argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I assure the Committee that there is a clear obligation on the OfS to consult when it first determines the initial and ongoing registration conditions and on significant subsequent changes. This will be taken forward through the consultation on the regulatory framework under which the OfS will operate. Clause 69 is clear that, before the OfS can publish its regulatory framework, it must first undertake a wide-ranging consultation Subject to the passage of the Bill, the consultation on the new regulatory framework will take place in autumn 2017, so the OfS can begin accepting and assessing applications from new and existing providers in 2018, in time for the 2019-20 academic year. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has taken note of this timetable. We mentioned it earlier in Committee—I think on the first day. We are deliberately taking our time over the introduction of the new regulatory framework and regime. We are not rushing into this. The OfS must have time to consult fully and take on board the views of a very wide range of stakeholders. The new regulatory approach to higher education will be very carefully introduced Clause 69 places a very clear duty on the OfS to take into account representations from every part of the sector. It makes provision for the OfS to consult any persons that it considers appropriate and is drafted in such a way that it gives the OfS discretion to consult higher education staff On the question of students, which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised, we will look to the OfS strongly to encourage providers to engage and consult with students and other stakeholders as a matter of good practice. However, we do not believe that it is right to be prescriptive further than that The OfS register will cover all providers regulated by the OfS and will share some similarities with HEFCE’s register of providers. However, whereas HEFCE’s register is primarily a regulatory tool, the OfS register is aimed squarely at students. I reassure the Committee that, although the Bill states that the Secretary of State "may" make regulations, this is standard legislative drafting. It is not meant to imply that the Secretary of State will not do so; I can assure noble Lords that she will. I can also assure noble Lords that the Government firmly expect the OfS to consult on how it will run the register. With that explanation, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
James Peter Hymers Mackay (Conservative, Centre-right): I want to be sure that I understand. The designated body will be able to perform some of the duties which the Office for Students has, under the Bill, if that option is taken up, but the designated body will also have responsibilities which the Office for Students does not have under the Bill at the present time. Am I right in that? If so, are the extra responsibilities that the new designated body has in relation particularly to the fixing and consideration of standards?
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
Annabel Goldie (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay. To answer the specific point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, about where all this appears in the Bill, my understanding is that Clause 59 and Schedule 6 cover the duty to publish English higher education information, as originally drafted. We are clarifying and expanding the rules and data, by the amendments to which I have just spoken, to build on what is provided for in this core clause and in Schedule 6. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern raised a fairly technical issue and I hesitate to give a full response at the Dispatch Box in case I get it completely wrong. With his approval, I shall write to him on that issue.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
David Willetts (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, briefly, I support this amendment but ask my noble friend Lord Lucas whether the obstacle is not somewhere else. The universities do not necessarily have as much data about their graduates as we think they do. Sadly, the Foreign Office and the British Council do not have enough. They try to host parties for Chevening scholars in embassies around the world and have a limited database of who the people are who were on the scholarships in the past. There is, sadly, surprisingly little information. The organisation that has the data is the Student Loans Company, and the legislation around it is heavily constrained because it is treated essentially as an arm of HMRC, with all the confidentiality that goes with that. If I were a university that wanted to communicate with my alumni, instead of putting an obligation on me, I would say, "Please, can there be some way in which we can communicate with our alumni via the Student Loans Company database?", as that is where the contact addresses are. I hope there might be some way in which, in the spirit of these excellent amendments, that could be facilitated. That is the infrastructure we do not have. The American universities have built it up over generations. There was the great observation: "If only Osama bin Laden had been to Harvard Business School, because the Americans would have found him within 24 hours". They are very good at tracking down their graduates, we are not so good at it, and access to the Student Loans Company data would make that a lot easier.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
