Clause 12 - Qualifying complaints
Higher Education Bill
10:30 am
Mr Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
I rise briefly in support of these amendments and am grateful for the hon. Lady's contribution, as well as to my hon. Friends for moving them. The background for my doing so is that I was the only Member who spoke on Second Reading who flagged up the particular sensitivities of disabled students. I do not claim to have done more than any other Member might have done, but I then received a briefing from Skill and the RNIB. Beyond that I can claim the credibility of having led for our party in relation to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. I have had an interest in this area for some time and a huge respect for both Skill and the RNIB and for the other leading disability institutions in their work for disabled students.
I need not return to the point, but individual disabled students have particular difficulties. The interface between their disability and academic judgement is one of the most sensitive of all. I would like to put on record that many institutions are sensitive to the interests of their students with a particular need—be it continuing or chronic conditions, including some such as dyslexia that are more difficult to tie down than a physical condition, or it may be a particular acute problem, such as migraine. They generally seek to meet those. The essence is that there should be proper address if they do not.
Above all, in cases where there is any suspicion—it has happened in the past and may happen from time to time in the future—that an institution has tried to dress up dealing with the inconvenience or expense of a disabled student under some kind of academic guise, it is entirely right that disabled students should have their rights observed like everyone else. It is equally desirable that they should not rush into court at the first drop of trouble. All reasonable opportunities to conciliate, to mediate and to use the internal and adjudicator procedures should be the preferred route.
My experience of the 2001 Act raises a particular problem, which the RNIB has drawn attention to in a wider context. It concerns the operation of the Act in further and higher—post-compulsory—education compared with its operation in statutory age education, where the special educational needs and disability tribunal, as my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) will well remember, has its remit. If there is a tribunal, people will use it. If they have to go to the courts to enforce their rights it is much more difficult, even with the assistance of Skill or the Disability Rights Commission.
I hope that the Under-Secretary can respond positively to the amendments: in respect of the issue of the interface with academic freedom and in particular the entirely reasonable point that there should be more time to exhaust the process. We are not asking for the time limit to be extended indefinitely, but a reasonable amount of time should be given for everything to be done before it is necessary to press the legal trigger.