House of Commons Hansard Debates for 11 Feb 1992

Mr. Eggar : I have paid two visits to Bradford and Ilkley community college, and I do not think that there will be any difficulty for it. In respect of schedule 2 courses, it will be funded by the further education funding council, and in respect of higher education courses it will be funded by the higher education funding council. In addition, the local education authority will continue to provide funding in that area. I should remind the hon. Gentleman and some of my hon. Friends that colleges such as the Bradford and Ilkley community college are very used to having lots of different sources of finance for lots of different courses.

Mr. Carr : I want to turn to adult education. The Secretary of State has said that there is no threat to the pattern of continuing education. He has said that local education authorities have a duty to provide non- vocational education for adults, that funds will be provided for that purpose, and that it will be for the authorities to distribute those funds. In September, he expressed the same view in a rather bullish letter to all his colleagues, following the summer campaign organised by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, the women's institutes and other bodies. The fact that he did not convince those organisations is shown by the letters that I and other right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House are still receiving.

The local education authorities will lose the money that would have been allocated to them for further education. A large slice of the education budget will be devolved to schools under local management. I am worried that, when the responsibilities for statemented pupils, education welfare and school transport have been discharged, local education authorities may find it difficult to fund the very non-vocational courses to which the Secretary of State referred. Perhaps the Minister's summing-up speech will provide some clarification on that point.

Mr. Jessel : Does not the hon. Gentleman think that he ought to wait to hear what the Minister of State says in response to my intervention and to points made by other hon. Members on this very subject?

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Mr. Carr : I have made my comments on that very point, and I do not propose to dwell further on it. We shall indeed hear what the Minister says when he sums up.

The Secretary of State, who said that he does not often refer to questionnaires, referred to a questionnaire that had been sent to college principals. I should like to draw attention to a question to which he did not refer. It is about the likely future balance between vocational courses and non-vocational courses following the introduction of the measures proposed in the Bill.

Forty-three per cent. of college principals felt that there would be fewer so-called leisure classes, and 14 per cent. of them thought that overall provision would decline. The college principals have views to which the Secretary of State probably did not want to refer, but I have now made them available.

The Government's propaganda on adult education is not being believed. Adult colleges are in a difficult position. Richmond college, which has been referred to, has 25,000 students--more than many further education colleges have. There is concern about how this funding will be secured if further education colleges, for their own reasons, are not too willing to forward applications.

There is a growing feeling that adult education colleges that do not have governing bodies as legal entities ought to have such bodies, and that smaller adult education centres ought to be able to form consortia, with a governing body recognised as a legal entity. If we have to go down this road of funding councils, if we have to lose local democratic control, the adult institutions themselves and the consortia could apply directly to a funding council. Indeed, it has been suggested that perhaps there ought to be an adult education funding council, but that matter is not within the scope of the Bill.

The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) referred to people gaining from leisure courses skills that enable them to enter self-employment or to go on to courses that will equip them with qualifications. That is an aspect of adult non-vocational education that we understand and accept, but there is another dimension. Adult non-vocational education is not only about self -employment or about the possibility of further qualifications ; it is also about self-fulfilment, about the meeting of personal needs that fall within the broad definition of education. I am concerned that that aspect may suffer. For many elderly people, women and individuals living alone, the so -called leisure classes provide an opportunity for self-fulfilment.

Underlying everything is the suspicion that the question of additional resources--the one thing to which the Government do not refer in this Bill- -will be skated over. If the numbers in higher education are to be expanded, if we are to continue to provide adult non-vocational classes, if the number of people participating in education beyond the age of 16 is to expand, there is a resource implication.

The Government ought to be honest and say that, if they are to achieve their own stated aims, they may--from the point of view of Conservative Members, heaven forbid--face the possibility that income tax will have to be raised. My party has said that it would do that. We are prepared to provide the funds that education needs by increasing the standard rate of income tax by 1p in the pound. I should like to see from the Government a commitment to the provision of increased resources.

Several Hon. Members rose --

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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has applied a 10-minute limit to speeches delivered between now and 9 o'clock.

