RT HON ALAN JOHNSON MP

19 JULY 2006

  Q200  Mr Marsden: Highly motivated people.

  Alan Johnson: That is not where this comes from. It comes from the tortuous debates I had as Higher Education Minister, where you had people in different camps. The one thing that unites us is that we support the dual support system and we want to fund excellent research wherever it takes place. If running these two exercises alongside each other and the research around that shows some of the fears UCU have suggested, we will have to tackle that because I certainly believe that we can save £8 million and put more into research, not save it back for the Treasury. We can stop a long system of 82 committees and peer reviews. We could have a much better system because behind the metrics is peer review. Metrics is a dreadful term but it is the best one we can think of. I do not agree with these fears. These certainly are concerns that we will have to watch.

  Q201  Mr Marsden: I share your frustration with the 82 committees or whatever it is. For what it is worth, I think so do many people in academia which is why they would like to have seen a much broader consultation on successes of the RAE. The former chief executive, Howard Newby, speaking at the higher education policy unit conference said, more eloquently than I can, you are putting the cart before the horse. One of the concerns is that you will be replacing a restrictive and difficult process with an even more restrictive one, particularly in terms of the humanities and social sciences. Does it not worry you, given your passion for life long learning and further education, that you will be missing an opportunity to look at the way in which we translate research into teaching and communication, because that is one of the major criticisms of the RAE at the moment, that it up-ends the system. It does not give value to the dissemination and communication of academic ideas across the piece.

  Alan Johnson: That does concern me, yes. We have a consultation period that is running to October on this. There are zealots on both sides of this argument. We have to sort this out once and for all. The RAE has been going for about 20 years and as long as the RAE has been going there has been an argument about whether—

  Q202  Mr Marsden: You are open to the possibility that this consultation might raise some broader issues about the relationship between research and teaching and how that should be rewarded, particularly for younger academics?

  Alan Johnson: Yes.

  Q203  Mr Marsden: There is an issue, is there not, that if you focus research into a narrow band of universities, whether it is the ones you named or whether it is the ones that other people name, you miss the bright stars and the people coming through. Albert Einstein was a patent clerk when he started working on the theory of relativity. Do you think he would have got it right under a metrics system?

  Alan Johnson: I would like to think so.

  Q204  Chairman: What Howard Newby said is, "Get your policy objectives right first. Then consult and then evaluate whether metrics will help you in achieving your policy objectives." Our mutual friend, Sir Alan Wilson, when he was in front of the Committee, did not seem altogether happy about the place he was at on that day. I may be wrong. Howard Newby and Sir Alan pretty much know where this issue is. You will take their views into account, will you?

  Alan Johnson: There are no more wise and sagacious people than Alan Wilson and Howard Newby and I will take their views into account, yes.

  Q205  Chairman: What are you going to do when Sir Alan leaves you? Who is going to replace him?

  Alan Johnson: Cry. He will be a great loss to us. If you had the offer that he had to go to Corpus Christi, you might follow that route.

  Q206  Chairman: I tested the catering on Thursday night. If you look at the context, this is taking place. You and I and some other people in this room were more or less on the same side on variable fees two years ago. Some of us saw them as putting one of the mainstays of higher education on the right track. The other is research and it is very important to get that right, is it not? I know you said you were a fan and it worried me a bit, but this is a government that believes in evidence based policy. On the evidence, no one will be against change but it will be on a careful analysis of the evidence. Can you assure the Committee of that?

  Alan Johnson: It will be because this is not about cutting costs. The investment in science and research, never mind about what it does socially for this country, the economic challenges that we face from globalisation et cetera mean that we have to stay ahead of the game. This whole process is underpinned by a passion for ensuring that we stay second in the world only to America in terms of our research base. If we jeopardise that it would be ludicrous. I would happily cease to be a fan of metrics if I could see quite clearly that peer pressure is the best system.

