Safety of School Buildings

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my hon. Friend, and he is absolutely right. That is what we are doing with any work. We are being ultra-cautious here. The decision I have made is ultra-cautious, and first of all it is to make sure that we survey all schools as quickly as possible.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

By the same volition, a school in my constituency sent in the results of the survey on 14 July and was promised by the Department that it would be contacted on Friday or Monday with the report, but it has heard from no one and it was given a telephone number that gets it through to the wrong department. We now have children out of school as a precautionary measure, which is surely unacceptable. Will the Secretary of State look at this case, but will she also say how many other schools are in this position?

[Gillian Keegan]

I will definitely look at that case, because that sounds as though it took place before the decision I took and also before I stood up the caseworkers, proppers, cabinets and portacabins. If the hon. Lady will give me the details of that case, I will look at it, because that should not be happening. What should be happening is exactly the same as what my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) laid out.

Turing Scheme

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain]

As always, the hon. Member anticipates what I will go on to say. When the funding provided under Erasmus and the funding provided under Turing are compared, there can be no doubt that there has been a real-terms cut—and that is before we take the cost of living into account. I will go on to talk about that.

Even if term starts at the beginning of September, it does not follow that students need cost of living funding to arrive in their bank accounts only on day one of classes. Students have to travel to the country, pay up-front rent costs, buy books, get medical checks and, in some circumstances, get visas. Aria told me that she was quite lucky; although she does not come from a particularly well-off family, they were able to help her find the money for her flight. She has been able to find a cheap flat, and she has been living off some savings from a part-time job last year. Uruguay does not require students to have special visas on arrival, although other countries require proof of funds checks, which Aria tells me she probably would not have passed without the Turing funds.

To come back briefly to flights, I am sure that the Minister will point out that the Turing scheme offers some funds to students from less well-off backgrounds. When I asked Aria about that, she said that she did not know about it, but in any case she could not see how it would have helped her, given that she had to travel before the funding decisions were announced. It is a good idea in theory, but it is poor in practice.

I have three other points to make on the funding model. First, there was a decision to make funds available to institutions on a single-year cycle. That means that when universities and colleges are encouraging students to apply for places abroad, they can only tell them what sort of places might have funding, but not what sort of places actually have funding. That leads to the sort of uncertainty that Aria felt as she travelled to the other side of the world on her own, without any knowledge of whether she would in fact receive financial support, and indeed to the uncertainty she continues to have, as she still has no word on whether she will receive funding for next term, which she is due to spend in Taiwan. As a parent, I cannot imagine the stress that her family must have felt. A 24 or 36-month project cycle would allow institutions to plan partnerships, provide certainty to students and, importantly, ensure wider access for all. That is surely the intention of the Turing scheme, right?

Secondly, I would like the Minister to comment on the amount of funds provided. In response to a written question that I tabled earlier this year, the Minister’s Department set out that countries are determined to have a high or low cost of living with reference to data from the World Bank, Erasmus and the OECD, but it did not explain how the references to each of those data sources impacted the groupings. I find some of the groupings totally baffling. Group 1, the highest cost of living group, contains most of North America, New Zealand and Australia, but the only European country is Switzerland. Group 2, on the other hand, contains most of Europe—equating the cost of living in the Czech Republic with that in Denmark, or that in Antarctica with that in Ireland. It feels a bit like a one-size-fits-all category that has not been properly targeted to the reality of the cost of living overseas, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out. Given that the Government are always quick to say that inflationary issues are a global issue and not simply an issue for the UK Government, I find that strange.

Worryingly, the amount allocated per student has fallen regardless of which country a student travels to. Under Erasmus, the maximum a UK student travelling to a European country in 2021 would receive each month was £415, or £600 for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, but the Turing equivalent is £380 and £490. We have simply fallen behind what Erasmus offers, and the Government must review that at the next spending review.

That brings me on nicely to noting that Turing funding is guaranteed only until the 2025 spending review. If institutions are to build long-lasting relationships, and if the Government are serious about offering education to our young people, funding needs to be guaranteed long into the future; it cannot just be a short-term sticking plaster to pacify those of us who saw the benefits of EU membership and did not want to leave. The situation certainly shows how short-sighted it was to decide, late in the Brexit negotiations, to leave Erasmus.

Finally, there are delays in getting funds to institutions and out to students. I have been dipping in and out of Aria’s story. I mentioned that she found out that she would receive funding on 18 August, some six months after applying and weeks after having to travel to her placement. It is now 5 September, and when my team spoke to her yesterday she had still not received the funds. She is getting her usual student funding, which helps with rent, but there is very little left for day-to-day living. Those sorts of delays clearly put students, who ought to be at the heart of the programme, at risk.

To touch on an important but not particularly exciting element of the debate, I have to tell the Minister that the project reporting tool being used by Capita—and presumably approved by the Department—is terrible. To put it in slightly better language, universities are required to provide updates and make requests for funds to be released, but whenever universities do so, the system locks and they cannot use it again until approved by Capita. That creates an administrative headache and is clearly adding to the payment delays I just mentioned. There is no proper audit trail of what funds have been released and when, and universities are being left to make repeat requests. I urge the Government to engage with universities, Universities UK and the Russell Group to see how the process can be streamlined for everyone’s benefit.

The last point I will touch on is the Government’s short-sightedness regarding the scheme. Even if we ignore the benefit to each and every young person of having the chance to live and learn abroad, the Turing scheme is meant to be a core part of global Britain and how we present ourselves on the world stage. The problem is that those relationships are not one sided, yet the Turing scheme decidedly is. It does not offer any element of reciprocity, which has made it incredibly difficult for institutions to set up longer-term partnerships. That is worsened by the exclusion of professional staff from the scheme. Where previously UK education and research was promoted and strengthened through staff exchanges, now we are left in the cold. It is about being at the forefront of cutting-edge research and development, about tackling the next pandemic and responding to the climate crisis.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. She talks about the lack of reciprocity and the inability to form a cohort of students across the world who have connections and then go on in their professional lives to keep in touch. They are what is sorely missing from the Turing scheme. We have heard nothing from this Government about how they are going to address that. The scheme was never just about money, as woeful as that is; it is about making those connections. How are we going to foster them?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. From a reciprocity perspective, for all that we do not necessarily want to talk just about money, there is an economic disbenefit to universities and constituencies such as mine. Students who previously came under the Erasmus scheme may not come under Turing, with a resulting economic loss to both the university and the wider community.

On a more practical level, good working relationships with international institutions are vital to the Turing scheme, given that the decision to apply or waive fees for UK students abroad sits with the host university. There are additional steps the Minister could take to make global Britain a reality and to boost our soft power. It currently costs over £1,000 to sponsor an intern coming to the UK from Europe, and that is now only available to degree students. As Universities UK put it,

“The UK is essentially closed to inbound interns, resulting in a loss of skills to UK business and damage to partnerships, while implicitly expecting other countries to facilitate visas to take in UK outbound interns.”

The relationships between medical, veterinary and health science institutions have been put under immense strain as a result of the Government barring incoming students from treating patients and therefore from taking part in clinical electives. There is no reason for those partnerships to keep going if we cannot provide equal opportunities. An urgent amendment to the visa rules is needed to allow the supervised treatment of patients by visiting students. Coupled with the ongoing uncertainty regarding the future of the Horizon programme, the failings in the strategic intent of Turing means that we continue to retreat from the global stage.

At the other end of the education spectrum, but no less important for our soft power, Brexit has caused a sharp decline in the number of European children who are able to visit the UK on school trips. My party’s policy is to seek to negotiate passport-free travel for UK and EU schoolchildren on a reciprocal basis. I hope that is something the Minister can agree with as a common-sense measure, with a benefit disproportionate to any costs.

