Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Wolf of Dulwich Excerpts

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

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may associate these Benches with the eloquent words we have already heard. It is inevitable that there will be a measure of disappointment that not all of your Lordships’ wisdom has been accepted unequivocally by the other House, but I think we can all agree that we have made immense strides in this Bill, and we are deeply appreciative of the way in which Ministers have listened and come forward with proposals. Perhaps I may pick up one thing about which we are particularly pleased, which is that there will be a delay in implementing this while a review is carried out. Some really key measures set out in the Bill need more reflection to see whether they are actually the right path to tread, so we appreciate the fact that the delay has been built in. Again, we appreciate the measures that the Government have taken to come towards us on these issues.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, first, I should declare an interest as a full-time Academic Council member of King’s College, London. I had not expected to speak in this part of the debate and I am afraid that I will be speaking again later. But, since I am on my feet, I would like to say that I agree with all noble Lords who have expressed their appreciation of how the Government have listened to opinions and to the House generally. I, too, feel that we have come a long way. In this context, I will bring back a couple of points that were made in the earlier debates by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and by me in the context of amendments that we had tabled. Since the noble Duke is unable to be here today, I will make them briefly on behalf of us both.

Along with almost all noble Lords here, we strongly welcome the delay in implementing the link with fees—here I endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lord Kerslake. I am delighted to hear that we are moving quickly towards a position where we will have subject-level rather than institution-level assessments. However, one reason we became so concerned about the TEF is that putting a label on an institution is potentially very damaging to it.

One thing that has been rather an eye-opener for me is the extent to which—perhaps inevitably and as someone who teaches public management I should not be surprised—the “sector” is, in the view of the Government, the organised universities and Universities UK, and how few good mechanisms there are for the Bill team and the department to get the voices of students, as opposed to occasionally that of the National Union of Students. Students have been desperately concerned about this, because they are in a world where they pay fees and where the reputation of their institutions is so important. They have been worried about and deeply opposed to anything that puts a single label on them. This single national ranking caused many of us concern.

I will say a couple of things that I hope the incoming Secretary of State will bear in mind. First, as others have alluded to, we have a pilot going on and a system of grades that is out there. I fully understand that that is under way and there are enormous lessons to be learned from it. However, I hope very much that, after the election, whoever the Government may be will think hard about how they use that information, how they publish it, and whether they are in any sense obliged to come forward with the type of single-rank national league table that has caused so much anxiety to students. That is of great concern and it is hard to see how it serves the purpose, also expressed in the current Conservative manifesto, of preserving the reputation of our great university sector.

The other thing, on which I do not have any particular inspiration but about which I would love the incoming Government to think, is how to widen out their contacts with not just the organised sector and Universities UK but the academics and students who are really what the sector is about. We have great universities not because we have activist managerial vice-chancellors but because they are autonomous in large measure internally as well as vis-à-vis the state. That has been of real concern to me. Since we are going to have an Office for Students, it would be very good if, post the election, we could make it genuinely an office for students.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very big Bill. I share the feeling of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, that perhaps this subject is one we will not see again for some time to come and so ought to enjoy what we are seeing now. The train passes slowly, but it is a very important one and we should pay regard to it.

We should also bear in mind that the Bill attracted more than 700 amendments and resulted in, at our last count this morning, 31 major concessions made by the Government to the voices raised, in the other place and particularly in here, in relation to some of the issues we heard about today. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, was right to reflect on the fact that what we have in front of us today, although really important, is the end of the process, not the whole of it. We should not forget that within the list of concessions—“concessions” gives the wrong sense; I mean the things that moved in the Bill—there are important aspects. There is not just freedom of speech, which she mentioned and which is of course tremendously important, but also measures that will improve collaboration within the sector, that will help reverse the decline in part-time students, that will assist mature students who wish to come back, and that pave the way for more work to be done on credit transfer and flexible courses. These are all really important changes to the infrastructure of our higher education system and will make it better. They have not been picked up today because they were dealt with earlier in the process, but they should not be forgotten as they are important.

We have also heard nothing today about UKRI and the developments made in that whole area, which are to change radically the consensus on operating within science and research more generally that has gone on for nearly 30 years in one form or another. It is important that we also reflect that those changes went through after debate and discussion—and some minor adjustments but not many—primarily because there was an effort to make sure that the words used to describe the change were understood properly. A lot of time was spent in going round talking to people and making sure they were happy with that. That was a good thing. Indeed, this whole process, as has been touched on already by a number of noble Lords, is an example of what this House is good at but should be more widely developed within our political debates and discussions: that there is room for civilised debate and discussion about every issue. It does not have to be party political, as my noble friend Lord Blunkett said. It can be small-p political. It can be aimed at trying to arrive at a better overall solution, and I am sure that what we are achieving today has ticked the box in all these areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, our reforms are designed to make it simpler for high-quality providers to enter the higher education market, contribute to greater student choice, and ensure that our higher education sector remains innovative and can respond to changing economic demands. However, we have been clear that encouraging new providers cannot come at the price of lowering the quality bar for obtaining degree-awarding powers. We are absolutely committed to protecting the value of English degrees and, throughout the passage of the Bill, we have added to the legislative protections to achieve this.

