and earning lies in the autonomy and individuality of our universities. They are not one size fits all, beholden to the state or looking forward to launching themselves on the FTSE 100. They are, to use a phrase of Alan Bennett’s, just “keeping on keeping on” at a high level in different but effective ways, with fertile variations, with their primary purpose: scholarship. As we know, the consequences of scholarship can increasingly be very profitable, wide-ranging across the whole of society and, from the evidence we have, increasingly essential to the success of a 21st-century economy, which, in so many other areas, has found this country wanting. But the heart of it is learning, and the heart of that is the curiosity to pursue knowledge for the sake of more knowledge. Key to that is a certain looseness and confidence in individual and often idiosyncratic needs—private space, in short, for what our greatest scientists and writers in the humanities have always needed to generate their best work. This cannot be legislated for: it is an individual-to-individual decision. This heavy-handed state control is the enemy to that free-ranging condition.

The clamp of the Government’s decision to create a new body—a central control unit—the Office for Students, is anathema to freedom, of which we need more, not less. It would impose another layer of regulation. Goodness knows, universities in this country, like schools, hospitals and the Government themselves, are all but disappearing under the tangleweed of overregulation. Who will run these new bodies, which will interfere so radically in the affairs of the variety of universities? How will they be trained? Where will they come from? How will they know more than those already working hard inside the universities who are the best people? They are already there inside the universities. All of these universities, from the ancient to the relatively new, have built up through expertise and expediency individual and ingenious ways to ride the tide of the times. There is danger of strangulation by bureaucracy.

As they take an increasingly important place in our society as one of the few success stories of the last few decades, universities are being asked to do more, which they are doing. They have now become the forum for disputes about free speech, and it is in universities where unacceptable and destructive racist attitudes must be and will continue to be challenged, I trust. In cities thoughtlessly stripped of traditional industries it is universities that have often provided the new hub of hope in the place.

No doubt others will itemise ways universities can be improved, and I look forward to hearing that. though, we must declare and itemise their current strengths. Universities must be high on the agenda—as high as they are on the ladder of learning in this country. I look forward to the Minister confirming that he will go along with the amendment.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the amendment is very important for one reason. Having taken part in Second Reading, I declare my interests once again as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School, and honorary fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge—I could go on.

This is a once-in-many-decades opportunity to improve the higher education sector in this country. One could argue that we have the best universities in the world, along with the United States, in spite of underfunding. The key issue is that we underfund our universities. If we put in the funding equivalence of the United States of America, or of the European Union, or the OECD average it in itself would improve our universities hugely. But, as an entrepreneur building businesses, I live by the mantra not of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but of restless innovation, of the world belonging to the discontent.

To that extent, I applaud the Bill’s objective to try to improve our universities. I also recognise the Minister, Jo Johnson, for his commitment to this, for listening through the entire Second Reading, and for being here with us today. I know he and his department will listen, as, I hope, will the Minister.

I therefore agree with the noble Lords, Lord Waldegrave and Lord Willetts, that the use of “must” in this clause does not make sense in many circumstances. For example, in India, 1.5 million students apply to get into the Indian Institutes of Technology. The first cut is 130,000. Ten thousand of them make it. Some of the brightest people in the world have come out of that funnel and run some of the biggest organisations in the world today. It has nothing to do with engineering, but it is a specialist engineering science institution. Caltech is always ranked among the top universities in the world. It is a pure science institution. One cannot therefore prescribe that all universities must do everything, but the spirit of this amendment is absolutely right: that universities on the whole must strive for variety.

[Lord Giddens]

Caltech has a range of other departments, including philosophy, history, social sciences and English.

[Lord Bilimoria]

I was stressing that it focuses on technology—that is its strength and why it wins all those Nobel prizes—but I acknowledge what the noble Lord says.

