argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Ernest Ronald Oxburgh (Crossbench, Unknown): I apologise for not being faster to my feet to intervene slightly earlier before the last speaker, but there are a couple of points that still need making. I declare an interest as an honorary professor at the University of Cambridge and before that as rector of Imperial College. Probably more relevantly, over the past 15 years or so I have been much involved in the assessment of universities in Hong Kong and Singapore I have two main points to make. First, the assessment as proposed at present by government is simply not useful to students. It may satisfy administrators or others, but it is not useful for students in so far as it does not have sufficient granularity. Within a university there may be departments that are outstanding in their teaching and others which are not, and that is the information that is of value to students—not some blanket assessment of the university as a whole Secondly, there is an implicit assumption in all this that, if a university is not teaching well or if a department is not teaching well, it is because it is not trying hard enough. That might or might not be the case, but it may also be that there is insufficient resource in that university to do better. Indeed, the proposal to link the level of support or the ability to increase fees may initiate a vicious downward spiral of despair, discouragement and pessimism in those institutions which are given the lowest ranking.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Karan Bilimoria (Crossbench, Unknown): I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he confirm that when the Government carried out the consultation on the teaching excellence framework, one of the questions asked was: do you agree with the descriptions of the different TEF ratings proposed? Will he also confirm that an overwhelming 55% said no? On the basis of that, the Government came up with the gold, silver and bronze. Now the Minister is hearing unanimously from noble Lords and university leaders that this will not work for universities, will damage the sector and will create the wrong perception. So surely the Government should listen again. If they have listened before, they can listen now.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Alison Wolf (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I feel as though I must have read a different ONS report from the one given to the Minister. You can clearly identify the outliers in the NSS data, those at the bottom and those at the top, but the rankings in the middle are so uncertain that you cannot discriminate or put in order the vast bulk of English higher education institutions. So, to say that minor amendments were called for uses the word "minor" in a way that I personally would not.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Onora O'Neill (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I have nothing against new providers coming in. I should declare that I taught for 14 years at the University of Essex, which was a new provider and which I think achieved very high standards. It was of course believed not to have done so until the first research assessment exercise, which revealed that it was doing very well However, the deep difference that we have not yet explored in this debate is that we used to assume that new providers, like old providers, would have a system of governance of a sort that we recognise in this country. We have talked quite cosily about the governing bodies of institutions, but it is not clear to me that that is an apt way of speaking about the full range of possible providers that might come forward under this more open scheme. In effect, the burden is being transferred from governing bodies to a regulator. A regulator may say that there are certain standards of governance that it thinks are important or even that it believes that university councils should undergo some sort of fit and proper person test. That would be a reasonable thought, but that is not in the Bill at present, so when we think about new providers, we must open our minds to the full range of possibilities, and we may wish to set some restrictions on the sorts of institutions that would be appropriate. I use the euphemism deliberately.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Onora O'Neill (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, this is quite a complicated matter for higher education providers—as I have learned to call them—as the reasons why students come to a halt on their journey are very varied. Sometimes, they are not really committed to continuing, sometimes they are not really able to continue on the course, and sometimes there is another course with slightly different requirements to which they would be very well suited. It has to be a very hands-on process, and does not always go successfully, but nor would it even with this amendment One has to be very careful. In my experience, academic staff and the student counselling services have a great deal to do when an individual student hits one of these vicissitudes, and the process is not always successful. But we should also remember that in countries where they ostensibly have more of a credit transfer system than we have ever managed to achieve here, you cannot say, "Oh, I am not really enjoying my course here; I would prefer to be on that course there". The process will be extremely difficult and very expensive for the institutions. On balance, "must" facilitate may not, for those additional reasons, be quite the verb that we want here.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Alison Wolf (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, this is a very small amendment and I rather hope that it is a tidying-up amendment that the Government will go away and decide to agree. At the moment, as part of the general rethinking of the sector, it is possible for institutions to apply for just bachelor-level degree-awarding powers, bachelor’s and master’s or bachelor’s and research, but one group is regrettably shrinking in size: foundation degrees. That is important because, in another part of the woods, we are trying to rethink and redevelop tertiary education, and foundation degrees are a sub-degree level to which there is a lot of business and employer input By what is to me is a strange quirk, although the Minister may be able to explain it, the only people who can have foundation degree-only powers are FE colleges. I cannot see why other institutions should not also in certain circumstances have those powers. My amendment would simply delete that restrictive clause and leave it to the OfS to give foundation degree-only awarding powers to any institution where that seems appropriate. I beg to move.