  Q207  Chairman: If you look at your table in terms of expenditure on various sectors of education over the last nine years, the fact still does come through that higher education is the one that has not the same kind of percentage increase that other areas of education have. That is not to deny that good things have not happened since 2002. There has been, for example, a very substantial increase in university pay at last but overall there is no doubt Lord Sainsbury and the regime have been pretty consistent—there has been some good investment in science—but any vice-chancellor looking at the overall package here, overall spending on HE which is at the cutting edge of our competitive struggle against other countries, the figures are not really very inspiring, are they, in percentage terms?

  Alan Johnson: That is because you are comparing it with other areas of education. If you look at schools, for instance, there was huge under-investment there. Let me give you my take on this. In higher education there was a 36% reduction in per student spending between something like 1989 and 1997. The previous government set up the Dearing Report. The Dearing Report said that we need another £3 billion to go into higher education. We put 2.9 billion of public money into higher education since the Dearing Report. We put 800 million from the £1,000 up front fees and we will be putting 1.35 billion from variable fees up to £3,000. You add all that together. Dearing had all party support. Remember, at the 1997 election, everybody was saying wait to see what we are going to do on HE. God bless Lord Dearing for the work he has done on higher education. What people in higher education should acknowledge is we have done what Dearing said we should do and some more in terms of investment. Very importantly, the introduction of fees has not affected the public per student funding that we put in. The thing that higher education must be most concerned about is that, for whatever reason, a government says, "Now you have that money from fees income, we will cut the money you get from HEFCE and from public expenditure" because that would have been a betrayal of everything we went through on that very difficult Bill. That has not happened. Rather than a comparison saying, "We are badly off because there has not been as much money spent on us as in schools." What we did in schools was address the problems in schools. What we have done on Sure Start is address the problems there. In FE, there has been an enormous increase in expenditure from those figures. Goodness, it needed it. What we have done on higher education is pursue what Dearing said we should pursue, not immediately, of course. We went through the highways and byways before we got back to where Dearing said we should go but, in terms of the expenditure and the investment in higher education, that is a very good story.

  Q208  Chairman: Earlier on I asked you whether you could set your stall out for delivering a campaign on teaching children language skills. I wondered if the other one that matched that would be making universities more adept at producing entrepreneurs. Some of us met the chief executive of BT yesterday and he made that very strong call. Our educational system still does not seem to be able to produce enough young people coming through the system with entrepreneurial skills and the courage to get into business on their own. Do you think that is a problem?

  Alan Johnson: Yes, it is a problem we were looking at very closely in the DTI as part of the general problem in entrepreneurial skills. Women and entrepreneurship, for instance. If we had the same level in this country as they have in the US, we would have a much bigger economy and many more businesses. It is particularly important in universities. Whereas we have had a huge amount of success on spin-out companies from universities which, by definition, involves some entrepreneurship that is just helping students with really good ideas to get them into a commercial place, that has been hugely successful. There does seem to be a problem here vis-a"-vis our international competitors. That was the real driving force for us in the DTI. What is happening with students coming out of universities in China, India and America? There seems to be a much better grasp of entrepreneurial skills. There is more we could do in that area.

  Q209  Stephen Williams: You have widened the discussion into other higher education areas away from research. I get the impression that you mean what you say. Did you really mean it when you said in The Sunday Times, "The students will learn to love top-up fees"?

  Alan Johnson: Incidentally, these are not top-up fees; they are variable fees but let us leave that to one side. No, I do not think I did say that. That was the David Cracknell interview. I did not say they would learn to love top-up fees because that would have been silly. I do not expect students to love a £3,000 a year contribution. The point I was making is that I found time and time again, as the Higher Education Minister going to universities to talk to students who were by definition hostile, once you went through the arguments and once you explained the arguments, it took a fair bit of explaining. Most people thought and still think probably it is £3,000 up front, who do not understand about income contingent repayments, who do not fully realise that if your earnings ever drop below 15,000 you stop paying. It is quite a chunky pitch. What I was explaining was that variable fees will not prevent kids who get two or three decent A levels going to university. We have to get more kids from poorer backgrounds to the starting blocks. I do not think fees, properly explained, particularly once there is experience of them which will not start until this academic year, will put them off.