I go back to areas of specialisation and the purpose of universities. The mindset of certain people, including in this country, is, “You should study at university what you can apply in a job thereafter”—that is, a sort of vocational mindset. Our universities are not what that is about. My oldest son is reading theology at Cambridge. I do not think that he is going to become a priest, but if he wants to, that is up to him. I do not think that that will happen—he will probably become a management consultant—but what he will learn in that environment is phenomenal. He gets one-to-one supervisions with world leaders in his subject. Not every university does that or can afford to do it, but he has that ability. I consulted Cambridge on this. It said that it recognises the importance of diversity in research and teaching and that the success of global competitiveness of the UK’s universities relies on the core principles of sustainability, diversity and—here is the crux of it—institutional autonomy. That is what worries so many of us about this Bill and why this proposed new clause, right up-front, is so important. It is the spirit of it that I completely support.

The pro-vice-chancellor for education at Cambridge, Graham Virgo, has spoken about the last part of the amendment, which is about being a critic and conscience of society. To narrow down the definition just to teaching and research will be to miss the opportunity to improve our universities and to miss the point. Professor Virgo pointed by way of example to the New Zealand Education Act 1989, which had five criteria for defining a university. The fifth of those was for an institution to accept a role as a critic and conscience of society. That is so important and it is why the amendment sets right up-front the essence of what universities should strive to be about, so that we do not go down the wrong track in this once-in-many-decades opportunity to improve our already fantastic, best-of-the-best, proud, jewel-in-the-crown universities.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support the spirit of this amendment, and I declare an interest as emeritus professor at Loughborough University and a fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences. I apologise that I was not able to speak at Second Reading, but I suspect that my contribution was not missed among the 70-odd people who did speak. I have read the debate, and very thoughtful it was. The clear thread running through a large number of contributions from all sides of the House was the perceived threat to university autonomy and academic freedom. I fear that those concerns were not assuaged by the Minister’s assurances, hence the motive behind the amendment.

The fears have to be set in the context of what is widely seen as the creeping marketisation and consumerisation of universities. As my noble friend Lady Bakewell put it, students are now consumers of a product, as if a university were a department store. Many would argue that all that is precious about universities in terms of the development of critical thinking, and in particular encouraging students to think critically and not simply accept what they are given, is being increasingly subordinated to an instrumentalist, economistic concept of a university as in effect a degree factory feeding UK plc.

I suspect the Minister will say that the amendment is not necessary because the Government have said they are committed to the key principles it contains. But surely there would be no better way of demonstrating that commitment than by either accepting the amendment or, given that a number of noble Lords have pointed to possible weaknesses in the wording—and my noble friend on the Front Bench has made it clear that he is not wedded to the exact wording—offering to bring forward their own amendment setting out what a university is and the principles it should pursue. That would show their commitment and establish a clear framework for our deliberations on the Bill. In doing so, the Government would go some way to reassuring both Members of your Lordships’ House and the many organisations and individual academics who have written to us to express their fears that the Bill is taking us too far down a road that is incompatible with the basic principles of what a university is and what a university should be.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Kerslake. The noble Baroness is right to say that placing a duty on Secretaries of State does not necessarily mean that you get the right outcome, but it helps, and this amendment would certainly help. It also sits rather well alongside the new clause we passed earlier today. That was a declaratory provision which affects the title of “university”, and if anything it places a duty on universities. However, this amendment elegantly places a duty on the Secretary of State and on the OfS in exercising the very considerable powers the Bill is likely to give them. It would be sensible to accept it because the autonomy of higher education institutions is so massively important that the more belts and braces we have in the Bill to ensure that that autonomy is safeguarded, the better.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Kerslake on institutional autonomy. In passing the new clause earlier today, we have reflected at the beginning of the Bill the spirit of what a university is all about. Although many of us might disagree with the wording of the new clause, its spirit and essence are in place and at its crux is the autonomy of universities. As chancellor of the University of Birmingham, before Second Reading I consulted our vice-chancellor, Sir David Eastwood, who is one of the most respected figures in higher education in this country and probably in the world, frankly. He is also a former head of HEFCE. When I asked him about the Bill, he said, “The UK has a co-regulatory approach that has maintained the autonomy of universities and relies on their own governance arrangements where appropriate, allowing universities such as Birmingham to be flexible and responsive to the needs of their students and employers, including shaping the curriculum in the light of the latest research findings, to think long term about global challenges and remain free from direct political interference. It is vital that that cornerstone of UK higher education is preserved throughout the Bill”. That is absolutely crucial to the whole Bill, and this amendment puts autonomy at the heart of everything.

