My hon. Friend, the esteemed chair of the all-party parliamentary university group, is absolutely right. She makes precisely the same point that so many people want to make to the Government. Edmund Burke famously said that the price of liberty was eternal vigilance. Well, the price of extracting these concessions from the Government today—if, by any chance, they get back into office after 8 June—will be at least very severe, if not eternal, scrutiny. Whatever the situation is, not just in the House but outside it, that scrutiny has to happen.
The agreed process is not a tick-box one, but one where there must be a big conversation. My hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and all sorts of other people have made this point. I pay tribute to Baroness Brown for pursuing the matter. I hope that the penny has finally dropped for the Government. As MillionPlus said,
“strong safeguards need to be put in place to ensure that any body that is awarded degree awarding powers…has met the criteria to do so, and will not put student interest at risk, or potentially damage the hard earned reputation of the entire higher education sector in the UK.”
That is why it is so important that the Government commit to that full and wide-ranging consultation.
I am pleased that the Minister has confirmed, as we discussed, that the consultation will look at international examples, such as Australia, in granting university title. It is crucial that the Government look at the range the Minister talked about: excellent teaching, sustained scholarship, cohesive academic community, learning infrastructure, knowledge exchange and—often forgotten—pastoral care, with universities actually supporting students to learn and not simply being part of some vague online community. As Research Fortnight said last year,
“the title of university needs to be seen as a privilege…not an automatic entitlement”.
That is why this consultation and the subsequent guidance are so important, with the market being open to new entrants, and that is why we will continue to press Ministers on this issue.
Let me move on to the granting of degree-awarding powers. As we have said from the beginning of proceedings on the Bill, that is at its heart significantly about trust, or the lack of it, and that was nobly elaborated and strengthened by the amendment tabled in the other place by Baroness Wolf, who is a fantastic advocate for the HE and FE sectors and who knows of what she speaks, which is why the Government have had to move on this issue. We have said right from the beginning that the Government need to make things very clear to allay some of the concerns that we, along with a number of people across the sector and the noble Baroness and others in the other House, have had about the principle of independence. Giving providers the option from day one to build up degree-awarding powers is potentially dangerous, and we are potentially taking a gamble on probationary degrees from probationary providers.
I do not want to reopen our debate on this in Committee, and I want to say very strongly that we are not against private providers or new providers as such, but the premise must be to strengthen the public sector and to ensure that new providers can demonstrate that they provide high-quality education—including robust governance that maintains academic quality, protects the student interest and has a demonstrable track record of delivering higher-quality education—before they are granted degree-awarding powers.
We know only too well from the issues that have arisen in the United States with private providers, from the criticisms Baroness Wolf has levelled at a similar process in Australia and from the issues involving BPP and the Apollo group three or four years ago why the safeguards being put into the Bill are entirely necessary. The Council for the Defence of British Universities said exactly that in its submissions.
We are therefore pleased that a significant degree of scrutiny will now be put in place and that, when granting, varying or revoking degree-awarding powers, the OFS must be advised by the independent designated quality body—the Government have conceded that—on a provider’s ability to provide and maintain HE provision of an appropriate quality and standard. It is crucial that there is a traffic light, if I can dare to use that expression, saying “Caution” and providing a guarantee of the process. It is important that the OFS is advised in the way I have described; after all, in the first few years of its existence, it will—whether we take the term neutrally or not—be a creature of the Government, but one that is on probation and on trial.
There are known quantities in this process, which is why I was pleased to hear the Minister praise the QAA for what it has done, but, as he said, things change with time. That is why we had to press the Government so hard to come forward with a new mechanism if the QAA were no longer to be the appropriate body. That is reiterated in the concession of an automatic review by the designated quality body if there is a change of ownership or a merger at a university. We know what can happen, just as people in the sector know—the people employed there and the people being taught in inferior conditions because of what has happened in the past. We therefore need these steps, alongside a consultation and guidance on university title, to protect our brand of HE providers.
This is about not just the letter but the spirit of these proposals, and that is reiterated by the automatic review, which will prevent university title and degree-awarding powers being purchased without the protections of quality assurance. We remain concerned that, should no independent designated quality body exist, the OFS must set up an independent specific committee. We were determined to encourage the Government to take that fall-back position. Their concession of an independent specific committee with a majority of members with no previous involvement with the OFS is crucial. It is also crucial that this body remains independent of Government and of the OFS, for the reasons that I have described.
I want to move on to the teaching excellence framework, and Lords amendment 23 and the amendments that the Government have tabled in lieu. The Minister said that the importance of teaching excellence was accepted across the House. Indeed, who would be against teaching excellence? However, the devil is always in the detail.
In this case, the detail is that it took nearly six years to take through the research excellence framework process. We are therefore wise to think and to pause, particularly on the potential to differentiate fee levels at higher education institutions, which has been a major concern for many across the sector. We have expressed serious fears from the start, not least in the context of the ridiculously titled “gold, silver and bronze” scheme, which was no doubt dreamed up in the Minister’s office by someone in a post-Olympics euphoria back in the autumn.
People are concerned that any sort of link is bound to affect student decision making adversely, particularly in deterring students from low-income families from applying. Those concerns have been expressed right across the sector, from unions such as the UCU and Unison to a number of other groups. The Minister quotes somewhat selectively on occasion the groups that he wishes to quote, but I can assure him that a number of universities and university groups, including some of our most revered and aged, remain concerned about this. That is why it is crucial that the Government put in place a legislative commitment to a full independent review before the TEF could be used to differentiate fees and why it is right that that has been accepted and aided by the work that the Lords has put in. It gives us a different direction of travel from the rubber-stamping technocracy the Government previously had in mind for us.
The Government’s agenda on higher education has consistently hit students hard, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. As we have always said, we will do everything in our power to resist the TEF being used as a Trojan horse for the escalation of fees. We know from the Sutton Trust and from the various surveys about the daunting mountain of debt that is being imposed on students as a result of how this Government and their predecessor have gone forward on this: what an impediment to their hopes and dreams. Now that inflation is leaping, post-Brexit, to the sorts of levels that will bring in increases in future, we are right to be concerned that there should be a proper process in how we take this forward.
Along with the unions involved and many others in the sector, we feel very strongly about any sort of link that affects student decision making adversely—particularly, as I say, with regard to low-income families. The NUS and the UCU have strong concerns that the TEF would create a high-stakes, multi-tiered system and increase pressures on teachers, as well as incentivising universities to cut teaching in subjects that score less well. Sally Hunt, the general secretary of UCU, said last December:
“If the Government really wants to improve teaching quality, it”
also
“needs to think…about whether staff are supported”
enough
“to deliver their best teaching.”
It is therefore vital that the Government have now finally, on the back of the strength of the concerns of our colleagues and the people who really know what is going on in the sector, found the courage to put in place a legislative commitment to a full independent review before the TEF could be used for differentiating fees.
I was grateful to the Minister for spelling out so clearly the chronology of that process, because it is not
simply about the extra year, but about the process itself. We would have preferred—and we will still campaign—for the link between the TEF and the fees to be removed altogether, but we know that we have entered a process where we have to do the best we can with this Bill.
4.15 pm
A full independent review would give us much more capacity to challenge any issues. It is clear that the review would cover specific areas, including whether the process by which ratings are determined is appropriate for use by the scheme; the names, which the Minister has referred to; the scheme’s impact on the ability of providers; and an assessment of whether it is in the public interest. A good, strong independent reviewer would dig those things out, and then the Government, whoever they are, will be held to account.