Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

Monday 13th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Open Rights Group for pushing for this amendment, and particularly the Public Bill Office for getting it into a form that is acceptable in the Bill. This amendment addresses age verification for accessing pornography; currently there are no specific safeguards. However, sexual preferences are very sensitive, so this amendment allows—it does not compel—regulation at a higher level than is currently the case. The pornography industry has a woeful record of regular, large-scale breaches of data security and I do not believe that we should trust it. Even if we think we might trust the industry, we ought to be in a position where we do not have to. Our young people deserve proper protection regarding some very sensitive data.

I believe that we should take this seriously—my experience of young boys of 14 and 15 is that they are being exposed to high-grade pornography on a large scale, something that in the context of their relationships with women later in life we may want to think about carefully. Therefore, surely we should take the opportunity to give ourselves the powers to take action, should we decide that that is necessary, rather than having to come back to primary legislation with all the time and delay that that involves. We can anticipate this difficulty—we can see it coming down the tracks—so let us prepare for it. I beg to move.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I am completely discombobulated because the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has hidden himself on the far right-hand side of the Chamber, which makes it very difficult to engage with him—but I am sure we can get over it. He is also incredibly skilful to have got an amendment of this type into the Bill, because we were looking at this issue as well but could not find a way through. I would like a tutorial with him afterwards about how to get inside the interstices of this rather complicated legislative framework.

I must say that I have read his amendment several times and still cannot quite get it. I shall therefore use my usual strategy, which is to come in from an aerial height on a rarefied intellectual plane and ask the Minister to sum up in a way that I can understand—but under the radar I will ask for three things. First, we spent a lot of time on this in the Digital Economy Act. It is an important area and it is therefore important that we get it right. It would be quite helpful to the Committee, and would inform us for the future, if we could have a statement from the Dispatch Box or a letter saying where we have got to on age verification.

I hear rumours that the system envisaged at the time when the Digital Economy Act was going through has not been successful in practice. I think that we have heard from the Minister and others in earlier groups in relation to similar topics that in practice the envisaged age verification system is not being implemented as it stands. What is happening is that the process of trying to clear up this area and making sure that age verification is in place is actually being carried out on a voluntary basis by those who run credit cards and banking services for the companies involved and for whom a simple letter from the regulator, in this case the BBFC, is sufficient to cause them to cease to process any moneys to the sites concerned—and, as a result, that is what is happening in the pornography industry. That may or may not be a good thing—it is probably too early to say—but it was not the intention of the Bill. That was to have a system that was dependent on a proper age verification system and to make the process open and transparent. If it is different, we ought to know that before we start considering these areas.

My third point is that we would rely on Ministers to let us know whether it is necessary to return to this issue in the sense of the information that we hope will be provided. It is only at that level that we can respond carefully to what the noble Lord said—although I have no doubt that it is a very important area.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to support this amendment and particularly what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has just said. We are asking our children to take on a whole set of responsibilities for which we, let alone they, are not prepared. The social consequences of social media and how to handle them produce enormous stresses on friendship. As for where this amendment is directed, there are also the consequences for children in the way their data are gathered and used, which we do not understand. The House of Lords can now track where each of us was geographically over the last month. It is all on our phones. A complete record is kept unless you happen to have turned it off. When did we give permission for that? If we cannot handle it, how can we expect our children to be able to handle it?

It is also quite clear that the sort of middle-range teenagers—14 and 15 year-olds, boys in particular—are living in a world of extreme pornography, in quality and content, that is quite unprecedented. What effects we can expect that to have on relationships between the genders when they get through to university and life afterwards I do not know. We cannot abrogate our responsibility to make sure that children are looked after properly and that we are not exposing them to amoral companies—I am not aware that any of these companies have a deep moral sense, whatever they may claim. We entrust their upbringing and education to that, but we care very much about their mental health, their sense of society, their sense of relationship to each other and the qualities that they will bring to the world as young people. We ought to be doing something about it in schools. We probably need a bit of thought as to what that should be, but we absolutely should not be doing nothing.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I am very sorry for interrupting the noble Lord, Lord McNally, as what he had to say was very apposite and appropriate. I thought at one stage that he was going to say that he had been around for the passing of the first reform Act as well as everything else he was talking about, but I must have misheard him.

This has been a good debate, which has tended to range rather widely, mainly because it is so important we get this right. I confidently expect the Minister to respond by saying that this is a very good idea but he lacks the power to be able to give any response one way or another because it lies in the hands of one of his noble friends. That of course is the problem here, that we have another linked issue. Whitehall is useless at trying to take a broader issue that arises in one area and apply it in another. Education seems to be one of the worst departments in that respect. I mean that, as it has come up time and again: good ideas about how we need to radicalise our curriculum never get implemented because there seems to be an innate inability in the department to go along with it. It may well be that the changes to the structure of education in recent years have something to do with that. It is good to see in the second line of this amendment that this would apply to “all children” irrespective of the type of school or type of organisational structure that school is in, so that it applies to everyone. We support that.

