Examination of Witness (Questions 1-19)
1 DECEMBER 2004
RT HON
CHARLES CLARKE
MP
Q1 Chairman: Secretary of State, may
I welcome you to our deliberations. It is not so long since you
were with the Committee, but we wanted to draw together the strands
of the year's work we did on secondary education and we are going
to publish that as an overall report after Christmas. The main
thrust of this meeting is secondary education, but, as we discussed
earlier, because of certain publicity about the closure of another
chemistry department, at Exeter University, we thought we would
have just 10 minutes on that aspect of higher education before
we got started. It would be wrong of the Committee to ignore that,
given the opportunity we have to have a conversation with you
about it. Would you like to say anything on higher education before
we get started?
Mr Clarke: I should
like to, Chairman; thank you for the opportunity. May I express
my appreciation, as I have done before, of the role of this Committee
in the education debate, both in the secondary field, which is
the main subject of our conversation this morning, but more generally?
You have played a major role in enhancing public debate on these
issues and I want to express appreciation for that. On higher
education, we have been concerned for some time, following the
White Paper on higher education, as to how we can develop the
national strategic interest in relation to these issues, because
we have a very demand-led system and the research assessment exercise
(RAE) also operates in that way. At the end of July, as the Higher
Education Bill came to its conclusion, I formally consulted Cabinet
colleagues to ask them what subjects of national strategic importance
they thought we should think about establishing across the university
system as a whole. I further discussed that at the universities
UK conference in September and we have been having ongoing official
discussions with the Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of
Physics and others more widely. I met a delegation from the Royal
Society of Chemistry myself much earlier this year to discuss
precisely these issues. What I have decided to do—and I
have made available a copy of this letter for the Committee through
the Committee Clerk—is to write formally to ask for advice
from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
on what courses of national strategic significance it might be
appropriate to intervene in to strengthen or secure their role
within the educational provision of the country. Following discussions
with Cabinet colleagues, I have identified five areas which I
have asked HEFCE to advise on. Firstly, Arabic and Turkish language
studies and other Middle Eastern area studies, former Soviet Union
Caucasus and Central Asian area studies, which is mainly for strategic
security and inter-cultural awareness reasons. Secondly, Japanese,
Chinese, Mandarin and other Far Eastern languages and area studies
for business and trade purposes. Thirdly, science, technology,
engineering and mathematics, chiefly for maintaining the UK's
excellent science base and it is obviously within that context
that the chemistry is relevant. Fourthly, vocationally oriented
courses of particular interest to employers in industries, which
are of growing importance to the UK economy; for example the cultural
and creative industries and e-skills. Fifthly, courses relating
to recent EU accession countries, especially those in Eastern
Europe and the Baltic. The constitutional position is that I am
asking HEFCE to give me advice on how we might secure courses
of this strategic importance in each of these areas. It is a significant
departure, because it is a move away from the purely demand-led
position which has existed over recent years.
Q2 Chairman: What do you mean by "demand-led"?
Mr Clarke: It is simply that the
funding follows so closely the students who wish to study a particular
subject that universities have very little flexibility in the
situation and as a kind of inadvertent aspect of that you may
find that certain courses which are nationally, strategically
important end up not getting the support they need. I hope that
the advice HEFCE gives me will enable us to be sure that we are
strategically certain in these areas. In the case of chemistry,
I know HEFCE are already looking at systems of saying that, for
example, in a particular region, say the south west of the country,
there should be a number of chemistry places available throughout
that region whatever else happens, whatever particular decisions
are taken by particular universities. There are quite difficult
strategic questions. If you take the case of chemistry, there
are interesting issues about the development of other sciences,
for example the biosciences, the environmental sciences, which
are moving forward and the relationship between that and chemistry.
There are also quite difficult questions about what ought to be
the number of chemistry places and where they should be. Should
you, for example, have a small number of relatively large chemistry
departments in universities or a large number of relatively small
chemistry departments? These are difficult questions upon which
we need advice, which is why I have asked HEFCE to prepare advice
in these areas. The decision of the University of Exeter is a
decision for itself of course, but that is the overall context
and I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to say
it. I have issued a Written Answer in the House today, setting
out the position I have just described to you.