I will end by reading something that Aria said to me:

“I never thought I would have the opportunity to study or travel abroad like this and feel incredibly lucky and grateful to be able to do so. However it has been incredibly stressful. I have never travelled outside of the UK before, and don’t have external financial support if anything goes wrong. More communication from the scheme administrators and earlier decision making would make such a difference to students like me.”

Surely we can all agree on that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

I will set this out further, but the hon. Lady, for whom I have huge respect, will know that the Turing scheme is not just for university students; we have expanded it significantly for students in future education and in schools. If we look at it in the round, as I said, organisations across Scotland have had funding for almost 4,000 participants, nearly 600 more than the previous year.

My three objectives for the Turing scheme are, in essence, social justice, enhancing skills and securing value for money. I am sure that the hon. Members for North East Fife and for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) will know that the Turing scheme is extending the ladder of opportunity for over 40,000 students and learners across the UK to spend time studying or working abroad, 60% of whom will be from an under-represented or less advantaged background. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is no longer in his place, but there is more money for living costs and additional costs, such as for passports. I have met people in my own constituency from disadvantaged backgrounds who have benefited from the Turing scheme, and they are not from universities; they are from FE.

There is good evidence, as we know, that time spent studying or working abroad can be transformational for students, improving graduate outcomes and employability and building skills and confidence. Universities UK says—the hon. Member for North East Fife will agree with this—that graduates who participated in an international placement are less likely to be unemployed, more likely to have achieved a first or 2:1, and more likely to be in further study. Those in work are more likely to be in a graduate-level job, and on average they earn 5% more than their peers.

I see the Turing scheme as a remarkable vehicle for helping to improve the skills pipeline and helping people into high-quality jobs. Universities, colleges and schools will share almost £105 million of funding to offer placements to their students. No matter what kind of course students are on, whether they are studying for a degree in foreign languages, doing a T-level or an apprenticeship—the scheme was not open to apprentices before—or a school pupil, opportunities made possible through the Turing scheme can have a hugely positive impact on their studies and their skills development.

[Layla Moran]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

I will in a moment; because of the time, I want to get on a bit and try to answer some of the questions from the hon. Member for North East Fife.

This year saw significantly higher interest in the scheme from colleges and schools, including a nearly 50% increase in the number of successful applications in the further education sector. I think that technical education and training routes should have parity of prestige with academic routes, and I want to see even more FE learners and apprentices offered Turing scheme opportunities.

[Layla Moran]

I do not disagree with anything the Minister says—40,000 students is wonderful—but we cannot help but make a comparison with Erasmus+, from which 55,000 students were able to benefit. We have heard about the impact on the wider economy and, as he says, students’ ability to access better degrees and a better life outcome. Has the Department looked at how much money we have potentially lost as a result of the lower number of students engaging in such activity?

[Robert Halfon]

Actually, the number of students is comparable, and it is a new scheme. It is also worth remembering that the Erasmus scheme is not value for money. The UK was putting way more taxpayer money into the scheme than we got out of it. The Erasmus+ scheme was also available for teachers to go overseas. We have decided to focus on students, which I think is a very good thing.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

My colleague Baroness Barran has written to those responsible bodies again and requested that they respond to the questionnaires by the end of the week. We will then need to consider what we do with those from which we are still awaiting responses.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I spoke with the chief exec of a local trust earlier today, and that trust’s top priority is how it is going to fund this work. I was worried to hear the words “reasonable costs” from the Secretary of State just now. Can she confirm that a list of what is considered reasonable costs will be published as soon as possible, and would that include heating, for example? Clearly, heating a portacabin over winter is going to be much more costly than heating a well-insulated classroom.

[Gillian Keegan]

Actually, the portacabins of today are very well insulated, but I would advise the hon. Lady that any particular case should be referred to the Department. The school can come directly to the Department with its revenue requests, and we will look at each one on an individual basis.

Safety of School Buildings

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

The condition of school buildings is important. It affects learning and it is very much why the Government are funding more than 1,000 school improvement programmes through a £1.8 billion investment. That is part of a much wider amount of money being put into schools, with £58.8 billion to come in 2024-25. That will be the largest amount going into schools that there has ever been. My constituency, which runs from Wallingford to Shrivenham, has benefited from that. Schools from Wallingford to Shrivenham have benefited in particular from the condition improvement fund. Nine schools have benefited so far, including Wallingford School and St John’s Primary School yesterday.

While the condition of the building is important, what goes on inside the building is also important. I will never tire of reminding Opposition Members that in 2019 they stood on a manifesto to abolish SATs, Ofsted and academy schools. I would very much like to hear what they think about the fact that we came fourth in the global rankings for reading last week. I would like to hear what they think about their friends at the National Education Union who keep calling strikes in the run-up to exams for children who missed so much school time during covid. What would their approach be to these unions were they in government? Would it be beer and sandwiches? The NEU runs statements every day welcoming whatever Labour says. It runs paid-for social media ads against Conservative colleagues. The NEU clearly thinks it will get a better deal from the Labour party, so what will it be?

I like counting things, and Members will know that the last time we had an education debate, I counted how many times the Leader of the Opposition talked about education in his speech setting out his vision for the country. It was zero. I counted how many policies the Labour party has on education, and there are two. The first is breakfast clubs, a policy Labour likes so much that it has announced it twice, in March 2021 and then again 18 months later. I am afraid that does not count as an additional policy; it is just the same policy being repeated. The other is VAT on private schools, which few people believe would raise any money. It is small fry for the whole of the education system.

What we find over and over again is this sort of student union vibe of bringing motions on education. We have had eight Opposition day motions on education from the Labour party since the general election. The Leader of the Opposition has mentioned it zero times, Labour has two policies on it, but we have had eight debates. Today’s motion is a classic example of that, because there is no policy in it. It does not say whether we are spending too much or too little. It does not say what Labour would do or how it would pay for it. It is just another attempt, as the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) said, to try to strike fear into people about what is going on in our schools.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I am extremely grateful to my Oxfordshire colleague for giving way, and I too have some of our county’s secondary schools. I am curious about whether he has had the same representations as I have had from heads in Oxfordshire, who are desperate for their buildings to be improved. I have one school where the toilets have become such no-go areas that a child said they no longer drink when they are at school because they are scared to go into them. This is a great school—it is outstanding—and what goes on in it is fantastic, but surely he would agree that improvement can be made to school buildings and that the Government need to help.

[David Johnston]

I said at the start that the condition of school buildings is very important, and as my right hon. Friend the Minister set out, lots of these schools are being rebuilt as part of this. As I said, I have nine that are being rebuilt. To go back to the Labour party, as it is Labour’s motion, if we look at what has happened in Wales, where it is in charge, there has been no audit of schools’ conditions since 2017. Again, it is a case of “Do as we say, not do as we do”.

The Labour party is currently into setting missions. We do not have a lot of policy, but we are told that the shadow Chancellor is stopping a lot of policy because she does not want to make unfunded spending commitments. I do not think it can be that, because we are already up to £90 billion of unfunded spending commitments. It is just that we do not seem to have many in education. However, Labour is into setting missions, which seem to be big statements with no detail about how it will achieve them. Surprise, surprise, but we have not yet had one for education, so I have a suggestion. Let us have a mission for this area, and let us have the Labour party have a big five-year mission to find some education policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

So far, we have heard a lot about what we do not know, but I want to remind the House about what we do know about the results of the last condition data collection survey, completed in 2019. Over 7,000 schools contained a building component deemed to be life-expired or at serious risk of imminent failure. Almost nine in 10 schools in England had at least one component with “major defects” or “not operating as intended”. Overall, more than 240,000 items across the school estate—from doors to electrics to light fittings—were defective.