However, two worries remain that still need to be looked at very hard, and the noble Lord who just spoke was on the point here. Do we have the skills in the schools to teach to the level of understanding that we are talking about? I suspect that we do not. If so, what are we going to do about that? Thirdly, I suspect that our kids are way ahead of us on this. They have already moved across into a knowledge and understanding of this technology that we cannot possibly match. Teaching them to go back to basics, as has been the case in previous restructuring of the curriculum, is not the right way. We need a radical rethink of the overall curriculum, something which is urgent and pressing. It is raised, interestingly enough, in a number of publications that are now appearing around the industrial strategy. If we do not get this right, we will never have a strategy for our industries that will resolve all the issues we have with improving productivity. I hope the Minister will take this away.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

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

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am greatly in sympathy with what the noble Baroness has just said. I very much hope that universities will carry those principles through into their current practice of taking lots of money off students who are studying humanities in order to give it to students who are studying sciences. The little bits of money being unfairly taken off students to fund the OfS are not a very substantial worry in proportion to what universities are already doing to students on different classes of course.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 423 in my name. The question is about grants to the OfS for set-up and running costs, but there is the additional possibility, picked up in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, that there may be other aspects and bright ideas that come to mind about how these charges might be recouped. The amendment asks whether or not there are tight guidelines available which would restrict the ability of the OfS to raise funds in a broader sense other than specifically for set-up and running costs. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

The point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, in her opening remarks on Amendment 420 is important, because we still worry a bit about what the nature of the beast called “OfS” is. Is it a regulator? It has been said that it is, and if it is, does it fall under the Regulators’ Code? I think I heard the Minister say on a previous amendment that it did not qualify to be considered within the code of practice for regulators. But if that is so, why call it a regulator? It will cause confusion and doubt if, in the public mind, it is a regulator for the sector but in fact it is not because it does not fulfil the criteria that would normally apply to other regulators. As the Minister said, these are not unhelpful comments in relation to regulator practice. They would clarify a lot of the uncertainty we have been experiencing in terms of how the regulator will operate. It might be that there is a case for it, even though it was not intended.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has pointed out a number of times that there are other statutory provisions and considerations that might bear on how this Bill is constructed and issues relating to it. It is wise to have a wider net on these matters than simply to focus on the wording of the Bill. If there are other considerations that we ought to be aware of, it would be helpful if the Minister could respond, making quite clear what it is that drives the determination that the regulatory code does not apply in this area, even though some of the factors might be helpful and effective in terms of how it discharges its responsibilities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

I too support the amendment. There are things that only Governments can do. If we want an example of creating universities, we should look at the career of our late colleague Lord Briggs and what he did, and what the status of the institutions he created is now. They are considered to be top-ranking universities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, they were just made and put in place and they ran. It can be done. Indeed, it is happening overseas: other countries are doing it.

We are proud that we have a collection of top-ranking international universities. Why do we not want another one? What would it take to make another one? It would take substantial action by the Government. Do we need a tech powerhouse on the lines of Stanford or MIT? Yes, I think we probably do. As my noble friend Lord Ridley said, there is a space for that—but it is not going to happen through little institutions founding themselves. We have seen enough of what that is like. I am involved with a couple of small institutions trying to become bigger ones, and it is a very hard path. Reputation is hard won in narrow areas, and it takes a long time. Look at how long it has taken BPP to get to its current size: it has taken my lifetime.

The Government can make things happen much faster, and if they realise that things need to be done, they can do that. For them to come to that realisation, a process of being focused on it is needed, and the committee proposed in the amendment certainly represents one way of achieving that. I would like to see, for instance, much wider availability of a proper liberal arts course in British universities. By and large, they are deciding not to offer such courses. If the Government said, “We want to see it; we will fund this provision”, and if the existing universities did not respond, we could set up a new one, in a part of the country that needed it. That would be a great thing. Equally, the idea might be taken up by existing universities. That is not going to happen through the market, because the market in this area is far too slow. But the Government can do it, and they ought to be looking to do it.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I support the amendment and endorse everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said in introducing it. She hit the nail on the head very firmly. There are issues around new providers. There is not very good evidence, and the evidence that there is seems to be anecdotal rather than scientific. The information published recently by HEPI threw doubt on whether many of the institutions that have come forward were bona fide or would survive, and some questionable practices were exposed—so there is an issue there.

In addition to the points that the noble Baroness made, which I endorse, there is, again, a gap in the centre of what the Office for Students is being established to do. It could have been imagined—pace the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about not wanting to overload the OfS—that it would have a responsibility to speak for the sector to the Secretary of State about the gaps that it may see in provision, and the issues that may need to be picked up in future guidance. I would have expected that to be the normal thing.

However, it is interesting to see that the general duties in Clause 2 do not cover it. They are all about functions to do with quality, competition, value for money, equality of opportunity and access. They are nothing to do with surveying and being intelligent about the future and how it might go. However, as the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said, the game may have changed a bit now with the publication of a strongly worded industrial strategy—or at least, we hope it will turn into an industrial strategy after the consultation period. Out of that will come a requirement to think much harder about the training and educational provision that will support and supply the industrial machine that we will need as we go forward into the later parts of this century. It therefore makes sense to have advance intelligence about this, and to recruit from those who have expertise. It makes even more sense to do that in the way suggested by the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I hope that in the course of this Bill we will make an amendment somewhere in this area or in that of the previous amendment, and I think that we will have to consider carefully what that amendment is. We know that we will be up against a tough negotiator who, in the case of Brexit, has said that no deal is preferable to a bad deal. Unless we can steel ourselves to that level, we will not get our way.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this has been another good debate. In some senses the previous amendment and the two amendments in this group are two sides of the same coin. The first amendment, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, set an aspiration for what we were trying to do about the flow of students that, for all the reasons we gave, we wanted to see. The two amendments we are discussing now deal with the detail of how we could achieve that—they could probably be combined to make the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