7.9 pm

Sir Richard Luce (Shoreham) : In this House, it is a convention that hon. Members declare existing interests. I do not have an existing interest, but I think that it would be courteous to declare that, after retiring from the House at the general election, I shall become vice- chancellor of the university of Buckingham. Against the background of all the exciting changes that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State is bringing about, I regard that as a wonderful challenge.

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on this Bill, which will strengthen our policies on further and higher education. Our record is clearly a good one. It is interesting to reflect on my time at university, which I confess was 30 years ago. At that time, one in 14 of those aged 18 years was able to go to university. In 1979, the ratio was 1 : 8. Today it is 1 : 4, and we anticipate that by the end of the decade it will be 1 : 3. There has been remarkable change. Over the past 10 years, the number of students at polytechnics has increased by about 50 per cent. There has been a 55 per cent. increase in the number of mature students. Clearly there have been significant changes since 1979. These figures demonstrate the scale and pace of the change that has taken place.

Our university system has a good reputation for the quality of eduction within it. It is interesting to note that graduate output in the United Kingdom is the same as that of France and of Germany. Fewer students are admitted to the United Kingdom university system, but the drop-out rate here is far less than elsewhere. The rate here is about one sixth, whereas in many universities elsewhere in Europe it is about 50 per cent.

Mr. Pawsey : Perhaps my hon. Friend will care to speculate for a moment on the plan of Opposition Members to reduce the A-levels to five- subject examinations. What impact does he think that that will have on the degree system in British universities?

Sir Richard Luce : There have already been some exchanges on this issue, which is a serious one. Our concern is to increase and enhance the quality of our university education, which is already extremely good. The Channel 4 commission on education had this to say : "British graduates are acknowledged throughout the world to be of a very high standard. Our job is not only to maintain that but to enhance it still further."

The Bill surely does a great deal to strengthen that purpose with its single funding structure, with the absorption of polytechnics into the university system, with separate higher education funding councils and with important procedures of quality assurance. All these factors are singularly important.

Above all else, the Bill will help to increase competition between institutions for students and for funds, but on the basis of equal status between different types of institution. That will be underpinned by a firm system of quality assurance, which is an extremely important feature of the Bill.

I turn now to academic freedom. Towards the end of his speech, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State gave the important assurance that the Government

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would not seek to reverse the amendments that were made in another place. That assurance is singularly important, and I am grateful to my right hon and learned Friend for giving it. However, when he and his ministerial colleagues examine the Bill in Committee, I ask them to take a fresh look at clauses 68 and 81. My experience in Parliament over the past 21 years is that the law is

incomprehensible. The two clauses still lack comprehensibility, and it needs to be beyond all doubt that the Secretary of State has no intention of interfering in the academic freedom of universities. That must be made absolutely clear in the Bill.

Surely the principle is clear : that no Secretary of State of whatever Government should have the right to intervene specifically in the affairs of individual institutions in a way that affects the academic freedom of those institutions. It must be right, however, that, when dealing with taxpayers' money, the Secretary of State must be accountable to the House for that money. I draw an analogy with my experience over five years as Minister for the Arts. Sensitivity about preserving the artistic freedom of bodies funded by taxpayers was such that I think that, if I had tried to intervene, for example, in the affairs of the royal national theatre or the Royal Opera house, in terms of how they presented their productions and what productions they undertook, I would have been strung up in Whitehall, and rightly so. It is essential that we preserve the principle of artistic freedom.

The same considerations apply to academic freedom. There are funding bodies for the arts, such as the Arts Council, and for education there are the new funding councils, which will act as a cordon sanitaire. They will take specific decisions on the funding of individual institutions and on the quality of their academic courses. There is an important distinction. It is right to preserve the powers of the Secretary of State to give general direction within an overall policy on the allocation of funds to the funding councils, but he should not intervene in any way to call into question the academic freedom of universities, whether the criterion is selection of staff, the admission of students or the duration of courses.

