Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-09
Topic: Education
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): I thank all noble Lords for their contribution to this rather extended debate. I prefaced my opening remarks by saying that this is a complicated group, and it certainly proved to be so. We have got there, but by a rather circuitous route, and I am a bit confused about some of the things that the Minister said when responding. I am sure a lot of us will want to read Hansard very carefully It is clear that the position that we are moving towards—it is clear to me and I am going to advance this as a thesis as I withdraw my amendment—is that we want a healthy system of higher education provision in this country. There is no doubt or dissent about that, but it is not clear who decides which institutions that are providing higher education are going to be universities and what the criteria are. The university title follows a particular process which we have discussed and we know about, but who does it? Is it Ministers or civil servants, or is there another body yet to be set up? I would like the Minister to write to us setting out very clearly the structure he has identified today. Who maintains the register? The Minister said that it will be not a statutory register but a voluntary register. I agree that the carrots and sticks are very substantial, but it is a bit of a strange decision to have a regulator—the Office for Students—that does not have a regulatory function because it is voluntary. That needs to be unpicked. We need to know who assesses the criteria under which higher education providers get on to the register, who assesses the threshold standards for degree provision that they are obliged to have, and who assesses the quality of the degrees they subsequently grant. There are amendments about this later on, but we must also ask who regulates the body appointed as the regulator for the system. Is there another body that we do not know about? A lot of this will be answered by transparency, and I would be grateful if the Minister wrote to us about that I was asked three specific questions that I am not going to be able to answer, but I will record them so noble Lords know that I have them in mind. I do not understand the issue about where an institution needs to be located, but I think it is intimately connected with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about who gets the benefit of the subsidy and the tax provisions that are available. It would be quite inappropriate for a body to be registered as a university within the United Kingdom and to receive tax benefits if it is not also providing a public benefit. It is obviously a circular argument; we are making the same point, and we need to have that bottomed out. I do not have a solution, and my amendment would not have taken us to that point. The situation needs to be looked at again The trustee model has served us well. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, was not knocking it and recognises its value, but he wanted there to be other bodies such as enterprise institutions. I would like to see the evidence for that. He has no responsibility in this respect, and it is about time he told us where he thinks all these brilliant institutions are. Comments were also made on this side about that issue. I am very sceptical about whether that would be worth while, but it is a fair point to question My noble friend Lady Cohen and others on our side need to resolve our differences about this issue. I am not against an institution making a profit, provided that the arrangements under which it is made are transparent. Transparency is the issue, and I am sure we will come back to it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.