I do not need to say much more about this; I just want to put one point. On our first day in Committee we spent a lot of time talking about what we thought about our universities, what they were and what they were about. We have not really come back to the amendment we were debating then—which is probably just as well, as the wording was, I admit, not very good. The essence of it was an attempt to reach out to an aspiration that everyone in the Chamber, apart from those on the Government Front Bench, felt—that universities do have a particular distinctive nature and character. I argue that these two amendments help us to articulate that in a rather special way: for all the people who attend those universities—our children, and any other students who come to them—we want the very best quality of teaching and research available. That aspiration can be met only if we are able to recruit for it, and that is what these amendments would achieve.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

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

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lord Norton’s amendment, which would be the ideal. Certainly, we have to move away from where we are in this. I do not find the idea of validation by the OfS satisfactory, with all its conflicts of interest, but universities which set and mark their own degrees are used to that sort of conflict. This sector seems plagued with such conflicts, but I would rather do without them. We have to get to a point where universities acting as validators are not permitted and are in some way controlled by the OfS—if we do not have the arrangement that my noble friend proposes—so that they do not indulge in competitive behaviour in the way that they have in the past. It is an extremely unsatisfactory process at the moment. Validation can last for three years only. That is not in the interests of students. They must have longer-term arrangements with the universities and the universities must be held to them, if that is what we are to go on with.

One can look at examples such as the London College of International Business Studies—a 150 year-old institution, one way and another—which has its degrees validated in Switzerland. It has gone to the altar three times with UK universities, each time being left in the lurch, although it got a QAA pass in the course of one of them. It is now engaged to the Open University and has high hopes of it. I wish it good fortune, but that is not a fair way of asking an organisation to get degree-awarding powers. There has to be good behaviour and consistent behaviour on behalf of the universities.

We also need to solve the problem facing Cordon Bleu. It is an institution operating in 20 countries, awarding degrees in most of them, and extremely highly respected. It cannot come to the UK because, under the validation arrangements currently in place, the validating institution gets a complete licence to use the validatee’s IP to do whatever it wants. Indeed, we have seen one of Cordon Bleu’s competitors pillaged in that way by a UK university. All its IP was taken and used to run that university’s own degrees. That cannot be permitted as a relationship between someone seeking validation and someone offering it.

Whatever we do, we must improve where we are. I am not particularly impressed by what is in the Bill at the moment, but I very much hope that between us we can reach something that will support the entrance of good organisations to degree-awarding in this country in a way that takes account of their quality and the good reasons that they have for thinking they might be allowed to award degrees. However, as others have said, the legislation must absolutely protect the reputation of degrees in this country. We cannot have a situation where substandard organisations get to award degrees.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate. It has shone a light in strange places that I did not think we would ever get to. As a not very good Scottish Calvinist, I am probably the least able to contribute to the debates that were organised by my noble friend Lord Murphy and the right reverend Prelate. However, they make good points and I hope the Minister will be able to help to move that debate forward.

I do not like the idea that my noble friend Lord Murphy’s institutions have to act illegally but be forgiven in the courts when they are finally taken account of. We should get ahead of the game and try to sort this out.

We started with the question of how research awards needed to be done jointly between UKRI and the OfS, if that is the body. This is something we will come back to, so it is no disrespect to say that we need not spend too much time on it now, particularly as the principal proposers of Amendment 509 are missing, in one case because of fog and in the other, I think, because of Cambridge. I cannot remember which is which—your Lordships can probably guess. It is therefore probably better if we pick that up when we come back.

That leaves the central issue posed by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, which is how we can find a structure in a system that has institutions of the highest quality by all accounts that can provide the assurance, support and effective answers to any of the questions raised by new challenger institutions, without those challenger institutions feeling that their operations and ways of working will be squished in some sort of force majeure that will be offered by the established club.

The amendments are very interesting. The words that have been used to attack the concept of probationary degrees need nothing further from me; I think that is right. That is not the way the Government should go on this. We are looking at a way of making sure that the quality assessment—the ability to come to an enduring decision about an institution that wishes to seek degree-awarding powers—is done in a way that reflects its ability to fulfil the necessary requirements in terms of capacity, financial security, academic capacity and the rest, but does not interpose somebody else’s view about what the institution should be doing on top of that.

The right reverend Prelate suggested that some of the stuff he was talking about had been going on since 1533. That puts in perspective people’s worries about a four-year period during which tests are made of whether institutions coming into the system are able to cope. Certainly, my discussions, which were mentioned by others, suggested that people who had been through that process found it valuable, so it would be very stupid to throw it away without further consideration.

