Examination of Witnesses (Questions 496
- 499)
MONDAY 11 MAY 2009
RT HON
JOHN DENHAM
MP AND SIR
ALAN LANGLANDS
Q496 Chairman: Good morning. Could
I very much welcome the Secretary of State, Mr John Denham, to
this final evidence session of our Students and Universities inquiry
and also a particularly warm welcome to Sir Alan Langlands, the
Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
Sir Alan, it is the first time we have had the pleasure of meeting
you before this Committee, but you are very welcome indeed; we
hope you enjoy the afternoon. Secretary of State, in February
2008 you made your speech to the Wellcome Foundation—I think
a very welcome speech—about looking 15 years ahead with
our higher education system. You have commissioned a number of
individual organisations or individuals to actually feed back
to you in terms of creating a framework for higher education.
Could you tell us at what stage that is and how do you actually
intend to bring that to the attention of the House and indeed
the wider public? Is there a timescale?
Mr Denham:
The process you describe is right. The key events I would point
you towards are a speech that I made to a university vice-chancellors'
audience at the end of February which I described as a "minded
to conclude" speech, so it was a clear indication of the
way in which I thought we would be going. The current plan is
to produce the forward looking HE framework in the summer, certainly
after the European and County Council elections, and then after
that we will be launching the independent review of fees and of
funding. I think the Committee will recall from last time I was
here the basic idea was that the framework should set out the
forward looking broad vision for higher education so that this
time, when people come to look at funding issues, there is hopefully
some sense of what it is we are trying to fund rather than trying
to deal with the question of funding in the abstract without debating
what sorts of universities, what their role is going to be, how
they are going to develop in the future.
Q497 Chairman: So in June/July time
that will be produced.
Mr Denham: Yes.
Q498 Chairman: You will then launch
the fees debate straight away or will you leave some time for
that to be debated before you actually go for this fees review?
What is your timescale there?
Mr Denham: I need to be a bit
cautious because I do not want you to get the idea that final
decisions are being taken, so I will share with you the indication
of current thinking and that might be that at the same time or
about the same time that we publish the higher education framework
we might indicate the broad terms of reference that a fees review
might have. As you will know, Charles Clarke set a number forward
in the original debate but we do need to look at whether that
covers everything we need to look at. There then, I think, needs
sensibly to be a period of time where people can comment on those
and have some discussion about it before we move ahead with the
review itself. So it is not an enormously drawn out process but
long enough certainly for people to see the higher education framework,
the way we want to move things and they can come back and make
their comments on it.
Q499 Chairman: So you are not expecting
any final decision before May 2010.
Mr Denham: I have not set a timetable
on that.
| 