  Q210  Stephen Williams: We have talked about the review of Research Assessment Funding and the Comprehensive Spending Review. Of that period of the CSR, the Government is going to review the impact of variable fees, top-up fees, call them what you will. How meaningful is that review going to be? We have already had the Prime Minister saying he wanted nuclear energy and that effectively undermined the energy review. We have had the Chancellor, when he spoke at the launch of a Centre for European Reform pamphlet on higher education in Europe, more or less indicating that he wanted a market in fees in the future, taking the cap off the existing £3,000. How can the aspiring students in school at the moment be confident that in the future the levels of debt from top-up fees are not going to go through the roof?

  Alan Johnson: I am going to have to be a little bit pedantic here because it really is not top-up fees. It is relevant because the whole point you make about the cap is what means these are not top-up fees. The debate was about whether there should be a level of fee that we charged that Government said was appropriate but universities could, if they wished, top that up to whatever level they liked. If anything, this is top down because the system now that we are replacing is £1,000 that you must pay. You cannot charge any less or any more. In a sense, we moved that £1,000 to £3,000 but said, "You can charge less." That is not top-up fees; that is variable fees with a cap tightly screwed down in legislation. You laugh but I am not an anorak; I have become a kagool on this. It was relevant to our manifesto. 2009 is going to be a very meaningful review. I wish it was a bit later because 2009 is the first year when you have the whole university paying fees. Nevertheless, we are where we are. We said 2009 because at the time in Parliament people wanted a very early review of this. The review could lead to us abandoning this policy altogether. It could be damaging. We could find that kids from social classes four and five will find it more difficult. That is not what I want to do. Quite the opposite. I know David Chaytor, this Committee and you, Chairman, are in the same camp. We could abandon it altogether. It is going to be a very serious review. The legislation is screwed down. That £3,000 cap cannot be lifted without primary legislation through both Houses of Parliament. The independent review goes direct to both Houses of Parliament. The Parliament of 2003 by a very narrow whisker did their job very well in ensuring that, if we were going to go down this route, no tinpot Secretary of State for Education, no Chancellor, no Prime Minister was going to be able to lift this easily. It is Parliament's job and that is why it has to be a serious review, because there has to be a serious debate that follows it.

  Chairman: I want to reassure Stephen that once you have any witness in front of the Committee you can ask anything you like.

  Q211  Fiona Mactaggart: I want to start with the announcement about giving the Mayor of London powers in relation to skills in London. I was wondering why you did it.

  Alan Johnson: Because we had a situation where there were four, maybe five, Learning and Skills Councils in London. The issue of skills is so crucial to everything that the GLA and the Mayor are trying to do in London. It made absolute sense. There is already a parallel with Regional Development Agencies where the Mayor is responsible for appointing the Regional Development Agency in London. Everywhere else the appointment is made by the DTI and government. The Mayor made a very persuasive argument—to be honest, he was pushing at an open door here—that we should redefine learning skills so it is London wide. The Mayor is responsible for operating the strategy and the policies that are set by government but to give him more control over that in terms of the way that money is spent and the way that strategy is implemented in London was absolute common sense.

  Q212  Fiona Mactaggart: Do you think it is a model that other regions might be attracted by to put some public/political force around developing a skills strategy rather than the present rather anonymous Learning and Skills Council approach?

  Alan Johnson: The Learning and Skills Council is going through a big change anyway because they are moving away from their 47 areas and becoming much more localised. You can reach out and touch it, rather than it seeming fairly remote at the moment.

  Q213  Chairman: That is not true. You are going the other way, are you not? We have gone from the 43 to regional centres.

