Higher Education

Part of Orders of the Day — Supply – in the House of Commons at 6:41 pm on 18 November 1981.

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Photo of Mr Chris Price Mr Chris Price , Lewisham West 6:41, 18 November 1981

I should like to take up the latter point raised by the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Benyon), because on a number of occasions in the past fortnight the Secretary of State has been pressed about what a university is to do if it stares bankruptcy in the face over the next few months.

The right hon. Gentleman's answer, given both to the Select Committee and, even worse, in the debate, is hopelessly inadequate for conscientious members of university planning bodies who are trying to plan what their universities should do between now and January. If they declare redundancies, the universities are likely to go bankrupt. But if they do not declare redundancies, the universities are still likely to go bankrupt, because the salary bill will exceed the capital expenditure allocation of the UGC. I cannot remember any Government having treated a public sector body in that way.

Last week the Secretary of State told the Select Committee that, if there were to be closures, he would prefer deliberate to random closures. He said that he would prefer a coherent process rather than a shambles. But everything else that he said shows that that cannot be true. He is heading for a shambles and it is inevitable.

The Secretary of State may say that he would not intervene if bankruptcy stared a company in the face, but to treat universities in that way is an approach that we have not seen by any Government. If the Government think that they ought to close three universities to make the system more coherent, let them have the courage of their convictions and stand up and say so. Simply saying that universities must take a chance and guess what the House of Lords will decide in about 12 months from now is proper compensation for tenured staff is as irresponsible an approach as I can remember any Minister taking in such circumstances.

I congratulate the Under-Secretary on his appointment, but if he is to preserve the reputation that he has gained as a fellow of All Souls, he must say something more coherent about redundancy. He must get his advisers to give him a better statement to read out than the statement read out by the Secretary of State.

There will be a shambles in higher education. Some of the most precious and desperately needed departments in our universities will disappear overnight because there will be the random bankruptcies that the Secretary of State told the Select Committee he did not want to see.

I do not want to pursue the Secretary of State's ramblings about whether higher education is inside or outside the market, but he should not be allowed to get away with the contention that public expenditure on higher education is a burden on the British public. The Opposition and, I believe, a majority of Conservative Members regard public expenditure on higher education as an essential investment and a service for the whole of British industry. None of the profit-making parts of our industry could operate without a flow of graduates from our higher education system.

Writing off that system as a burden because it is in the public sector is an utterly irresponsible way to treat some of our greatest and most important institutions. The Under-Secretary has made forthright comments, even since his appointment. I hope that he will not use the word "burden" but will perhaps redefine—as the Robbins principle is to be redefined—that element of the somewhat incoherent speech of the Secretary of State and tell us whether the Government believe that higher education is an albatross or a burden on Britain.