I know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has stated in a White Paper and has said himself--I happen to agree with him-- that he believes strongly in the idea of introducing more two-year degree courses. I agree that there is a case for that in some circumstances. Indeed, the university of Buckingham is a pioneer. It would be wrong, however, for the Secretary of State to intervene specifically and instruct an individual university on the duration of its courses.

I hope that, when these matters are debated in Committee, the role of the Secretary of State will be made absolutely clear. The principle is enshrined in clauses 68 and 81, and hon. Members will be aware that clause 81 deals with financial mismanagement and provides that, as a last resort, the Secretary of State has the right to intervene.

If the Secretary of State or the Government are not to intervene on academic freedom, the Government and all of us in this place must be assured that the proposals for maintaining and building upon the quality of education is deeply enshrined in the Bill. There has been reference already to the Robbins era of the 1960s, when there was fear that a dramatic increase in the number of students would mean a lower quality of education. Accordingly, my

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right hon. and learned Friend is right to place in the Bill procedures for maintaining quality--the highest possible standards of quality, with the minimum of bureaucracy.

There is the proposal that the quality audit unit should be enabled to go into institutions, as it were, to ensure that their mechanisms for maintaining quality are adequate. Secondly, there is the quality assessment unit, which the funding councils will appoint to help to ensure that the good quality of education in universities is upheld. Those procedures are right, but in the other place there was great debate about how independent of vested interests the units would be. That is a crucial consideration.

If my right hon. and learned Friend is saying that Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools should be independent, we should ensure that the quality assurance units are as independent as possible. Some concessions have been made, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will offer us some strong reassurances when he replies.

The Bill enhances and strengthens the prospects of improved quality and those of a much wider range of education at the higher level in universities to cater for the varying needs of a greater number of students. This education will be infinitely diverse in terms of the range of courses, the balance of teaching and research and the duration of degree courses. There will be much more flexibility. Parents and students will have greater knowledge of what the various institutions offer. There will be a range of institutions to cater for a greater variety of needs among our students, including those of mature students and those who wish to take up part-time courses, as well as those who are interested in the Open University and in distance learning. The Bill goes a long way to strengthening all these possibilities.

7.18 pm

Mr. Richard Caborn (Sheffield, Central) : As all the previous speakers have declared vested interests, I shall do so as well. My constituency contains a polytechnic, part of Sheffield university and two further education colleges.

Many have welcomed the late conversion that has driven the Government to remove the binary divide between polytechnics and universities, and to create a single funding council for higher education. I am now hopeful that the polytechnics will play an important role, along with the universities and the rest of higher education, in developments not just at city but at regional level. As the speech of the right hon. Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) amply demonstrated, two issues still cause concern--the conditions governing the grants referred to in clause 68, and academic freedom. I hope that the Minister will deal with both. Recently, the polytechnic and the university in Sheffield have entered into a strong working partnership with the city as a whole, and that has had a regional impact as well. I believe that the economic regeneration now taking place in the area has been helped by the close working relationship of what are now the two local institutions of higher education, and by the development of technology transfer and science parks.

Further education is a subject of considerable contention. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) has pointed out, we have removed one impediment--the divide between polytechnics and universities-- only to institute two new boundaries which may be equally damaging, if not more so. To suggest that

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the recent release of polytechnics from local authority financial control should be extended to the further education sector is, in my view, to advance a dangerous and, indeed, ignorant argument. It may, of course, have been the only argument available to the Government--albeit a weak one--when they were trying to cover up the fact that they had taken more than £2 billion from local authorities' further education budgets. As my hon. Friends have revealed, that took place during the panic about the poll tax calculations. It is all very well for the Minister to shake his head, but that is the truth, and I think that most people outside know that it is. The Government have made their calculations for a change in the funding of at least 500 further education colleges at a time when we have only a handful of polytechnics. It shows ignorance for the Government to claim that the role of polytechnics is the same as that of further education colleges, for that is entirely untrue. I am a product of a further education college. Having left school at 15, I served an apprenticeship in one of Sheffield's major steelworks and then, thankfully, attended the further education college. I sat on the board of governors of two such colleges for some time. I also attended Sheffield polytechnic, and I know that they are entirely different institutions, fulfilling different needs. Further education provides for local needs, and to break up the system now would be highly detrimental to the recovery that we look for in the United Kingdom.