David Willetts (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, that fascinating intervention gets to the heart of the direction of travel that is being debated in many different amendments this afternoon My understanding—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—is that universities and higher education institutions are not public sector bodies. Nevertheless, in a range of different contexts, Parliament has decided to impose on them the obligations they would have if they were. The public sector equality duty could be one example. Freedom of information is another example. My concern—here I am a bit of a purist—is that universities are not part of the public sector and it is quite important for universities that they are not. If I were running a university—which I am not—I would start feeling two kinds of pressures on me. On the one hand, a significant number of Members of this House and elsewhere want to treat universities as if they are public bodies, so that whenever there is a nice public sector duty around they say, "Let us add it to universities although they are not part of the public sector". Both FoI and public sector equality are examples. On the other hand, at the same time the Government—and this process goes back before 2010—are saying, "There is a private contractual obligation to deliver a service to a student so really they have got to be subject to competition law and the CMA and so on". They end up being subject to a pincer movement, where they have got all the private obligations as if they were a company that needs to be competing, plus we throw in all the public obligations as if they were in the public sector when they are not The dynamic of these debates begins by saying we must do more to preserve the autonomy of universities and then spend the rest of the time adding extra obligations we would like them to comply with. If at the end of the legal process of preparing what will become an Act of Parliament we have ended up with more obligations on the universities, making them subject to the CMA, and more public sector duties despite them not being in the public sector, we will leave universities even more burdened than they are at the moment. We require some self-denying ordinance so that we do not keep piling more obligations on them. We have already imposed on them a range of obligations that go way beyond what any other private body is susceptible to. At some point there is a danger that universities will end up in the public sector. There is a danger that we all talk about them as if they are part of the public sector and treat them as if they are hospitals, schools and so on. They are not. They are independent bodies outside the public sector and we should be wary of imposing obligations on them as if they are inside, especially when we are in parallel and subject to greater market competition as well.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, although I am a thoroughgoing advocate of freedom of information, I am very conscious of what my noble friend Lord Willetts said shortly before supper: we must be careful of the degree and direction of obligations that we put on universities. This amendment is therefore very much phrased as not prescribing any particular outcome but saying that it must be equal. That is born of my experience, when, under the last Government, UCAS was deemed to have public functions and made subject to the Freedom of Information Act. I immediately requested some information from it and was refused, and went through the appeal procedure. The case having been ruled partially in my favour, UCAS went through two sets of tribunals, with QCs. It must have cost it about half a million quid to resist the commissioner’s attempts to pin it to the Freedom of Information Act obligations. That is perhaps why I reacted so fiercely to the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, when she quoted "commercial interests". It was quite clear then that UCAS’s order of priorities was: first, making money; secondly, looking after the universities; and thirdly, the students. I did not think that was right and nor do I think it is right that universities put money first and other things second We are dealing—or ought to be dealing—with different kinds of institutions. On the bits that I did not get through the commissioner, some of which is information now being made available through this Bill, I failed because of the inequality of treatment of universities, which were subject to freedom of information, and other higher education institutions, for instance BPP, which were not. That inequality created a commercial tension between those who might have been asked to reveal information and those who were not subject to FoI, which prevented information being released under it. My recommendation to the Government is, whatever you do, do the same for everybody and then everybody has to comply. I beg to move.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
James Peter Hymers Mackay (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am not certain whether the two amendments in this group will place a statutory duty on higher education providers or whether they are intended to enforce some kind of contractual obligation—that is, in order to be registered, they have to agree to do this and that, which would not be quite the same thing. There are important distinctions between universities and other providers of higher education. Whether the level playing field that has just been referred to applies across that divide is an interesting question, on which I would be glad to know the Government’s view.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the Government have given careful consideration to the range of views expressed in response to our 2015 Green Paper in relation to the application of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to higher education providers. Over 100 consultation responses were received on this issue and, perhaps surprisingly, opinion was divided. The underlying principle behind freedom of information legislation is that people have a right to know about the activities of public authorities. Although not traditionally regarded as public authorities in the wider sense, the Act does currently apply to HEFCE-funded institutions in recognition of the fact that they are in receipt of direct public funding. In seeking to apply the Freedom of Information Act equally to all registered providers, the effect of the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas—and I thank him for that—would either be to remove all higher education providers from the remit of the Act, or impose an additional freedom of information obligation on providers which are not already covered, irrespective of whether they receive direct public funding. This amendment would extend the scope of freedom of information obligations in this case to all registered higher education providers with courses designated for student support In the 2015 Green Paper, we considered the application of the Act and the regulatory costs it could impose on higher education providers, some of which may be relatively small organisations. Having considered the views expressed by a range of stakeholders, our decision was, so far as possible, to maintain the status quo by applying freedom of information obligations to those providers who, in future, are eligible to receive direct grant funding from the Office for Students—namely, approved fee-cap providers. As part of our overall principle of risk-based regulation and seeking to reduce regulatory costs and barriers to entry where appropriate, we did not consider that there was a strong case for expanding the scope of the Freedom of Information Act more broadly. We already believe that more higher education providers will be regulated through our reforms In this short debate, I wanted to address an interesting question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. The gist of his question was why the Bill does not seek to provide a level playing field of regulatory obligations. I would like to expand a bit on my answer. The Bill continues a rather different approach, whereby those that receive the most significant funding directly from the public purse are subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. This is a targeted approach to regulation, imposing requirements on those—
