Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-13
Topic: Education
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this is a golden thread in our debate that has been pursued with considerable vigour by the noble Baroness, who has on every occasion, I think, asked difficult questions. In fact, she has been quite free with her favours, asking questions of me and of other noble Lords around the whole Chamber when we have failed to measure up to her high standards of accuracy and precision when mentioning the words "English", "higher" and "education" in sequence Here we are at the crunch point. The noble Baroness has put down a very specific amendment that would have quite strong repercussions for any body attempting to recruit English higher education students, because along with students comes public money. The main argument as I take it—and we look forward to hearing about it from the Minister—is that we are risking public money on bodies when we have no certain knowledge about where and how they are incorporated and what rights and responsibilities they have to the students. She could have mentioned several other areas and it is important to get them on the record. Under the Consumer Rights Act, students are owed a duty of care by the providers of their course. Specific issues must be supplied by the institutions and remedies for students lie in legal protections, which would be exercised in court. If the bodies are not incorporated in the UK, how are they going to manage that? I think the Minister should respond to that in a positive way We are also concerned with insolvency issues. It is quite interesting and instructive that most of the Technical and Further Education Bill—which is accompanying this Bill through Parliament—is taken up with measures that apply if a college of further education goes into insolvency or is wound up. There is a special education administration regime with particular powers for the insolvency practitioner appointed to ensure that students rank above all other creditors and that their courses will continue, if possible, or be transferred to a similar institution if not. Creditors, who in insolvency law—as I am sure your Lordships’ House is well aware—are normally given primacy, are relegated to second place. We have no such system for higher education institutions in the UK. There is therefore no provision for what happens when a private company, in particular, decides it no longer wishes to teach its students. Where will the students seek redress? The cases mentioned by the noble Baroness are relevant in this jurisdiction as well as abroad. It will be very interesting to see how students will recover their loans and their opportunities if there is no incorporation which allows them to do so We are discussing this when there has been a change of ownership of a very distinguished private provider, BPP. That situation is not nearly so dire as the one I have been discussing but nevertheless reflects a very major arrangement. The ownership has changed. The senior management have decided to not continue and there is still uncertainty about how the overall firm will be run. This is a real situation involving large numbers of students, lots of money and very difficult legal and jurisprudential positions The Government are taking this seriously. I had a letter delivered to my hand as I walked into the Chamber. It deals in four pages with some of the issues that the noble Baroness raised. I am not in any sense wanting to make slight of the letter because it is useful to have it on the record, but the Government seem to be broadly of the view that the existing arrangements under which the Office for Students—surely we will be shortly be calling it the Office for Higher Education, as we prefer—will have responsibilities under the registration and degree-awarding powers will make sure that nothing untoward happens. That is not sufficient. We need greater certainty about what institutions are responsible for our students, how they are responsible, in what way they are incorporated and what the legal position is I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, but I do not think that he will be able to measure up to some of the very strong critiques that have been made so far.