We know this not because the Department published the information itself but because of a series of written questions that I tabled last year. I am grateful to those on the Labour Front Bench for drawing attention to them. However, one fact that the Government did publish is that under the Conservatives the overall condition of the school estate has tanked. In 2014, the cost of the total maintenance backlog stood at £6.7 billion. It now stands at a whopping £11.4 billion. I have heard of “a stitch in time saves nine”, but the Conservatives have lost the repair kit and cost the taxpayer billions of pounds.

There is still much about the survey that we do not know. We do not know which schools received what grading for each of their components, and we do not know how much the total repair bill is in each council area or constituency. We have been told by the Minister that the data is forthcoming and that he needs more time to process it, but this survey is now four years old. How much longer must parents wait to see if their child’s school is safe and fit for purpose?

[Layla Moran]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. A headteacher I spoke to this week said that he spends his whole time just keeping his students safe, warm and dry, when what he wants to do is create an inspirational space in which they can learn. Does my hon. Friend agree that this Government seem to want us to be grateful for the very lowest levels, when instead we should be focused on having a great school for every child in this country?

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree with my hon. Friend more. I regularly hear from teachers that they are doing so much outside their core remit of teaching in order to support our students, and buildings are another example. A teacher from St Mary’s and St Peter’s School in Teddington came to visit me recently. She told me that she had had a bucket in her classroom for two years because the school could not afford the maintenance to fix it. Not repairing those sorts of things now will cost a hell of a lot more further down the line.

We know that some of the stats I have just quoted represent the tip of the iceberg, because the condition data collection survey is based purely on a visual inspection of school sites, meaning that latent problems in the school estate are going undetected. Thanks to an investigation by “ITV News”, we know that 68 schools contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, a building material likened to an Aero chocolate bar, which even the Office of Government Property has described as

“life-expired and liable to collapse”.

Yet thousands more schools do not know whether their site contains RAAC, because it cannot be identified on a visual inspection.

Every shut classroom, leaky roof and cold sports hall stands as a concrete sign of the Government’s neglect in investing in our schools and colleges. Parents, carers and communities are fed up of being let down and taken for granted, and there are few more concrete signs of a community being neglected than a crumbling school or hospital building. The Conservatives are learning the hard way, as the amazing by-election victory of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) shows. He ran a fantastic campaign on rebuilding Tiverton High School, and it took that by-election win and a question to the Prime Minister in the leadership hustings finally to get a promise of money for the school, yet we still have no start date for shovels in the ground.

Communities across this country are feeling let down. In my borough, two schools that applied to the school rebuilding programme last year had their application rejected. Twenty-three of 25 schools in Surrey met the same fate, as did six of seven schools in East Sussex. People are fed up and angry, and they want to make their voice heard. The Liberal Democrats believe that education is an investment in our children’s future. Spending on human capital generates returns for generations to come. It is absurd that the Treasury will predict that a new rail line will generate returns worth multiple times its initial cost while predicting that capital investment in schools returns just a fraction of the amount. How can that make sense?

The Government must invest to clear the backlog of repairs to school and college buildings. Parents deserve to know their children are being sent to schools that are safe and fit for purpose. They expect their Government to be transparent and they expect their community not to be taken for granted, yet the state of their local school often suggests otherwise. Neglecting school and college buildings endangers our children and may well contribute to this Government’s downfall.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Layla Moran Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

Respectively, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not think that would be the case. The Government are committed to strengthening the protection for lawful freedom of speech on campus, as set out in our manifesto. If providers fail in their duty to take steps to secure freedom of speech within the law, individuals who have suffered as a result should be able to secure real remedies, including by means of civil proceedings. For all those reasons, our position is that the tort should be reinstated in its original form for further consideration in the other place.

Amendment 3 was tabled in the other place by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, and received support from all sides. It will prohibit higher education providers and their constituent colleges from entering into non-disclosure agreements with staff members, students and visiting speakers in relation to complaints of sexual misconduct, abuse or harassment or other forms of bullying or harassment. I believe that Members on both sides of the House will welcome the inclusion of this provision in the Bill. It can never be right to force a victim of sexual misconduct, bullying or harassment to remain silent, denying them the right to talk about what has happened to them even with their family or close friends. This does not come down to politics, in my view; it is about doing what is right.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Claire Coutinho]

I will not, as I have to make some progress.

It is impossible to understand the full extent of this practice—by definition, NDAs too often remain hidden from view—but a 2020 BBC investigation found that nearly a third of universities had used NDAs to deal with student complaints. I agree with those in the other place, who proposed and supported the amendment, that we cannot allow this practice to continue.

Many institutions have already signed up to a voluntary pledge rejecting the use of NDAs in such circumstances. That pledge was launched by the previous Minister for Higher and Further Education and now the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), together with Can’t Buy My Silence. However, many institutions have not done so, despite strong encouragement from the Government. This amendment builds on the strong foundation of the Government’s work in this area over the last year and brings a legislative means to end this abhorrent practice for good.

It is important to appreciate that this is not a total ban on the use of NDAs. There are some circumstances where an NDA is appropriate—for example, to protect intellectual property or commercially sensitive information —but as I said, using NDAs to silence victims of this type of conduct is entirely wrong. I therefore wholeheartedly support this amendment. Not only is it vital for the welfare and wellbeing of victims, but by enabling them to speak out and provide information to others about their experiences, it will extend protections to students and others on campus.

I will now speak to the group of amendments concerning the definition of freedom of speech. There was much debate in the other place about whether the Bill would benefit from a more expansive definition of freedom of speech, and peers subsequently agreed a number of Government amendments to that effect: amendments 1, 2, 4, 5, 8 and 9.

Amendment 4 amends the provision in new section A1(11) of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, inserted by the Bill, which previously set out what freedom of speech in the Bill includes. The amendment refers to the freedom

“to impart ideas, opinions or information… by means of speech, writing or images (including in electronic form)”.

That wording is derived from article 10(1) of the European convention on human rights and is also used in the Bill of Rights Bill. There is also a reference to article 10(1) of the ECHR, as incorporated by the Human Rights Act 1998. The drafting is deliberate in reflecting that freedom of speech in the Bill has broader application than freedom of speech in article 10, because students’ unions are not public authorities and are not subject to the ECHR.

The other amendments are consequential on amendment 4. For example, where previously the Bill referred to “ideas or opinions” in certain provisions, to achieve consistency, those references need to be changed to “ideas, beliefs or views”. These consequential amendments do not change the meaning of the original drafting.

There are also minor and technical amendments made by the Government to the Bill. Amendments 6, 7 and 12 clarify that the term “members” in the Bill does not include a person who is a member solely because of having once been a student of a provider or constituent institution. The term “members” is intended to include those who are not technically staff but are closely involved in university life—in particular, members of the governing councils of universities and also retired academics who are emeritus professors.

However, it became apparent from debate in the other place that some universities and colleges treat their students as members for life—for example, the University of Cambridge. As a result, the Government tabled these amendments to clarify that alumni of providers and colleges are not covered by the Bill. It is not our intention that providers and colleges should have duties that extend so widely, even to people who have no current relationship with them other than as ex-students. These amendments do not affect the position where a current student’s freedom of speech is wrongly infringed, in so far as they may still make a complaint about that even after they have left university.

Finally, amendment 11 distinguishes between new functions imposed on the OfS by the Bill. It will amend the power in new section 69A(2) of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, inserted by the Bill, so that it refers to “how to support” freedom of speech and academic freedom, rather than “the promotion” of these values. The original drafting replicates section 35 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 about identifying good practice relating to the promotion of equality of opportunity.

However, that wording might lead to confusion that this power relates to the new duty on providers and colleges to promote the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom that is in new section A3 of the 2017 Act, inserted by clause 1 of the Bill. I can confirm that it does not. The OfS will have a duty under section 75 of the Higher Education and Research Act to give guidance on how to comply with the duty under section A3. There is no overlap with section 69A(2). Accordingly, section 69A(2) is different, providing the OfS with a general power to disseminate good practice and advice on how to support freedom of speech and academic freedom. The amendment makes that distinction clear.

