My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Younger on the amendments that he has put his name to. They represent a great step forward and a real example of how a Government can
listen and react constructively. I am grateful to him for his Amendment 6, which covers some areas that I referred to.
Perhaps I may question my noble friend on proposed new subsection (7)(c) in Amendment 11. I am puzzled as to why the “freedom” in this subsection is restricted to only these activities. In particular, there are occasions when the received wisdom within universities is rather different to that outside universities. I am not clear which this wording refers to, nor why there should not be a freedom to advocate popular opinions. I know that this has been a matter of controversy within universities from time to time, when people are referred to as popularisers of science in a derogatory way. Again, that should not result in discrimination or losing jobs and privileges. I will also refer to my two amendments in this group, which are linked with the Government’s Amendment 6.
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The GREAT campaign, which the Government created, has been a great success. There are many areas in which it has made a great difference to our image abroad and to the support that the Government give to various industries and sectors. But the relative failure of that campaign in the education sector is quite notable. By and large, I think that that is because the institutions involved have not, at any stage of their existence, become used to collaborating. They plough their own furrow abroad; they find it hard to countenance joining in a nationwide effort to promote British education as a whole. I do not think that this is something they would object to once they got used to it, but it is something that the Government need to give some impetus to. Since the GREAT campaign has been running for some while, and since the universities have clearly not got together and supported it in the way that other competing industries have, it is necessary—and I very much hope that my noble friend will confirm this—that the Government should have powers to push them in this direction. In a post-Brexit world, we need to give coherent nationwide support to the reputation of British education and we need the universities, particularly the grander universities, to join in this and not think they need not bother because they have their own independent reputations. We need them to be part of the national effort.
I particularly think that there is an opportunity to create an online community of all those who have been through British education. Someone who has been, say, to do engineering in Newcastle could derive support from being part of a community of everybody who has been to a British university, particularly everyone who has studied engineering at a British university, and have many more contacts and much more ability to derive strength from that association within the countries they have gone back to than if they are just connected with other people who had done engineering at Newcastle. We could really boost the value of a British university education by connecting people in that way and boost the value of those people to us. Again—particularly coming back to remarks which the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, made in Committee—it is clear that universities are not ready to collaborate in this voluntarily, so I would like
to know that the Government have the power to push them in this direction and that if this is something that, after due consideration, we decide to do, we have in this Bill or elsewhere the power to make it happen.