HL Deb 14 May 1991 vol 528 cc1558-64

8.35 p.m.

The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Baroness Trumpington) rose to move that the draft order laid before the House on 4th March be approved [14th Report from the Joint Committee].

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, we are here to consider whether my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales should be empowered to transfer the Polytechnic of Wales and the other local authority institutions of higher education in Wales out of the local authority sector.

The background to this proposal is the Government's decision, taken in 1987, to leave the Welsh institutions of higher education in the local government sector while the English institutions were incorporated and responsibility for their funding was transferred to the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC).

Your Lordships will be aware that we owe the growth of the public sector of higher education in Wales almost entirely to the local authorities. There is one voluntary college in Wales with some 700 students, but the remaining 15,000 students in the public sector are all in the local authority institutions of higher education. We owe a debt of gratitude to the local authorities that over the years have supported, sustained and developed the Polytechnic of Wales and the Welsh colleges of higher education and have brought them to the position they are in today, a position of mature development where it is right for them to be given independence from their maintaining authorities.

Four years have passed since it was decided to leave the Welsh colleges in the local government sector; four years in which they have continued to grow and to mature. The recommendations of independent consultants, Price Waterhouse, received last year, that the Polytechnic of Wales should be given corporate status with funding from the Welsh Office were timely. In considering those recommendations and their implications for the other higher education institutions, my right honourable friend has also had regard to the successful experience of the English polytechnics and colleges since they became independent in 1989, and also the equivalent institutions in Scotland where it has been accepted for many years that higher education is best provided by independent colleges. He has concluded that it will now be in the best interests of higher education in Wales if all the Welsh higher education institutions are given similar status to their counterparts elsewhere in Britain. I believe that the Opposition also take the view that the higher education institutions should now become independent of the local authorities and that the time has come for them to be funded by an all-Wales body. In a policy document published last year the Labour Party envisaged higher education in Wales becoming the responsibility of the proposed regional government for the Principality.

I should like to make it clear that my right honour able friend is not proposing to take control of the colleges himself or to take over ownership of their assets. His proposal is to make the institutions legally independent and to allow them to own their own property and employ their own staff. All the assets currently owned by the local authorities will pass to the independent colleges, which will remain locally based aid will continue to function as they do today. But legal independence will give the institutions the managerial freedom they need to operate successfully in the challenging climate of higher education in the 1990s.

The draft order before us, under Section 227(4) of the Education Reform Act 1988, is an enabling order. Bringing Section 122 of the Act into force in Wales will enable my right honourable friend to make a further order that will incorporate the six institutions concerned and allow him to transfer responsibility for their funding to himself. He already has powers that allow him to fund higher education institutions under the 1944 Education Act. Incorporation will be achieved by the creation of higher education corporations charged with the responsibility of conducting the institutions.

As well as the Polytechnic of Wales, the other institutions that meet the criteria for incorporation are the Cardiff and West Glamorgan institutes of higher education, the Gwent College of Higher Education, Bangor Normal College and, with the agreement of South Glamorgan County Council, which has been given, the Welsh College of Music and Drama.

My right honourable friend announced his intention of exercising his powers to incorporate these six institutions on 30th January. Some noble Lords may wonder whether the Government have further plans for higher education in Wales that go beyond the subject of our debate today. If so, I am afraid I must disappoint them. The Government have no announcements on this subject to make this evening and your Lordships will not expect me to anticipate future announcements that may or may not be made.

I hope that your Lordships will agree that the time has come for the Welsh local authority institutions of higher education to be incorporated and that the enabling draft order that is before us should be approved.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 4th March be approved [14th Report from the Joint Committee]—(Baroness Trumpington.)

8.42 p.m.

Lord Prys-Davies

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her careful and fair explanation of the meaning and implications of this brief but important order. She has explained that it will lead to the incorporation of six local authority institutions of higher education in Wales and their transfer out of local authority ownership and control.