  Alan Johnson: We put a regional dimension there. God knows why it was not there in the first place. There were 47 councils and a headquarters in Coventry introduced at exactly the time we were setting up nine RDAs across the country. The absence of a regional focus was just palpable. Several years ago when I was in the junior minister job in education we put the regional tier there to the LSC. Now there is a regional tier and there are 47 local councils as there have been since 1999. If you keep the regional level there, it is not huge; there is a regional link with the Learning and Skills Councils. These 47 which have not been seen to work become much more localised. There is one at the moment in my patch that covers both sides of the River Humber. That would be a much more whole focus Learning and Skills Council. Do I think it is going to be replicated elsewhere? I doubt it. The RDAs are already different in London.

  Q214  Chairman: Why on earth should London get this special treatment? In our region of Yorkshire and Humber, why should we not have more independence in the way that the London area is going to get? It does seem to many of us who are in Yorkshire, Members outside London, that not only did London get the Olympics and so much more investment; they get the special privileges that other regions do not get. This is why I was elected to Parliament and so were you, Secretary of State, to stick up for our region.

  Alan Johnson: London is different. Every region could have been in this situation had the north east voted a different way. We came in in 1997 looking to decentralise. Part of that was a GLA; the rest of it were Regional Development Agencies which were decentralisation rather than devolution. It could have gone to a much more devolutionary route. It did not. If you are asking me are there ways in which your region could become much more focused on skills, it is the number one issue on the agenda of every RDA in the country. London has the structure there; it has a Mayor, a GLA and an autonomous system. As far as RDAs are concerned, it is in a different place because the Mayor appoints the RDA. They are self-contained in that respect. I am certainly up for an argument and a discussion about how we can improve the regional position on skills. We do not want to hog all of this. I am a great believer in decentralisation but Ken Livingstone is not making up his skills policy. It is the skills policy decided by government. He just has much more freedom over how he implements that.

  Q215  Chairman: There will not be a shift. You know the difficulty now on any issue in the Greater London areas that Members of Parliament cannot ask questions directly on a number of issues like transport, for example. That will not mean that Members of Parliament in this House cannot ask questions about skills because they are a deferred responsibility?

  Alan Johnson: No.

  Q216  Chairman: There will be none of that?

  Alan Johnson: Of course not.

  Chairman: We will come back to this issue because we are about to start a major inquiry into skills. You know we finished our FE inquiry. That will be published in September. We then start a major inquiry into skills so we will join that discussion again.

  Q217  Mr Chaytor: Are you saying that, following the publication of the Local Government White Paper which may well put the case for the concept of city regions rather than geographical regions as we have known them so far, if city regions have the powers of establishing their own directly elected mayor, what will be the logic of denying to the city region of Greater Manchester the same powers that apply in London?

  Alan Johnson: You are a few steps ahead of me. If we get to that position, if the Local Government White Paper does come out heavily on city regions and if city regions have a city mayor, there is an argument to say we want to replicate what is happening in London.

  Q218  Chairman: You are rather enthused about city regions, are you?

  Alan Johnson: I am very enthusiastic. When I was at the DTI responsible for RDAs, so were the RDAs. It was not seen as a threat to Regional Development Agencies; it was seen as an enhancement. The David Miliband idea of city regions was very exciting.

  Q219  Fiona Mactaggart: I was going to move on to the new Ofsted inspection regime. This links back to the issue that I raised before about the tendency in some schools to focus on children who are just below an achieving boundary and improve their results by pushing them over that relatively narrow distance between one level of achievement and the next. I have seen some things which suggest that the new Ofsted inspection regime that has been proposed by a local national association of head teachers representative, because it focused very much on short information prepared before a visit to the school and so on, is encouraging teaching to the test rather than education and learning. Have you had any evidence about that and what would you think about the new regime if that was true?

  Alan Johnson: I feel ill equipped to answer. I have not had any evidence on that. I would like to look at that and the earlier question you asked because it is not something that has registered on my Richter scale over the last eight weeks. Let me look into it.