I went down memory lane with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, because I started my career in academic administration with CNAA. It was bureaucratic and a little heavy-handed but it worked very effectively. It is interesting that the final vestiges of CNAA still exist in the Open University. Maybe that is where we might want to look, as a future amendment suggests, before we start trying to create something that will not stand the test of time or advance higher education in the UK, and may indeed cause problems, many of which have been raised in this short debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, when I talked earlier about the need to give the OfS some axis in making sure that validation arrangements work well, this was what I meant. I beg to move.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That is the second speediest moving of an amendment I have heard so far in Committee. I will be almost as brief, since we have alluded to the fact, if we have not specifically mentioned it, that the answer to a lot of our problems about the validations issue, which will come up in both this and the following group, where there is a clause stand part, and the power of validation of last resort being given to the Office for Students is to pick up the fact that the CNAA, of blessed memory, still exists, in rump form, in the Open University. That is where all its functions and assets were transferred—not that it had very many assets, I am sure—at the time of its dissolution, around the time that the polytechnics were given their degree-awarding powers and we abolished the binary line, effectively. So we have a situation in which it would be possible, I think, to obtain a validator of last resort at very little cost and certainly at no considerable worry in terms of new structures or arrangements. It would certainly resolve one of the issues that is devilling the question of the powers of the OfS, and I very much hope that this amendment will be considered very carefully.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

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

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I will be brief. Although the phrasing of the amendment is quite broad, the intention behind it is relatively straightforward and quite narrow. In keeping with earlier debates that we have had in Committee, our feeling was that we should do all we can to make sure that those who have a commitment to extend access to higher education to as many people as possible would share the view—I think the Government also share it—that there would be value in having a more flexible system that would, in particular, include more part-time students. It therefore seemed that there was a bit of a gap, which this proposed new clause is intended to fill. With regard to access and participation, there would be a duty on the OfS to make sure that the system of admissions ensured that those who wished to apply for university were fully apprised of the fact that there were alternative models for how they pursued their higher education careers. They should think in terms of part-time or flexible courses, since that might be in some ways better than trying to do a full-time, three-year course immediately after leaving school.

I am sure that that is in the Government’s mind and that they would accept that the underlying thinking behind this is right. The amendment may not be the best way of providing this, but I thought it was worth putting it in as a probing amendment to make sure that we get on the record the Government’s commitment to this type of approach and to the idea that the architecture of regulatory and other bodies involved in the process has this as part of their thinking. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, on this amendment. It is only the OfS that will do these things when they need doing and keep an eye on them, and it ought to be part of what it is meant to do. It is far too easy for schools, colleges and universities to continue with their current practices and to grouse about what is happening. However, no individual or small collection of individuals ever has sufficient incentive to kick against the current system and to try to get a motion for change going. An example of that is post-qualification admission. I speak to a lot of schools, and a large number of them would like to move to post-qualification admission. Nothing will happen unless the OfS or a similar body decides to take a look at it. I hope that my noble friend can reassure me that, should the OfS or the Government wish to take a look at these things, they can do so without any powers beyond those provided in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I have to say to the Minister, who cannot see behind her, that her noble friend was not looking that reassured.

[Lord Lucas]

No, I do not find myself reassured. I very much hope my noble friend may be able to write to us. The sort of protection plan she is talking about is starting to look extremely expensive. Are they going to hold a year’s fees in reserve? If we do not have some kind of mutual arrangement, each course will have to look out for itself; that is going to be extremely expensive and make new initiatives very difficult to finance. I would really appreciate a properly worked example of what happens when a university ceases to trade at relatively short notice.

[Baroness Goldie]

I am very happy to undertake to write to my noble friend. I have so much of interest to tell him that it will be a long letter.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

A couple of my amendments have washed up in this group. Amendment 192 asks whether the OfS will be able to collaborate with other organisations, for instance, the Times Higher Educational Supplement, which is also involved in rating universities in this way. It seems foolish not to be able to use the work that these organisations have done or, indeed, to share intelligence with them to enable them to do their job better.

The second amendment picks up a point made by my noble friend Lord Willetts. I want the OfS to be able to prompt discussion on the system of degree classification in the UK. The class of degree that people come out with from university matters a lot to them. The line between a 2.1 and 2.2 can have a very big effect on people’s careers. It is not at all clear to me that the system really operates in students’ interests so that someone with a 2.2 should be marked down to the extent they are in terms of employment. We have to have a nationwide conversation on this. Since the universities have not prompted it, the OfS should be able to prompt it. It would be a valuable thing to do. It should not be able to impose an outcome but we ought to have a serious conversation. There are obvious disadvantages in the system we have; I am not saying that I know of a better one but we ought to review it.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a good and useful debate about, as everyone has said, important issues which at the moment are not as well established as they could be in the Bill, so I hope there will be an opportunity to return on Report to get them better organised. I do not think that any one of the amendments in this group, with respect to those who have tabled them, takes the trick. This also has to be interfaced back to what we will decide to do on institutional autonomy, which to some extent is the other side of the same coin.

As the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, the two contributions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Brown and Lady Warwick, gave us a real insight into the difficulties that will arise if we do not get this right. I do not want to be too critical of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who is doing his best to raise a series of interesting questions, but Amendment 192 refers to making arrangements for the rating of the quality and standards of higher education. That is exactly the problem although I agree that the amendment is more subtle in some ways. If we do not approach this with real intelligence about how we use the two terms we will run into difficulty as we go further down the track. That being said, I understand where the noble Lord is coming from. We will probably have to come back to some of the issues that he raises at a future date.

