Higher Education (Basic Amount) (England) Regulations 2010

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold]

I intend to make very brief comments because a lot of noble Lords obviously wish to come in and a lot of arguments have already been aired. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, as I have not had the chance to welcome him to his present position. I note that the same silky tongue is at work and I am certainly one of those who in the past had very cordial relations with the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, when he was in his trade union situation. Indeed, it extended to him sending me Christmas cards but I do not think that he will send me one this year. Well, he might; yes, he is telling me that he may.

I must declare three interests: I am chairman of the council of the Royal Veterinary College, chairman of the Institute of Education and chairman of the Oxford University Society. This debate is being conducted against cries of outrage from the Opposition but those cries cannot and must not conceal the facts of the matter—the situation in which we are. The Opposition, when in Government, introduced the fee system and the mechanism for uprating which we are debating. We have been castigated for doing this in a hasty manner but that mechanism was put in place by the Opposition. As Steve Smith has said, writing in the Times on 6 December, the coalition Government,

“has chosen a system that builds on the logic of the one introduced in 2006”.

The Opposition, when in Government, set up the Browne review which recommended, among many other things, the lifting of the fees cap. It was a great pleasure and a great illumination to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Browne, today. Liam Byrne, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, left office with the previous Government uttering the immortal words, “There is no money”. I have sympathy with a number of the sentiments expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, because self-evidently the Opposition have no solution for the problem that they have created and it is down to the coalition Government to find the solution. It is obvious that they have no solution because when the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, asked the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, for his own policies the noble Lord threw no light. We remain in darkness in that respect.

In contrast, the coalition Government have promised a White Paper—I believe that it will be in the New Year—so that the many detailed complexities and implications of the fees decisions can be examined and consulted upon. I look forward to that White Paper because there are questions that need answering about, for example, the funding of students who are already graduates. We do not have those answers at the moment. I should have thought that almost everyone in this House would be able to produce other questions for which we need the clarity that a White Paper would provide.

The Government have proposed help with fees for the least well-off students for the first year of study and, possibly, for the second. They will invest £150 million to provide a national scholarship programme. Universities which charge fees of over £6,000 will have to demonstrate how they will attract students from the least advantaged backgrounds. The income threshold for the repayment of fees is to be raised from £15,000 to £21,000, which will make around a quarter of graduates better off than with the threshold left in place by the Opposition—not that, from listening to this debate, you would have guessed that—while for the first time, part-time students will be eligible for loan support for tuition costs on the same basis as full-time students.

I believe that the Government have made the best possible fist of the situation bequeathed to them by the previous Government. That is why I will most certainly be supporting the Government today. However, if the fee rise is rejected today, Universities UK has calculated that some 59 per cent—that is its figure, not a government figure—of current higher education places will be lost. I do not see that as fair, inclusive, or socially advantageous but it may be that some of the contributors from the party opposite will explain how they see that as fair and advantageous.

There are also those who advocate delay today. I suggest that if they have ever run an institution, an organisation or a business, they ask themselves how they could make any attempt at planning staff numbers, course numbers or student numbers if they do not know the most basic thing: what the income will be of the institution that they run. By rejecting the fee increase today, we will be imposing on all our higher education institutions the chaos of confusion and uncertainty. Everyone in this House supports higher education. Many of us are the beneficiaries of it. But I would not want to impose that uncertainty on those institutions that we hold dear by withholding a decision today.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

Will the noble Baroness not concede that part of the reason why Universities UK and other institutions that are not members of that organisation are worried about the possibility that this regulation may not go through is that they know that the Government propose to withdraw the teaching grant? That is what will make their financial situation so unpredictable, not the question of whether fees go up.

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold]

Who does the noble Baroness think is responsible for the situation that we are in? It is her party, the party opposite.

Queen's Speech

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I begin by joining in the congratulations that have been offered to the two new Ministers. I should like also to extend my own commiserations to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, in the task he faces in summing up this extraordinarily wide-ranging debate. I should also like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Myners, who gave us an absolutely barnstorming speech. His intention to retreat to the Back Benches has provoked what it would be fair to say are lamentations around the House, so I invite him to consider his contribution today as perhaps the first of many final appearances at the Dispatch Box.