When Universities UK was consulted about this, it said that in order to be successful, universities need to take their own decisions and indeed it used David Eastwood’s words: “flexible”, “responsive” and “autonomy”. They provide the key competitive advantage of our universities. Who is the number one competitor in the world when it comes to universities? We have the top two institutions, along with the United States of America. Later this week I will be at Harvard Business School, which I have been attending for 15 years because I am an alumnus. Harvard is the wealthiest university in the world by miles. On Saturday I will see new facilities that did not exist a year ago which are the result of $1 billion of investment. The university is very wealthy and privately funded, but there is a huge distinction between state universities in the United States and institutions like Harvard. We have a wonderful mix that gives us the best of both worlds. We have universities that receive state funding but yet have always been autonomous and can do their own thing in their best interests. We must not jeopardise that, so we should support this amendment.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to my own Amendment, Amendment 66, and in doing so I declare my interests as I did at Second Reading. In common with many commentators, I fear that the Bill gives unprecedented powers to the Secretary of State to interfere directly in the academic business of universities and providers of higher education. As it stands, the Bill will allow the Minister to give direct instructions to the Office for Students and it will allow that office in turn to convey specific instructions to universities and other providers. A separation of powers is required to prevent any agency acting in a manner that exceeds its competence or expertise and infringes on other domains for which independence should be guaranteed.

The Office for Students should be an executive body and not be allowed in its own right to pass judgment on academic standards. An independent body of experts should be relied on to assess the quality of the provision of higher education and to judge the standards of accreditation. My proposed amendment would clearly limit the power of the Secretary of State to give specific instructions to universities. The Bill already proposes that any guidance given by the Minister must apply to the providers of higher education in general, but it would also allow the Minister to declare, for example, that, “the course in epidemiology at the University of Middleshire does not conform to the guidelines issued by the Secretary of State under Section 3 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017”. In other words, the Minister could refer to a specific university relative to the general guidelines that have been enunciated. My amendment would preclude the Minister from making such statements in respect of a specific institution. It should be for the Office for Students to make observations about the conformity of courses with guidelines and standards, and it should be allowed to do so only on the advice of a designated body of experts. This point will be reinforced in later amendments that I intend to bring forward.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, according to UUK, the UK higher education sector is a success story with a global reputation for excellence in teaching and research, supporting over 2.5 million students from the UK and around the world. I declare my interest as chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School. The University of Cambridge strongly believes that the success and global competitiveness of the UK’s universities rely on the core principles of sustainability, diversity and institutional autonomy. According to the Russell group’s report, Jewels in the Crown:

“International comparisons show that universities produce more outputs when they have the freedom to operate autonomously and face strong competition for people and funding”.

Martin Wolf wrote about the reform of Britain’s universities being,

“a betrayal of Conservative principles”,

and felt that the measures constitute a serious threat to Britain’s world-class and highly innovative universities.

I am proud to be the chancellor of the University of Birmingham, where we are very fortunate to have Professor Sir David Eastwood, one of the most respected figures in higher education in the UK and a former chief executive of HEFCE. As many noble Lords have said, he says that this is the first major change in the sector since the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which is just after I started Cobra Beer; it is a long time ago. It has lasted all this time, so what we are doing now will be there for a number of decades ahead. So this is really important; it is not just tampering around. He also makes the point that the UK has a co-regulatory approach that has maintained the autonomy of universities and relies on their own governance arrangements where appropriate, allowing universities such as Birmingham to be flexible and responsive to the needs of their students and employers, including shaping the curriculum in the light of the latest research findings, to think long term about global challenges and remain free from direct political interference. It is vital that that cornerstone of UK higher education is preserved throughout the Bill.