I shall speak briefly to our Amendments 131 and 136. Amendment 131 is an attempt to try to ensure that in a particular part of the Bill, in assessing the quality of higher education providers as a whole—I am not talking about the individual quality; I am falling into my own trap here—there has to be a robust system to get people to a point at which they can be registered as higher education providers. Those systems must include a consideration that the provider has in place appropriate standards that they may apply. I apologise for the typo in the last line of the amendment which should read “providers”.

Amendment 136 tries to give a slightly more detailed interpretation of what a threshold standard is and relates it to,

“a student undertaking a higher education course provided by it, is sufficient to merit the award of a degree or other higher qualification”.

I agree with all noble Lords who have said that the breakdown here is between the sector, which is responsible for the threshold standards, and the necessary quality assessment, which should be done by an external body—it is currently done by the QAA. I also accept, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and others have said, that the QAA has a very important role, which we will be revisiting in relation to establishing the conditions under which a body gets on to the register, therefore becoming a higher education provider, and is eligible for access to student support.

Listening to this debate, I was struck by two things. First was the sense that we are all grouping around a particular area which needs to be unpicked. As I said, no one of these amendments does it exactly, but we know what we are looking for. Secondly, the Government need to signal—if they can—their willingness to look at this again on Report. I welcome what the noble Viscount said in his opening remarks: there will be a statement or a further chance to come in and discuss how we are going to make sure that, as it leaves this place, the Bill has appropriate wording for institutional autonomy, which is at the centre of all we are discussing.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

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

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, rather perversely, Amendment 4 is a drafting amendment consequential on Amendment 18, so I will start with the latter, which is about the important question of the structure of whatever we are going to call the OfS board, as it is currently named.

Amendment 18 brings parliamentary scrutiny into the question of who should chair this board. A very important theme, although perhaps one for another day, is that the Bill is relatively light in terms of its engagement with the parliamentary process. Although the intention is that the Bill should move away from scrutiny under the Privy Council and other similar regimes, it is not necessarily clear that the will is there on the part of Ministers to provide a different scrutiny arrangement, so we will definitely have to return to this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, who is in his place, made a very powerful speech at Second Reading in which he pointed out a number of drafting infelicities in relation to statutory instruments, the use of Henry VIII powers and similar matters. I am sure that the recent report from the Delegated Powers Committee will feature in our discussions going forward and that this is another issue we might need to come back to.

However, I am interested in the Minister’s response to the particular question raised by Amendment 18, which is why the Government do not wish the appointment of members of such a key organisation as the OfS to be subject to the scrutiny now commonplace for many public appointments of this type. As discussed, under the Bill as drafted, this body will have incredible power in relation to higher education, effectively opening and closing universities and deciding who should or should not be preferred. It is inconceivable that there should be no scrutiny other than that of the Minister. It is important that we consider including in the Bill the idea that the chair of the OfS should be subject to scrutiny in the process that is now taking place.

Amendment 5 picks up the themes that I elaborated on in the previous group in relation to student representation. It is not convincing for the Minister to simply say that this area has been dealt with by ensuring that at least one of the ordinary members of the OfS board must be capable of representing students. We are all capable of representing students, but none of us present today—unless I am very much mistaken and more deluded that I normally am—can say that they are an active student and can bring that experience to the table. There are many teachers and others around who I am sure would be prepared to stand up and say they could do it, but I do not think they would want to if they were ever exposed to the full fury of the student body. It seems completely incomprehensible to us that the board should not have a student representative—indeed, there should be more than one.

Amendment 6 would ensure that the related criteria for all OfS board members are taken to be of equal importance. The worry here is that there may be vestigial elements from the current regimes, which have been alluded to in earlier discussions today. There is the sense that research takes precedence over teaching competence, that somehow older universities have more authority than newer ones, and that ones with different missions should be discriminated against. Then, there is the question, which I am sure will be raised during this debate—if not, it has been raised in previous ones—of how we make sure that the very necessary representations from our smaller institutions, conservatoires and specialist institutions are made properly.

It is one thing to have a series of representations and an equitable and appropriate way of appointing people, but quite another to be clear that this is done in practice. The amendment is drafted so that the appointment processes—one hopes they will be of an extremely high standard—ensure that broad and equal importance is given to all the elements that make up our university sector and our higher education providers, and that there should be no perception that a hierarchy exists in respect of any of them.

Amendment 7 makes the point, although I am sure this will happen anyway, that there must be current or recent experience among those appointed. I am sure that would be the assumption, but there is no reason at all to suggest that that is always going to be the case. The Schedule seems the appropriate place to put this provision, rather than in the main Bill.

Amendment 8 suggests that the experience of higher education and further education providers should also be taken into account when appointing board members. We have a tendency to speak about higher education as being exclusively in the existing university arrangements but, of course, further education institutions and other institutions such as those we have been talking about in the last few hours all have a contribution to make to higher education, and it is important that board members reflect that.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that at least some of the members of the OfS should have experience of providing vocational or professional education. I am thinking here of the University of Law or BPP University, for example, but there are also wider groups that we would need to pick up on. I am sure the noble Lord will make that point when he comes to speak.

