Clause 11 - Qualifying institutions
Higher Education Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
First, may I say that this is the first time I have served under your chairmanship, Mr. Hood, and how pleasant it is? From those sittings that I have been able to attend, the debate has been thoroughly constructive, and I do not intend to spoil that now. I will be speaking very much within the terms of the inquiries of my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale.
On this rather narrow amendment, it would probably be inappropriate to stray too far into the overall scope and remit of the adjudicator. I have already indicated my respect for Dame Ruth Deech, whom I know personally as well as professionally. She is an immensely able person. My worries about the clause are not conceptual but relate to the fact that
there should be adequate resources to meet the work load, especially bearing in mind the fact that everyone must bed down with the system to start with. The office should not bite off more than it can chew. I have some reservations about scope if we are moving into further education colleges.
There are interesting definitional issues, which the Under-Secretary will need to clarify, about which students are covered. For example, not only is approximately 11 per cent. of the higher education student body resident in further education or franchised institutions, but there are people in higher education institutions at universities who are not doing higher education work: they are doing further education, mixed or short-term courses. It is important to clarify that.
The clause also relates to the institutions themselves, because not every institution has a unitary structure. Oxford and Cambridge notoriously have collegiate structures, and issues of liability may need to be considered. Something occurred to me only this afternoon, which I have not had time to check, about some legislation on student unions that I was involved in—it works, incidentally, much better than anyone had anticipated. We perhaps need to know whether the range of the adjudicator's coverage extends to complaints about student unions, which are part of the university but are not run by it.
There may be other issues, for example, with regard to a contractor who works for the university, but is not part of its establishment, whose conduct has damaged, or allegedly damaged, an individual. Those are beginning to sound like lawyerly points, which I am not qualified to expatiate on, but Ministers must give thought to how this measure will work in practice. That is my major concern.
The subsidiary concern is that we should explore the areas that are covered by this provision. As I understand it, it is not a matter of first instance. It is a question of advising students to use the domestic complaints procedure of the institution itself, and to take it on to a higher level only if they are dissatisfied. I mention that, because I had recent parliamentary question and answer exchanges with the Under-Secretary about the old student charter. He quite reasonably—I was not offended by this—said that it had in effect fallen into desuetude. That is the technical phrase that I think we should use. The charter had been discontinued, and it was up to institutions to do their own thing. In one sense, that may well be right. Nevertheless, this measure is imposing an element of central control, or at least accountability on the system. The Under-Secretary needs to explain the relationship between those.
The other area that chimes in with that concerns the various jurisdictions—with regard not only to level and institution but to type of complaint. I do not imagine that Dame Ruth and her staff will be terribly keen to examine issues such as the temperature of the pizza, or whether there were two added toppings in the university refectory. That would be facetious and inappropriate.
However, rather more seriously, the Under-Secretary needs to walk the Committee through the type of complaints that are appropriate to be referred to the adjudicator, those that are entirely proper to the academic world and how they are to be dispatched—because they are precluded from the Bill—and those that might relate to the courts. They might relate to the law of contract—and I seek, perhaps, the advice and support of my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) in this—and whether there is a proper case for a student to sue a university. I realise that even—