I hope my words today have provided clarity and reassurance on the amendments made in the other place. Once again, I thank Members of the other place for the time and scrutiny they gave to the Bill. Our opinions on the statutory tort differ, though, as I still firmly believe it is an essential part of the Bill and an integral part of ensuring that freedom of speech is properly protected in our universities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill in general, and specifically to support the Government’s decision to reject Lords amendment 10.

It continues to be a matter of great regret that in a country like ours, it should be necessary to legislate to protect free speech, but we have reached a point where it clearly needs to be done. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of any democratic society, and in a society like ours it should be a given. Throughout history, philosophers have understood that creativity and progress in a society depend on acts of intellectual rebellion, dissent, disagreement and controversy, no matter how uncomfortable they may be. To a very large degree, freedom of speech matters most when it is controversial, because this is how pre-existing thinking can be challenged and new ideas can develop. In a democratic and free society, discussion, challenge and debate are healthy, and our universities have traditionally been at the forefront of this battle of ideas.

As I stated on Second Reading, university should be a place where ideas are freely exchanged, tested and, yes, criticised. However, in recent years, free speech has increasingly been eroded, particularly on university campuses. I served on the Public Bill Committee and the evidence we took from eminent academics was deeply worrying, so much so that I really do wonder if the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) was actually listening. Evidence was given of the chilling effect in universities, where academics feel obliged to self-censor for fear of the consequences of daring to express views that do not accord with an increasingly intolerant monoculture.

One of our witnesses was Dr Arif Ahmed, reader in philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He informed the Committee, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) said, that a 2017 University and College Union survey found that 35% of academics felt obliged to self-censor. To paraphrase Dr Ahmed, many academics are not speaking their minds or pursuing important research, simply because they fear facing disciplinary action from their university or being ostracised by their peers. As Professor Matthew Goodwin of the University of Kent told the Committee, not only does the issue affect academics, but a quarter of students are self-censoring.

If academic freedom is under threat, so too is freedom of speech. Another of our witnesses was Professor Kathleen Stock; she was still at the University of Sussex at the time, but shortly afterwards she was finally hounded from her job after enduring an entire year of bullying, marginalisation and intimidation. In recent years, there have been repeated accounts of speakers whose views do not correspond with the prevailing monocultural mindset being disinvited from speaking engagements, of reading lists being censored, of publishing contracts being cancelled, of reputations being trashed, and of “safe spaces” being created in which nothing but the prevailing view is permitted to be heard.

The truth is that it is not about protecting delicate sensibilities from offence; it is really about censorship. After all, in a free society people can always protect their own sensibilities if they wish: by not going to the speech, by not watching the film, by not reading the book. Nobody is compelled to engage if they do not wish to do so, but when people are explicitly or indirectly no-platformed, those who take such decisions are not protecting themselves; they are denying others the right to hear those people and challenge what is said. That is exceptionally damaging. If dissent and debate can be silenced at university, they can be silenced elsewhere.

As I outlined at the beginning of my speech, I cannot support Lords amendment 10, which would delete clause 4. Clause 4 is what gives the Bill its teeth. Removing it would reduce much of the Bill to impotence; retaining it is crucial to securing the cultural and behavioural shift needed in our higher education sector. The Minister said:

“I stand firm in my belief that the tort is an essential part of the Bill.”

I entirely agree.

I will conclude by quoting George Orwell:

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

George Orwell’s words remain just as apposite today as when he wrote them nearly eight decades ago. The Bill will protect that liberty, and I fully support it.

[Layla Moran]

I rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 3. I am frankly delighted that it has received Government support. It will do what I and others across the House have for some time been calling for, which is to ban the use of non-disclosure agreements by universities in cases of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, bullying and other forms of misconduct.

I thank everyone who has worked on the campaign. I thank Lord Collins for tabling the amendment; the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who have campaigned with me; and Zelda Perkins and Can’t Buy My Silence for their tireless campaigning over the years. More importantly, I want to thank the young women, particularly Ffion from the University of Oxford and everyone involved in the campaign It Happens Here—those brave survivors who have spoken out about their experiences.

My involvement began as the constituency MP for some of those young women, who first came to me in 2018 with shocking testimony about gagging clauses being included in agreements signed in the wake of an instance of sexual assault. One woman had to sign not an NDA—this is a critical point—but a no-contact agreement that prevented her assaulter from having access to her accommodation, among other safety measures. That agreement, which was meant for her safety, included a clause that prevented her from making any information public about the assault, or indeed about the investigation. It was so poorly explained that she took it to mean that she could not even speak to her GP.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Member is making an excellent point. When the woman raised those issues with the university, how did it possibly defend the idea that it would offer such protection to somebody who had clearly been found molesting other students, harassing them or worse?

[Layla Moran]

I have since spoken to a number of heads and principals of colleges. Many are not defending such behaviour; they are often coming from a place of wanting to try to protect both students—it is often another student who is involved. It comes from a good place, but the consequence is frankly devastating. That is why Lords amendment 3 is so necessary.

The other element that needs to be improved in most colleges and universities is the complaints process itself, which is deeply flawed. All it does is cause young women —and those who have spoken to me have invariably been young women—to feel retraumatised as a result of the process that they have had to undergo. Because the safety measures were included, this particular young woman felt forced to sign the agreement. She was therefore silenced by a process that was supposed to protect her. Other students have told me similar stories. One said that the gagging clause

“felt like the icing on the cake of a ridiculous system that had let us down. The disciplinary process had failed to sanction a rapist, but was threatening us with sanctions if we talked about it.”

How on earth can that be right?

The pledge launched by the campaign group Can’t Buy My Silence, in conjunction with the Department for Education, was certainly welcome—76 universities have signed it so far, committing themselves to ending the use of NDAs in cases of this kind—but, like other campaigners, I feared that it did not go far enough. It was particularly concerning that there were no sanctions for breaking the pledge, and it was largely dependent on universities’ opting in. Oxford’s It Happens Here—Oxford is the university with which I have been dealing with the most—has noted which Oxbridge colleges have signed it. The Minister may be shocked, as I was, to learn that there are only four, three at Oxford and just one at Cambridge: three out of 44 colleges and one out of 33. Moreover, that is replicated in institutions throughout the country. The take-up of the pledge has been poor, which is why we needed the Government to step in with this legislation. However, I hope other Members agree with me that this should not apply only to universities, because the same thing is happening in workplaces all over the country, including charities and voluntary organisations.

This is, I hope, the start of something much bigger. Last year I tabled a private Member’s Bill which would ban the use of NDAs and confidentiality agreements by any organisation or institution in cases of sexual assault, harassment and bullying. We are looking for a vehicle with which to bring the whole shebang back; the Victims Bill may be one, but we are looking for others. My Bill —which I recommend the Minister to push to other Departments that have not quite got there yet—is modelled on legislation that has already been passed in Prince Edward Island in Canada. A similar Bill is making its way through the Irish Senate, and the Speak Out Act was passed in the United States in November, so we would be very much in line with similar countries.

I am of course pleased that the Government are now supporting this move in the context of universities, but I want to ask the Minister some specific questions. First, does it apply only to legally drafted non-disclosure agreements, or will it also cover no-contact agreements in the confidentiality and gagging clauses? It is worth pointing out that those are already non-binding legally, and would not pass muster if they were brought to court. By what mechanism can we ensure that these things will definitely no longer happen? For survivors, a gagging clause has just as much impact as any legally binding non-disclosure agreement. We know that such clauses have become boilerplate language in no-contact agreements between a survivor and perpetrator, and we must ensure that new legislation clamps down on this extremely harmful practice. Silence cannot be a condition for safety.