Then there is talk of removing royal charters, which are precious things. We should not just remove them—absolutely not.

The strength of our universities is based on collaboration. This wretched referendum has caused a big uncertainty about losing funding from the EU. But it is about much more than losing the funding—it is about the collaboration. When we at the University of Birmingham carry out our own research, we have a field-weighted citation impact of 1.87; when Harvard carries out its own research, it has a field-weighted average of 2.4; but when we co-author together it is an average of 5.69. That is the power of collaboration.

The Prime Minister wrote a letter to Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, the Nobel laureate, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and president of the Royal Society, only five days after she came into office, saying:

“Our research base is enriched by the best minds from Europe and around the world—providing reassurance to these individuals and to UK researchers working in Europe will be a priority for the Government”.

We have the insecurity and anxiety caused by Brexit, and the Prime Minister’s refusal to provide that reassurance now, when 30% of academics at top universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Birmingham are foreign. One example from Birmingham is the discovery of or proof of the existence of gravitational waves 100 years after Einstein’s theory of relativity. Two of the professors working on that from Birmingham University are Professor Alberto Vecchio and Professor Andreas Freise, both EU scientists.

On higher education and the new organisation that has been formed, Times Higher Education reported that John Kingman, chair of the newly created UKRI, wrote that it is,

“nine brains in one body”,

explaining the governing philosophy of the research and innovation funding organisation. The noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, spoke about this. Do we really need to bring this all into one organisation? Stephen Curry of Imperial College said:

“Unlike schools, our universities compete nationally and internationally—indeed, this competition is one of the drivers of quality—and need the freedom to innovate in all sorts of ways … Excessive intrusion by the OfS could well stifle the vigour of the sector”.

We are already competing in a global arena. Then Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, talks about recruiting overseas students depending on rankings of universities. What is she talking about? I was the youngest university chancellor in this country when I was chancellor of Thames Valley University, now the University of West London. It had world-class excellence in areas such as hospitality and catering, something that Oxford and Cambridge could never do. Just because universities are lower down in the rankings, does that mean that they should not be able to recruit foreign students? I think that the Home Secretary needs to learn quite a few things.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, in her excellent speech spoke about students being against all this, but what about staff? The University and College Union feels that this is going to harm our globally renowned education system, as 15% of UK university staff are EU nationals and many more are from further afield. Of course, from India we have had a 50% drop in students since 2010; they feel that the Bill will do nothing to help this.

The best classroom teaching that I have experienced in my life was at the Harvard Business School, of which I am an alumnus. Professor Ranjay Gulati, whom I consulted on this, said that it was more about education, not evaluation—I am talking about the teaching framework. He feels that there should be measures that allow for guidelines in a holistic, not mechanical, way because that could be dangerous. It surely should be about teaching effectiveness, not teaching excellence. At Birmingham, we have teaching awards that come from the students, which is fantastic. Students look at world rankings and country rankings of universities.

To conclude, we have 450,000 international students in this country. I am the president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, which represents those international students. On the Government’s attitude to international students—we continue to include and categorise international students as immigrants in the net migration figures, but this Bill is an opportunity once and for all to sort this out. I hope that we will address this and remove international students, sending out the signal that we welcome them. I know that our Minister, Jo Johnson, is totally onside with regard to this, and I hope that we can go ahead with it.