In Wales, since the early part of the last century, people have taken the keenest interest in education and have given it a high priority. Schools and colleges have been seen as significant to Welsh national life and it is important that their governance be responsive to lay opinion. I join the Minister in paying tribute to the Welsh local education authorities, the founding fathers of these colleges. They justly deserve that tribute.

I confess that at first I was unhappy about the Secretary of State's decision to make the local authority colleges of higher education directly accountable to the Welsh Office. I was uneasy about that decision because I feared that it would tend to devalue the role of lay opinion in moulding their development. However, I have always accepted that there was a problem which called for an answer. It had been identified in one report and I believe that it had also surfaced in another. I did not feel that we should simply seek to maintain the status quo with few presentational changes. It seemed to me that that was not on. However, now that the Secretary of State's decision is to be activated, we must ensure that we and Welsh students derive the maximum benefit from the change.

I am interested to know how the Government envisage that the new system will work. I hope that the Minister can tell us more without trespassing upon the White Paper which will be before us shortly. I have a few questions for the Minister.

We are repeatedly told by Welsh Office Ministers that the incorporated colleges will gain independence and freedom. That is a phrase we often hear from their lips. The colleges will be independent of local authority control, of course. But although further away, the colleges will not be independent of the Welsh Office, will they?

What then will be the legal relationship? The Minister referred to legal independence from the authorities. What will be the legal relationship between the incorporated colleges and the Secretary of State? Can the Minister throw more light on that relationship? For example, will it be that of principal and agent—a well-known relationship? Or will it be a relationship between two contracting but clearly unequal parties? We are told that the incorporated colleges will gain freedom; but surely not the freedom to enter boldly into any area of experiment or duplication.

It is comforting to be told by Ministers that there will be no unnecessary duplication of courses, but how will that be achieved without somebody taking pretty awkward decisions? Perhaps the Minister can give an indication of who will resolve an institutional conflict between the incorporated college and the Secretary of State. I stress that I have a feeling that the Welsh Office should not assume that the new relationship will not bring its problems.

We are told that the Secretary of State will be advised by a committee of experts from industry. Those are words which I have seen used in another place. Can the Minister say what will be the remit of this committee? Will it be limited merely to advising on financial distribution of the budget between the colleges? Or will the remit be wider? We hope that it will be wider.

The speech in another place referred to industry being represented on the committee. I should be interested to know; why not the professions, in particular those of accountancy and the law? Will the committee contain representation from the colleges themselves? Will it contain a representative from the University of Wales? I suggest that a representative of the Assembly of the Welsh Counties could also make a valuable contribution. On the other hand, will the committee have a representative on the Welsh sub-committee of the Universities Funding Council for as long as that council is in existence?

There is also the wider and important question of promoting co-operation and partnership between the incorporated colleges and the federal University of Wales. This important area was touched upon by Sir Goronwy Daniel's working party on the functions and powers of the University of Wales, although it was not fully explored by the working party as it was outside its terms of reference. I am sure that the Government will agree that it is important to encourage and facilitate co-operation and partnership between the colleges and the university. How do the Government propose to do that?

I now look further ahead and my next comments are delivered in a personal capacity. I do not necessarily represent the views of the Benches behind me. As the Welsh Office comes to play a more dominant role in the development of higher education in Wales, I believe it may become more difficult to defend a continuance of the historic relationship between the University of Wales and the Department of Education and Science in London. Although I am not aware of any demand within the Welsh academic community generally for direct Welsh Office involvement in the affairs of the University of Wales—indeed, I believe there would be opposition from some quarters to such an involvement—nevertheless, I hope that the academic community will come to see in the not very distant future that the case for Welsh involvement in university affairs is substantial.

In the view of some of us, it is not satisfactory that the non-university colleges of higher education in Wales should be looking to the Welsh Office for direction and that the University of Wales should be looking to the Department of Education and a Welsh sub-committee of the Universities Funding Council. Wales is a very small country, with just over 2.5 million people, and it would seem to be far better that the higher education system in the Principality should be planned as a whole. Moreover, if the Welsh Office were to be solely responsible for higher education in Wales it would be much better placed to bring influence to bear on government policies, to encourage co-operation with industry and the professions in Wales and, not least, to mould public opinion in Wales, without which an education policy cannot succeed in the long term. Those are merely my own personal views and the Minister need not respond to that part of my speech.