Amendment 10 contains a theme that will run in later amendments. We will be addressing ourselves in those amendments to the suggestion that the Bill is too narrowly constructed around traditional university syllabuses in particular, and to a model whereby students arrive at university having completed their school studies at 18 and then spend three years at university before graduating and going on to do other things. The reality is that the median age of students in our British universities is 22 or 23, that many students come in with different previous experiences, and that there is value in that. There is a real sense that the opportunity to build a structure that encourages people to take alternative routes to further education—to take time out to work, or to study while they do other things—has been missed. We need to address that opportunity. Amendment 10 would ensure that widening participation and associated issues are appropriately reflected in the membership of the board.

The final amendment in the group is Amendment 12, which suggests that the Secretary of State should have regard to the experience of higher education employees and teaching and research staff when making appointments. Valued contributions are made from that sector to boards of higher education institutions. Certainly, when I worked in higher education, there was very strong representation from the non-teaching staff—technical, clerical and administrative staff— who all felt that they were participating in the process of governing and managing the university. Why is that not also the case for the regulating body?

I look forward to the debate and to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 11 and 13. I am mostly interested in hearing the Minister’s views on these matters. It seems to me that it is important for a board such as that of the OfS to have experience of the main sets of people and tasks that it is going to be faced with regulating. Amendment 11 would ensure that its members had an understanding of what happens in vocational or professional education. That would be very important because some of its charges will be very much in that part of the world.

Most of all, the amendment would ensure that the OfS has representative people who understand how people end up at university. The business of advising school pupils, looking after pupils who are looking for careers, the limitations of that, the sort of information you need on how 16 and 17 year-olds are, which is very different from 19 and 20 year-old students at university—that is vital experience for a board to have. A great deal of what the OfS is doing is concerned with giving information to people who might come to university and providing structures in order that they should be well looked-after when they get there, so it needs an understanding of what pupils are like.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, since this is HMRC and it refuses to use email, presumably this is printed material. If it is sending it out to this group of kids, that is a couple of million kids a year and their parents, at £1 a time when you include the postage and the printing. This is not cheap stuff. I read the wording of this clause to allow the National Citizen Service to include anything in here. It says what is in here. It can include advertisements for other charitable services or perhaps for a bank to raise a bit of money for itself. This seems a very widely drafted clause, and I am not at all sure that it achieves the purposes that have been set out for it.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I have an amendment in this group. This is one of my favourite topics. I have raised it in every Bill I have worked on, with no success at all, usually to substitute “must” for “may”. On this occasion, I noticed rather late in the day that there are two “mays” in this clause, and I have to be careful that it is not the first one, because that would play directly into the hands of the noble Lord, Lord Cope, who has made quite clear his reservations about this arrangement, which is going to provide the necessary oxygen to try to fuel the excitement that will be felt right across the country when letters drop into the houses of those who might be eligible to join. He might want to hold his choler a little longer because the Digital Economy Bill, which is coming down the track very shortly, contains swathes of permissions for data to be shared, not only within Whitehall, which is perfectly understandable, but wider, to local authorities and others. The noble Lord ain’t seen nothing yet. It is going to be quite interesting to see how that plays here.

I am sorry to have taken up the Committee’s time. My amendment deals with Clause 9(3) in the context of communicating information. I think it has probably come from the draftsman’s pen because “may” and “must” are drafted as “may” throughout. There is probably a word processor instruction to make sure that no “musts” ever appear. But surely on this occasion we are talking about information that has to be derived by the NCS from its own resources, and it must be that information that goes out. Therefore, it is right on this occasion that it should be “must”.

Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 9th November 2016 Other Business

[Lord Lucas]

I want to ask a question, so that I understand things better. In the case of a box of Tesco own-brand cornflakes, is Tesco the primary infringer, or must the person who thinks that their patent is infringed write to Tesco to ask who the manufacturer is? In other words, must they ask who Tesco has commissioned to make the cornflakes for it?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

Luckily, I do not have to answer that, but we have expertise beyond parallel at the Minister’s end of the table.

I just want to support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted. The question here is not so much whether this is an issue that we should take into account ab initio, which was slightly the case with the previous amendment, although I supported that as well; the support here comes because there was clear evidence from those whom we consulted that this issue needs further attention, and the noble Baroness has made that case very well. If we have gone to the trouble of taking evidence but then do not consider it and take it forward, that seems to be a slightly casual way of approaching things. I hope that we will take this point very seriously.

I also take the noble Baroness’s point that, if we were to amend the Act in the way that she suggests, this would reduce the impact on small and medium-sized enterprises and other organisations, because there were would be fewer court actions and more such matters would be dealt with in the right way, which is directly between the participants. So I support these amendments.

Enterprise Act 2002 (Part 8 Domestic Infringements) Order 2013

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

Did the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, wish to speak?

[Lord Lucas]

I was just sitting down.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

The noble Lord’s fluency in so many matters suggested that he wanted to make a contribution. I am sad that he will not do so.

We on this side welcome the regulations. They are a good step in a direction that many noble Lords will recognise has been a source of considerable annoyance and concern to consumers over many years. In that sense, I want to understand better the approach that the Minister is taking here. He quite rightly explained that there are requirements because of the European Union directive to move in this direction. In many senses today is interesting because the earlier order that we considered also relates to a European Union directive. The choice there was to do something at the latest possible moment whereas the choice here is to take forward the timing of the European Union directive and use it to solve a problem that is, as he said, a domestic rather than a European one. That aside, it is still a good decision.