Q3 Chairman: Let us remain with chemistry
for a moment. Do you know how many chemistry departments have
closed in universities since 1997?
Mr Clarke: No, I do not have the
number to hand.
Q4 Chairman: It is a substantial number
though, is it not?
Mr Clarke: There have been several;
King's College London, Swansea, Exeter, a number of chemistry
departments. There are other chemistry departments which are being
kept open at significant cost to the university itself because
they have not been economically successful.
Q5 Chairman: Interestingly enough, why
I pushed you to clarify what "demand-led" meant, what
places like Exeter are saying about chemistry and indeed Swansea
have said, is that they are getting plenty of students who want
to study chemistry, but because they do not have a five-star rating,
they could not use research money to subsidise the teaching of
their students. We are in a pretty poor pass, are we not, when
we get high demand for a subject but it is so expensive to teach
a subject like chemistry that we can only do it economically by
transferring across the research budget. There is something wrong
out there, is there not?
Mr Clarke: There are two issues
involved in this. Issue one is the cost of teaching a particular
course and, as you know, HEFCE has a set of different financial
indices for the cost of particular subjects according to their
assessment of what the cost is. The fee regime we have established
also helps look for income streams to help deal with those particular
aspects. You then have the RAE exercise which is controversial
in some circles. Just to make it absolutely clear, we have said
throughout, on the RAE, that a university must decide its strategic
approach. If, for example, you have a four in chemistry or a four
in architecture, to take another contemporary example, the university
can and should take a sensible decision about where it is going.
So it can decide to have a strategic view over two or three years
to raise the attainment in the exercise from a four to a five
or to a five star. That is a perfectly rational course of action
to be followed. I do not believe it is acceptable to have a state
of affairs where we argue that every university—whatever
it is; 120 universities in the country—has both research
and teaching in every subject. That is simply not sustainable.
Q6 Chairman: That is true and this Committee
accepted that in its report on the higher education White Paper.
What we were disturbed at was that you ceased to have the critical
mass of chemistry departments when actually, as Lord May said
to us and indeed yesterday you might have heard the Provost of
University College making the point—
Mr Clarke: Debating with your
good self on the Today programme.
Q7 Chairman: —to feed bioscience
you need chemistry as well. Bioscience is not a replacement: the
two have to be there together. Is that not a concern and a worry,
that we will not have that critical mass?
Mr Clarke: I am accepting that
argument in the letter I have written to HEFCE today. I am accepting
the argument of this Committee and saying you cannot simply have
what I have described—it may not be the correct language—as
a demand-led system. You have to say that there are certain subjects
which are of national strategic importance. Chemistry is the example
we are discussing today, but I have actually set out a range of
subjects where, if we were to lose, in your words, the critical
mass, that would be nationally a very serious state of affairs.
The question therefore for HEFCE to advise me on, is how to get
to a state of affairs in each of these subjects where we do not
lose critical mass. There is a further issue which is quite significant:
do we believe, for example in chemistry, that there should be
a reasonably even regional spread across the country? That is
again a matter which HEFCE will advise on and there are issues
of that type. I accept the arguments being made, not only by Lord
May but by the Royal Society of Chemistry, that it is necessary
to act in these areas and that is why I have taken the steps I
have in what I think is quite an historic shift in government
policy. It is saying that it is the responsibility of the state
to have a view about what we need to be studying in this country
and that HEFCE is the correct organisation, in my opinion, to
advise me on the right way to get to that view.
Q8 Chairman: I do not want to push this
for too long, but you will remember that our Committee, back when
we looked at the White Paper, did prioritise the Government's
views on research: higher than flexible fees or top-up fees as
they became known—
Mr Clarke: And you were right.
Q9 Chairman: —for the long-term
health of universities. What worried us at that time was that
certain voices in the university world were pushing a line of
concentration of science excellence in a very small number of
institutions which would have meant really a concentration in
London and the south east and we very strongly say that there
should be at the very least a high science capacity in a university
in each of our regions.