I want to talk about a particular aspect of business but, before I do, I should like to say something about transport. As a supporter of the stop Stansted expansion campaign for some years, I welcome the withdrawal of BAA’s planning applications for additional runways at Heathrow and Stansted airports and the part that the new Government’s declaration of intent has played in provoking that long overdue decision. How much it was attributable to government action and how much to BAA losing the will to live in the face of very well organised and effectively marshalled economic and environmental arguments I could not say but, either way, I hope the Government will remain steadfast on the critical issue of airport expansion. When they come to review aviation policy, I hope they will not revive the crippling uncertainties that have blighted communities in Sipson and north Essex for nearly a decade. When the Minister comes to reply I hope he can reassure me on this point.

I turn now to business, albeit of a kind that does not often get mentioned in the same breath as the City and high finance, so I am taking this opportunity to discuss the creative industries where they belong—in company with other significant contributors to this country’s economic effort. Too often they are assumed to inhabit a different bit of the political universe. The term “creative industries” covers everything from the mega-commercial, mega-successful worlds of computer gaming, blockbuster publishing and multi-million dollar film franchises such as Harry Potter and James Bond, right down to tiny one or two-person enterprises making, for example, hand-crafted jewellery, designing fashion or creating i-phone applications. The result of this diversity is a mass of output and a body of talented people whose skills are in demand all over the world. The UK creative industries are a success, accounting for, according to DCMS figures published earlier this year, 6.2 per cent of gross value added in 2007; exporting £16.6 billion worth of services in the same year, which was 4.5 per cent of all goods and services exported; and in 2008 there were coming up to 2 million jobs in the sector, of which 1.1 million were in the creative industries themselves and a further 800,000 plus creative jobs were within other businesses.

By any standards these are significant figures generated by businesses which deserve our respect and support and not the lofty disdain manifested, for example, in a curiously sour piece in a recent edition of Prospect, which makes the fundamental error of assuming that, because we talk about the economic benefits of a strong creative and cultural sector, we elevate the importance of those benefits over the quality of what is created. That is simply wrong.

In a thoughtful speech last month, the new Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt, said:

“For me, culture is not just about the value of our creative industries—not just about more than 3 million visits to UK cinemas each week, more than 40 million visits to our national museums and galleries each year, or more than 14 million visits to the theatre in London alone—it is what defines us as a civilised nation.

I agree with that sentiment from the bottom of my heart, but I also recognise the economic impact creative industries have had and can continue to have as long as they are not cut off at the knees by the insensitive application of harsh economic correctives or the loss of support for fledgling enterprise.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, emphasised the new Government’s belief that economic recovery in this country must be led by the private sector, particularly SMEs. Contrary to popular belief, most creative businesses are in the private sector and many are SMEs—for instance, in independent television production, the fashion industry or, indeed, computer gaming—but their market is globalised and highly competitive and they need to be encouraged in two significant ways, both of which require government to play a part. The first is that many of them depend on high skills levels, including in design, mathematics and computing. I refer your Lordships to the findings on this subject in a report published earlier this year by the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications looking into the film and television industries. Higher education has an important part to play in delivering these skills—and here I acknowledge the remarks of my noble friend Lord Jones—and severe cuts to that sector will have a negative impact on our creative industries. Secondly, the commercial viability of, for example, London theatre, which has an astonishing track record of success both here and overseas, depends significantly on talent and material nurtured in publicly funded organisations such as the National Theatre, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Royal Court. The recent 4 per cent cut administered to the Arts Council, which was more than to other DCMS bodies, makes me wonder whether the Government have yet fully understood the symbiotic nature of public and private enterprise in the cultural sector.

However, I recognise that, at a time when the national watchword appears to be austerity, there can be no expectation of special treatment and I do not ask for it. What I do ask is that our creative industries, for which the UK is very widely admired, should not be treated less well than other sectors and that their particular needs and unique contribution should be properly respected.