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Alan Johnson: I fully accept that, and I hope that none of my comments suggested that Lord May was anything other than an eminent and valuable contributor to the debate. I agree completely with the hon. Gentleman's comments.
The hon. Member for Daventry asked for a reassurance as regards international links. I will give him that, although I should point out that a later Opposition amendment would damage those links. However, we shall debate that in due course. With those comments, however, I ask the Committee to agree that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Transfer to Council of property etc of Arts and Humanities Research Board
10.15 am
Chris Grayling: I beg to move amendment No. 126, in
clause 2, page 2, line 5, at end insert
'and carrying with it full employment and other rights reflecting the employee's service with the Board'.
This is a simple proposal, which is designed to meet some of the concerns that frequently arise when status is transferred between Government bodies, from one corporate form to another. I say that because, on at least two occasions in my constituency, the message from the management of the organisations concerned to their staff contained ambiguities—probably inadvertently—that caused confusion and uncertainty among staff.
The amendment aims to set out a clear, simple and straightforward stipulation for the staff who work for the current board that their employment rights will remain unchanged and unaffected by the transition. It aims to remove the uncertainty that might exist if the message given were wrong.
A person in a similar situation told me, ''I am not sure if my pension rights will carry over in the same way. I am also not sure if one of my colleagues who, in the existing organisation, has the right to stay on for a particular period of time, will be able to do so under the new organisation, and so he may not able to continue his career as he had previously envisaged.''
The amendment is designed to clarify for the members of staff that their rights will transfer. The Society of College Principals, the organisation representing higher education colleges, welcomes the
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amendment. It believes that such clarification would be valuable to staff, and would like to see it added to the Bill. I hope that the amendment is uncontroversial; it will not make a material difference to what the Government are trying to achieve, nor will it cause problems for the council as it is established.
The amendment would clarify the situation for all staff who currently work for the legacy body—the previous body—when the new council is established and the royal charter is put in place, and when the new corporate framework in which those staff will work has been set up. It would reassure them that when the transition from a charitable organisation to a non-departmental public body takes place, nothing—their rights to pensions, to specific benefits after particular lengths of service or to their current pay scales, which may have led them to expect a pay rise next April—will be materially affected by the change.
I hope that the Government will accept the simple and straightforward amendment and will use it to send the message to staff that the provision is a positive step for the whole of the arts and humanities world and that the commitment to staff within it is absolute and straightforward.
Alan Johnson: I think that I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks. However, he does not need to carry the amendment to achieve the effect that he wants. Incidentally, the TUPE regulations stem from the acquired rights directive, and it is rather ironic that the Opposition, when in government, fiercely opposed that directive. However, I accept that times change and that we now have champions of trade union rights in the Opposition. As John Lennon once said:
''A working-class hero is something to be.''
I am heartened by the interest shown in the matter. Clause 5 will ensure that there can be no ambiguity about pensions. However, it is worth mentioning that last year the Government included pensions as one of the issues that would be protected under a TUPE transfer; previously they were not covered, so that was an important development. However, to remove any doubt, we have dealt with pensions in a separate clause.
When the AHRB was created, it was itself subject to a TUPE transfer. That worked well and the AHRB is determined that when it becomes a council it will do the same thing.
We looked carefully to see whether anything was missing in relation to the transfer of employment rights, but there is not. All that would be achieved by adding the wording in the amendment would be to repeat the wording that is already in the Bill, because TUPE must be applied in relation to the transfer, and pensions are covered under clause 5. The hon. Gentleman can safely withdraw his amendment, because the terms that he rightly seeks are in the Bill as drafted.
Chris Grayling: I am grateful for the Minister's reassurance and for his statement, on the record, that TUPE applies in this case. In the related matter to which I referred, one of the uncertainties in the
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separate organisation involved in a similar type of change was that the employers had not made it explicit that TUPE applied, so there was a further uncertainty. The Minister has given a categorical assurance that all employment rights are protected and that there are no missing elements in the package that could slip through the net, and I am grateful to have that clarification on the record. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chairman: I remind hon. Members that if they seek to catch my eye they must do so before the debate is wound up.
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Expenses of Council
Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion) (PC): I beg to move amendment No. 212, in
clause 3, page 2, line 11, at end insert—
'(1A) Sums may not be paid under subsection (1) unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that the principle of distribution set out in section [distribution principle for funding by research councils] will be adhered to.'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 5—Distribution principle for funding by research councils—
'(1) In distributing funding, the research councils to which this section applies shall have regard to the distribution principle in this section.
(2) That principle is that, in any period of twelve months, 10 per cent. of funds to be distributed shall be awarded to those institutions that have benefited the least from the distribution of the other 90 per cent. of funds.