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Alison Wolf (Crossbench, Unknown): I have to say that I do not find the answer satisfactory, because I still do not see why, in that case, one still has a foundation degree-only awarding power in the mix at all. I continue to feel that it is odd to bar the possibility of something which might be useful in this changing landscape. Nothing here says that you have to do it However, I accept that the Government are not minded to do this, at least on this occasion. I very much hope that they might think about it some more. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Alison Wolf (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I listened carefully to the Minister’s response on this and I have to say that I was rather disappointed. I was very pleased with the government amendment, to which I put my name, but I feel that, as part of thinking hard about how new providers enter the system in the decades ahead, we have to be aware of the fact that, although there is enormous promise, there are also enormous threats. I am rather taken aback by how many new providers we have Looking at the fact sheet on degree-awarding powers, I note that there is an intention to reduce the typical amount of time before a track record is approved as adequate in validation to three years rather than the existing four, which is not a good idea. If completely new institutions are going to go straight to having degree-awarding powers, I reiterate the importance of being absolutely sure that it is a special type of institution, that it is well established and that there is a good reason for this. It is worth remembering that we have now, around the world, a large number of cases of institutions that have gone through apparently quite thorough regulatory oversight and have still failed—in large numbers in the United States I accept that the Secretary of State has set up a regulator, which will be independent, and clearly I do not think that he or she should involve themselves in every decision. However, this is a very important part of our higher education system and our reputation. If we are creating brand new institutions that can go forth and give degrees straight away, and which therefore often carry the rather strange term of having "probationary" degree-awarding powers, this ought to go right up to the top. In the next few years we will have a new and, I hope, exemplary regulator with a very well-known and highly respected chairman. However, the reality is that regulators are subject to regulatory capture and, as time goes on—particularly if we have the volume of new entrants coming through that the Government would like—there will be real risks For that reason, as well as because I would like to encourage the Secretary of State to be involved in this and to think actively about where something really exciting can occur and should be given support, the suggestion in our amendment that on that route the Secretary of State should have some involvement remains a good one. Therefore, rather sadly, I would like to test the opinion of the House on this.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Law and Crime
Simon Denis Brown (Crossbench, Unknown): I will speak very briefly to lend support in as full a measure as I may to this proposed amendment. I echo everything that was said by the noble and learned Lord. The contrast between what is provided for in Clause 46(2) and what his amendment strives for—a full merits appeal—is as well illustrated in the language of Clause 46(2)(b) as in any other way, because for this purpose you have to show that the decision was "wrong in law". If the Bill had wanted to say that it was wrong in law or in fact—just wrong—it could have said so. That is what is now proposed. Judicial review is simply not a sufficient basis of appeal for decisions as fundamentally and crucially important to the future of the institution and those who are affected by it as is required.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Igor Judge (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, we have just heard an utterly reasonable argument but, with great respect, it is wrong, and that is the issue the amendment is intended to address. Reasonable decisions may be wrong. Looking at this issue in depth, one hopes that the power will never have to be exercised. However, if it is, it will be an extraordinary power wielded by the OfS and it will not be open to the university in question to say, "We agree. All your facts are well set out but you have reached the wrong conclusion". That seems to be a ground of appeal that ought to be available We need not worry that amending the clause in the way we have respectfully suggested will lead to a huge torrent of cases. We hope that there will be no case at all but, if it arises, the straightforward way to go about it will be to say to the tribunal, "We are arguing that this was wrong". The tribunal is well able to assimilate the reasons why the OfS reached the decision it did, and will hear argument on behalf of the university. I propose to ask for the opinion of the House.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Alison Wolf (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I will not say that this is a tidying-up amendment, having been quite rightly told off about that, but it is meant to bring things into line and make sure that everyone in this emerging landscape of higher education is able to operate with confidence, knowing that if things are going wrong they have a route of appeal The amendment addresses validation, an area that Ministers are concerned about because they consider it to be fraught with problems for new providers. It is an area where new and innovative providers are encountering difficulties. There has been for a long time a difference of opinion about how major an issue this is. What the amendment sets out to do is state clearly that, if a commissioning arrangement involving the validation of a new provider by an existing provider goes wrong, there should be a means by which to appeal The Bill gives the OfS powers which, curiously enough, no one as far as I know has challenged during our long and slow progress. We seem to have had amendments to