Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 6th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lipsey]

1: Clause 2, page 2, line 2, leave out “Office for Students” and insert “Office for Higher Education Standards”

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I move this amendment with the support of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. The USA Patriot Act—aka the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act—the Revoke Excessive Policies that Encroach on American Liberties (REPEAL) Act and the Reducing Barack Obama’s Unsustainable Deficit Act show that the disease of giving statutory measures titles that are in effect propaganda for their content rather than descriptions of it was endemic in the United States even before Donald Trump. I hope that this House will be unanimous that we do not want it to happen here. It does not yet happen by the front gate, but there is a danger of it being smuggled in by the side gate.

“Office for Students”, the title of the new regulator set up by the Bill, is an example. It describes some of the functions of the office, but not all. Is a register of universities for students? No, it is for other purposes. Is the new organisation of research councils for students? No, it is for other purposes. I could go on. If you consulted students themselves, they would say that it would be better called the “Office against Students”, because student unions up and down the country have come out in rejection of it. So it is very unfortunate that we are planning to use the title “Office for Students”, and I would like to see it changed.

In Committee, I offered a bottle of champagne to the noble Lord who could think of, and get the Minister to accept, a more neutral title. I gave it some thought, hoping to win my own bottle of champagne. I thought I had got it with the studiously neutral “Office for Universities and Conservatoires”, then I realised what the acronym for that spelled out: OFUC. Oops. There will be a ticking off for me from Black Rod later on, I think. It is to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, whose name is on this amendment, that I owe “Office for Higher Education Standards”. It is impeccably neutral, descriptive and comprehensible.

I understand that there is disquiet in some quarters about the word “standards”, which might suggest that the office will impose standards on universities. Universities are rightly acutely conscious of their autonomy and would resist any such thing. That is fine. If the Minister thinks that changing the title is the right thing to do but that this is not the right answer, let him come up with an even better alternative and insert it into the Bill at Third Reading. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to present him with my carefully matured bottle of champagne. I beg to move.

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I attached my name to this amendment as I was both puzzled and surprised by the Minister’s response to the earlier amendment moved in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey.

I take it that we can agree that the proposed Office for Students is a regulatory body. In replying in Committee, the Minister said that,

“we need a higher education regulator that is focused on protecting students’ interests”.—[Official Report, 9/1/17; col. 1840.]

In the ministerial letter of today we learn that the OfS is to comply fully with the Regulators’ Code. This commitment makes it even more surprising that the name of this regulator does not follow the well-established practice of reflecting the industry or activity that is being regulated. During the course of the past 20 years or so I have been involved in a lot of regulatory activities, as a regulator with the National Lottery Commission and by holding various positions in the financial services, water and communications sectors. In each case, the name of the regulator reflected the industry or activity that was being regulated rather than the consumers whose interests were being protected.

Furthermore, Wikipedia has a handy entry titled “List of regulators in the United Kingdom”. It lists some 60 to 70 regulatory bodies. My reading is that in each case the title reflects the activity that is being regulated. I could not find one that mirrored the proposed treatment of this regulator—although the Minister may be able to correct me. Whether this is the right or wrong treatment is not the issue; this approach has been adopted until now and has the merit that the name gives us a clear idea of the role of the regulator and the activities that it is regulating.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, the simple answer, which I think I made clear in Committee and just now, is that this is for students: the focus is on the students, and we want to keep it that way. We are very clear about that. That is not to say that we did not listen carefully in Committee to the views on this matter raised initially by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, but we are adamant that the main focus—yes, the focus can be a little broader—is on students. We are sure about that.

The newly appointed chair of the Office for Students, Sir Michael Barber, reflected in his evidence to the Education Committee that the Office for Students title is no accident. He emphasised that the student interest must be at the heart of the new office.

In respect of the alternative name proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, I cannot agree that,

“Office for Higher Education Standards”,

would be a suitable name. As we have seen during debates “standards” has a specific meaning within the sector and is only part of what the Office for Students will be responsible for. Noble Lords have frequently expressed strong views during debate that the standards used by the OfS should be those owned by the sector—a point that we have considered carefully, and amendments have been tabled to address this.

With great respect not only to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, but to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, it would be highly misleading to refer to standards in the name of the regulator, and I think other noble Lords in this short debate have acknowledged that. It would imply that they are the main emphasis of its remit. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I am very tempted to seek the opinion of the House because I think the Minister might find himself having to be his own Teller, given the unanimity in the debate so far. However, there is unanimity in the House that this title is wrong but there is not complete unanimity on all sides that the alternative title proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is the right one. I shall therefore take this away and think some more before Third Reading. I hope that the Minister might yet have a conversion in view of the powerful arguments levied against him and the weakness of those he put forward, and that he will propose a new title. If not, of course, we will have the option of dividing the House at Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. I agree with my noble friend Lord Kerslake that to use the TEF in its current state as a mechanism for deciding what fees an institution can charge is premature and quite wrong. I agree with him also that, given that the Government wish to put students at the centre of things, it is extraordinary how little we are listening to them. At the moment, not a single representative body led by students has backed the proposal to link the TEF judgments to the level of fees. Twenty-six students unions, including a number in the best-known universities—in fact, largely in the better-known universities—are boycotting the national student satisfaction survey this year because they are so concerned that the metrics that the Government propose to use are inappropriate.

