My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and I spoke in support of the same amendment in Committee. This is a problem of some seriousness and I think it is understated. We heard in the previous debate that the QAA was not taking it particularly seriously and had no legal or regulatory powers to take action against an individual student who was found to have cheated in whatever way. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, told us at that time that it was rather offhand about the fact that only 17,000 students had been caught cheating. The fact that that was the tip of the iceberg seemed not to be a major issue.
It is a major issue if there is such an amount of this going on that Professor Newton—to whom the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has referred in the past—has carried out a survey by interviewing students and those providing such services, which came up with a whole list of how long it took for an essay, a dissertation or whatever. If it is even worthy of academic study, it has to be a problem of some substance. The noble Lord quoted Professor Newton and said that he had been advised that if the word “intent” had been taken out of the amendment it would have strengthened it. I am not quite clear about how it would have strengthened it. I think the noble Lord said it would have given it more power, but that has not been done. Will the noble Lord explain why the amendment has been submitted in the same form?
The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, is in her place. She was the Minister who responded to this debate in
January. As we were together in the Scottish Parliament many years ago, I hoped that she might respond to this debate, but I see that—forgive me—silence is Goldie and the noble Lord, Lord Young, will respond. Will he pick up the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, made in her response in January that the Government were on the point of announcing a new initiative on this? The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, said it would be with us,
“Within the next few weeks”.—[Official Report, 25/1/17; col. 765.]
Seven weeks have ticked by since we last discussed this, so we must be very close to it now. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether he has a date for the publication of this new initiative, which I think was to involve the QAA, the NUS, HEFCE and UUK—a whole lot of acronyms. It would helpful and would perhaps deal with this issue, at least in the interim, as I accept that we are short of a position where legislation is required.