Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (Further Implementation etc.) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-06-05
Topic: Education
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for acknowledging that these regulations are mainly technical. I am pleased that these are the final regulations that have come out of the Higher Education and Research Act. It was a major Bill to go through this House and I thank all noble Lords who were involved A good number of questions arose. Before I get into answering them, I would like to pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said. He is quite right: the whole House acknowledges—and we would like to confirm—that what is important is to uphold and improve the quality of our first-class universities and, in so doing, to ensure we give the best choice to students, including international students, and that they get best value for money. That is behind everything we are doing in relation to the regulations and the Act itself, and—I will touch on this in a moment—is the basis for the Augar review, the independent review that has just reported. As I said yesterday and will say again in a moment, we will look very carefully at all 53 recommendations and will report back at the spending review, but not before. I say this not, perhaps, to reassure but to reiterate the point I made yesterday I will get straight into answering some of the questions raised: first, from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on pension schemes. The department ran a consultation, as she may know, on the impact of increased employer contributions on all TPS employers—including state schools, further and higher education providers and independent schools—for 2019-20. The department has decided to fund schools to the tune of £830 million and further education providers to the tune of £80 million—and not universities—in 2019-20, with costs beyond that year to be agreed at the spending review. This decision was based on the strongly positive response to our consultation proposal and the fact that schools and further education providers are most directly funded by government grants. I will read Hansard tomorrow to look again at the detailed remarks that the noble Baroness made. I will check her questions against my answer and, if I am not satisfied, I will write; I am sure that she will press me if she is not satisfied. The point the noble Baroness raised on data is important and, again, she had some detailed questions. Although I would like to write to give her some information in answer to her question about our plans for changes, I emphasise that these regulations do not extend access to data; they simply update the bodies between which data may be shared, replacing HEFCE with the OfS and HEFCE-funded higher education providers with OfS-registered higher education providers I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, to her place. I was sorry that she was not present yesterday. I thank her, particularly, for her role in the production of the Augar review. I am sure she has read Hansard in detail for yesterday’s exchanges. She asked how the OfS will demonstrate that it complies with the Regulators’ Code. The OfS, as she may know, is required to report annually on the performance of its functions. This report is sent to the Secretary of State and laid before Parliament The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked why the Charities Act amendments in Part 4 were drafted in this way; she had a number of detailed, interesting questions. I am sure that I will not be able to answer them all, particularly the points raised about the differences between Oxford, Cambridge or Durham. Again, I will need to read Hansard. What I can tell her is that the Charities Act amendments reflect the existing drafting in the Charities Act, which lists certain specific institutions. The term "relevant higher education provider" is used to ensure that a provider is registered with the OfS. If the provider is removed from the OfS register, it will no longer be a relevant higher education provider. But I want to go further and say that deregistration by the OfS can happen only under very narrow circumstances, including: serious breach of registration conditions by a provider; where the provider requests that it is deregistered; or where a provider stops providing higher education in England I shall say a bit more about the Augar review, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. As I said yesterday, I am not able to give an opinion on what, if any, recommendations we will take forward. I said yesterday, and repeat again, that we need to look at the 53 recommendations "in the round"—that was the expression that I used yesterday—since many of them are interactive. For example, the proposal to reduce tuition fees from £9,250 to £7,500 needs to be taken into account along with the proposal to extend the payback period from 30 years to 40 years and the further proposals for changes to the in-study interest rates and beyond. These are matters that I am simply not prepared to comment on or make a judgment on.