My Lords, I have a significant number of amendments in this group. I thought that for the convenience of the House, I should introduce them at this stage so that the debate can be as full as it can be. I support the comments made by my noble friend Lord Hanworth. He is right in describing where my amendments would take us. I do not specifically say that I would rule out the continuation of the existing QAA. Indeed, this group is wide enough to allow a number of different interpretations and some of the amendments do concern the status quo ante. However, the amendment at the heart of this group would create a new independent body. This would probably be best achieved by transmogrifying the QAA but it does not require that.
The new clause in Amendment 170A sets up a body called the Quality Assurance Office, which has come largely from discussions and debates around the sector. It has gained considerably by comments made by the Council for the Defence of British Universities, an organisation that has attracted a lot of attention from Members of your Lordships’ House and more widely in the sector. I am grateful to it not only for its ideas and discussion but also for some of the drafting in these amendments.
Amendment 170A therefore sets up a new body. Amendment 201A sets out the functions of that body. It is a key point that it would be independent of the Office for Students and of the Secretary of State, with a focus on responsibility for qualities and standards. Amendment 213A inserts a revised schedule setting out the detail of QAO which replaces that which appears in the Bill for a committee to deal with standards. Amendment 217A sets out how the QAO will be funded. We are thus presenting a complete package. It would be relatively easy for the Minister to respond by saying that he accepts every word of it. I am sure that as I sit down I shall hear him say exactly that.
To be serious, the reasons for these amendments are in two groups. The first group is about the creation, in the Office for Students, of what I think is primarily a regulator. I say that partly because that is how it has been described by the Minister, although in his recent letter he tries to backtrack a little from that in saying that it is not a regulator as one would understand the term “regulator” since it will not acquire with its establishment any of the functions currently given by the code of regulators. This is neither one answer nor another. We shall have to come back to this problem. What we know is that the regulatory structure in higher education is becoming more complex because of the requirements in the Consumer Rights Act 2015 which made the CMA responsible—although there were powers before that—for obtaining undertakings from universities and higher education providers in order to ensure that they were operating with the proper integrity required of bodies offering services to those consumers who wished to take them up.
So we have a rather complicated field. The letter from the Minister dealt in part with this, but it does not quite answer all the questions. I hope we will get some more information from him during this debate. Either today, or at some future date, we will know that the Office for Students is indeed a regulator. However, in the Bill as currently drafted, it has responsibility for setting up committees or, in some cases, direct functions relating to quality assessment and fair access; the statistical underpinning of these areas and validation. Indeed, it is appointed as validator of last resort. This would be a situation which is unparalleled in the regulatory framework: a body which is not only responsible for the health, existence and support of the bodies which it is regulating, but also has the power to deregister them and shut them down. At heart, it is an all-singing, all-dancing model which has been tried in other areas and just does not work. Such a body is not right in principle and will not work in practice. That is the first strand—what the Bill is trying to set up is not the most efficient and effective way of operating in this sector.
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My second point is a positive argument for why it is important to have an independent regulator in this area. The key issues we have been discussing, both at Second Reading and in Committee, are: how we establish the appropriate standards for the university sector in the United Kingdom—in this part of the Bill, in England particularly; how a body that wishes to become a higher education provider can be registered as such and how it will acquire degree-awarding powers. This is a key plank which we must get right as we go through the Bill. Secondly, it goes further than we currently do in providing quality teaching and research—this Bill is mainly about teaching—in a way which has not been tried before and using methods which are not yet in proper state, but we must all support the aspiration. This work is currently done by QAA, which at the moment is an independent body and not part of the HEFCE set up. We need to think about how we can find an addition to the structures which will enhance and encourage others to develop both quality and standards even further than they currently do, although the two are completely different.
In these amendments we argue that it is important to get an independent body for standards which is, therefore, outside any possibility of pressure from the OfS or the Secretary of State to do one thing or another; gives independent advice to the OfS and the Minister; can respond separately on innovation and enterprise and support them without having to be part of a broader corporate approach, reflecting what is happening on the ground and not filtering it through some other set of instructions or bodies organised through OfS; and ensures, with the purity that only an independent body can provide, that threshold standards, and the knowledge of the institutions that are making up those who have threshold standards, and the assessment of the quality deployed by these bodies, is fully in accordance with the highest standards that can be achieved. If it being separate also enables the appeal mechanism—which we have just been looking at—to be improved that would also be a plus.
Those are the reasons behind these amendments and the primary points I wish to make at this stage. There are other amendments in this group which are mainly, as I said, about the status quo.