Higher Education: Green Paper (Hansard, 5 February 1985)

§ Baroness David
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, later this year.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, can the Minister explain why the Green Paper should be delayed because of the muddle which the Government got themselves into over student grants? Perhaps the Minister will remember that he told this House just before 934 Christmas that the Green Paper would be published early in the new year. Turning to the recent letters which the Secretary of State wrote to the Chairmen of the University Grants Committee and of the National Advisory Body—the letters of 30th January—do we understand from those letters that the Government's philosophy on higher education means that qualifications and not ability to benefit (as both bodies proposed in their answers to the Secretary of State) are to be the criteria for entry to higher education? Does it mean, in other words, that the criteria for entry into higher education will not be the ability to benefit but qualifications, as has been the case in the past? That will be a great disappointment to a great many people.

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I think the first part of the supplementary question asked by the noble Baroness shows the difficulty. I genuinely tried to be helpful last time, but this time I am not going to try and make any guess at all as to what "later in the year" means. The discussion of a number of issues in the proposed Green Paper will need to take account of the review of students' support arrangements announced in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science on 5th December, 1984. The Government are considering how best to align the two exercises.
The best answer that I can give to the second supplementary asked by the noble Baroness is to quote from the speech which my right honourable friend made during last October's debate on higher education in the other place regarding the recommendation that entry to higher education should be on the basis of the reformulated Robbins principle. He said: I think that it would be agreed that under such a principle the student's 'ability to benefit' would have to be exactingly judged by institutions, in terms of not only the aptitude but the motivation of the candidate in relation to the course that he or she wishes to follow, regardless of whether the candidate is conventionally qualified or not". [Official Report, Commons, 26/10/84; col. 915.]

§ Lord Boyd-Carpenter
My Lords, can my noble friend say whether the Green Paper will contain any proposals for improving the manners of certain senior academics?

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I should think that that is somewhat unlikely.

§ Baroness Lockwood
My Lords, can the Minister indicate whether the Green Paper is likely to contain any proposals for introducing a comprehensive programme for continuing and part-time education along the lines of the recommendations from the UGC and the NAB?

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, it would be wrong to try to guess what the Green Paper will contain. Like the rest of us, the noble Baroness will have to wait and see.

§ Lord Beloff
My Lords, will the Minister give the House an assurance that the Green Paper will be based on the principle that access to higher education, whether as student or teacher, is a privilege to be earned by work and is not, as some dons in Oxford appear to think, a licence to plunder the public purse?

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I think I explained in my answer to the first supplementary question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady David, the Government's current policy on higher education.

§ Lord Glenamara
My Lords, will the Minister say whether the quote which he has just read out from his right honourable friend represents a departure from the Robbins principle, which has been the criterion by which students have been admitted to higher education for the last 20 years? It appeared to me to be so.

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I think that that would depend upon the person who was trying to interpret it. I am sure that the noble Lord opposite can interpret it as he wishes. I have my own way of interpreting it.

§ Lord Glenamara
My Lords, with respect, that is not good enough. Are the Government going to adhere to the Robbins criteria, which have obtained for the last 20 years? Let me remind the noble Lord what they are: namely, that any student who is qualified and who will profit by higher education will be found a place somewhere.

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, the noble Lord says it is not good enough. I am afraid it is my best. I think the noble Lord, like the rest of us, will have to wait to see what appears in the Green Paper.

§ Baroness David
My Lords, does the Secretary of State really expect that there can be (and I quote again from his letters to the chairmen of the UGC and the NAB of 30th January), the greatest possible shift to science and technology without a very substantial increase in resources? Did not the chairman of the UGC make it abundantly plain that to produce much-needed engineers will certainly require very much more funding?

§ The Earl of Swinton
My Lords, I am quite certain that the Government are right to concentrate on that side of things. Again, the noble Baroness will have to wait to see what appears in the Green Paper.