On the board of governors were local industrialists and local trade unionists ; there was also a major input from the local authority. It is no good for the Government to ask for economic regeneration and to expect a partnership to develop across the major conurbations, and then to think that some elements can be isolated--elements such as the further education colleges, which are an integral part of the training mechanism.

If we are to start upgrading schools--you will understand this, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as a former engineer--we must not do it in an offhand way or at arm's length. It is important to understand the role of the further education colleges, which is quite distinct from that of the polytechnics. They serve national, international and regional needs. People across the political and industrial spectrums are concerned about the direction in which the Government are pushing further education colleges.

It was interesting to note the concern expressed by Conservative Members about the community colleges. It highlighted the need for flexibility in the development of that sector of education for the over-16s, along with the need for security of funding. Security of funding must involve democratic accountability, and that, surely, must be obtained through elected bodies--local authorities. One of our main criticisms of the further education provisions in the Bill is that they will not achieve the stated objective of a significant increase in the number of people entering higher education, or continuing in full-time education between the ages of 16 and 18. Furthermore, it is bizarre and wrong to exclude local education authorities from strategic decision making in respect of post-16 education and training. That will open unnecessary divisions between the school and college sectors.

It is incomprehensible that local authorities, which are frequently the largest employers in an area or city, should

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be excluded from governing bodies. It is wrong to say that the governing bodies can contain employers, but that local authorities cannot represent their employees on those bodies. The time scale is rushed, and is likely to cause major implementation problems. The distinction, for funding purposes, between vocational and non- vocational education is artificial--as was adequately demonstrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn--and is likely to prejudice the hundreds of thousands of students who participate in non-vocational education.

The Government are wholly silent about the nature of funding mechanisms, and the Department has failed to respond to any of the detailed questions put to it by local education authorities. That has been reflected by what Conservative Members have said. The further education clauses of the Bill are being pushed through in the teeth of widespread public disquiet and opposition--witness an earlier question about responses to the White Paper. Those responses have not been published, although I understand that they have been asked for on a number of occasions both here and in the other place.

Mr. Eggar : The hon. Gentleman has made a variety of inaccurate accusations about the Government's position. Perhaps, as he is speaking on behalf of Sheffield's local education authority, he will comment on that authority's attitude to the forced bringing together of Sheffield's six colleges.

Mr. Caborn : I intend to discuss that at length, but I shall not do so in the 10 minutes that I have been allotted this evening. If the Minister will ask me the same question another time when I am not under such a constraint, I shall answer it with pleasure. Let me deal with the general issues of education and training, and how they are dealt with in the Bill. Although there was a considerable increase between 1979 and 1988 in the number of young people in youth training schemes, the absolute number of 18, 17 and 16-year-olds pursuing full-time education increased to 131,000, 232, 000 and 336,000 respectively. Those figures represent percentage rates of 18, 33 and 47. That may seem a good achievement, until it is compared with that of our major competitors--for instance, the United States, Japan, Germany and Belgium. In 1988, the percentage of 16 to 18- year-olds who participated in full-time education and training in the United Kingdom was only half that achieved by our major trading partners.

Between 1979 and 1989, there was a significant increase in the number of home full-time students in higher education--from 184,000 to 250,000. That is welcome, but it really means that it will be more difficult to widen the pool that has not grown significantly--the further education pool--unless access is made much easier. More counselling and development work will be needed at the bottom of the social ladder.

Funding is of great concern to many local authorities. Only a proportion of the provision currently made by further education and tertiary colleges will be funded. Students will count for funding purposes if they follow courses leading to vocational qualifications ; but the non-vocational side is very important to inner cities. It is no good for the Government to come to the House and complain about riots after they have neglected those matters in the Bill.