almost every clause, but not to this one. I think it is recognised that, if we are going to try to make it easier for good, new innovative providers to come in, there should be an active role for the Office for Students in that. It may wish to ensure that one provider can work with another institution, validate its degrees and help it to mature, and it has the power to do so. In the same way, there are existing powers for two institutions to get in touch with each other and go through validation. While I know that this is a major issue of concern for the Government, it is also true to say that the Competition and Markets Authority does not think that this is an area where there is a real problem with the market However, the relationship is not always easy, so the purpose of my amendment is simply to make sure that if things go wrong where a provider is involved in a commissioning arrangement of this sort, where one institution is the potential validator of degrees and another institution hopes to have its degrees validated if they are good enough, there is a clearly marked out route of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. That is what this amendment sets out to introduce into the Bill. On that basis, I hope that the Government will see this as something which would ensure that everyone has a route of appeal and that they will consider it seriously. I beg to move.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-03-08
Topic: Education
Alison Wolf (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I do not want to say very much about this. I did not withdraw the amendment which my noble friend Lady Brown and I originally tabled and which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, kindly introduced, because I wanted the opportunity to say in the House how very much we appreciate the fact that the Government listened to us on this and how convinced we are that introducing the Regulators’ Code into the OfS’s actions will be entirely for the good. It will take care of a great many anxieties we had about details in the Bill and we are truly appreciative of that I also want to agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said about the realities of dealing with students who are in a university and how you cope with problems, complaints and all the issues which come to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator. It is really important that the Government take account of the fact that this is not like a situation where you buy a coffee and if you do not like it you go and buy another coffee. My noble friend spoke very eloquently. I hope the Government will listen to her on that as much as they listened to us, and I thank them very much.
Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield Combined Authority (Election of Mayor) (Amendment) Order 2017 — House of Lords, 2017-03-16
Topic: Government Operations
David Alton (Crossbench, Unknown): Just before the Minister leaves that point, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, was making the point that as we go forward it will be important to keep under review how the provision actually works out in practice. I fully support the order being laid before your Lordships’ House, and the next one, which deals with Liverpool and the Merseyside area, where there is agreement that we should have a combined mayor. But will the Minister have a dialogue in future with local councils about replication, whereby you can end up as Liverpool will with a mayor for the greater region, an elected mayor in the city and a lord mayor as well? That will cause confusion.
Prisons: Overcrowding — House of Lords, 2017-09-07
Topic: Law and Crime
David John Ramsbotham (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I salute my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood for tabling this important debate, on an issue that has bedevilled the conduct of imprisonment for far too long. Time allows me to mention only two possible ameliorations, neither of them new, of which I hope the Minister will take note Giving evidence to my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf’s masterly inquiry into the riots in Strangeways and other prisons in 1990, the then Director-General of the Prison Service, Mr Train, justifying his contention that: "for improvement to be solid and service-wide, the canker of overcrowding must be rooted out", said that, "the life and work of the Prison Service have, for the last 20 years, been distorted by the problems of overcrowding. That single factor has dominated prisoners’ lives, it has produced often intolerable pressure on the staff, and as a consequence it has soured industrial relations. It has skewed managerial effort and it has diverted it away from positive developments. The removal of over-crowding is … an indispensable pre-condition of sustained and universal improvement in prison conditions" My noble and learned friend recommended a new prison rule that no establishment should be allowed to hold more than 3% of its certified level of accommodation for longer than three months without the permission of the Secretary of State, about which he had to inform Parliament. The then Home Secretary, now the noble Lord, Lord Baker, followed the inquiry with a White Paper containing 12 priorities for the way ahead for the Prison Service, including to end overcrowding. Sadly, none has yet been implemented by any successor Secretary of State, nor has the proposed Prison Rule My second point involves cell certification, for which, under the Prison Commission, inspectors were responsible, but which the Home Office brought in-house when it took over the running of prisons in 1963. As Chief Inspector, I felt it quite wrong that the Prison Service should be both judge and jury on how many prisoners might be held in each cell. I agitated that I should be made responsible for advising the Secretary of State on when overcrowding had become so bad in a particular prison that further intakes of prisoners should be forbidden—my request was refused Of course, ministerial and parliamentary oversight of the numbers, and cell certification by the inspectorate, will not by themselves root out the canker of over- crowding. But if the Prison Service’s distortion of its role is to be rooted out, Ministers and officials must stop ignoring, and start listening, to the clarion calls of those who, for years, have been drawing their attention to the damage that overcrowding does to a system for which they are responsible and accountable to the public.