(3) This section applies to—
(a) the Arts and Humanities and Research Council,
(b) the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council,
(c) the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council,
(d) the Natural Environment Research Council,
(e) the Medical Research Council,
(f) the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council,
(g) the Economic and Social Research Council, and
(h) the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils.'.
Mr. Thomas: I am looking forward to working with you on the Committee, Mr. Gale, to see how we can possibly improve this dreadful Bill.
However, I welcome this part of the Bill because I completely agree with the establishment of the arts and humanities research council. The purpose of the amendment is to probe some of the ideas that were mentioned in the debates on the two previous clauses, especially what may happen under the dual support mechanism when the Bill's proposals on variable tuition fees—top-up fees—come into play.
I tabled the amendment because I am worried that a two-tier system of higher education—teaching universities and colleges, and research institutions—will develop in the United Kingdom. The current meld of the two from which we benefit so much in terms of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching will be
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undermined and weakened in many parts of the country and, over time, will decline. Instead, there will be a concentration of research money, institutions and expertise in certain areas; for example, the golden triangle around Oxford, Cambridge and the Thames valley. The amendment was tabled to try to ensure that the Government do not achieve what they want in that respect. We will see how far we get.
The amendment would change the funding of the research councils, assuming that the arts and humanities research council is established by royal charter. I remind hon. Members that at present the dual support mechanism means that there is a payment from the funding councils in Wales and England. Two different funding councils make payments to fund the general cost of the basic research infrastructure, including laboratories and equipment. Arts and humanities do not need laboratories and equipment, but they need offices, IT and so on, from the general funding councils. I assume that that will continue.
The other element is provided by the research councils and depends on the research assessment exercise, which is much cursed by academics, certainly those in Aberystwyth and Lampeter. Every department is assessed on the basis of its research capabilities and excellence and those that achieve a five or five-star assessment are eligible to apply for grants from the research councils, although they do not necessarily get them. As the Minister said, the way that the application system works is that proposals are made; I think an awful lot are recycled.
Under the Royal Society exchange scheme between parliamentarians and scientists, I have had the opportunity to spend some interesting times in the last couple of months with a scientist in Aberystwyth called Dr. Gareth Griffith. As an arts and humanities graduate, I found it an eye opener to visit the laboratories and the infrastructure, good and bad, where Dr. Griffith works and to try to appreciate the immense time and effort that he spends in making applications to research councils and for external research. For example, he is applying to carry out research on a type of cocoa fungus, which could be useful for the Department for International Development in overcoming the problem that the fungus causes in developing countries such as Brazil and on the west coast of Africa.
All sorts of interesting work is going on in our universities, as we well know. It is interesting to be directly exposed to that, and to have an idea of the immense amount of administrative time and effort that goes in to so much academic work nowadays. Much work is done on applying for money and trying to get extra bits of resources to patch together a decent research department in order to attract the best students and lecturers and to build success. The problem is that if a department cannot quite get there and is drowning at the shoreline, as we Welsh say, it will never be good enough to make an application to the research councils; it will always be able to get
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something from its funding council and to maintain some level of infrastructure, but it will not be able to break through.
The Government have tried to do something with student support and access in the Bill, which we will debate later. It is interesting that they have recognised that some institutions cream off the best students, and that some students may be prevented from attending some institutions by barriers other than academic ability. Through the Office for Fair Access, the Government seek a different way to ensure that there is a spread of ability throughout the higher education institutions of England and Wales, without artificial barriers.
With these amendments, we are trying to do much the same for the research councils, at least in principle. We recognise that there are good departments that undertake interesting lines of research that could benefit the economic development and cultural welfare of this country. They are not quite able to access the research council funding because they are caught in the double bind of not being able to get the good research in order to get funding and a five-star grading and, therefore, never quite break through.
For example—I can only give examples from Wales, the area I know best—I contacted the research councils and asked, ''What sort of allocation is there between England and Wales, because Wales has about 5 per cent. of the population, but about 6 per cent. of the students?'' We have always educated a lot of students in Wales. I wanted to know what proportion of research council money was generally being spent in Wales and in England.
About ten years ago, an eminent politician and physicist who will be known to the Welsh members of the Committee, Dr. Phil Williams—sadly, he died last year—found that Wales was being short-changed by the research councils. He found that about 2 or 3 per cent. of funding was coming to Wales, even though it had 5 per cent. of the population and 6 per cent. of students. I understand that the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs is looking into that and that the research councils are gathering information for that Committee, but they do not have that information yet. I am concerned that we may be creating systems when we should be collecting relevant information about where the money will be allocated in order to ensure that it will not feed those institutions that other parts of the Bill, and OFFA, are trying to change.
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