It is worth remembering that the Conservative manifesto undertook to recognise universities offering the highest teaching quality. I do not think that a single person in this Chamber does not believe that teaching quality and giving information to students about it are extraordinarily important. I want to quote my own institution. A joint statement from the college and its students union said:

“The university and the Students’ Union … agree that the Teaching Excellence Framework … metrics currently under discussion are not, in their current form, appropriate measures for improving educational quality”.


The president of our students union feels strongly that, while students have never disagreed with this principle, they dispute the employment of the teaching excellence framework in its current form to achieve the goal of improving teaching quality in higher education. These are serious young people and they have thought about what they are doing. They feel that linking fees to the TEF is not appropriate.

Many people will know that Universities UK feels that the Government have great concessions and that this is basically fine. It is worth remembering that this was an action on the part of its executive. It is also important to remember that in the current environment vice-chancellors are above all interested in behaving in such a way that they maximise their fee intake. I remind people who have not already heard it of Goodhart’s law, which basically says that any instrument, measure or metric used for making decisions or allocating funds which are of high importance automatically becomes unreliable. It is a law for which nobody has yet found a counter example; it is my daily teaching bread and it is true not just in education but in hospitals, social care and everywhere else. If we want to give people really good information on the teaching quality in their institutions, tying it to whether that institution can raise its fee is not a good way to improve the quality of the measurements.

I want to cite three groups of academics who are quite separately trying hard to get through to us, the Council for the Defence of British Universities, the Campaign for the Public University and the Convention for Higher Education, all of which feel, as do students, that in their current state the TEF metrics are not up to the job of determining fee levels and that, until we are sure that we have valid and reliable measures, we should not do this.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, hearing the words “TEF metrics” made me come to my feet, because a consistent theme to run through our debates on the Bill has been the developing understanding that the metrics are wholly inadequate and, in particular, that the national student survey is not the basis for any judgments on teaching quality.

I am glad that the Government have moved as far as they have on the NSS and the metrics—now we are getting a thorough review; the metrics related to the NSS are being officially described as the least important of the metrics before us; for smaller institutions more scope is being given; and so on. That is all good news, but what seems knocking on bizarre is to plough on with bringing in this link between fees and the TEF before we have got the TEF right. It would be logical to get the TEF right first, see whether the metrics can be made to work and get them all in some sort of order, and then, when you have done that, you can seriously consider whether to have a link with fees. But when the TEF is such a self-evident mess, why put all your money on having the fees link, which will make people even angrier at the effects of the TEF? Why not show a little patience? The Government believe in linking the TEF and fees; others in this House do not. The Government would give themselves the best chance of proving themselves right and the sceptics wrong if they gave time for the TEF to settle down before they brought in the fees link.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I remind your Lordships that when the Browne report came out at the beginning of the coalition Government, the change was introduced to increase fees from £3,000 to £9,000 in one go and to convert to a loan system. I remember tabling a regret Motion at the time. The argument then was that a market would be created so that students would go for universities and courses that were better value for them, but what I highlighted in my Motion was that the Government were withdrawing funding on the one hand and tripling the fees on the other. In the five years since the change was implemented, there has been no market; universities across the board have had to increase their fees virtually to the maximum £9,000, because funding was withdrawn at the other end. For students, it was a double whammy. Their fees were tripled in one go—I suggested that it should have been phased in—and they are now saddled with loans of tens of thousands of pounds that they have to pay off. On the other hand, for the universities, there is a £9,000 figure which for some subjects—science and engineering, let alone medicine—is nowhere near enough to provide that type of teaching.

This is a Hobson’s choice. You can understand the students’ point of view—they are already paying £9,000; they were paying £3,000 and they got the loans; they do not want the fees to go up—and you can understand the universities’ point of view: they want to provide the best possible research, teaching and facilities for their students, but they have had no increase in their fees for five years. In real terms, the £9,000 is already down to just over £8,000. Now we have this further linkage with teaching.

I want your Lordships to understand that this is not easy. Universities operate in a challenging environment. We are competing with the whole world. We have the best universities in the world along with the United States of America. Our research is fantastic. I am proud of our universities, but in many ways we have our hands tied behind our backs. I applaud our students and our universities.