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The Chairman: Even by my standards, which are pretty low in light entertainment, the hon. Gentleman has gone off the script. We are discussing the programme motion; I have already ruled on the composition of the Committee. Mr. Willis: You are always so wise on such matters, Mr. Gale, and I will obey your every instruction. We accept that 12 sittings are probably sufficient to debate the Bill. We accept that the real decisions will sadly not be made in Committee; they will be made on the Floor of the House on Report and Third Reading. We want an early assurance from the Minister that we are not wasting our time in Committee. The Secretary of State's statement, made on the Floor of the House, that this is an everything or nothing Bill makes a mockery of having a debate in Committee, and I hope that the Minister will put us right on that. We accept that the emphasis of the Bill is the issue of differential fees and the future of the university system. We are grateful to the Minister for recognising that and putting aside the bulk of the time for a thorough examination of the effects of top-up fees on the future of the higher education system. However, other key elements of the Bill are important. We welcome the new arts and humanities research council, and particularly the huge grant from the Secretary of State for the research of medieval history. We are also interested in student complaints. That has been regarded as a non-contentious element of the Bill, but it has significant effects. We hope that the Minister will keep an open mind when considering some of the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) and I have tabled. Having said that, we are anxious to start debating the Bill. We intend to co-operate with the Government, and hope to improve this bad Bill. We hope that by the time the Bill has passed through the Committee, under your excellent leadership Mr. Gale, it will be worthy of debate on the Floor of the House, to be ultimately defeated. Column Number: 7 Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): I echo the remarks already made by members of the Committee about your chairmanship, Mr. Gale. I will not abuse your wisdom by speaking at length about the following matter when I would much rather debate the substance of the Bill. However, instead of intervening on my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, I wanted simply to record one point about the timing. The problem with the breakneck speed of Government legislation is that it provides scant time for reflection and preparation by the excellent bodies that prepare work, amendments and arguments for members of the Committee. It provides even less time for members of the Committee to reflect on that work. For this to be a real process, and not merely a shallow appearance of one, Ministers require time for the arguments to sink in. I respect the Minister, who has been personally kind to me, for his attention to the arguments. Ministers, and all members of the Committee, must be able to consider what is said and to allow the debate to evolve. I can tell hon. Members, including Government Members, who may firmly support Government policy—there will be a few—that there will be points of difficulty worthy of consideration in all clauses, including those that appear non-contentious. I think that the common wish of members of the Committee, whether or not they like the legislation, is to ensure that it works as well as it can. We have to work within time constraints, as has happened on other Bills, but that will probably unnecessarily constrict the process in this case. In the manner of the serpent that swallows the chicken, if an issue is not dealt with immediately, it will have to be stored for further consideration on Report or perhaps in another place. I am not sure that that is the best and most efficient way to do business. Mr. David Rendel (Newbury) (LD): I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Gale, and I am grateful for the chance to make a brief contribution. I am slightly concerned because the Minister, in saying that he believed that the last half-day would be sufficient to consider the remaining clauses, mentioned that he thought that the important part of that would relate to Wales. I should hate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), who is on the Front Bench, to think that I thought that Wales was in any sense unimportant, but it was our feeling that the issue to do with Wales was comparatively non-controversial and therefore might not take up too much time, important though it is. If the Minister really thinks that most of the last half-day will be taken up purely with the Welsh clause, that will mean that we cannot spend much time on the bankruptcy clause, which is also important, on other clauses to do with information, to which we have tabled amendments, and on the three new clauses, all of which also come under that part of the knife. I hope that he will reassure us that he does not expect to spend all that time on Wales; otherwise, we might need to extend the time. Column Number: 8
Alan Johnson: I do not accept the point made by the hon. Member for Daventry that we are moving at breakneck speed. The Bill has 50 clauses and involves controversial issues, but I think that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have agreed that we have allowed enough time for them to be considered. We published the Bill on 8 January, a year after we published the White Paper that contains virtually every element of the Bill. Nothing has changed in that respect, so we cannot be accused of moving at breakneck speed. [
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con): The regulatory impact assessment says explicitly at a number of points that measures in the White Paper have been dropped.
Alan Johnson: I delete ''zilch''. There are a few minor issues, which will be fully explained in my answer to the hon. Gentleman's written question.
No one from our ranks who opposed the Bill applied to be on the Committee. I will not take that point any further, because I respect your ruling, Mr. Gale, but we needed to make that point in response to the points that were made with regard to ''Erskine May''.
On the points made by the hon. Member for Newbury, I emphasised the position of Wales, but we have allowed half a day for the whole of part 4 of the Bill, which includes the issue of bankruptcy. I fully accept that that is an element and I suggest that we will not spend that full half-day purely on Welsh issues. The hon. Gentleman is probably right that little controversy surrounds those issues, although we shall see when we reach that part. I should have mentioned that the bankruptcy issue is equally important, as are other clauses in part 4. Half a day is sufficient to debate the whole of that part.
Question put:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 18, Noes 6.