I would also like some clarification of the Department’s plans for implementing these measures—and, in particular, the timeline—and of how the legislation will affect existing NDAs that have already been signed by students. Will it be retrospective, or will it apply only to future agreements? The message to universities is clear, but these are specific questions that I am being asked by young women who have already signed these agreements.

The survivors who have spoken to me are being taught that their pain and their voice do not matter, and that the reputation of an institution is more worthy of protection that they are. We should be taking—and are taking—all possible steps, and wasting no time, to stop this happening. We all know that there is a difference between the time when an amendment is passed and the time when it is enacted. I urge the Minister please to pass and enact this quickly.

Finally, please will the Government back my private Member’s Bill? It is a Bill that mimics a Conservative party pledge in, I think, 2017. There is cross-party support for this across the House and it is now time to ban these non-disclosure agreements, not just in universities but in any workplace and, frankly, anywhere.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I rise to speak in favour of the Government’s motion to disagree with Lords amendment 10. As has been mentioned by other hon. Members, this Bill has been introduced because freedom of speech and academic freedoms are under threat in our universities. That has been well evidenced during the passage of the Bill and, as has already been mentioned, a recent report shows that 35% of British academics surveyed self-censor, and Office for Students data shows that 193 speaker requests or events at English universities were rejected in 2021, compared with just 53 in 2018. And of course there have been numerous high-profile cases of cancellation, including those of Helen Joyce, of the Israeli ambassador and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) when he was Education Secretary. This Bill is clearly very much needed.

Crisis in Iran

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on being another of the seven individuals who have been sanctioned, and I thank him for raising these concerns again and again. We have made clear our own concerns about the IRGC’s continuing destabilising activity throughout the region, and the UK maintains a range of sanctions that work to constrain that activity. The list of proscribed organisations is kept under constant review. I will take back that message, but, as I know my right hon. Friend is aware, we do not routinely comment on whether an organisation is or is not under consideration for proscription.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

These brave women are inspirational, and how lucky we would be if they were able to get out of Iran and came here to obtain sanctuary. Is there any chance of a lifeboat scheme for them, should they be able to get out?

May I also ask about something very practical? The Minister will recall that earlier in the Ukraine-Russia conflict the BBC was given extra money to ensure that the World Service could broadcast in Ukrainian and also in Russian. Is there any chance that that could also apply to BBC Persian, which currently faces the chop?

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and I join her in commending the bravery of the women in Iran. It is very easy for us to sit here, but what they are doing every day takes incredible courage and they really are showing huge strength. On BBC Persia, the BBC is operationally and editorially independent but we do provide funding, and the FCDO is providing the BBC with more than £94 million over the next three years to support the World Service. On any future actions we may do, obviously we keep everything under constant review but we do not have anything yet to announce in this area.

Department for Education

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson]

The hon. Gentleman must be psychic or have very good eyesight, because he has pre-empted what I was about to say about free school meals. About 2.6 million children are in families that experience food insecurity; as he says, the reality is that many children are going to school hungry, because parents are struggling to put food on the table. Hunger and poor nutrition affect children’s ability to learn, their development and their mental health. How can our most disadvantaged children, who already have a much bigger gap in attainment as a result of the pandemic, be expected to catch up? I pay tribute to the schools and teachers up and down the country who are working their socks off to put additional support and interventions in place to help them to catch up, but how can children who are going to school with empty tummies and sitting hungry in lessons be expected to benefit from the catch-up?

I sincerely hope that the Government will think again and take the advice of yet another Government adviser they chose to ignore: Henry Dimbleby, who advised them on their food strategy. He recommended that every child in a family in receipt of universal credit should be entitled to a free school meal. To be honest, I am shocked that that is not already the case. I really urge the Secretary of State: if she does one thing in her first few days, please will she address that? It is a scandal that children are going to school hungry.

The Ark John Archer Primary Academy in Clapham is not in my constituency, but I visited it recently because I was told about the fantastic early years offer that it is developing; Ark has invested money, alongside the Government’s paltry investment in early years, to support some of the poorest children. The headteacher asked me why, although some two-year-olds are eligible to receive 15 hours of free childcare a week because they are from disadvantaged backgrounds, we are not providing them with free school meals. It just seems really odd. The school is funding meals for everybody, right across its nursery and primary provision. Whether the child is eligible or not, they are making sure that every child gets a healthy, nutritious meal.

The school pointed out to me that with some childcare providers, disadvantaged two-year-olds who are getting free childcare are having to bring in a packed lunch—quite possibly not a very nutritious one, but with cheap things that the parents can afford—and will be sitting alongside children whose parents are able to pay for their childcare and who are getting a far better lunch. I find that contrast between the haves and the have-nots really quite distasteful. When the Education Secretary looks at free school meals, will she look at the case of two-year-olds?

As has been said many times in this place, our childcare costs are among the highest in the world. In the cost of living crisis, parents are struggling even more to make ends meet with their nursery and childcare fees. Liberal Democrat analysis of Coram statistics suggests that parents in inner London who fund 50 hours per week of childcare will have seen an increase in costs of almost £2,000—I will say that again: £2,000—over the past year. That is just shocking. The problem is that as childcare costs go up and parents struggle to make ends meet with their mortgage or rent, their food and their other bills, fewer and fewer children will be put into childcare. That is bad for a range of reasons.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I could not agree more about the cost of childcare. Does she agree that the answer to the problem is not to decrease the staff-student ratio? I was taken on a tour of Robin nursery in Kidlington the other day; Teresa, the wonderful person who runs it, was concerned that if that ratio goes down, she will not be able to give the safe and caring level of care that parents need. She is concerned that, unfortunately, it will be the most disadvantaged students who lose out, because they are quite often the ones who do not yet have the help with special educational needs and disabilities that they need, and they are the ones who need the most love.

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree more. The Government are trying to tackle the issue of childcare funding in completely the wrong way. My hon. Friend makes the point about safety and the ability to support children with SEND. Given the razor-thin margins with which so many childcare providers operate—we know that they are going under all the time—if the Government power ahead with this after their consultation, and if they really think that the saving will be passed on to parents to help with the cost of living, they are living in cloud cuckoo land, because of exactly what my hon. Friend says.

I have given the example of my son’s childminder before. She has to do all this jiggery-pokery with her invoices every month, because she has been told categorically that she cannot make it clear that I have to pay to top up the 30 hours of “free” childcare that we are meant to be getting, because it does not cover her costs. It is an add-on. That is fine—I have no problem with paying it; I am in a position to pay for it—but the point is that many parents will not be able to afford that top-up or will end up putting their children into what might be fairly low-quality childcare. Our most disadvantaged children are the ones who need the most high-quality input. By the time children start school, the most disadvantaged are about 11 months behind their peers. That gap continues to widen, which has been accelerated by the pandemic.

There is a really important point to make here. Childcare is not just about babysitting. It is about high-quality early years input, with properly trained staff who should have an early years qualification; who should not be on poverty wages, as so many are; and who should have continuous professional development so that they can pick up on things like developmental delays in speech and language, which have become even more prevalent as a result of the pandemic.

It should be about investing in our early years to help children to get on in life, but also about supporting parents who wish to go to work from when their children are at a very young age. We know that people—mostly women, sadly—are leaving the workforce or reducing their hours in very large numbers. Once again, that takes us back to the economic argument for long-term investment in children and in education. It will be harmful for our economy that fewer women will be in work and setting up businesses, because so many are having to give up work to look after their children. Finally, let me return to where I started. The Government say that they want to help Britain back to work and they say that they want to tackle the task of levelling up. The former Education Secretary, the right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who is now the Chancellor, has talked about children, skills and education being his passion, and I hope he will put his money where his mouth is. He is now in the Treasury, which was the biggest blocker preventing him and his many predecessors from doing the right thing by children. They are our future. They will be the innovators, they will continue to make this country great, and every single child, regardless of background, deserves the very best start in life.