Finally, this is the brunt of it all—we are talking about a Bill and evolutionary reform, which we need, but the real essence of it is that we punch above our weight as a research nation. The UK represents 1% of the world’s population but accounts for 11.6% of citations and 15.9% of the world’s most highly cited articles. This is in spite of the UK spending only 1.7% of GDP on R&D. As to the £2 billion extra, if we want to catch up with the United States at 2.7% or Germany at 2.8%, it should be £20 billion more a year just to catch up. When it comes to higher education, we have the best universities in the world, and we do that by investing well under the US, the EU and the OECD averages as a proportion of GDP. That is the real crux of the matter.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, when I visited CERN in Geneva, I realised that the experiments that led to the famous Higgs boson discovery, ATLAS and CMS, were both headed by British scientists: Professor Dave Charlton from the University of Birmingham, and Professor Sir Tejinder Virdee from Imperial College. And of course it was Sir Tim Berners-Lee who actually created the world wide web at CERN. Then, this year, we had the gravitational waves proving Einstein’s theory of relativity, 100 years later, with 1.3 billion light years being measured. Who were two of the principal scientists behind that? Professor Alberto Vecchio and Professor Andreas Frieze—EU scientists at the University of Birmingham. What makes this country great—this 1% of the world’s population, as my noble friend Lord Kakkar said—is not our natural resources but our talent. The jewel in our crown is our universities, which are the best in the world, along with those in the United States of America.

I declare my various interests, including being the proud chancellor of the University of Birmingham, chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School and the president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs, representing the 450,000 international students in this country, of whom 180,000 are from the EU.

I say that we achieve all this excellence in spite of underspending on HE. We spend way below the EU and OECD average, and we are well behind the United States of America. When it comes to our research and development spending as a proportion of GDP, South Korea spends double the percentage that we do and we are way below the EU average, let alone that of the United States. What is scary is that the proportion of GDP spent on R&D, 1.6%, has been falling from 1985 to 2013. Will the Minister acknowledge this?

We heard from my noble friends Lord Rees and Lord Smith and others that at the University of Cambridge, around 16.5% of university staff are EEA nationals. When it comes to PhD students, that figure is 27%, and for MPhils, it is 21%. Look at the awards: UK institutions have won more ERC awards than any other country—989 compared with France’s 577.

On the implications and opportunities of leaving the EU on science and research, the University of Cambridge’s response is that,

“it will create significant challenges for Universities. We recognise that there is a great deal of uncertainty”.

Everyone has said that today. But the university also said that the political instability raises significant questions in the following areas. It refers to,

“our recruitment and retention of the brightest and best staff and students regardless of nationality … the future of our substantial European research funding”,

and the point that many noble Lords have touched on,

“the extensive global network of the University’s collaborations”.

Sixty percent of the UK’s internationally co-authored papers are with EU partners. The mobility of our scientists is phenomenal—I have given you just one illustration. Professor Alice Gast of Imperial College, one of the top 10 universities in the world, said:

“Foreigners improve the creativity and productivity of home-grown talent, too”.

They enrich our universities, both academics and students.

Cambridge was the highest recipient of EU funding allocated under Horizon 2020, about which lots of Peers have spoken. I want to ask the Minister about intellectual property. In the event of Brexit—which may not happen, by the way—the value of any EU-based research for exploitation may be limited. Does the Minister agree with that? The UK has played a key role in shaping the design and implementation of the EU’s research programmes to ensure that the funding has been allocated on excellence. That has not been mentioned so far. Legislating for the ERA could have potential negative impacts on our current world-class systems.

People talk about the drop in the number of EU applicants, which is real—will the Minister confirm that? But the other aspect is that as the Royal Society said, the scientific community often works beyond national boundaries on problems of common interest and so is well placed to support diplomatic efforts that require non-traditional alliances of nations, sectors and non-governmental organisations. This is known as science diplomacy.

I conclude by saying that what worries and saddens me about this whole situation is that here we are talking about excellence and Britain being the best in the world, and yet my noble friend Lord Smith spoke about hate crime. I have lived in this country since I came here from India as a 19 year-old student in the early 80s. In 35 years I have never experienced any hate crime except for this year—and this year I have received it in abundance. Whether it is tweets, emails or letters, I cannot even repeat what people have been saying to me. It has saddened me. And yet this is the country that Liam Fox talks about opening up to the world. The world is laughing at us. They see us as closing up to the world, inward looking and insular, not open, not diverse, not plural, not tolerant and not brilliant. The headline of an Indian newspaper would read: Lord Bilimoria—this is not the Britain that I know and this is not the Britain that I love.