It looks like I am going to be the last speaker, noble Lords will be relieved to know. I support the general tenor of all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 7 and the idea that people’s experience should be current or recent. That is extraordinarily important, particularly in an area such as higher education which changes very fast. A number of noble Lords have talked about the importance of further education and the importance of—and decline in the numbers of—part-time students. We are concerned about these extraordinarily important things, yet it seems that none of the current authorities and institutions which deal with higher education has much idea about why this has happened. We did not intend to have the decline in part-time students that we have. Government after Government have talked of the importance of increasing the role of further education colleges in higher education, because they are central to the availability of part-time courses, retraining and lifelong learning. Yet the role of further education has not in fact increased. The numbers have not increased and the proportion has tended to decline.
So these are real challenges. But it also seems to me that one of the reasons we have got ourselves into this situation is that we do not have enough people with current and recent experience involved at the highest levels of policy-making. Therefore, of all these amendments, I most strongly support the proposal that the Office for Students should look for people to join its board who are deeply involved in the sector in the areas which it is looking for, not people who can tick a box because 20 years ago they were on the board of governors of something. I hope very much that the Minister will take that point away and think about it. I cannot see any way in which it undermines the purposes of the Bill and of government policy. That one small thing might make a big difference to the effectiveness of the Office for Students.