If the Secretary of State will not listen to me, I ask her to listen to the Government’s own advisers, such as Kevan Collins on catch-up, Henry Dimbleby on free school meals, and Josh MacAlister on children’s social care; so many children are simply written off by the system because we have a broken social care system. I ask her to step up now, to make the necessary investment in children and young people, and to end this Conservative chaos. Our children are depending on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

I have been very consistent on this subject and will continue to be so; every young person deserves to know that when they pick a degree course it is of a high quality. Low-quality courses do nothing to progress social mobility; all they do is limit opportunities, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would not want for his constituents.

If you are an adult wondering what this Government are doing to help you gain that new job, high wage or new career, this debate is for you. In my maiden speech, I said that it should not matter where someone comes from, it is where they are going that counts, and I said that education is absolutely key. I said all those years ago that what it boils down to is that it is so important that MPs, from across the House, focus on opening doors for our society and opening up opportunities.

[Layla Moran]

I, too, extend my congratulations to the right hon. Lady. When I asked my county council what was the single most important thing we could do to help the SEND backlog, it gave me one thing to relay to this Government: we should increase the number of educational psychologists. I hear her passion, so will she put that on her to-do list urgently and increase their number, not just to the 200 more that we have now, because that is not enough? We need to supercharge the number of educational psychologists available across the country, to help tackle that SEND backlog.

[Michelle Donelan]

I will be looking at everything in the coming days and weeks. As the hon. Lady will know, mental health was one of my key priorities in my former role. I recognise the importance of supporting the wellbeing and mental health of young people to their going on and succeeding in education.

NDAs: Universities

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

I will call Layla Moran to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered non-disclosure agreements and alleged cases of sexual violence, bullying and harassment in universities.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. At the outset of this debate I want to commend the brave young women who have spoken out about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment. This campaign started with survivors and it is a testament to their courage that it has reached this place today. I start this debate by sharing their words. First is Naomi’s story. She said:

“I and several of my friends were involved in a case with a serial offender in my college. He behaved generally creepily towards me, and on one occasion came into a room I was sleeping in. He also assaulted multiple people in College. They confided in me and we decided to report him to our College. We decided to do this rather than going to the police, because we believed College would provide a safe space for us. My friends just wanted to be able to breathe when walking around College, and weren't concerned about getting the guy locked up.

College ran a disciplinary case during which we were all brutally questioned on the truthfulness of our stories. Around three weeks after the hearing, we were informed by email that the panel had found insufficient evidence and wouldn’t be doing anything. They did not tell us what would amount to sufficient evidence. The whole process felt deliberately untransparent.

We all signed no-contact agreements, which contained really important safety measures that we wanted in place, but also…a gagging clause. For me, it…felt like the icing on the cake of a ridiculous system that had let us down. The disciplinary process had failed to sanction a rapist, but was threatening us with sanctions if we talked about it. I can see how for other people it could be very damaging.”

The sad thing is that Naomi’s story is not unique. Another survivor—I will call her Lucy—had a similar experience, but at a different college. After being assaulted by her then partner in her dorm room, she was given a no-contact agreement that included a clause that forbade her from making any information about the assault or the subsequent investigation publicly available. Speaking about the clause, she said:

“I signed it, feeling terrified that if I didn’t agree to it he would be able to enter my accommodation without any consequence. But I was incredibly upset about the effective gag clause. I was terrified of telling absolutely anyone anything, because what if college interpreted that as ‘publicly available’? I felt I couldn’t talk to anyone, my friends or my mental health support or my GP, because of it and felt very alone.”

That is not just one story in one college that happened a long time ago, and not just one incident of bad management by a rogue member of staff. That is recent and these stories are rife. From speaking to the student group, It Happens Here, which supports survivors of sexual assault at the University of Oxford, I know that there are survivors in colleges across universities who have all too similar stories.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate on something that is often discussed and seen in the papers. It is something that, unfortunately, happens in universities right across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Does she agree that universities have been aware of the problem and the potential for mischief with non-disclosure agreements for some time now, and yet the necessary safeguarding has not been put in place? Now is the time for the Minister to take the steps that universities have thus far refused to put in place to protect staff and students alike.

[Layla Moran]

I could not agree more. There are now movements in place—I will come to those in a moment—but they are far too slow, and by the time that they come into force all the young women who are affected have moved on.

Gagging clauses have significant emotional and psychological effects on the survivor. Young women who have just suffered a traumatic ordeal are then presented with what looks like a sophisticated legal contract, written by their superiors who control the fate of their degrees. The fact that these contracts are not legally enforceable does not really matter. How on earth can a vulnerable university student know that? I am not sure I would either.

The imbalance of power between the institution and the victim is huge. We must understand that this issue is not with the no-contact agreements themselves. They actually contain important safety and security measures that survivors stressed they wanted in place. Those measures are what makes it all the more challenging to object to the gagging clause. As Lucy said, survivors feel they have no choice but to sign in order to protect themselves.

The perception of a lack of choice and the coercion to sign against their instincts and wishes is the issue I hope to address today. Expecting a young person who is in extreme psychological distress to challenge staff at their university and then seek to renegotiate a contract that contains important safety measures is absurd. We would not expect it of ourselves, and we certainly should not expect it of them.

That is why I have written to all 39 Oxford colleges, asking them to sign this pledge against the use of non-disclosure agreements in the cases of sexual harassment, abuse or misconduct. I am pleased to report that three colleges—Lady Margaret Hall, Keble and Linacre—have now done so. I express cautious optimism that a number of colleges have made their own statements, albeit not signed the pledge. I urge colleges that are reluctant to sign the pledge or have concerns about it to meet me to discuss it.

University is a stepping stone between childhood and adulthood. It is supposed to be a place of safety and security—a home away from home. It is where young people learn how to behave as an adult and how they can expect to be treated. My fear is that these young women are being taught that their voice and their pain is less important that the institution’s reputation.

Signing the pledge is a no-brainer, but it should be only the beginning of the work that needs to be done to stamp out this deeply deplorable practice. In my view, the pledge does not go far enough. Students have expressed concerns that colleges and universities will sign up to it and then sneak clauses into agreements like no-contact agreements and argue that it does not actually constitute a no-disclosure agreement. Clarification on that point from the Minister would be really helpful.

There is also no real consequence of breaking the pledge. Can’t Buy My Silence provides a platform to report breaches of the pledge, with the only listed sanction being the removal of the university’s name from the list of pledges. I have met with the Office for Students—which comes to the point the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made—to discuss its role in regulating the behaviour of universities and investigating how the sector is to meet the standards set.

I am pleased that the Office for Students recognises that there is more it can do and intends to do on bad behaviour by universities. However, I am concerned that this work is far too slow. I ask the Minister to do whatever she can to expedite this process and get some real regulatory bite behind that statement of expectation. I welcome the steps taken by the Government and the Department for Education. I am pleased that the Minister has backed the university pledge, created by the campaign group Can’t Buy My Silence. I welcome her response to my letter earlier this year, especially her offer of a meeting. We are still waiting on that meeting. I wonder if today she could reiterate that offer, so that we might discuss in private some of the details I was unable to give in the debate today. I am sorry to say that I think she will be shocked by them.

Survivors need more than commitments, pledges and statements. They need concrete action. If this is happening in Oxford colleges, it is happening in other universities and other institutions. The Can’t Buy My Silence campaign began with Zelda Perkins being placed under an NDA by her then employer Harvey Weinstein. She was paid £120,000 to keep quiet about Weinstein’s abuse and mistreatment of her and her team.