At Report in this House, we tabled an amendment, based on a proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, requiring the OfS to request expert advice from a “relevant body” on quality and standards before granting or varying degree-awarding powers, or revoking them on grounds of the quality or standard of provision. The role of the “relevant body” would be similar to that of the QAA’s ACDAP, and the system that we are putting in place will build on the valuable work that the QAA has been doing over the years. Our amendments further strengthen this requirement for expert advice. In particular, this amendment makes clear that if there is not a designated quality body to carry out the role, the committee that the OfS must establish to carry it out must feature a majority of members who are not members of the OfS. Additionally, in appointing those members, the OfS must consider the requirement that advice be informed by the interests listed in the clause. This will ensure that the advice is impartial and well informed. This amendment also makes it clear that the advice must include a view on whether the provider under consideration can maintain quality and standards. In line with the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, it requires the OfS to notify the Secretary of State as soon as possible after it grants degree-awarding powers to a provider who has not previously delivered a degree course under a validation arrangement.

Let me be clear that, as is already the case, I expect the Secretary of State’s guidance to the OfS on degree-awarding powers to continue to require that a provider’s eligibility be reviewed if there is any change in its circumstances, such as a merger or a change of ownership. The OfS has powers under the Bill to remove degree-awarding powers from a provider when there are concerns as to the quality or standards of its higher education provision following such a change. I can confirm that we expect the OfS to seek advice from the relevant body on any such quality concerns before taking the step of revocation. I beg to move.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

First, I take the opportunity to thank the Minister in this House and the Minister for Higher Education very sincerely for listening so carefully and patiently to the arguments that I and many others put forward on these issues. I follow other noble Lords in saying that, while this has been a grind, it has also been something on which all parts of the House have found a great deal to discuss and agree. In that sense, it has been perhaps not enjoyable but certainly an educational and ultimately a positive process. I repeat that I appreciate the time that everybody in the Lords has put into this, and I very much appreciate the time put in by Ministers and the enormous work put in by the Bill team.

I am very happy to see the clause moving towards the statute book, but it seems to be slightly ill understood perhaps outside this Chamber and certainly outside this building. It might be worth my while reiterating what I think is important about it, and I would be grateful if the Minister would let me and the House know if he disagrees with anything that I am just about to say.

One of the major reasons why the Bill is so important is that it sets out what is happening in the sector, quite possibly for decades to come. That is why we have to take account of both whether it can provide innovation and new ideas and allow the sector to move and whether it can provide guarantees of quality and standards and protect students, many of whom take out large loans, and the whole country against what is always possible: that some institutions and people will not have the interests of the country and the sector at heart. Innovation is a very important part of it.

I also take this opportunity to welcome in this House the fact that the Government have recently given some money to the new model university that is being established in Herefordshire, which is enormously important because of the role it will play in helping to develop engineering skills and in working with small businesses and supply chains. It is the sort of institution that we need many more of, and I am really pleased that the Government have given their support.

It is worth remembering that one thing that has bothered us very much in thinking about how this Bill should go forward is our knowledge that it is only too easy to create a situation in which institutions arise and gain access to public funds but whose existence is very hard to justify and that can do enormous harm. It is not just this country—the United States has given us the largest and most catastrophic bankruptcies, leaving students stranded—but it is, after all, not very long ago that the Home Office moved to investigate and shut down higher education institutions in this country that were, not to put too fine a point on it, fraudulent.

This part of the Bill has always been enormously important. I am extremely happy, because it seems that this new clause will institute a quality assurance process that focuses the attention of the Office for Students on a number of critical issues when it is granting or varying awarding powers, and clarifies the importance of independent advice from outside an institution. This is always important, because an institution creates its own understandings and inevitably becomes defensive against the world. The potential strengthening and improvement of the advice that the OfS will get from outside, which will build on the QAA but will potentially be more independent and therefore both add an additional safeguard and add substantively to the process, is very welcome.

This clause also clarifies for the general public the way in which the Government envisage new institutions coming through. They clearly envisage two pathways. Many people will come through validation, a process that itself has grown up over the years with remarkably little scrutiny, but if an institution is to get degree-awarding powers from day 1, this is something of which the Secretary of State must be aware. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, pointed out in earlier debates that anything that goes wrong tends to land on the Secretary of State’s desk anyway. What seems to be important here is that we have an extra element not just of formal accountability but one that will bring into the process both a clear ability for the Secretary of State to create a new institution that has degree-awarding powers, because that is seen as something of which they are capable from day 1, and something to make the process public and one that cannot slide through unobserved.

This is an area in which we have made enormous progress. Perhaps all this would have happened anyway, but I am extremely happy to see it in the Bill. I finish by expressing my gratitude once again to everybody who has worked on the Bill and listened to our concerns and my appreciation of all the comments, information and hard work that colleagues on all Benches of the House have put into it. I welcome this amendment.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak very briefly just to endorse everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, has said. On behalf of the House generally I want to thank her for all the hard work and effort that she has put into securing these changes. It is fair to say that this part of the Bill, in its original form, was the one that gave cause to a great deal of worry, and for me personally the most worry of all because in my view it threatened the reputation of higher education not only in this country but overseas. With this amendment, we are now in a much better place.

The only thing that I ask is that there be some monitoring of how it works in practice. It is very important that there should be some evaluation to make absolutely clear to the higher education sector as a whole, and to those who might want to enter it, that there will be rigorous tests of both quality and standards before any institution can have degree-awarding powers and access to grants and loans through the system of financial support that we have. Having said that, however, I am really grateful to the Government and to the Minister for bringing forward this amendment. It is a huge improvement to the Bill compared to what we had originally.