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7.29 pm

Sir Robert Rhodes James (Cambridge) : I hope that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), with whom I have much in common, will forgive me if I do not reply to his speech. This is almost certainly the last occasion on which I shall have the privilege of addressing the House of Commons. Perhaps it is appropriate that it should be on the subject of higher and further education. We should not dwell on the past or on the disagreements that I have had with my right hon. and hon. Friends. I should like to concentrate on the Bill and on the future. Although I found myself in overwhelming agreement with the Bill as it was first introduced, certain sections of it were rightly amended by the Lords. The fact that the Lords made those amendments and that the Government will agree to them means that I shall support the Bill wholeheartedly. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State repeated the differentiation between applied and pure research. There is no differentiation between pure and applied research. How could we have found the anti-diphtheria drug, penicillin, insulin or histamine without pure research? They were the results of pure research. The genius of certain people in the past, such as Cavendish, Wellcome and others, was that they invested in pure research on the offchance that something commercial would come of it.

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State that the key problem--I admit that it is a difficult one--relates to the powers of the Secretary of State and the Government on the one hand, and to the doctrine of university autonomy on the other. I accept that the latter doctrine was carried one stage too far. Self-government and autonomy in higher education are enormously important, but the taxpayer and the Government also have some responsibilities.

When I had some responsibility for such matters, I was struck by the extraordinary variety of our institutions. I became convinced that central Government should have much great influence, but not to the detriment of the individuality and initiative of different institutions. It is a question of balance, and it is difficult. However, I believe that the Government have accepted that, and that the Bill represents the degree of that balance.

I warmly welcome the fact that so many excellent polytechnics, especially Anglia, will receive university status. I congratulate the Ministers who were principally involved in that.

Although it is not the dominant purpose of this Bill, I hope that the House will forgive me if I refer briefly to problems of finance, and especially to student finances. I cannot refer to academic salaries because I have a potential interest. The funding of higher education, and especially of its students, raises a profound problem, to which neither party has addressed itself seriously. They have produced palliatives and promises, but not answers.

Perhaps such matters should be removed from the sphere of party politics and, indeed, from Government. I am not suggesting another Robbins inquiry or another royal commission, but perhaps the Secretary of State and the Government should set up an advisory committee comprising people who understand and are deeply involved in higher education, to advise them not on tactics but on strategy and to look forward to the next five or 10 years. I am deeply concerned, for example, about the way

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in which we finance research. It is a question not of money but of the allocation of the money and the criteria that are used. The problem applies to all the research councils ; I do not want to concentrate on any particular one. Huge sums are spent--some usefully, some not--but nobody is in a position to judge whether the money has been spent properly. I suggest that an advisory body--not the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, but one that does not have a special interest--could advise on strategy.

In the 25 years that I have served in the House, I have endeavoured to outline my concerns to it. I shall now return to academic life ; to scholarship ; to the love of learning for its own sake, which I believe is still the dominant purpose of higher education ; to the excitement of a new generation eager to learn ; to the sheer fun of education, which people sometimes forget ; and to the joy of seeing one's students do well and to the sadness of sometimes seeing them not do as well as one would wish.

Education, which politicians talk about as something political, is a personal matter. It is the relationship between the teacher who wants to teach and someone who wants to learn, and it is precious. The teacher rejoices at every pupil triumph and mourns at every failure. There is a glow about the glory of true education which is impossible to describe. I wish that the House, when it stops arguing about whether Conservative policies are better than Labour or Liberal Democrat policies, would remember that the true lure of higher education is the love of learning for its own sake. Our job is to try to finance and to encourage that.

7.36 pm

Mr. Huw Edwards (Monmouth) : It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Sir R. Rhodes James), who has given 25 years' distinguished service to the House and has had a distinguished career in international relations and scholarship. I am sure that we all wish him well as he renews his distinguished academic career on leaving the House.

It is also a great privilege for me to speak in the debate because prior to being elected to the House I was a lecturer. I have been a student at Manchester polytechnic and the University of York and a lecturer in polytechnics and in the university in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn). I welcome most of the higher education provisions in the Bill, such as the removal of the binary divide. The binary divide in higher education has been similar to the unfair distinction that used to exist between grammar and secondary modern schools. I hope that we resist all opportunities to reintroduce that distinction while we remove those in higher education.