NDAs occur in many different walks of life—in settlement agreements of severance packages as well as in cases of wrongdoing. Where both parties agree to sign to an NDA, we do not take issue. It is not a problem when it is signed freely. Whether it be a university student or an employee reporting their boss’s bad behaviour, the practice of individuals feeling in any way pressured or forced to sign up to these clauses needs to stop.

If we decide to regulate the use of non-disclosure agreements, we will not be the first. Prince Edward Island in Canada is one step ahead, having already passed a Bill to regulate such agreements. It is called the Non-disclosure Agreements Act, and it was passed in May 2022. It states that

“A party responsible or person who committed or who is alleged to have committed harassment or discrimination may only enter into a non-disclosure agreement with a relevant person…if such an agreement is the expressed wish and preference of the relevant person concerned”—

the expressed wish of the survivor, the victim, the person who is reporting. It is so simple: no one in any circumstance, in any university or otherwise, should enter into a non-disclosure agreement or gagging clause against their will. As such, I will table a private Member’s Bill today to establish exactly that principle. I hope that colleagues and Ministers who I know are on board with the campaign will consider supporting that Bill.

Moreover, the vehicle to attach my Bill to is on the horizon. The Ministry of Justice, in consultation with the Home Office, is bringing forward a victims Bill that will contain measures to, in the Ministry’s own words,

“amplify victims’ voices and make sure victims are at the heart of the criminal justice system”.

I had a positive meeting with the Home Secretary, at which she agreed to work with me on trying to include a ban on NDAs in that Bill. She further agreed that no one in any setting, of any age, should be able to silence the voice of a victim of crime. I have urged the Government to back my Bill, and to insert the language needed to tackle that egregious practice once and for all into the victims Bill.

Finally, though—this is a point made by some who do not want to sign the pledge—we have to acknowledge that tackling gagging clauses will only scratch the surface of the problems faced by women and girls. It is far and away the lowest-hanging fruit, but it is important. One survivor said to me:

“If they can’t do this, then I don’t have confidence they’ll do anything.”

Women and girls are keenly aware of the dangers that face us when we are walking home at night, venturing into a nightclub, or staying in our own homes. We are frequently subject to harassment, with 71% of women of all ages in the UK having experienced some form of sexual harassment in a public space. A smaller number, but still substantial, are subject to sexual offences, with the number recorded by the police reaching an all-time high in 2021—over 170,000.

At the top of that pyramid—or the bottom—are, I am afraid, those who have lost their lives. This weekend, I attended a vigil at my local church in Botley. We read out the names of the 140 women who were killed by men in 2021, of whom Sarah Everard was probably the most famous. Local artist Alice Brookes hand-stitched every name into a pillowcase. They were hung in a line wrapped around the church—it was incredibly moving. While those statistics are appalling, I do not think anyone is surprised by them any more. The scale of the crime is enormous, and what struck me about my conversations with survivors was that they had no faith in even reporting to the police. Sadly, the statistics confirm why: just 2.9% of reported sexual offences and 1.3% of recorded rapes result in a charge or summons.

While there is clearly much to do to end the epidemic of violence against women and girls, I hope that we can at least work together today to end the misuse of non-disclosure agreements and gagging clauses, not just in university settings but elsewhere in society. Young women up and down the country, not just those in Oxford, have been silenced by a system that is supposed to protect them, so I ask the Minister to not just encourage colleges and universities to sign the pledge, but work with colleagues across Government to stamp out that deeply harmful practice in its entirety. Through the victims Bill, we have a golden opportunity to enshrine in law the principle that no victim’s voice should be silenced, and although sexual violence takes so much from survivors, we can restore what should never have been taken away in the first place: their voice, their agency, and their power.

[The Minister for Higher and Further Education (Michelle Donelan)]

I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this vital debate on an issue that I am personally passionate about and that is, as she knows, very close to my heart.

Some of the issues that we deal with come down to a simple assessment of whether something right or wrong. I have said for some time that the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment, bullying and other forms of abuse in universities is very much one of those issues—it is simply wrong. That is why, back in January, I launched a pledge, with the support of Can’t Buy My Silence, for universities to commit to stopping using NDAs in this way. Sixty-seven institutions have now signed up, protecting more than 1 million students. I do want to correct the record: it was not the case that the Government supported the pledge; the Government created the pledge.

I am pleased to hear that the Members present share my view that it is simply wrong to use NDAs in this way. It is a gross and grotesque misuse of our legal system and one that I personally find indefensible. The only thing worse than a person experiencing this kind of horrific abuse is their then being forced to remain silent about it, even to friends and family—loved ones—for life, when they are trying to deal with the horrendous incident.

If you will permit me, Mr Efford, I want to put the voices of real victims on the record today, because, like the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon, I feel that the weight of their stories will convince anyone who does not perceive the issue in the way I have outlined. One anonymous victim said:

“I was asked to sign an NDA so that I would not tell anyone my experience of sexual harassment to protect the university…I felt helpless, hopeless, and powerless. It was a feeling worse for me than the year and a half of sexual harassment I endured from my employer.”

Another victim said:

“I signed an NDA a few years ago after more than a year’s bullying by two managers at a university…The process of negotiating the NDA was very one sided and stressful. I was given a short timescale to comply and told the university would not negotiate the offer.”

That is simply not acceptable, and it is just a tiny snapshot of the sickening result of powerful institutions using NDAs to silence students and staff. There are many more cases below the surface. We must empower and enable those people to speak up. As is clear from the testimonies logged by Can’t Buy My Silence, this is not simply one group victimising another. Those silenced include men and women, staff and students, and people in senior positions as well as junior positions. It is not good enough to simply confine our concern to one of those groups; we need a holistic and comprehensive response to the problem.

In considering some of the solutions suggested by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon, it may be helpful to Members newer to the campaign if I briefly recap how we got to where we are and what prompted me to take action on behalf of the Government. Last year, I received correspondence from the newly established campaign group called Can’t Buy My Silence. Only a few lines into the explanation of the campaign, my heart sank at the thought of the victims who had been on the wrong side of an NDA in our universities. I immediately voiced my support for the campaign and went further than had been asked for by calling a meeting with it to establish what I could do as the Minister.

Our discussions on the best solutions led to the conclusion that although universities are of course autonomous institutions, they are accountable to their students and staff. In deciding which university to attend, students are looking for providers to show that they will value not only their academic growth and their professional growth, but their safety and wellbeing. The students I meet throughout England want to learn in an environment where they are free and comfortable to go forward and flourish and to report incidents and get appropriate support.

Of course, the same goes for staff—the people who make our universities such wonderful places to learn. Overwhelmingly, they want the institutions that they work for to commit to creating a safer and fairer working environment. Establishing that clear and direct channel of accountability between students, staff and a university therefore became my priority. That is why on 18 January I launched a pledge that commits universities to never using NDAs to suppress the student voice or the staff voice in relation to reporting incidents of sexual violence, harassment and bullying.

I must put it on the record that it is an honour to have supported the work of Can’t Buy My Silence, which was co-founded by Zelda Perkins, the first woman to break an NDA against Harvey Weinstein. I am grateful to her and all the campaigners at Can’t Buy My Silence for both their advocacy on this issue and their support of my pledge.

I am pleased to report that, as of 22 June, 67 institutions have signed up to the pledge, including 63 providers in England and three Oxford colleges. Of course, that is not far enough—we must go further—but it does mean that more than 1 million students are now studying at institutions covered by the pledge. That is around half the English student population. That milestone was reached in just a matter of months, before the issue received wider attention in Parliament beyond my own speeches and advocacy. I am therefore confident that, with the support of the Members present—especially those with universities that have not yet signed up to the pledge in their constituencies—we will be able to ensure that every student in this country is covered by the pledge.

I take this opportunity to once again call on Members of the House and every university to sign the pledge. It is vital that they put on the record publicly that stamp: that they will not tolerate this kind of behaviour in their institution. I ask anybody who has not already contacted their universities to do so. I will not hesitate to publicly name and shame any provider that has not signed up to the pledge.

