Higher Education (Transparency Condition and Financial Support) (England) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-07-24
Topic: Education
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I hope that the Minister will forgive me, but I am somewhat confused by the procedure. My noble friend has tabled a Motion to Regret on one of the sets of regulations even though the Minister introduced all of the regulations in his opening remarks. Perhaps I may make a few remarks now on the first of these sets of regulations concerned with transparency before we come on to the data sharing issues in a moment No one could have anything against these regulations. It is vital that there is transparency and the Office for Students, which got off to a terrible start in terms of its reputation, the appointments to the board and so on, is at long last starting to concentrate on some of the issues for which it was set up. One of those is to ensure fair access and to encourage universities to publish appropriate data on this. It is an important point, and the Minister’s remarks on that at the outset were well made and I support them entirely The essential thing to understand is that the publication of data itself will not improve access. It is a tool to that end, but the critical development is what happens university by university and community by community. My concern with the OfS is that, in setting up this new body and getting into a big exercise in establishing systems, protocols and data arrangements, it will concentrate too much in its first year or two on getting the systems in place and not on actually changing the behaviour of universities. There is some evidence for that already The first big announcement the OfS has made is to parade, as if it was some enormous achievement in the history of higher education, a register of providers. A register of providers in itself is an entirely neutral thing. No additional provider has been made available simply by the publication of a register. The fact that this may be the first such register is an interesting proposition but it is not a great development in the history of higher education in this country As a former Minister in this area, everywhere I go around the country I can see the enormous challenges involved in widening access. I want to bring the Minister’s attention to one area which I hope he might be able to write to me about after the debate. I do not expect him to be able to respond to my remarks now, but it is an issue of immense concern which does not come to the attention of this House because of devolution. I spent most of last week in Northern Ireland, where the shortage of higher education places is a very big issue. Northern Ireland exports a very large number of students to universities in the UK because there has been proportionately a much lower cap on places in Northern Ireland than has applied in Britain I turn to a subject that was raised with me almost everywhere I went, particularly at Queen’s University Belfast. Students and academic leaders told me in graphic detail about the brain drain from which Northern Ireland is suffering as a result of the shortage of higher education places. That in itself is a matter of concern. A large number of students in Northern Ireland are studying in Britain and then not returning home, which is very damaging to the economy and probably also to the wider society of Northern Ireland. However, there is an additional dimension that was forcefully made clear to me: this is a particular issue in the nationalist Catholic community in Northern Ireland because of a decision taken by the Stormont Parliament a generation ago not to establish a university in Londonderry. I looked into the history of the decisions that were taken in the 1960s and 1970s. It was decided to set up a new higher education institution in Coleraine rather than Londonderry which, amazingly, still does not have a proper higher education institution. That is greatly resented by the community in Londonderry and acts specifically against the interests of the Catholic community Normally this would be a matter for the Northern Ireland Assembly to concern itself with, and indeed part of the reason the Assembly exists is to address issues like this. However, it has now been more than a year since the Northern Ireland Assembly met. The two leading parties in Northern Ireland have conspired to keep the Assembly from sitting. There is no Government in Northern Ireland. Therefore, in this as in other areas such as equal marriage and abortion, this Parliament must surely start addressing these issues if there is no other democratic outlet for Northern Ireland to make its views heard, and for them to be addressed as they should be by Parliament This issue of higher education places in Northern Ireland, which goes directly to the issue of access, looks to be of fundamental importance. Will the Minister undertake to do two specific things? First, will he let me know what the powers of the Office for Students are in Northern Ireland? Does it have powers in Northern Ireland equal to the rest of the United Kingdom? Can it get into these issues of access? Secondly, will he ask the Office for Students to look, if it can, at fair access not regarding the number of places, but between different parts of the community in Northern Ireland, because it is clearly an issue that is very strongly felt there?