My Lords, this has been another good debate. In some senses the previous amendment and the two amendments in this group are
two sides of the same coin. The first amendment, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, set an aspiration for what we were trying to do about the flow of students that, for all the reasons we gave, we wanted to see. The two amendments we are discussing now deal with the detail of how we could achieve that—they could probably be combined to make the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.
I do not need to say much more about this; I just want to put one point. On our first day in Committee we spent a lot of time talking about what we thought about our universities, what they were and what they were about. We have not really come back to the amendment we were debating then—which is probably just as well, as the wording was, I admit, not very good. The essence of it was an attempt to reach out to an aspiration that everyone in the Chamber, apart from those on the Government Front Bench, felt—that universities do have a particular distinctive nature and character. I argue that these two amendments help us to articulate that in a rather special way: for all the people who attend those universities—our children, and any other students who come to them—we want the very best quality of teaching and research available. That aspiration can be met only if we are able to recruit for it, and that is what these amendments would achieve.