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): It is slightly more complicated than that, and it may be that I should write a letter to clarify this, but there is the funding on the student side that the noble Lord is talking about, the tuition fee, where a private individual is receiving private funding, and on the other side, what we are talking about, funding that comes in the form of a grant to help with the top-up—for example, for a high-cost STEM course. I think it would be good if I wrote a letter of clarification on that. There has been some discussion outside the Chamber on this aspect and it gives me the opportunity to write further on this. Having said all that, there is a bit more I wanted to say about that.
Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-16
Topic: Education
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): I would be delighted to add that to the letter for clarification. These are complicated aspects that require proper clarification To complete my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, providers, as he would probably guess, will come in the future in many shapes and sizes. A one-size-fits-all approach to regulation risks would impose an unwarranted cost on smaller providers and new entrants that could stifle the positive effects of competition in the sector. The Independent Commission on Freedom of Information, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, concluded that the current application of the FoI Act is appropriate. It considered evidence that it may place traditional universities at a competitive disadvantage compared with alternative providers and found it unpersuasive In addition to comments made by my noble friend Lord Willetts, I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, put it rather succinctly. That backs up the equivocal aspect of this debate. I believe that there is a balance, and it has been helpful to have this discussion Given the importance of information to the effective regulation and scrutiny of higher education providers, we have introduced provisions elsewhere in the Bill to provide a high degree of regulatory oversight and transparency. For example, Clauses 8 and 9 would require the Office for Students to impose ongoing registration conditions on higher education institutions to provide it with the information it requires in order to carry out its functions and to publish specified information The noble Lord, Lord Storey, raised a point about information availability and I will attempt to deal with that. Through the Bill, we are making more information available to students than ever before, as I hope he will know. For example, both approved and approved fee cap providers will be subject to the transparency duty in Clause 9, which we discussed earlier in Committee, and the TEF will make much more information available for students. With that, I hope that my noble friend will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Technology
Hazel Byford (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I spoke at Second Reading on this aspect of the Bill. I was one of the people who said very clearly that I should much prefer not to have pornography of any sort on any website, because the world would be much better without it. The previous speaker is quite right. The influence that modern communication has on young people is devastating. In some families, it really has been disruptive and led to unfortunate consequences within them I welcome the Minister’s statement that they will take this away, think about it and come back again. I reiterate my dismay that again we have another very important Bill from the Commons that really has not been dealt with in the proper manner. I hope that in future the Commons will be allowed more time or will organise itself so that it can do the job it should and can do, and not leave it to this House to be the one saying, "Hang on" If you look at the number of amendments tabled to this one Bill, it reinforces the whole position that my noble friend the Minister must deal with, which in many cases should have been dealt with before. I am an old hand here and still feel strongly about this. I do not complain that my right honourable friends at the other end have not had the opportunity to do this—that is how the system works. However, we go on, year after year, saying the same thing and it is high time we got to grips with this. I would like to push a little further on the Minister’s response earlier that the Government will look at this: it is hugely important that they do I have slight concerns about Ofcom being perhaps one of those who should undertake this. In some ways, Ofcom is not always as robust as I would like it to be, which is perhaps unfair. Secondly, we certainly need to identify in the Bill before it leaves our House exactly what is to happen: who the enforcer is where there are dual splits within what we seek to do in the Bill. The Bill is hugely important and I hope that the Government will, as they have already indicated, take it away after Committee and think seriously about it. I would hate to think that some of the final detail will come through in secondary legislation, which we cannot alter. We need to get this into primary legislation. I support the comments made by other noble Lords and look forward to the Minister responding and, I hope, being able to take it away and come back, even if that means it happens a little later. It is much better to get it right later than to leave it in its current form.
