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11.43 am
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): I am especially pleased to be called in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell), who made several remarks with which I agree, so I shall not delay the House by repeating them. I am grateful, as are we all, to the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) for having sought this timely and important debate.
As Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire, I represent two Cambridge colleges--the lesser part of Cambridge university, but the part containing the Institute of Molecular Biology; I am happy to say that, just a few weeks ago, my constituency acquired another Nobel prize winner.
I am not a graduate of either Oxford or Cambridge, although some say I would have benefited from being so. Nevertheless, that does not disqualify me from saying that I entirely concur with the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon that we are not talking about two centres of excellence to the exclusion of other universities. There
is much excellence to be found in Britain's higher education sector, and to say that Oxford and Cambridge occupy a special position is not to denigrate the achievements of other universities.
Oxford and Cambridge occupy a special position not only in our own education system but in the world education structure. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon was right to say that they are unique within Europe and that they have a capacity to compete directly with the major United States universities. If the higher education structure in this country did not exist, the United States universities would acquire an international monopoly as centres of excellence. That would be a monopoly to be strongly deplored.
I shall restrict myself to making one or two points. First, much of the debate has been about access and admissions to Oxford and Cambridge. The hon. Member for Cambridge amply testified to Cambridge university's intention to increase further the number of students taken from state schools.
Mr. Alan W. Williams (East Carmarthen and Dinefwr):
I declare an interest in that I was educated at Oxford. I am sorry that there is such a strong Oxbridge flavour to the debate this morning and I hope that hon. Members representing other parts of the country will be called to contribute later. Will the hon. Gentleman accept that, when I was at Oxford in the 1960s, the ratio was about 50 per cent. private school students: 50 per cent. state system students, and that that has not changed at all over the past 30 years? The promises we keep hearing from Oxbridge ring hollow.
Mr. Lansley:
The speech of the hon. Member for Cambridge gave ample testimony to the great efforts made by Oxford and Cambridge in that respect. The figures tend to mislead.
Mr. Howard Flight (Arundel and South Downs):
A-levels.
Mr. Lansley:
My hon. Friend makes the point about A-levels: in so far as A-levels are a measure, it is clear that Oxford and Cambridge are being presented with many highly successful A-level students from the independent sector, but they are not restricting their efforts to attracting such students. Through the target schools scheme, many colleges are making every effort to interview applicants from the state sector in a way that identifies potential rather than simply assessing performance at A-level.
Mr. Flight:
Is my hon. Friend aware that a significant proportion of Oxbridge students from independent schools went to those schools via the assisted places scheme, a fact which distorts the comparison? In addition, a number of schools that were in the state sector 30 years ago have since moved into the private sector.
Mr. Lansley:
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I do not wish to debate the assisted places scheme again, but its existence has meant that the proportion of students coming to Oxford and Cambridge from the independent sector is by no means an expression of elitism, since such students may well have come from low-income households and used the assisted places route to secondary education.
I run the risk of falling into the trap against which I wish to argue, which is construing the review as being essentially about access and admissions. It is not. The review is fundamentally about value for money and the use of the resources deployed through the collegiate system in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to achieve excellence. If, as I hope, access is improved and admissions from state schools are increased, students will not wish to be admitted to a university whose standards have not been maintained and whose methods of teaching are no longer those that once sustained those standards on an international scale.
We have to look at the use of money and resources, and on that point the arguments are clear. We are talking about one third of 1 per cent. of total expenditure on higher education--perhaps one thousandth part of spending on education in this country, but it is a one thousandth part that has a powerful influence throughout the system. Excellence breeds excellence, not only within higher education, but within the education system as a whole. The collegiate system is not simply about tutorial groups and teaching: it is integral to the research output of Oxford and Cambridge.
The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon made it clear that 70 per cent. of United Kingdom university professors pass through Oxford or Cambridge at some time during their academic career, so there is a spread of that excellence throughout the education system. The idea that we can have some sort of Marmite strategy and take the--
Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North):
Can the hon. Gentleman give me an example of a piece of excellent research that developed solely because of the collegiate system, as opposed to research such as that on DNA, which was developed in a Medical Research Council laboratory that just happened to be sited in Cambridge?
Mr. Lansley:
The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not attempt to give examples. I am aware that, in Cambridge generally, the ability within the multi-faculty universities and the collegiate system to relate one discipline to another has led to a cross-fertilisation of great importance.
Mr. Robert Jackson:
My hon. Friend might like to refer the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) to Trinity College, Cambridge. Over 100 years of the Nobel prize, that one college has won more prizes than France.
Mr. Lansley:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. There are many examples of excellence within both universities. As I have said, I am not denying the presence of excellence in other universities. There are universities where two thirds to three quarters of research departments are achieving five-star ranking. There is no lack of excellence in other universities, but we must recognise--it is a matter of perception as well as reality--that, throughout the world, there is a recognition of what Oxford and Cambridge are achieving.
We need to look at the two Dearing criteria. I am sure that hon. Members understand and accept the need for a review of the college fees system and I am sure that the
two criteria of good value for money and good use of resources are perfectly acceptable. On those two criteria there will be no difficulty sustaining the college fees system, because it does represent good value for money and is a good use of resources.
It is good for the universities in terms of what they achieve with the students who attend them. It is good for the higher education system because Oxford and Cambridge are feeding excellence and success elsewhere within higher education. It is a good use of resources in terms of our economic benefit. The hon. Member for Cambridge accurately referred to the impact on local economies, but we could look at the impact on the United Kingdom economy as a whole.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield):
I am not a representative of either an Oxford or a Cambridge constituency, but I have an interest in the debate because I am a governor of the London School of Economics and I have a daughter at Jesus College, Cambridge and a daughter who has attended Pembroke College.
There needs to be a breath of fresh air in a debate that recognises that there is a real crisis in higher education. That crisis has been caused by chronic underfunding over 18 years under the previous Government. Pay in the higher education sector is appalling. I do not believe the argument about the brain drain, but I do believe that some people with excellent qualifications do not want to stay on in higher education because they can slip into the City or into occupations that pay two or three times more than professorial salaries within just a short time.
There is a crisis with our elite institutions. I believe that we will always have elite institutions in higher education and that we must have world-class institutions. However, I do not think that Oxford and Cambridge are quite as good as they think they are. If they measure themselves against the best in the United States, they will see that they have been falling behind for a long time. They need to buck up their ideas about how they organise themselves and how they attract high-quality researchers and students. They need to do that using all the talents in our country.
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