Underneath this is a history that the Minister touched on but is worth recording. This comes from a civil complaint from Which? that was referred to the OFT, and the OFT generated the momentum behind this. Yes, it could have happened because of the European Union directive but there is sufficient pressure internally. That also shows that the measures brought forward under the previous Government to try to provide for more active consumer protection in this area have been successful. As a result of that, we are seeing these changes today.

In the impact statement, to which the Minister referred, the assertion is made that these drip-pricing approaches—you do not know the full cost of what you are buying online until you get to the final screen and suddenly some additional charges are put in—are, of course, a frustration and an annoyance. It is interesting, however, that the impact assessment is quite coy about whether it will be to the long-term benefit of consumers. It is effectively saying, if you read between the lines, that while the changes in the regulations and the consequences of what is being proposed mean that companies will not be allowed to add these additional charges, or drip charges, to the price that they are quoting and we will therefore be able to compare prices better and get more for our money, in fact, the money that is being taken out of the system through drip pricing will probably re-emerge as additional charges within the main cost. The impact assessment says that,

“the overall price level may fall; however this is considered unlikely”.

I wonder whether the Minister has any more information on that. I looked carefully through the impact assessment and I could not see much documentation about what will happen to prices. Does he think that my assertion is overstated or about right?

My final point is that the CRD—and the regulations implementing it—covers most retail sectors, but does not include some. Will the Minister please explain what is going to happen in areas which are not covered by the CRD or by these regulations? What measures are the Government considering to bring forward in future years to deal with those?

Universities: Impact of Government Policy

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Lucas

Thursday 13th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Giddens for securing this debate, which has given us a long overdue opportunity to discuss the future of our universities. It has been an excellent debate, with expertise, history and passion, including, in the evocative words of my noble friend Lord Bragg, several thoughtful contributions from the men who “cut the hay”, who we are of course adjured to listen to very carefully.

In that context, it is very sad that we have not had the benefit of contributions from the Conservative Back Bench today. That is obviously a huge vote of confidence in the policies that they are pursuing.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, it is a reflection of what a hard time the Opposition have given us over the past three days and the general state of exhaustion on our Benches.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My heart bleeds.

In his contribution the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, quoted extensively from John Masefield. In fact he must have been reading my speech over my shoulder, because I was also going to quote John Masefield, although I was going to use a quotation that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, gave about a year ago. There were additional lines from where the noble Lord ended up:

“There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university: a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, went on to say:

“I cannot emphasise enough that our universities are and must remain centres of free thought and discovery, and seats of learning in both the sciences and the arts”.

She confirmed that the Government would,

“never lose sight of the wider purposes of higher education”.—[Official Report, 27/10/10; col. 1222.]

Given what has been said today in this debate, perhaps the Minister could confirm when she responds that this remains the position of Her Majesty’s Government.

What are our universities for? We know, first of all, that the recent report of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, confirms that we currently have one of the best, and certainly one of the most cost-effective systems of higher education in the world. We can contest exactly where we are in the rankings but we are certainly near the top. As the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, said, like the cultural industries, this is one of the things that Britain does best and it is something that we should cherish. So the first question is whether the changes now being proposed will assist us to retain and improve our higher education system. It is hard to believe, as the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, reminded us, that the decision to cut the block grant, to cut science funding by 10 per cent in real terms over this CSR period, to curtail overseas student visas and to make university fees three times more expensive is indeed the right way to build on the presently successful system. Indeed, it may get worse.

As my noble friend Lady Howells of St Davids said, the Government’s proposals will undoubtedly create three categories of degree-awarding institutions: an elite group, with almost all their students in the high-achieving category, defined as AAB or better, which will charge headline fees of £9,000 and will be allowed to grow; a large number of perceived second-rank institutions, which will charge £7,500 in order to be eligible to bid for those students that they lose to a pool through the “core and margin” reduction mechanism; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, predicted, a third group of private degree-awarding institutions, FE colleges and others, which will bid at very low fee levels to the pool, but which will have to provide a lot more for less if they are going to survive as universities. The experiences that the third group offer, including shorter programmes and minimal contact time, will not begin to match the experience offered at the other two groups.

If that turns out to be the long-term position, I have grave doubts about whether it will build on where we are today. The Russell Group universities—though not all of them—will prosper, but these changes clearly threaten the coverage, resilience, capacity and effectiveness of the sector. Like the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, I do not see a growth in the overall contribution that science and technology needs to make to our economy; and it will surely reduce the capacity to civilise our society that several noble Lords mentioned. We cannot rule out some closures of good and long-established institutions, with all that that implies. This strategy could destabilise the higher education sector and damage quality.

Related to this point, several noble Lords have mentioned postgraduate courses, a matter unaccountably omitted from the Browne review and the White Paper. It is of course inevitable that the postgraduate landscape will shift significantly as a result of the withdrawal of most central funding without any compensatory student loan support, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, because of the heavy indebtedness of future undergraduates. The changes in the visa system referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, are also affecting the flow of potential overseas postgraduate students, with a knock-on adverse effect on teaching on undergraduate courses. Urgent work is now needed to develop a response to these pressures, and perhaps the Minister could respond on this point.

