Higher Education and Research Bill

The Bill creates separate regulatory and funding bodies for teaching and research and in so doing risks undermining the positive interaction of teaching, research and innovation activity in our universities. The Government have gone some way to address this problem by giving the OfS a new duty to monitor the financial sustainability of the sector and by publishing a note on joint working between the Office for Students and UKRI. However, the Bill could do more to deliver what the higher education White Paper promised: that the OfS would take a holistic view of the sector and institutions. The Office for Students should have the same power to provide advice to Ministers without the specific instruction to do so that is being proposed for UKRI. I beg to move.