Higher Education and Research Bill

Wes Streeting Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am going to make some progress, because it is important that I cover the teaching excellence framework, which is at the heart of the Bill.

The framework will assess and drive up quality by providing reputational and financial incentives for success, which is a proven approach to ensuring high standards at our universities. That approach is based on what we have learned from our experience. It was a Conservative Government who introduced funding for research on the basis of quality, which is now a widely accepted way of working. The research excellence framework is regarded globally as the gold standard for institutional research. By extending that principle to teaching, we can ensure that British higher education remains in the world’s elite, and that students at all universities—old and new—receive the quality teaching that they have every right to expect.

Let me be absolutely clear: the Bill does not raise tuition fees or change current procedures for secondary legislation setting the maximum tuition fee cap. That will, rightly, continue to require the same level of parliamentary scrutiny as before, and the Bill will allow the maximum fee cap to keep pace with inflation, which the last Labour Government allowed for every year from 2007. What we are saying to high-quality providers is, “You can access fees up to an inflation-linked maximum fee cap if—and only if—you can demonstrate that you are providing high-quality teaching and you have an agreed access and participation plan in place.”

The Bill allows fee caps to be set below the maximum, to reflect varying levels of teaching excellence framework awards. The providers that are not meeting those standards will have to charge fees beneath the maximum fee cap, and that cap will not increase in real terms.

Our proposal to maintain the real value of the maximum fee cap, but only for those with excellent teaching, is backed by those who know the sector best. Universities UK has described that approach as “balanced and sustainable” and argues that maintaining the real value of the maximum fee cap is

“essential to allow universities to continue to deliver a high-quality teaching and learning experience for students.”

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on her appointment. I am sure that she is as shocked as I am that vice-chancellors are welcoming the opportunity to put up university tuition fees. Does she agree that many students and graduates who have gone through that £9,000 system do not feel that that level of tuition fee has been justified and that they have not seen the benefits of the decision that this House took some years ago?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. The real-terms ability of the maximum fee to keep up with inflation is enabling £12 billion of investment to get into higher education over the coming years. It is critical to make sure that students get value from the investment that they make in themselves and that teaching is of high quality. That is why the teaching excellence framework is such an important part of the Bill.

The proposed office for students is another part of the Bill that clearly shows that we are putting students at the heart of our higher education policy, as they should be. The creation of an office for students, which will be the principal regulator for higher education, will put students’ interests at the heart of regulation. It will have a legal duty requiring it to consider choice and the interests of students, employers and taxpayers, and it will look across higher education as a whole, with responsibility for monitoring financial stability, efficiency and the overall health of the sector.

The current system was designed for an era of direct Government funding of higher education when fewer people attended university. Higher education attendance is no longer a privilege of the elite. We lifted the limit on student numbers, meaning that more people than ever before have been able to benefit from a university education. The legislative framework needs to reflect that.

The office for students will create a new single register of higher education providers, replacing the current fragmented system and ensuring a single route into the sector. The simpler system means that this Bill will reduce regulatory costs on the sector and contribute to this Government’s deregulatory agenda. It also ensures that the requirements are clear and fair. Only those on the single register will be able to obtain degree-awarding powers, become universities or charge fees that attract student loans. Those providers will have to comply with conditions relating to, for example, their financial stability and the quality of their provision. The office for students will have powers to impose additional conditions—for instance, around access and participation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds—on fee-capped providers that wish their students to be able to access student support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

Broadly, the rule that 55% of students need to be studying on degree courses will remain. In the end, however, what we are trying to do more broadly with these changes is to open up the chance for new high-quality institutions to join existing high-quality institutions in our higher education sector in being able to offer degrees.

[Wes Streeting]

The Secretary of State is being very generous in giving way for a second time. She may not have seen the policy advice, but a briefing was caught on a long-lens camera outside No. 10 back in April. It said that the Government’s plans risk

“creating poor quality provision for marginal students”.

