Clause 22 - Power of Secretary of State to impose condition as to student fees, etc.
Higher Education Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell, Conservative)
My hon. Friend anticipates me. I very much share that concern. Whatever the Secretary of State's intentions, the clause certainly appears to allow for that possibility. We must understand the nature of most higher education institutions in this country. One thing that surprised me when I took the shadow portfolio and started to talk to universities, in detail and at greater depth than I had talked to them before, was to discover just how small a proportion of their overall income is made up from the teaching grant that they receive from HEFCE or the Welsh equivalent. In most cases, it is substantially under 50 per cent. It is certainly under 50 per cent. among our more prominent universities.
The real question is whether the Government, through the simple words of the clause, are taking a power to act far beyond the immediate scope of teaching students on undergraduate courses and beyond their determination to provide wider access to those courses, and are giving themselves powers over a much greater range of things that HE institutions do.
One of the greatest absurdities in all this is the introduction of the ability to levy financial penalties. As NATFHE, in one of the documents that it sent to
members of the Committee in the run-up to the debate, pointed out:
''All English HEIs already submit widening participation plans to the HE Funding Council for England, and report back on how the money has been spent.''
The Secretary of State is therefore taking powers to withhold loans and other payments when the basic process that the Government want to be implemented already exists.
I have three concerns about loans and about other payments in particular. In recent years, the Government have taken it on themselves to ring-fence funding to a variety of organisations by offering initiatives and specific pots of money that have to be bid for and that are not simply part of the block funding that those organisations receive. Higher education is no exception. All universities have sought to raise some of the funding that they receive from the Government and the higher education funding councils by bidding for particular pots of money. Clearly, that has had a significant impact, albeit in a convoluted and bureaucratic way, on the running of those institutions.
My first concern is about those ring-fenced funds. The Government currently provide additional funding through various different channels for the future and additional requirements on HE institutions to receive payments that are channelled on to third-party organisations. That is statutory. One example is the establishment of the Higher Education Academy. As the Committee knows, the Government's intention is that the academy will play a major part in enhancing the role of teaching and learning in universities and colleges. It is designed to support curriculum development and to facilitate the professional development of staff, and it will take on some of the functions performed by the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and the Learning and Teaching Support Network.
The academy is being set up by the Government, but participation by HE institutions in the form of a financial subscription to this new body is compulsory. The Government's response to concerns about the compulsory nature of the payment was revealing, because it throws up other issues relating to the funding that those HE institutions receive. The suggestion is that membership will be compulsory, and that that is a condition of the grant that HE institutions receive from Government. It is therefore clear that HE institutions are receiving money that they have to pass on to another body. What do the simple words ''other payments'' mean? Where an institution receives funding from a higher education funding council to support its compulsory membership of a third-party body, if that institution does not comply with the Government fund, does it lose the funding that enables it to be part of that body but still have a compulsory requirement to be part of that body? Does the money therefore have to come from another pot and from other resources available to that institution? Does that other payment give the Government the power to force that institution still to subscribe but not to receive the funding to do so?