Higher Education and Research Bill (Fifth sitting)

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 158, in schedule 1, page 65, line 31, at end insert—

“(1A) A joint committee shall be established by UKRI and OfS, which must—

(a) consist of representatives of both UKRI and OfS, and

(b) produce an annual report containing details on—

(i) the health of the higher education sector,

(ii) work relating to equality of opportunity,

(iii) the health of different academic disciplines,

(iv) research funding,

(v) the awarding of research degrees,

(vi) post-graduate training,

(vii) shared facilities,

(viii) knowledge exchange,

(ix) skills development, and

(x) maintaining the public interest.

(1B) The report must be sent to the Secretary of State who shall lay it before Parliament.”

This amendment would ensure that the two major bodies, UKRI and OfS, do not work in silos and that the work of each organisation is complementary to the other.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Sir Edward. It is a beautiful day, but I can assure you that for someone from northern climes, these temperatures present quite a challenge.

Amendment 158 is a probing amendment that will hopefully elicit from the Minister some more information about how oversight of the whole sector will work, particularly with regard to the OFS and UK Research and Innovation. As the Committee knows, a great many witnesses, including MillionPlus, the University Alliance and almost all of the research bodies that gave evidence, were concerned about how the OFS and UKRI will work together. It is essential that there is overarching oversight to guarantee the continuing success of the sector. This amendment would require the OFS and UKRI to establish a joint committee that would produce an annual report each year about the higher education sector in its totality, which would be reported to the Secretary of State and be put before Parliament. The amendment would add an additional layer of scrutiny and give parliamentary oversight to the whole sector.

When Pam Tatlow from MillionPlus gave evidence to the Committee, she said:

“I think we should be looking at the Bill in a holistic way. There is a real risk that we look at the Bill in terms of a silo—the office for students, and then UK Research and Innovation. What we have got at the moment through the Higher Education Funding Council for England is some holistic oversight over the whole of the sector”.––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 9, Q6.]

That is the point that people are making. There is additional concern that the separation of responsibilities for research and teaching could mean that the interests of postgraduate research students, in particular, are lost.

I would like the Minister to reassure us about where PGR will sit, and about some of the other issues on the list, including the health of the sector, work relating to equality of opportunity, research funding, shared facilities, knowledge exchange, skills development and maintaining the public interest. Where will those issues sit, and how will they be reported on?

As I said, this is largely a probing amendment. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

We support this amendment in principle but, because the research element of the Bill has implications for Scotland, a copy of any report that is produced should also be made available to the Scottish Government. More generally, any report produced as a result of this Bill should also be made available to the Scottish Government.

[Gordon Marsden]

I rise to support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham, and I commend her for her argument. I would spare her blushes, but as chair of the all-party universities group she is in an admirable position to take soundings from across the sector on this matter, which are of considerable concern. Before I address some of them, I endorse what the hon. Member for Glasgow North West just said about the Scottish dimension. When we debate part 4 of the Bill, we will discuss the new structure of research, about which there was rightly some sharp questioning in the evidence sessions. Given what I called in the evidence session the variable geometry of the Bill in relation to UKRI, the OFS and the research councils, it is essential that there is co-operation to ensure confidence and good relations between the devolved Administrations and the Westminster Government. I entirely endorse what the hon. Lady and her colleague, the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, have said.

On committees, again they can be set up to be what we want them to be: a token, a sop, or something that does some useful good. In the modest but nevertheless substantial way in which my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has phrased her amendment, she has struck the right balance.

I will not be outwith the subject of the Bill when I refer to the situation that occurred in 2007, because it is relevant. I will not get into the issues relating to the machinery of government today, because we will debate them properly under part 4—the implications for this and the issues to do with research in connection with the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as opposed to the Department for Education, are complex, and we will want to discuss them later.

To go back to the machinery of government changes that took place in 2007, before what became BIS and the Department for Education were set up, I was on the Select Committee that questioned David Bell—Sir David Bell, as he is now—the chief executive officer about the relationship between the two organisations was to be. He said that he would continue as chief executive of DFE, Ian Watmore would continue as chief executive of BIS and they would have regular discussions. I said that sounded as if they would have two or three pleasant but meaningful lunches during the year to chat about things, and they would get on very well.

The crucial thing, however, is what happens lower down the food chain, if I may put it that way. Unless there is co-operation and collaboration between the people who do the day-to-day work in the two Departments, the co-operation will not work properly. That is directly relevant to my hon. Friend’s amendment. If the committee is established, it is important that it is not simply two or three agreeable lunches between the high-ups, but a meaningful, continuing and regular communication between UKRI and the OFS.

As I have said, the views of what I might describe as the higher education fraternity and sorority are pretty strong. My hon. Friend has already referred to the evidence given by Pam Tatlow of MillionPlus. Cambridge University, in its written evidence to the Committee, stated:

“The Bill in its current form gives some recognition to the relationship between teaching and research”,

and this is the other broad issue, apart from the desirability of getting the new research structures right and in co-operation; it is also important to get the relationship between teaching and research right.

Cambridge University’s evidence went on to state that

“the Office for Students…and UK Research and Innovation...must work together if required to do so by the Secretary of State, and must also share information”,

with an important caveat:

“However, this provides no burden of responsibility for collaboration outside of any specific request from the Secretary of State. There is also little indication of how oversight will be given to the entire university…portfolio… This risks creating an artificial separation of functions”.

As my hon. Friend also touched on, the university declared that it had

“a particular concern regarding oversight of postgraduate students. Although there have been some assurances from Government that UKRI will have responsibility for funding and OfS will be responsible for their regulation, this is unclear in the legislation.”

Universities UK has offered similar concerns in its note to Committee members and, more widely, on 25 August, when it stated that there was a “substantial need” for collaboration between the OFS and UKRI, and that there was a “lack of clarity” as to which one would lead on cross-cutting institution or sector-wide issues, such as knowledge exchange. Also, since science and education are in separate Departments for the first time—this goes back to the point I made about the machinery of government changes—there is particular need for strong planning. The document that Universities UK circulated expands on that further.

Other organisations have also commented. It is particularly important to look at what some of the key research bodies have said. The Wellcome Trust expressed its concern that the separation of the functions of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, which is what will happen in the process of setting up UKRI and the OFS, could break the links between teaching and research if not well handled. There is no suggestion that that is the deliberate policy of the Government—why would it be?—but you and I, Sir Edward, have been in this place for long enough to know the perils of unintended consequences. When new structures are set up with lots of grand words and gestures, the peril of the unintended consequence is not putting in place the safeguards and the detail that would allow the two newish departments to co-operate. We are trying to be helpful to the Government by flagging up the concerns from the various bodies that have written to us all.

Whatever the Minister says about the specifics of the amendment, I hope that he will go into some detail—if not today, perhaps in future weeks with a letter to members of the Committee—spelling out what he has said today and reassuring all those who want the new structure of UKRI and the OFS to work. We will talk about the broader issues with the research structure in part 4, but we would like some reassurance now that the image of the two agreeable lunches and not much else happening further down the food chain, which I evoked in 2007, will not be replicated in the relationship between the OFS and UKRI.