Mr Clarke: Of course. Personally
I agree with that very much. I was at the opening of the new University
of Manchester a couple of weeks ago, an outstanding example of
what is a world class university strengthening its position to
be able to do precisely that. To those who argue that there are
only four or five universities in the country, focused in London
and the south east as it happens, which can be our only centres
of world-class excellence, I do not accept that. We have to go
down the line of having world-class universities in various parts
of the country; I think that is the right way to go. What is difficult
and not a straightforward point at all is simply to say that for
me to say it shall be that university and not the other university
and get into that state of affairs is not acceptable. Equally,
we need to look at the strategic national interest, which is why
I am taking this departure I mentioned earlier on. I think that
is the right context to decide how it should be. I know the vice-chancellors
who make this argument, but I have never accepted the argument
that there are just four or five universities in the country to
which one can go to down this course.
Q10 Chairman: With the sort of action
you are taking would it be too late to give any hope that the
department in Exeter might be saved?
Mr Clarke: That is a matter for
the Vice-Chancellor at the department in Exeter. I am not going
to comment on that particular case. I would make quite a serious
point here. Your Committee correctly identified in the higher
education White Paper the fact that we were asking universities
to focus more sharply on their most appropriate mission and not
to believe that every university can do everything excellently.
That is a very hard process; it implies a reform agenda and that
is in fact what the vice-chancellors are doing in these various
universities. They are trying to come to a view about where they
should focus their excellence. You or I might contest the judgment
on a particular judgment with a particular course, and one could
comment on that, but the universities, and certainly Exeter, are
faithfully carrying through the need to look carefully at what
their mission is and where they are strong and where they are
weak. There are consequences of that which can be painful, as
we are seeing in particular areas. The scientific interest of
both the Royal Society for Chemistry and more widely right across
the country rightly says that what we have to do is to look at
the national strategic interest. For the first time in many years
I am setting up a process here to get to that national strategic
interest in key subjects.
Q11 Chairman: That is your responsibility.
The responsibility of universities is rather different: it is
to produce a viable institution. It may be that the rules which
are set by the research exercise, which are heavily penalising
those other departments which do not get a five, but have a four,
and because chemistry or other subjects are expensive they are
jettisoning those subjects which we really need in the national
interest to survive as an institution. Surely it is your responsibility
to make sure in that national interest that we do not lose that
critical mass.
Mr Clarke: And I am carrying through
that responsibility in the way that I say. What is not my responsibility,
and let us be very clear about it, it has been a central issue
of the relationship between the universities and the state since
the foundation of universities, is that if I were to try to second
guess a particular university on the decision it makes, then that
would be against every historical role of the university in relation
to what happens.
Q12 Chairman: If every university gave
up chemistry departments would you say "So be it"?
Mr Clarke: No, I would not and
that is precisely why I have gone through the process I described
just now. Up until today it has conventionally been the case under
governments of all parties, that it is a matter for universities
to make those decisions and not for the state to make those decisions.
This is a delicate issue; it is a very difficult issue. The state's
role generally is to give money to the university system and then
for universities to decide how best to use it. HEFCE takes advice,
as its predecessors, the University Grants Committee and so on
going back in time took decisions of this type. The whole establishment
of the university funding regime was predicated on the proposition
that universities should decide for themselves where their resource
should be. I am saying, I think rightly, that we need to look
at certain national strategic interests, which is why I consulted
my colleagues in the Cabinet on what they saw, from their point
of view, as key issues and I am asking HEFCE to advise me on those
questions for precisely that reason. No, I am not saying it is
a matter of no concern to me. I am saying that, on the contrary,
it is a matter of concern and I am glad that HEFCE are already,
on the particular Exeter case, looking at the distribution of
university places in chemistry in the south west of the country,
for example. I am saying that in exercising that interest, to
get to a situation where any Secretary of State or anybody else
says "You will study chemistry in Exeter but not in Plymouth"
or whatever it might be, is a state of affairs which most people
in the university world would think of as unacceptable.
Q13 Chairman: You could make it attractive
financially for one university in each region to specialise in
chemistry.
