Students’ Return to Universities

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for the opportunity to reiterate what my right honourable friend says: we are working with universities to ensure that all students are supported to return home safely and can spend Christmas with their loved ones if they choose to. We will be providing guidance after consultation with the sector to say how that can be done safely at the end of term. Regarding the Office for Students, the noble Baroness may have seen that Sir Michael Barber, its chair, has written today in the Daily Telegraph about the work the OfS is doing to support students. Its student panel is meeting today to discuss how students see the situation, which will inform the response. That is in addition to the HE task force the Government have set up so that we can talk to the sector more generally.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, if we heard that a third-world country had locked up its students without access to food we would rightly be horrified. Yet that is what this Conservative Government have done to our students. The possible harm from Covid transmission is nothing compared to the harm from this draconian action, which will lead young people to distrust authority and despise politicians. Can the Minister persuade his colleagues, as a matter of urgency, to reverse this dreadful punishment and allow our students to be students?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Well, I do not recognise the characterisation that the noble Baroness gives of what is going on. As my right honourable friend said in his Statement, students as well as the wider community accept that in a global pandemic there have to be restrictions, for the good of themselves and the community more widely. But we do not believe that we should be inflicting any stricter measures on students; we are asking no more or less of them than we would of any other adult at this difficult time. We are working with universities to make sure that they can support the students studying there to get on with their lives as safely as possible and benefit from their education, while keeping themselves and the community safe.