Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the fellow of one Oxford college, the honorary fellow of another, and the chancellor-elect, to be installed on Friday, of the University of Reading.

The Minister in the Public Bill Committee described the Bill as a somewhat minor Bill—a tidying-up Bill. It is not. It is a juggernaut of a Bill. Arguably, it is the formal end of the delicate structure of autonomy under royal charters, which goes a long way back in our history. It is an irony that the Government should be doing that; remember that not long ago they presented IPSO—the Independent Press Standards Organisation —as well protected by its royal charter.

This is a disappointing Bill from a Conservative Government. Edmund Burke and Dizzy talked about the pillars of the constitution, which included the universities, this House, the Church and the monarchy. We do not need to pay too much attention to a squib by the young Dizzy but there is a truth in it: overcentralisation is dangerous.

The Bill is surprising, because post referendum all hands should surely be to the pump: the unintended consequences of Brexit will be severe in the university and research areas. I agree that the new money is highly welcome, and I know that some sponsors of the Bill had an honourable part in winning it. But there is an enormous amount still to do on freedom of academic movement, protection of networks, and so on. We have hardly started. It is notable that all recent British Nobel prize winners are working abroad. That may not matter so long as the young researchers from abroad, who may one day win Nobel prizes and be claimed for British science, are coming here. You cannot take those networks for granted. All the great university policymakers in the departments will be swamped with work on the Bill when they should be doing something more important.

It is surprising also because it goes in the opposite direction to a good deal of past policy. We have given power to the students, who take the money with them; their choices will shape and are shaping the university system, together with the money brought by overseas students—if the Home Office does not manage to see them off. What those students need, both at home and abroad, is better information about comparative teaching quality—separate, incidentally, from standards—and they need more information on pastoral outcomes and so on. What they do not need is a centralised behemoth of a regulator. That is a completely different policy.

In the very year when one of our universities has been graded the very best in the world—with, as noble Lords have said, many others not far behind—we in Britain choose not to celebrate our sector but to move it towards the sort of state governance structures that produce depressingly second-rate systems in, for example, France or Italy. The success of our autonomous universities should be the model, and surely it is perverse to challenge it just as its success is recognised worldwide.

We in this House have to be realistic. The juggernaut is trundling along but we can do some useful things, adding brakes here and there as well as warning lights, alarms and sirens—and we should do so. We should seek amendments to protect academic autonomy much further. Not long ago, a particularly silly Minister—whose name, luckily, I have forgotten—announced that in his view the teaching of dead languages was a waste of time. The Bill does not allow even so clever a Minister as my honourable friend the Member for Orpington to rewrite the honour moderations course at Oxford—but are we sure that it stops him saying that there is no need, on a strategic level, for the teaching of ancient Greek? I am not quite sure that the Bill provides us with that protection.

Then there is autonomy in the wider sense. Does the Bill stop universities having the fleetness of foot to make the kinds of decisions that I am proud to say Reading University has made, with a campus in Malaysia and a science park in the Thames Valley? It has all sorts of new courses and developments, which I am sure many other universities can match. However, it needs fleet-footed decision-making and very good governance by very good people who are attracted to the autonomy of an institution where they will make a difference. Are we sure that the Bill will encourage that?

I want to talk about UKRI, but I have only a minute to defend what my noble friend Lord Willetts called my legacy. I looked at the single research council—and please do not tell me that this is not a single research council with sub-committees; it soon will be. I tried to persuade my friend, the great scientist Sir Paul Nurse, not to go down this road, as all those who have looked at this subject for the past 60 years have not gone down that road. I am afraid that this behemoth will not, as my noble friend Lord Willetts said, be more efficient as a lobbyist for science; it will become a huge structure, and from it I fear that in 20 years’ time we will not see an increase in the productivity of British science but just an increase in that other great gift of Britain to the world—bureaucracy. Often, big is not best in science. Just look at the falling research productivity of the great pharmaceutical companies compared with the little challenger biotech companies for proof of that.

I repeat that I doubt whether we can stop this juggernaut. I rather wish that we could and go back to a more pluralist system. Again and again, it is untidiness and pluralism in research that produces creativity. You want some nooks and crannies; you do not want an overall strategy. That gives you lovely things such as Concorde, the AGR reactor and the System X telephone exchange; it does not give you what you need. We may not be able to stop it but we can make it a bit less dangerous. For example, let us at least try to put the Haldane principle on the face of the Bill. There is such a wealth of experience in this House and such a highly intelligent and well-educated Minister sponsoring the Bill that I think he will listen to our words of caution.