What is she going to do to mitigate that risk?

[Justine Greening]

The Bill is about ensuring that we have a strong, robust, successful, innovative and high-quality higher education sector for Britain’s young people. The hon. Gentleman sets out problems and then suggests we should not bring forward a Bill to tackle them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) after his relatively recent return to the Back Benches. Whatever disagreements the Opposition may have had with his various policies over the years, it is encouraging to see that while the Government may have lost his voice the House has not, as we have seen in recent days. I am sorry to have to associate myself with his remarks about the National Union of Students, in particular its lack of care towards Jewish students and Jewish representation. It is sad day when I find myself agreeing with the right hon. Gentleman on that.

UK higher education is a global success story, but that success has been put in jeopardy by the decision to leave the European Union. Our institutions currently have 125,000 students and 43,000 staff from other EU member states. Since the creation of the Erasmus scheme, some 200,000 British students have benefited from opportunities to study abroad. Our membership of the EU has added 15% to our universities’ income, not least through the £687 million in research income, from which the UK benefits disproportionately as a result of our strength and excellence in research. Against that backdrop, leaving the European Union provides significant challenges for the sector, and the Bill introduces unnecessary risk and uncertainty that the sector can no longer afford.

With some notable exceptions, this House needs a degree of modesty about the lack of scientific expertise across its Benches and should draw wisdom instead from expertise in the House of Lords. The dual support system for funding research in our universities has been vital to our higher education sector’s success, so we should pay particular heed to the warnings of the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, already referred to in this debate, from prior to the referendum when he described changes to the research councils outlined in the Bill as “drastic.” He was right then, but he is even more right today. It is a risk, a distraction, and an unnecessary reorganisation that we cannot afford. When winding up, the Minister ought to tell us what benefits this huge disruption will bring because it seems that any potential benefits are far outweighed by the costs.

The Bill continues apace the marketisation of our higher education system, which has been allowed to go unchecked without sufficient protections and rights for students for far too long. Nowhere is that more evident than in the provisions to allow new private providers to set up shop with degree-awarding powers from day one. What would stop the Donald J. Trump university opening in the UK? It could have degree-awarding powers from day one and then, a few years down the line, following inspection—I am sure that the Donald J. Trump university would not stand up to much—let us assume that it just chooses to up sticks and reinvest somewhere else. What protections and safeguards would there be for students?

The White Paper and the Bill refer to protection and the possibility of the OfS awarding degrees. I am proud of the degree that I got from my university—it is unlikely that my university would go bust, but we would certainly be in trouble if it did—but the idea that people who work hard at their chosen university for a degree could suddenly find that their certificate reads “Office for Students” instead of the name of their university is not reassuring. Students have for too long been an afterthought in the debate around reform of the higher education sector.

Turning to the office for students, its name is on the door, but there is no seat at the table for students. It is entirely unjustifiable to call something the office for students when there is no guaranteed representation for students. There was an entire White Paper called “Students at the Heart of the System” and the new Secretary of State used that exact phrase in her opening remarks, but students barely get a mention in the sector’s accountability regime. We should ensure, as a bare minimum, that student representation on the board of the office for students is guaranteed. It may well be that in the current climate that place is not reserved for the NUS specifically, but there are plenty of able student representatives in higher education institutions across the country and they deserve a seat at the top table.

Let me give a broader critique of the sector and what it has done for students. I bow to no one in my love and passion for the UK higher education sector, which is a national and international success story. I have been involved in debates on higher education for some time, so forgive me if I am impatient at the fact that we are still talking about problems that have existed for many years. Too many of our academically elite universities remain socially elite. I get frustrated when I hear of so-called “widening participation success stories” from institutions that have appalling retention data and graduate destination data.