However, as Members have said, we must go further. The Everyone’s Invited campaign has highlighted that there is much more to be done in a lot of areas to ensure that students are adequately safeguarded at university and have the best experience while they are there. I have made it clear that I believe that the Office for Students, as the higher education regulator, has a key role to play in achieving that.

In April 2021, the Office for Students published a statement of expectations on harassment and sexual misconduct. The framework provides a set of consistent recommendations to support higher education providers in England to develop and implement effective systems, policies and processes to prevent and respond to incidents of harassment and sexual misconduct. Section 6 of the statement makes clear the expectation that providers

“should have a fair, clear and accessible approach to taking action in response to reports and disclosures.”

It seems to me that not using NDAs in such cases is one obvious way that providers can meet that expectation.

I have asked the Office for Students to work on a new condition of registration and am pleased to report to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon that it is doing that. I have regular conversations about the progress of the registration condition.

[Layla Moran]

The Office for Students told me about the new condition, which will potentially be very useful. However, my heart sank when it said that it now has to have a long process of consultation, so it will potentially take years to come into effect. Is there anything the Minister can do to expedite that process?

[Michelle Donelan]

I would be shocked if the Office for Students said verbatim that it would take years, because it certainly will not. Of course, it is right and proper that a regulator would consult on such a change, but it certainly will not take years. It is a priority for me, the Secretary of State for Education and the Government at large. The registration condition would mean that higher education providers could be sanctioned for failing to take seriously their duties—including on NDAs—with a fine, suspension or even deregistration as a university. It will really have the teeth to effect change.

Back in September 2021, I welcomed Universities UK publishing its sexual misconduct guidance, which explicitly advises vice-chancellors not to use NDAs in sexual harassment, abuse and misconduct cases and highlights the fact that there is support from the sector on this very issue. Additionally, the Government provided £4.7 million of funding to the Office for Students for safeguarding projects between 2017 and 2020, and providers have been leading and sharing best practice from those projects.

I also wish to highlight the publication last July of the Government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, in the wake of the absolutely tragic murder of Sarah Everard. The strategy includes reviewing options to limit the use of NDAs in cases of sexual harassment in higher education.

I should add that the ask for higher education providers to commit to the pledge in order to spearhead a cultural shift against the misuse of NDAs in their own universities is only a first step towards ridding the sector of the use of NDAs in sexual harassment cases. I reiterate that although I consider commitment to the pledge to be important, it is of course not good enough on its own. That is why I have continued to go further and why I will not stop pressing this case to ensure that more is done.

I again thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon and those who attended the debate. Today’s discussion shows that there is a collective resolve, and not just here in Parliament; many members of the university sector have spoken up against NDAs, along with victims among students and staff. It is absolutely clear that we must address this issue, which is why this is the first Government to put this issue on the agenda and to begin to tackle it.

I conclude by urging every university to sign up to the pledge. Universities are in many ways the engines of social change, often showing the leadership required to effect major change in our society. I believe that if our higher education sector tackles the issue head on, more institutions and more sectors in public and private life will follow its example.

Question put and agreed to.

Schools White Paper

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and in knitting together a system between our White Paper and the SEND and AP Green Paper, I have the opportunity to make sure that such behaviour no longer happens and that alternative provision is not seen as a sort of warehousing for forgotten children, because high-quality alternative provision has a place and a role to play in our education system.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Education is the joint top sector affected by long covid—joint with social care, and above healthcare—but I have not yet seen anything from the Department on how MATs will help teachers with long covid. For example, I am aware of a headteacher who has chosen to take early retirement because they kept getting written warnings from the MAT, rather than being supported. That is not going to help workforce retention. Would the Secretary of State meet me to discuss how we can support teachers and heads who have long covid?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will happily meet the hon. Lady.

A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Layla Moran Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD) [V]]

In the local elections last week, Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats campaigned with a positive focus on the environment, improving the lives of our young people and supporting health and social care. It was a vision that resonated with people in Oxfordshire, and resulted in record gains against the Conservatives and our largest ever group on the county council. For the first time in 16 years, we are hoping for a leading role on an administration that will make that agenda a reality.

We believe that investing in our country is not just about physical infrastructure, but is also about investing in our people, especially our children. By contrast, in Oxfordshire under the Tories, youth services and children’s centres had been cut to the bone. In fact, most of our children’s centres closed in 2017 and they disbanded the Oxfordshire youth service in its entirety. Liberal Democrats want to bring youth services back, because we believe that there is no better way to create a bright future for the next generation than to help them engage with all the amazing opportunities available to them in our area, and we want to see real investment in children’s centres and early years support.

Two years ago, Lib Dem Abingdon councillor Neil Fawcett managed to persuade the council to reopen South Abingdon’s children’s centre. Despite Oxfordshire’s relative affluence, Caldecott is in the 10% most deprived wards in education, skills and training in the country and the 20% most deprived in income. Children’s centres change lives, but especially so in such places as South Abingdon. He should not have needed to campaign so hard for that, but I am pleased to report that with the support of the local community, that centre is now thriving.

It is that focus on fairness and long-term investment that completely exemplifies the approach that Liberal Democrats will take, should we help to form the new county council administration. To do that even better, however, we do need more central Government funding. Budgets for all councils were stretched before the pandemic, but it is even worse now. Add in the £1.6 million lost because of the former administration’s incompetence over a botched car park contract and £8 million lost from the social care budget because of short-sighted decisions, and it is fair to say that times are tough.

It is the non-statutory services that have suffered, but that is surely a false economy. Our children’s social care budget is in crisis. For every child who ends up in the system, we must remember the anguish and the enduring damage that getting to that point can cause, but it is also bad value for money. Investing in our children and their families early is not just the right thing to do morally, but the right thing to do for our taxpayers, too. We have only to look at the example of charities such as the Abingdon Bridge or Wolvercote Young People’s Club to see what an incredible difference these youth services make to the lives of our young people, but we need to be able to help everyone, and there are far too many gaps. When the Vibe youth club in Didcot was closed, the young people who relied on it just did not know where to go.

I welcome the aims set out in the education recovery plan, but I hope that in developing these plans, the Government will not overlook the role that local government and youth services can play. The Liberal Democrats have proposed devolving money away from the National Citizen Service and the youth investment fund to local authorities so that they can expand youth service provision and provide educational recovery programmes. That would make such a difference to my constituents; I ask the Minister what thought has been given to doing it.

For many young people, apprenticeships provide that practical bridge between education and work, and towards fulfilling independent futures where they are masters of their own destiny. In Oxfordshire, we want to do even better. We have incredible local providers such as Abingdon & Witney College and Activate Learning, but the Government do not make it easy.

In her answer last month to a question that I tabled in March, the apprenticeships Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan)—revealed that more than £1 billion in apprenticeship levy funding paid by employers had expired unused between May 2020 and February 2021. That was a 22% increase on the year before, which just shows that there is far too much bureaucracy and too little flexibility in the system. It has disadvantaged young people, who are missing out. Nationally, the Liberal Democrats have campaigned for the apprenticeship levy to be expanded into a wider skills and training levy to help to prepare the UK’s workforce for the economic challenges ahead.

Finally, there is great appetite to engage with the kickstart scheme, but I was deeply concerned to hear, in a business roundtable organised by our local enterprise partnership, that data on the kickstart scheme is gathered only at a regional level by the Department for Work and Pensions. If the Government want it to succeed, I plead with Ministers: give us the data at a county level—let us help you.

Our children and young people deserve a brighter future. As we emerge from this pandemic, it is the impact on the next generation that really concerns me the most. We need serious investment in them—in early years, children’s centres and youth services, as well as schools, colleges and universities. Only if we do that will the dream of a brighter future become a reality.