If there is to be parity of title between the polytechnics and the universities, I hope that we shall also ensure parity and equality in resources. I am pleased that the last institution in which I worked, Brighton polytechnic, will become the University of Brighton. I wish it and all my former colleagues there the very best for the future. I am concerned that some of the current inequalities between polytechnics and universities will not be removed as we enter this new era in which polytechnics and universities have the same title. I trust that, when polytechnics become universities, there will be positive action to equalise resources and to ensure that teaching facilities in polytechnics can be improved, and that the

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former universities can learn some lessons from the polytechnics. I hope that there will be improved library and research facilities and improved student residential provision in the polytechnics. One of my hopes for the new era is that some of the best in the polytechnics will be transferred to the universities and some of the best in the universities will be transferred to the polytechnics. That will create opportunities for former polytechnic staff to engage in research and have the facilities and resources to do so. I hope that in the new era we shall see education for education's sake and get away from the obsession with entrepreneurism which has dogged academic life in recent years. I know the skills as lecturers that many of my former colleagues had. They were lecturers, not entrepreneurs. As a lecturer I did not mind how many students I taught, but I did not want to be responsible for the administrative arrangements for bringing them into the college in the first place. We were told, "Go out and sell your courses." We could have sold many rather cheap packages.

When I left the polytechnic last year, I was anxious about what I saw as the "pile them in and teach them cheap" philosophy. Although we welcome the increase in educational opportunities in the past 10 years, there is some concern that by bringing students in at any price we devalued the level of education that we could give them. It is not possible to teach students adequately at degree level when seminar groups have 20 people in them or the course numbers increase but the number of books does not increase commensurately to resource those courses.

Let us go back to an education ethos in which students are regarded as a national asset and an investment and not simply as units of income. It causes anxiety to all of us that the expansion in higher education in the past 10 years has been characterised by increasing student hardship and poverty. There has been an attitude of, "Bring them in, but never mind about the financial hardships that many students may face." The right hon. Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) said that Britain had lower drop-out rates than many other countries. I fear that the drop-out rate might increase as students decide that they cannot afford to continue or, if there is a parental contribution, parents decide that they cannot afford it.

The Bill also contains provisions for further and adult education. All Opposition Members are convinced that the poll tax inspired the further education provisions and that they were nothing to do with a love of education for its own sake. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) paid tribute to the unsung success of the further education colleges. I recently visited Newport college of further education. I was impressed by the number of access courses that it ran. The college takes students who would never have dreamed of going on to higher education and gives them the opportunity to obtain a degree.

It is important that we do not measure success merely in terms of the number of good degree results--the number of 2 : 1s or firsts. For people who never imagined getting a degree, a third-class degree is a tremendous educational attainment. I am worried about the obsession with minimising the number of people who receive lower class degrees.

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There is widespread anxiety about adult education. This evening, Ministers have tried to give reassurances that adult education will not be jeopardised. That is not the view held by anyone who benefits from adult education, administers adult education or teaches in adult education. Both Opposition and Conservative Members have been lobbied vigorously by organisations connected with adult education. I pay tribute to the local education centres in my constituency and to the women's institutes, the Workers Educational Association and the Hill residential college, Abergavenny, which is a unique institution in Wales providing short-term residential education for adults, many of whom are retired, most of whom are women and most of whom see no distinction between vocational, non-vocational and leisure education. Indeed, the introduction of the word "leisure" makes the distinction even more frivolous.

I hope that the Bill will result in secure funding for adult education and the residential educational colleges. The people who benefit from adult education have largely completed their vocation. In pre-retirement, early retirement and retirement they want to study for the pure sake of learning subjects which they did not need in their working lives.

I conclude by echoing the words of the hon. Member for Cambridge. He said that there was a glow about the glory of true education. I pay tribute to all the people who were involved in education in the 1980s, when it was an unfashionable profession. People taught in higher education and polytechnics and gave references to students who went into the City and earned far more than the lecturers who had trained them for the job. That devaluation and the denigration of people involved in education were worrying. I repeat : let us go back to the time when we could see that glow about the glory of true education.