The right hon. Member for Surrey Heath alluded to the fact that the benefits, purpose and value of higher education have always extended beyond simple utilitarianism, and whether that is about graduates getting jobs or companies getting patents, there is a bigger vision and mission. It is about the exploration of humanity, expanding our horizons, having a deeper understanding of ourselves, our culture and our society, and pushing the boundaries of scientific exploration. But we should never forget that for many students, particularly those from backgrounds like mine, although it is of course lovely to go to university and make new friends and to engage in a deeper knowledge of one’s subject, it is also essential that that higher education experience delivers the transformational impact that is so often promised when students apply but that can so often be found lacking afterwards.

Too many institutions are too prepared to pat themselves on the back just for taking students from some of the most deprived communities, be they working-class communities, black and minority ethnic communities, disabled groups or other groups that are under-represented in HE and face particular disadvantage in society. The institutions then take their money, process them through the university conveyor belt and cast them off into the world with no real benefit to their earnings, and with these students having no real sense of direction or purpose in their lives. For too many students, on too many courses, that is the direction taken, and it is simply not acceptable or justifiable. The Government, we in this House and the accountability regime for higher education need to be more robust in challenging that institutional failure.

I am also frustrated about what is happening to so many of the concessions that students and student leaders fought for and won in successive battles, be they on the introduction of tuition fees in 1998, on the introduction of top-up fees in 2004 or on the coalition reforms. So many of the concessions we won—the reintroduction of grants for the poorest students, the increase in the repayment threshold so that it was more generous and even the introduction of the independent Office for Fair Access itself—are being too readily and rapidly undone. That is a betrayal of the promises made by successive Governments, and I would like to suggest a number of changes.

If I were in the Minister’s shoes today, I would be dropping this Bill and starting again. There are three areas in particular where the Government need to do some serious rethinking: funding and finance; transparency and accountability; and the global role of HE. On funding and finance, we have already seen the difficulties presented to departmental budgets and the demands on the Treasury when even simple miscalculations in the assumptions on the resource accounting and budgeting charge and on the level of repayments are made.

I do not wish to rehearse the debate, but we must be honest about the fact—there is an absence of any compelling evidence to the contrary—that the view before the referendum among the overwhelming majority of economists in this country and around the world was that if the UK put it itself on a different course, that would undoubtedly leave the country less well-off than it might otherwise have been. In that context, and given the pressures that will inevitably follow on jobs, inward investment and the labour market, a particular risk is placed on higher education budgets. If graduates are not earning as much as they might otherwise have been, that means less money in the repayment system going back to the Treasury and more pressure upon departmental budgets.

As an opponent of the up-front tuition fee system, which I suffered from in part, the top-up fee system and the coalition’s further reforms, I think it is a terrible mistake that we have ended up with the present system, rather than with some form of proper graduate taxation. I am totally comfortable with the idea of paying more as a graduate and as a beneficiary of higher education. There are particular problems with the principle of having a sticker price up front and with some of the mechanisms of the repayment system that create significant risk for the Government. I am encouraged that others are still engaged in this debate. It is interesting that the Fabian Society has proposals for national insurance education accounts.

As well as looking at the repayment mechanisms, it is more important that we look at the issue of student maintenance. It is undoubtedly the case, as is well demonstrated by NUS evidence, that too many students within the higher education system, particularly those from poorer backgrounds—not necessarily the poorest, but those from low and middle income backgrounds—struggle to make ends meet. If they find themselves stacking shelves or, as I did, working at Comet, now defunct, to fund my higher education course, there is a cost not just in the time taken at work. There is an opportunity cost, because if students are stacking shelves or pulling pints, they are not in the library, the lecture theatre, sports clubs or student societies and activities—all those opportunities that lead to personal enrichment and success later on in the workplace. It should be a serious cause for concern that too many students still struggle to make ends meet.

We could be far more creative with the current system. I particularly commend to the Minister and the new Secretary of State the proposals put forward by Lord Adonis and Josh MacAlister, the chief executive of Frontline, that where there are shortages in key public sector professions, we should look at what we could do by way of remission of repayment of tuition fees. If there was a shortage of social workers in Greater Manchester, for example, and there were graduates who were willing to go there and stick at it, the Government should cover the cost of their tuition fee repayments. There is plenty of scope to think about how to get the best and the brightest graduates into some of our most challenging professions.