My second point is whether the new voucher scheme, which underpins the assertion that students will be at the heart of the system, will deliver a better and more cost-effective system going forward. It may well be that putting the student at the heart of the system—with good information, allowing them to make a rational decisions on what course they want to follow—could create a market in undergraduate course provision, and hence improve standards of teaching. The noble Lords, Lord Giddens, Lord Bilimoria, Lord Morgan and Lord Judd, have rather demolished that canard. Even so, it seems to be based on a wrong premise. According to the supporting analysis provided by BIS, high entry qualifications is one of the two key indicators that many universities try to maximise. High entry qualifications enhance an institution’s reputation, which further attracts entrants with high entry qualifications. The result is a large degree of rigidity in the ranking of universities by reputation and prestige. This in turn creates a large number of small markets, with products defined by entry qualifications and subjects, so that each institution or department is effectively in competition with a very small number of others. It is this product differentiation that restricts competition. Most students, after all, will make only one purchase and will not be able to compare different providers directly, and even an improved information system will not entirely compensate for this. In any case, how are prospective students going to get better informed so that, in the words of the White Paper, they will drive teaching excellence,

“by taking their custom to the places offering good value for money”?

This is cod market orthodoxy. But nevertheless, the more students know about what to expect, the better prepared they ought to be.

However, despite appearing to recognise the importance of accurate and meaningful information, the Government proposals do not provide this. The BIS impact assessment says:

“The Government does not have the resources to develop commercial standard information tools (such as consumer price comparison websites) .... so our long-term strategy is to ensure that relevant student data is made available to third party providers, so that they can turn the raw data into meaningful information, innovatively presented”.

Don’t you just love that “innovatively presented”?

Perhaps we can persuade the Government to think again on this point. I cannot see that British analogues of what is already on the market will take the trick here. Take, for example, the US-produced ratemyprofessors, a website which boasts that it has 10 million student comments, and no doubt a huge hit list. Promoted,

“as a fun way to choose the best courses and professors”,

it includes ratings of a professor’s appearance as “hot” or “not”, and ratings of “easiness”—said to be useful for finding a module which will not involve hard work. David Mease, of San Jose State University, currently tops the list with a 4.8 score out of 5 and, you might not be surprised to know, a chilli pepper for “hotness”. There is no photo so I cannot enlighten the House further, but you get the message. For completeness, Brigham Young University, with an average professor score of 3.62 out of 5, tops the college lists. Surely this is not the way to go.

My third point, which has been widely raised already in the debate, is about social mobility. The new methods of allocating resources and controlling student numbers look likely to reinforce relative disadvantage rather than remove it. The removal of the need to pay fees up front for both full and part-time courses, the provision of maintenance loans, and the bursaries and scholarships that may be available to students from low-income backgrounds, should make participation in higher education a more attractive proposition—I accept that. On the other hand, and crucially, we simply do not know whether, and to what extent, the likely assumption of increased debt will reduce participation in general, and by those from low-income backgrounds, women and ethnic minorities in particular. As my noble friend Lady Howells said, the effect of the “core and margin” system will be very likely to create a race to the bottom, bringing in third-tier institutions that are much less attractive to students, which is where many students from disadvantaged backgrounds will end up, because, as we have heard, they are less likely to have good qualifications and will be obliged to accept a place at a third-tier institution; or if they are unwilling to do that, will miss out on higher education completely.

The impact of Government policies is making the future of our universities very uncertain. As we have heard in this high-quality debate today, the restructuring of university funding, which passes the state’s contribution largely on to the student, undermines the compact between student, state and employers that has long been the basis for our university system.

Universities are not an extension of school or, as my noble friend Lord Giddens said, utilitarian providers for people to receive training in the limited range of disciplines for the workplace. They have other noble missions which, to our mind, requires that the state ought to be a major stakeholder in higher education, not merely a provider of off balance-sheet loans at penal rates of interest.

Whereas the Government’s early rhetoric, and clear ideological preference, was to rely on market forces and students exercising choice to create competition that would hold down fees, these aspirations have had to be emasculated in favour of a much more direct control over the level of fees that are charged. The result is not a proper market but even heavier-handed state control, effectively controlling how much the majority of universities can charge and how many students they can take.

I predict that there will be chaos and confusion as universities have to make up their minds about how to play the game without knowing the rules. Will the Government keep cutting their core? What further changes will they make to the AAB regime? The arrangements they have introduced, removing a large group and a growing number of students each year from the majority of institutions, is hugely destabilising. They clearly have no regard for the health of a vital component of our public realm.

From what has been said in this debate today it is hard not to feel that we are at the brink of a major experiment in social policy. As my noble friend Lord Judd said, so much of what is being proposed is untested and the impacts unknowable and the costs of what is being proposed are still in dispute. Like the health service, a major reform is being pushed through with very little understanding of the impact it will have on individuals, institutions, intergenerational relationships and society as a whole.

In closing, I make a rather unusual suggestion to my noble friend Lord Giddens. This debate has succeeded in covering the ground in this policy area, and it has also revealed a large number of flaws in the arguments that have been made. I know that part of the process in these debates is to withdraw the Motion, but the second part of the Motion also says that it is moving for papers. It would be jolly interesting to see the papers supporting these policy initiatives. I therefore suggest that he might leave the Motion in place.