Division No. 1]
AYES
NOES
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The Chairman: I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill; copies of the resolution are available in the Room. I also remind hon. Members that adequate notice must be given of any amendments. As a general rule, my co-Chairman and I do not intend to call any starred amendments, including starred amendments that may be reached in the course of an afternoon sitting of the Committee.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Collins: I thought that it might be useful at this early stage, given that the clause creates the arts and humanities research council, to tease out some issues related to the running of the council and, in particular, its future relationship with the rest of Whitehall. Members of the Committee may recall that the Secretary of State referred to the creation of the council in his speech on Second Reading. He said:
Paragraph 64 of the explanatory notes state:
It is worth noting what the Department of Trade and Industry says about the role of the Office of Science and Technology, which will, as a result of the provisions in the Bill, become the new home for arts and humanities research. The Office of Science and Technology website quotes the Prime Minister as saying that
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I understand that it is expected that, within the Office of Science and Technology, the arts and humanities research council will come under the director general of research councils. He was appointed to the post with effect from 1 January 2004—a full year after the Government set out in the higher education White Paper their intention to create an arts and humanities research council and to place it in the Office of Science and Technology. However, the person who has been appointed to be director general of research councils is Professor Sir Keith O'Nions. He has an extremely distinguished academic and public service record, but it is heavily and, some might argue, exclusively scientific. He has been professor of the physics and chemistry of minerals and head of the department of earth sciences at the university of Oxford. He was a demonstrator and then lecturer in geochemistry at the university of Oxford and he was professor of geology at Columbia university. I will not read out his full curriculum vitae, but the point is that he has an immensely distinguished, but wholly scientific background. It is not simply that the arts and humanities will be located within the Office of Science and Technology, but that the Department that bats for them, argues for their funding with the Treasury and sponsors their work will be the DTI rather than the Department for Education and Skills. The Secretary of State who has responsibility to Parliament for accounting for the public moneys that are provided to them will be from the DTI rather than the DFES. It will be within your recollection, Mr. Gale, that there was a time when the DFES was the Department of Education and Science and so all those things were located within the one Department. The decision has been taken—I do not query that this morning—that science logically fits with the DTI. One of the reasons for that—the Government are quite explicit about this—is that they wish to encourage further growth of business sponsorship, business relationships and the development and practical application of scientific and technological breakthroughs to boost the competitiveness of UK industry. Those are entirely desirable objectives, but the reason I am seeking to tease out from the Minister his thinking on these matters is that it is not entirely obvious that arts and humanities have the same business spin-off, technological impact and scientific grounding. The Government refer in their explanatory notes, quite rightly and understandably, to the value of interdisciplinary research and the greater Column Number: 11 opportunities that are created by looking at matters across the arts and science spectrum. Of course, it is true to say that there a large number of areas where scientific and arts and humanities research will overlap. Sometimes it has to do with the use of technology such as carbon dating for looking into the past. Sometimes it has to do with the use of computer technology in analysing whether a lost text was the work of Shakespeare.It would also be true to say that many specialists in the arts and humanities would not naturally assume that their work or their expertise is the same as that of specialists in the physical sciences. I have no doubt that the Minister will be able to cite a large of number of people in the field of arts and humanities who have supported the creation of the arts and humanities research council. I wish to place on record that I do not say that it is an inappropriate step for the Government to take. In fact, in principle, the Opposition are in favour of it. However, it matters significantly whether the research council will have an opportunity to thrive within what will be quite a different environment. Arts and humanities have not hitherto been part of the DTI. A further subject for some concern, but about which the Minister may be able to reassure us, again comes from the explanatory notes to the Bill. Referring to future funding for arts and humanities research, they state:
Column Number: 12 However, a pattern begins to emerge. As far as arts and humanities research is concerned, the Government are giving the community something that I suspect the vast majority will welcome: the status that goes with being a proper research council, and the recognition that the work of arts and humanities deserves parity of esteem with scientific research. A statement has been made from a very high level, by the Secretary of State—I expect that the Minister will make it, too—of the Government's commitment to, and recognition of, the importance of arts and humanities research alongside other academic research.As framed in the explanatory notes, funding is predicted only for the first financial year after the transfer in 2005-06, and thereafter it is explicitly flagged up that it will vary from year to year—the wording does not say ''varying while continuing to increase'', it says ''vary''. That leaves open the opportunity for it to reduce, especially if responsibility is transferred to the Department of Trade and Industry. That Department has many strengths, but part of its core mission in life is not to promote arts and humanities research, because it has many other schemes, projects, mission statements and objectives that it would wish to pursue. There is a danger, not necessarily in the first or even the second year of the transfer, but down the line, that the DTI might take the view that it had inherited the strange, esoteric field of arts and humanities research, very little of which had much to do with promoting economic competitiveness, exports or the growth of UK industry. In a tough public spending round negotiation with the Treasury it might take the view that arts and humanities research could offer a relatively painless range of savings. I should be grateful for reassurance from the Minister on that matter. What discussions have the Minister's officials had with those from the DTI about the attitude of the new Department responsible for arts and humanities research to the proposed research council after it has been set up? Were his officials, who at present deal with the AHRB, consulted before the appointment of the director general of research councils, Professor Sir Keith O'Nions? Have they received assurances that in the future arts and humanities work of Research Councils UK will be given a higher priority? The Government's website states that the chief executive of the AHRB already attends meetings of Research Councils UK as an observer. That may cause slight concern in the arts and humanities community, as the main tasks of Research Councils UK are listed as developing the strategy for investing the science budget, investing in world-class facilities such as the new, high-performance computing capability and the new synchrotron radiation source, and ensuring that investment in science and technology benefit the UK's economy. Under the present structure of Research Councils UK, even though the director general knows that it is highly likely that the arts and humanities research council will join and that the chief executive of the Column Number: 13 AHRB already attends its meetings, there is no reference to anything non-scientific in the objectives or the mission statements of Research Councils UK. Has the Minister secured an undertaking from the Department of Trade and Industry that the changes will be reflected in the mission statements and objectives of the Office of Science and Technology at large and of Research Councils UK specifically? In short, the arts and humanities community, which widely welcomes the creation of a research council, would further welcome anything that the Minister can say to reassure us that, even after the transfer of responsibility for these matters to a Department that is not innately assumed to have a huge grasp of the importance of arts and humanities, proper importance will continue to be given to that work, which the Government will continue to make a priority.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2004 | Prepared 10 February 2004 |
