Clause 11 - Qualifying institutions

Part of Higher Education Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:30 pm on 10 February 2004.

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Photo of Tim Boswell Tim Boswell Shadow Spokesperson (Business, Innovation and Skills), Shadow Minister (Constitutional Affairs) 4:30, 10 February 2004

I am grateful for that, Mr. Hood. I think that it might just be helpful at this point for the Under-Secretary to say what is covered by the provision and how it chimes in with other areas including recourse through the courts. However, this might not be the place to do it and I leave it to his discretion and to yours, Mr. Hood. In addition, although I know that this is already subject to a separate amendment, there is a question about its interaction with the disability inclusion in the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001, and how that is to work.

I will make one final point about enforcement. In a sense this is prompted by my experience of SENDA, in which there are rather different regimes at school, college and university levels—one recourse being through the courts, and another through a special educational needs tribunal, for example. If there are different vehicles for recourse or redress, it may well be that according to the ease and cost of those, there are different take-ups of the particular remedies. They may work in different ways, and arguably may be inequitable.

However, it is quite important that the Under-Secretary explains how redress will be achieved in those various fields, and how the adjudicator's judgments are to be reached and acted on. There may be good reasons for this, and I do not want to debate the substance of it, but if a college feels unable to comply with an adjudicator's decision we need to know who gives teeth to it and what further recourse is available.

Those are genuinely motivated concerns on how this measure should work. I think that across the Committee we all want the measure to work in the best way possible. The only caveat that I issue to the Under-Secretary is that we need to ensure that the institution is adequately resourced and working properly before we think of extending it to cover further ranges of potential difficulty.