7.45 pm

Mr. James Pawsey (Rugby and Kenilworth) : I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards). He said that he was worried about degree-level teaching and mentioned the shortage of books. But, despite that, he certainly seemed able to consider the devalued A-levels proposed by his hon. Friends. They talk about moving away from the three- subject A-level to a five-subject A-level.

Mr. Edwards : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Pawsey : I will give way later. The hon. Gentleman seemed happy with the idea of a devalued A-level--

Mr. Edwards : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I did not say anything about A-levels and certainly did not advocate devaluing them.

Mr. Pawsey : Exactly.

Mr. Edwards : Then it is wrong for the hon. Gentleman to infer that I believe that they should be devalued.

Mr. Pawsey : With respect, the fact that the hon. Gentleman did not refer to A-levels is a clear indication that he accepts the proposal of his hon. Friends, who argue the case for a five-subject A-level. To increase the number of subjects to five would clearly devalue the entrance to our universities requirements.

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The proposals in the Bill give colleges greater freedom and cut the apron strings that secure them to the local education authorities. The Bill reduces the amount of bureaucracy and relieves principals of FE colleges the requirement to deal with bureaucratic budgeting rounds every year and to justify their budget to faceless officials in shire halls.

The Bill will enable the colleges to make a faster response to the requirements of their students and of local employers. It will help to bridge the criticism that education and industry are separate entities, each operating in its own intellectual vacuum. We all know that there is a wealth of talent in the colleges of further education. There is talent to be found in the staff room and talent to be found in the classrooms. The Bill helps to release that talent and broadens the vision. It does for the colleges of further education what the 1989 legislation did for the polytechnics. An indication of polytechnics' success is the substantial increase in their student numbers. Indeed, the great expansion in student numbers comes from the poly-technics rather than from the universities. While much has been achieved in schools and in advanced education in the past three or four years, FE has been something of a Cinderella. We have not done enough for young people who leave school at 16 or for adults who, for whatever reason, require additional training or education. This legislation undoubtedly helps to remedy that defect.

As my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State said, 60 per cent. of 16-year-olds in England participate in further education. Twelve years ago it was 41 per cent. Further education colleges take about 360,000 full-time students, 700,000 part-time day students and 700,000 part-time evening students. Those are spread over about 450 institutions.

Mr. Fatchett : Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the figure that he quoted includes all those youngsters on youth training schemes, only 25 per cent. of whom will gain a qualification? Also, the figure that he quoted is not the real international comparison but the figure for 16-year- olds. We shall be considering 16 to 18-year-olds and all those in full-time education, and that is the real comparison.

Mr. Pawsey : I do not think that there is any difference of opinion between us. It is intended in the Bill for the new further education funding councils to be in place on 1 April next year to prepare for the transfer of colleges from local authority control. It is that date which gives urgency to the legislation. No doubt that will be considered later this evening. Clearly, that is why it is necessary to introduce a timetable motion later tonight.

The further education funding council for England will have a membership of between 12 and 15 and they will be appointed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. They will be drawn from people with experience in education, including those with expertise in administration. There will also be members from business and industry. I have no doubt that colleges of further education will widely welcome those proposals, for they view them--as we Conservative Members view them--as a change necessary to improve further education and to bring it in line with modern practice and thinking. The second part of the Bill deals with advanced education. Here it is worth remembering that we are

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catering for a much-expanded sector as a result of the Government's efforts. When we came to office, only one in eight of the target group were in advanced education. Today, the figure is one in four, and it is moving towards one in three. It is the Government's intention to continue that admirable process. The target of one in three by the turn of the century, which we have set for ourselves, will certainly be achieved. That clearly underlines our commitment and our determination to improve the quality and standard of state education for all our people.

I welcome the ending of the binary line. It was always an artificial distinction, separating the universities and polytechnics. In some ways, the old regime protected those universities which were not quite in the first rank and held back polytechnics which enjoyed a substantial and justifiable reputation for learning. I am pleased that the polytechnics can now incorporate the title "university". It will certainly be a great help to them abroad, where there is less understanding of the word "polytechnic".