On funding and finance, which we debated in Westminster Hall yesterday, it would be unforgivable for the Government to accept the principle that it is okay for Ministers to change the terms and conditions of student finance retrospectively. Not only is it fundamentally unfair to change the terms and conditions for existing students and graduates, but there is a huge risk. Students, especially those from the poorest backgrounds, and their parents and advisers need absolute certainty about what they are signing up for. If they feel that the Government are going to change the terms of the debate further on, that will bring with it serious risk.

On transparency and accountability, as I have mentioned, I think the transparency revolution should be extended to outcomes and graduate success. It is important that the director of the Office for Fair Access should report not just to the board of the office for students, but to this House, given the level of interest across the House. We should challenge some of the bodies associated with higher education about their commitment to transparency.

How can it be justified that UCAS, an organisation on whose board I was proud to serve for two years, when asked for reasonable datasets on applications, particularly from students from disadvantaged backgrounds, continues to supply data in the most inaccessible way possible? It is entirely possible for the very talented data wonks at UCAS to use Excel spreadsheets. They should provide Excel spreadsheets, rather than PDF documents, to people with legitimate demands for data. I hope it will not take an amendment to the Bill to get UCAS to behave more reasonably.

On student representation, as well as the office for students, there should be guaranteed student representation on a statutory footing on the designated quality body and on the governing bodies of higher education institutions, and we should extend the provisions of the 1994 Act to private providers. I rather like the suggestion from my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for a student bill of rights in higher education.

We need accountability for the way that money is spent within institutions. One of the advantages of putting universities back into the Department for Education is that there is now an opportunity for Ministers covering schools, colleges and universities to look together at the issues of social mobility, widening participation and fair access to universities. I am tired of the hand-wringing of university vice-chancellors and their lobbyists, who claim that it is all the schools’ fault that they cannot get poor Jimmy and Jane from the local state school into some of our academically elite universities. If it is all the school’s fault, then I have a really good idea—take all the widening participation funding from higher education and put it into schools and early years, because vice-chancellors have made a compelling case for transferring it in that way. That is not to denigrate the excellent work done by staff working on widening participation and student recruitment in institutions; they are some of the most passionate and dedicated staff in terms of changing the profile of the student body. However, there is scope to make different and better spending decisions. Universities ought to be justifying how they are spending the money and what its impact really is.

We should have more accountability around the scandal of unjustified pay hikes for university vice-chancellors. Our institutions are very ably led, but against the current backdrop of public finances, I cannot believe that these pay increases are justifiable. The Bill should go so far as to require universities not just to publish vice-chancellors’ pay—a great public service provided by Times Higher Education magazine—but to publish pay ratios between the pay of the university vice-chancellor and the lowest-paid staff.

Finally on accountability, we need more clarity about market exit. What happens if these brave new providers go bust or simply shut up shop? There must be better requirements on these institutions to protect their existing students and their graduates.

On global higher education, we can be enormously proud of the role that our institutions play on the international stage. It has been beyond saddening to read of academics who are being told that their funding is at risk and of conferences that will no longer take place in this country because people feel that, by leaving the European Union, we are closing the door to the outside world. The Minister could do a number of things to address this, but none would be more powerful than removing international students from the net migration cap. There is an overwhelming consensus on that, with support on both sides of the House. The previous Home Secretary was an obstacle to this. I am sure that now she has walked through the door of No. 10, she is far more amenable to the idea as Prime Minister. In all seriousness, there could be no better signal to send to the rest of the world than to say that bright students from across the world are welcome to study here and will be embraced.

Those are just a few thoughts. I am anxious to hear from the Front Benchers, and particularly to hear the Minister’s assurance that he will move on the issue of retrospective payments and changes to the student finance system.