Prisons: Overcrowding — House of Lords, 2017-09-07
Topic: Law and Crime
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, there are far too many people in prison who ought not to be there at all. I have been concerned for some time about what can best be described as inflation in the length of the sentences being imposed by the courts. In England and Wales, the average length of a custodial sentence in 2007 was 12.4 months. In March 2017, it was 16.6 months—an increase of about one-quarter over the decade. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, pointed out, the tariffs for life sentences have increased too. In 2005, the average tariff in England and Wales was 15.7 years. By 2015, it had increased to 21.2 years. These are shocking increases. Why has this happened and what purpose is it serving? The Sentencing Council should be asked to examine the phenomenon of sentence inflation, to consider whether these increases now serve any useful purpose and to find ways of reversing the increases where they do not The effect of overcrowding is that the opportunity for effective rehabilitation is greatly reduced. On the other hand, many more prisoners are being recalled now for breach of licence conditions than ever before. The Transforming for Rehabilitation programme, introduced by the previous Government in February 2015, requires all those sentenced to a custodial term of less than 12 months to be subject to supervision for 12 months on release and to be eligible for recall. Since that date, there have been nearly 15,000 recalls of people serving these short sentences. This means that the number of people in prison on any day for breaching licence conditions has increased from 150 in June 1995 to 6,500 in March 2017—another shocking figure After all, the majority of those recalled are being sent back to prison for technical reasons only, such as failing to attend appointments with probation officers. They have not reoffended. They are in prison for a few days only, before being released again. The only purpose of this is to prevent reoffending by further rehabilitation. But what is the point of recalling prisoners for breach of conditions when, due to lack of resources, the rehabilitation element is largely absent This, like the IPP problem to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, has drawn attention so frequently, is a policy—no doubt well meaning—that has gone badly wrong. The good intentions that lie behind these measures are not being matched by a commitment to provide the funding necessary to make them work. The Government need to address the reasons for these rises in prison numbers as much as they need to address the physical problems the overcrowding gives rise to.
Prisons: Overcrowding — House of Lords, 2017-09-07
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Lilian Primrose Cunliffe-Lister (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, for many years I was a member of the board of visitors—now known as monitors—at a young offender institution. The 2016-17 report by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales should make people who read it realise that improvements must be made. I did not see monitors mentioned once. I ask the Minister: are monitors still involved in trying to highlight needs and improve conditions, as we did? What is their present role? When 78 of the 116 prisons in England and Wales are overcrowded there are many risks Things have changed over the years and they are now much more complex. There has always been a problem with alcohol abuse, but prisons are now recording surging levels of violence, self-harm and drug use. It is deeply concerning that the incidence of self-inflicted death and self-harm among women in prison has risen dramatically. Many young adult prisoners spend less than two hours a day out of their cells. It is no wonder that many are depressed. Is this due to shortages of staff, or could the system be more humane? How is the drive to recruit more prison officers proceeding? Are there facilities to train them adequately Apart from overcrowding and the shortage of staff, there is the challenge of prisoners with mental and physical health problems and a growing population of elderly prisoners who need extra care. If there was a more comprehensive aftercare system for vulnerable prisoners when discharged, with ongoing rehabilitation and a place to live for those who are homeless, maybe there would not be so much recidivism, which is one reason for prison overcrowding. Discharging vulnerable prisoners on a Friday, with no care plan in place, is asking for trouble. What hope is there for a better system?