The Bill introduces a single funding mechanism for universities, polytechnics and colleges of higher education through the higher education funding councils for England and for Wales. The new councils will be in operation from April 1993 and that tight schedule again helps to underline the reason why it is necessary to get this legislation on the statute book with the minimum delay.

The House will recall that under the Bill the Council for National Academic Awards will be closed--the first time that any

degree-awarding body has been dissolved. Recently, I met its chief executive, Malcolm Frazer, and we discussed how the 300,000 students on courses under its control would manage under the new proposals. I was pleased to receive an assurance from Malcolm Frazer that no students will be disadvantaged by the changes. We also discussed the question of records. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will wish to take note of this issue when responding to the debate. Clearly, if a student loses his degree certificate, he will require another. I was pleased to learn that arrangements have been made between the CNAA and the Open University for the latter to hold all the appropriate records and to be in a position to offer duplicate certificates. Those are not unimportant safeguards.

I welcome the proposal to establish a quality assessment unit within each funding council. That will maintain good practice and monitor, for example, performance indicators and changing student profiles. The units should also ensure that links with business, industry and education do not deteriorate. The institutions will establish a quality audit unit and some of its members will be drawn from business and industry, as well as from the academic world. Quality assessments and quality audit will safeguard the quality of degrees and ensure that standards do not slip.

The Government's proposals in the Bill will bring substantial benefits to the nation--benefits to students, to employers and to the community at large. The greater freedom being given to colleges of further education will enable principals and staff to display even more inventiveness in courses.

There has already been a massive expansion in the number of people attending polytechnics, and there will be a massive expansion in those attending colleges of further education, which will be of benefit not only to the nation's work force but to those who seek learning for its own sake,

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whether as a leisure pursuit or for any other reason, which touches on the issue mentioned earlier by Opposition Members.

I shall bring my remarks to a conclusion simply by saying that I hope that the Bill will soon be on the statute book, where it will be of singular benefit to the British people.

7.55 pm

Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) : I thought that when the Secretary of State introduced the Bill he gave us a demonstration of his usual bull-at-a-gate tactics in respect of yet another field of education into which he is rushing to impose change.

With the claim of simplifying, he is creating a much more complicated structure. In the name of eliminating distinctions, he is creating new ones. That restless process of change is typical of his approach. He introduced it first in the health service, transferred it to secondary education, and is now transferring it to further and higher education. In that process of change, he is not making any allowance for the simple fact that change itself has a cost. Indeed, change is expensive to introduce. Unless he increases spending to allow for the costs of that change, it will fail.

Here we are, in the last dying days in the life of the Government, rushing through a major change in the system with inadequate consultation. The Secretary of State has not demonstrated to us the evidence--the representations from local authorities--on which the change was based. He has not told us what arguments they offered against it. The Bill is being rushed through with a guillotine to follow and with no time to consider it. It is being imposed as the Government go out--with a twilight already shining on their shoulders. The Bill will throw higher and further education into another mess, just another achievement of the bull-at-a-gate Secretary of State in that area.

What I have said does not obviate the need for change, but change has to be managed, has to be carried through by a process of consultation, and has to be financed. That is the danger of the changes which have been introduced by the Government.

My main argument is on the effects that the Bill will have on a service which we are very proud of in Humberside--the Humberside adult education service. I wanted to intervene when the Secretary of State spoke, but unfortunately I could not. We are very proud of that service. It has 100,000 enrolments and 40,000 students, and it provides a valuable service, siphoning people into education who would otherwise drop out or would not be attracted to it, because it provides education where they live--in the village hall, and schools in the locality, in villages and towns, in the main using the facilities of secondary schools.

Although the service provides both vocational and non-vocational training-- the Government have created a contemptuous distinction between the two--it siphons people from one to the other.

Mr. Eggar : Since the hon. Gentleman is making all sorts of wild allegations without the advantage of his television researcher, perhaps he could tell us where that division appears in the Bill.

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