Higher Education — House of Commons, 2018-04-23
Topic: Education
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, one of the things about the appointments process that has deeply damaged the standing of the OfS in the eyes of students was the insistence by Government political advisers that there should be no representatives from students unions or the National Union of Students on the board. The Government did not say, "We’re going to cast the net wide, and if we find a student who is more capable than an elected officer of the NUS or a students union, we’ll appoint them," but instead effectively blacklisted the NUS and students unions. As a former president of the NUS, I think that is an absolute disgrace, not least because students who are elected have the confidence of the student body. They present manifestos about the issues that those they represent care about. If the Government had listened a bit more to what students were saying, perhaps they would not be in the political mess they are in, not just with students but with their parents and grandparents, who are horrified that tuition fees have been trebled, that student grants for the poorest were abolished and that the education maintenance allowance for students in further education was scrapped. The Government have got themselves into a real mess by failing to listen to people who know best about higher education, which is the people who work in it and the people who learn from it. It is a disgrace that there is no NUS representative on the board of the Office for Students It is also a disgrace that there is no staff representative from the University and College Union. Recent events, particularly in the pensions dispute, have shown that the lack of effective dialogue between staff representatives and university leaders leads to students being severely disadvantaged, but we have barely heard a peep from the Government about that crisis. They seem to have their heads in the sand. It is deeply regrettable that the Office for Students has been so deeply damaged by politicisation in the run-up to its creation, and the Government should not be surprised that we wish to oppose this statutory instrument Finally, let me gently say, without apology or any humility whatsoever, that many of the issues that have confronted the Government, particularly vice-chancellor pay and scrutiny and accountability, would easily have been dealt with had they accepted more amendments from me and my party’s Front Bench during the Higher Education and Research Bill Committee. I warned them that vice-chancellor pay was soaring out of control, and I proposed a modest amendment that would have put student and staff representatives on remuneration committees to better hold vice-chancellors’ pay to account, but that modest proposal was rejected by the Minister’s predecessor. The Government must be regretting that now. I also tabled an amendment that would have required universities to publish the ratios of the highest-paid to the lowest-paid at their institutions, to allow students, staff and the public to better hold them to account. That modest proposal was rejected as well As my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, the truth is that, when it comes to championing the interests of students and making our higher education sector better, fairer and more equitable, the Government do not listen and do not act. I agree strongly with what the Chair of the Education Committee said about the lack of further education representation. If we are serious about a further and higher education system that is well placed not just to serve the needs of our future economy, but to champion social justice, the Government need to do a damn sight better than they have done with the creation of the Office for Students. They cannot expect an effective Opposition to wade through statutory instruments like this when the work beneath it is so shabby and poor.