Mr Clarke: HEFCE already has a
series of incentives through its funding regimes. I am saying
that in addition to that we should look specifically at these
courses of national interest and I am asking HEFCE to identify
the right way to go about that by the process I have described.
I am asking their advice. It is an important constitutional point
just to emphasise. I am asking HEFCE to give me advice on how
to proceed and in my opinion that is their correct statutory role.
Q14 Mr Jackson: I am delighted about
the response to the BRISMES proposals and that the Secretary of
State is consulting on that. I actually chaired the conference
we had here on Middle Eastern, Arabic and so forth studies actually
in this room, so I am very pleased about it. I wonder whether
the Secretary of State could comment on the fact that Persian
is not mentioned in this list. It is a very important language.
If our diplomacy towards Iran works, it will be even more important.
There is a real, serious problem in that area and I hope there
is no significance about its omission as a specific mention on
that list. I want to make a much more general point and ask the
Secretary of State about this. I think he is correct to use the
language of demand and supply as an analytical framework for discussing
this problem, but I do not think it is correct to characterise
this issue as simply a problem of a demand-led system. It seems
to me that there are also supply side issues and I want to ask
the Secretary of State to comment on this. If you look at chemistry,
that seems to me to be a supply side problem: basically there
is not enough money going into chemistry courses and they are
therefore too expensive to run. The appropriate remedy is probably
to take some action on the supply side. On the other hand in these
Middle Eastern studies we are talking about the problem is a demand
side problem. Basically there are plenty of places available,
but there is not enough demand from UK students. The question
is how you can boost demand. It seems to me that the answer on
the chemistry side is probably to increase the funding on the
supply side for chemistry and on the Middle Eastern studies and
so forth to increase the demand by, for example, providing bursaries
to encourage people to do this, as was done by your predecessor
in connection with certain kinds of teacher training. I wonder
whether the Secretary of State could comment on this point about
the analytical framework, demand and supply.
Mr Clarke: I am very happy to
say that Persian is not excluded by this process here and that
would be one of the aspects HEFCE looks at. It was, Mr Jackson,
part of your own representations on this, with the experience
you have had, which led me to feel that we needed to work further
in this direction. In terms of the analytical structure, you have
four quadrants. You have a demand issue and a supply issue for
research and teaching in each of these areas. As you correctly
say, and I agree with your analysis, the assessment in each of
those areas will be different as to what measures are needed to
deal with the particular situation. I am absolutely happy to look
at bursaries and other devices to deal with things on that side.
I am also happy to look at how money is channelled. It is not
correct to say that the money situation is the entire explanation
of the chemistry position. The amount of additional funding this
government have put in to science is very, very substantial indeed.
What I think is more difficult is how to have a conversation about
which chemistry departments should be strengthened and which,
by implication, not, whether it is on the research or the teaching
side. Is one arguing that every university in the country should
have a chemistry department and the money should be spent relatively
thinly from that point of view? Or is it a relatively small number
of universities which are teaching chemistry, or research in chemistry,
or both together? I do not think it is therefore a question of
total quantum: it is a question of how the money is actually distributed
in that way. I think—and I am open to correction on this—that
the Royal Society of Chemistry understand that point and in the
discussions we had earlier this year, we had quite a long discussion
around precisely these types of issues. They are difficult questions;
it is not at all straightforward. I think addressing precisely
both the demand side and the supply side for chemistry is the
thing to do. However, you cannot do it simply on the basis of
saying every university has to have a chemistry department.
Q15 Mr Turner: A rather more practical
question. I have had a letter from someone who is in the third
year of a four-year Eng-Chem course at Exeter and who is currently
on industrial placement. He has been advised by the university
that he can complete his degree there, but by his tutor to look
for another place to do his fourth year because of staff being
dismissed or having left. Has a student a right to expect that
when he starts a course at a particular university that course
can be completed there to a high quality?
Mr Clarke: The student does have
a right to expect that and in fact one of the whole reforms we
have in the higher education process is to make that expectation
more explicit. I have had a large number of e-mails from individual
students at Exeter on my screen and I have read them all carefully.