Brexit: New Partnership — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: International Affairs
Thomas Jeremy King (Conservative, Centre-right): Is my noble friend aware that none of us has had a chance to read the White Paper yet? We have an advantage in this House that at least we have had it before the Second Reading and can properly discuss it Perhaps my noble friend can respond on one point that concerns me. I was involved when we had the presidency of the European Union for six months and I know of the great organisational pressures that are put on government at such times. I do not know what encouragement we can give to the other members of the European Union, but as I look at who the next presidencies will be after Malta—in the shape of Estonia, then Bulgaria, Austria and Romania—I do not think that I am the only Member of your Lordships’ House who will worry about the ability of the presidency to cope with the great pressures it will have at that time On a lighter note and just to warm things up a bit, is my noble friend aware that we are approaching the 100th birthday of Dame Vera Lynn? I do not think that I am the only person who noted how improbably appropriate her songs would be for this situation. They include: "We’ll meet again, don’t know where, Don’t know when", and: "Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye, Cheerio, here I go" The last is perhaps even more to the point: "Say that everything will turn up right, It hurts to say goodbye".
Brexit: New Partnership — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: International Affairs
James Bridges (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we will certainly be meeting again, here, many times. On the next presidencies, my noble friend raises a very good point. I think that I am right in saying—in fact, I am sure—that the Government have offered support for the presidency of the Estonian Government if it were required. We are obviously in conversations with all the nation states that he has mentioned. We have been supported by them in making sure that we will continue to have a role in matters of substance that come to be discussed by the EU until we leave the EU, thereby fulfilling our role as a full member until the day we leave.
Brexit: New Partnership — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: International Affairs
James Bridges (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Lord makes his point with his customary passion and eloquence. I simply say that I am sorry but I disagree on that point. The British people were presented with a clear choice on 23 June. They were presented with different options. They made a choice. Furthermore, as your Lordships will know, the House of Lords European Select Committee earlier in the year said that parliamentary scrutiny of negotiations, "will have to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the desire for transparency, and on the other the need to avoid undermining the UK’s negotiating position" That is our position and we will stick to it.
Brexit: New Partnership — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Foreign Trade
James Bridges (Conservative, Centre-right): There are two separate points there. First, what are we doing to help UK businesses export, as we speak? There is an enormous amount of work going on on that front. The signs are already there that we are beginning to get great progress in our export markets around the world. That work continues. As regards the actual point that I think the noble Lord is getting at about the negotiations, he will be well aware of the duty of sincere co-operation, which ensures that we are therefore not able to start formal negotiations with non-EU countries until we have left the EU. The noble Lord may have a sense of impatience about that—I can sense it—but the reality is that we need to approach these negotiations in good faith and good will towards our European partners, and not seek to tear up or undermine the obligations that we face as a member of the EU today.
Brexit: New Partnership — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: International Affairs
James Bridges (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Viscount makes an extremely good point. Indeed there are a number of organisations like Mercosur and certainly the GCC which my noble friend Lord Price has I am sure been in contact with. We will continue to have conversations with those groups as well as individual member states. I would be happy to discuss that point with him in more detail.