I do not reply to every one in the detail they might perhaps wish,
but I do read them and I am very interested to see what people
are saying. I cannot second guess the advice being given by the
tutor in the university, but I do believe that, put at the level
of generality, your question is right, that once a contract is
entered into to provide a course that a student is going to carry
through, then the university should be fulfilling their side of
that particular contract.
Chairman: I am conscious that we want
to get onto secondary education, but two quick questions.
Q16 Valerie Davey: I welcome the emphasis
on minority languages which should not be minority. I just want
to add a caveat there that there are British students for whom
this is their mother tongue in our schools and perhaps the education
department should be enabling those young people to exercise their
right to study their own mother tongue and perhaps that would
bring forward the demand for the university course. Secondly,
in the regional, national dichotomy, to which you were alluding
earlier I welcome the reference to "cultural and creative".
One of the other departments which is being shut in Exeter is
the music department. We met, with the DCMS minister, some of
the south west MPs yesterday to learn that the growth in jobs
and potential in the South West in that area is amazingly high.
How would the region feature in this? Will it be HEFCE who gives
some guidance as to where those departments stay open or shut?
Mr Clarke: I very much agree with
your first point. By chance I was meeting earlier this morning
the Turkish minister of education who happens to be on a visit
in this country. We talked about precisely this question in relation
to the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot community, about 200,000 in
this country, particularly in some parts of London, some of our
initiatives, for example the global gateway exchanges, the discussions
we had this morning about teacher exchanges. I did not know this
until this morning, but there are about 25 teachers, funded by
the Turkish Government, helping the Turkish community here. I
very much agree with you and our modern foreign languages strategy
and the languages ladders we are developing in that and which
will start rolling out in schools next September do include a
number of the languages you are describing and it will have the
effect of building demand in some of these areas. That will not
apply to some languages, for example Persian, the example Mr Jackson
gave. There are relatively few students there, but in subjects
like Arabic and Turkish there are more significant numbers of
students involved whom one can see going forward in those areas.
On your second point, I agree very much that there needs to be
a regional dimension. It was in fact colleagues at the DCMS who
made the representation, when I wrote round Cabinet, that we needed
to look at the cultural and creative industries and how we should
be doing that for exactly the reason you imply. I obviously do
not know what the recommendation from HEFCE will be, but I think
there is a very strong case for saying that the region is a very
good basis for looking at this. We are trying to build stronger
relations between universities and the regional development agencies.
If I may be absolutely candid, it is also the case that if you
look at any region of the country, not all the university relationships
with each other in those regions are as mellifluous as one would
like. There are occasionally—temporary I am sure—conflicts
of view about how to approach some of these matters. I think that
HEFCE will take this responsibility on for trying to get people
working in a more collaborative way, which is an important thing
to do.
Q17 Jonathan Shaw: Last year you took
money from some universities and gave it to others in terms of
the research assessment exercise. That was against the advice
of the Higher Education Funding Council. Now you have a problem
you are asking them for advice. Are you going to listen to their
advice this time?
Mr Clarke: I am going to listen
to their advice. I am not quite sure what you are referring to.
I think you are referring to some funding for the fours to fives.
Yes, the short answer is that I shall listen to their advice.
The reason why I have asked them for advice is to listen to it.
Q18 Chairman: Jonathan makes a fair point.
Mr Clarke: Jonathan always makes
a fair point in my experience.
Q19 Chairman: You did not heed HEFCE's
advice on that last occasion.
Mr Clarke: I have to put it like
this. Mr Shaw made a fair point. You made a fairer point and the
fairer point you made to me earlier on was that I, at the end
of the day, bear the responsibility for these matters. That is
as it should be in a democracy, but I should be properly advised
on what I do and that is why I am asking HEFCE for advice. At
the end of the day the responsibility will be mine, as you correctly
said earlier on. I am happy to assure Mr Shaw that I shall listen
very carefully to HEFCE. I have talked to HEFCE officers about
this whole question at some length and I am confident that they
will take this remit extremely seriously and come up with very
positive proposals about how we should deal with these matters.
The list of subjects is quite striking. It is a wide range of
different issues which are of strategic national importance and
it will be very interesting to see what emerges.
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