Having put that on the record, I hasten to confirm, on behalf of these Benches, that we agree the Secretary of State should have the power which he seeks by virtue of this Order.

8.53 p.m.

Lord Parry

My Lords, the House will have listened with great interest and respect to the remarks of my noble friend. He is a product almost entirely of the Welsh education system and the words he has used in the House, even his personal words, will be read with great interest tomorrow in the Principality and in the colleges. I should say also to the Minister that the assurances she has given will be greatly welcomed in certain of the colleges. I speak as a member of the governing body of the West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education. I know that the members are interested in tonight's debate and awaiting a report that the institute will be given, as they hope it will be, the status that is reported it will be given.

I should like to add that the institute, as indeed many others in Wales, is not simply totally concerned with the education of the Welsh. In fact, one aspect that has greatly encouraged me in my association with the West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education is its international outlook. Confidently Welsh in its siting and a product, as my noble friend said, of the Welsh local authorities, nevertheless, it has sought to develop ties overseas. Only last week its principal, its vice-principal and its senior lecturer were in China, carrying out a seminar as important to the development taking place in China now as it is to the development of ties that have long existed between the colleges in Swansea and in China, even in the most difficult times of the relationship between that great nation and our small one.

This piece of enabling legislation will be greatly welcomed in the colleges, though there will be reservations in the local authorities. It is only fair to say that some of those who have long been associated with the development of education in Wales, through the local authorities, look a little askance at some of the freedoms they see being given. It is understandable that when people have grown up within one system they feel displaced and have reservations about the new policies as that system changes.

However, what has happened in Wales is that the reason for the creation of such institutions as the West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education has gone away. Originally, the institute was based on coal and steel and its principal purpose in life was to produce educated individuals to work in those two great industries. Those industries have gone away, so it is increasingly important that the institutions should align themselves with the new means of earning a living that Wales sees for itself.

I have been greatly encouraged by the fact that the institutions I know are well aware that they need to re-align their old systems to meet the challenge of a new era in Welsh affairs. I reiterate that while there will be some misgivings, particularly in the local authorities, as to the direction in which the colleges will develop without the paternalism of local authorities, within the colleges themselves certainly there will be a very real welcome for the freedom they will receive.

8.56 p.m.

Baroness Trumpington

My Lords, I hope I am not giving away state secrets when I say that the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, with his usual great courtesy, had given me warning of his questions. I am most grateful to him for that and also for his welcome for these proposals.

To take the first of the noble Lord's questions, the relationship between the newly-incorporated colleges and the Welsh Office will be similar to the satisfactory relationship which has existed between the department and Trinity College, Carmarthen, for many years. There is no more reason to think that it will lead to conflict in the case of the newly incorporated colleges than it has done in the case of Trinity College.

Incidentally, the noble Lord added one question: who will resolve conflict between the institutions and the Secretary of State? There is really no reason to think that conflict should arise between them, and the Welsh Office will be very careful not to interfere in the internal affairs of any institution.

To return to the noble Lord's main question, the department will provide funding, in return for which it will expect the institutions to provide courses for a specified number of students. As I say, the department will not interfere in the internal affairs of the colleges.

Secondly, the noble Lord asked who will be appointed to the Higher Education Advisory Group. Its composition has not yet been decided. In due course I expect that my right honourable friend will be looking for expertise in the field of higher education and knowledge of the needs of employers. No doubt he will give consideration to the advantages of maintaining links with the local authorities.

Finally, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, we are of course very keen to encourage co-operation between the incorporated institutions and the University of Wales colleges. That is easier to achieve between individual institutions at a local level, but consideration will also be given to creating links at the all-Wales level. These exist at the moment between the Wales advisory body and the Wales committee of the UFC.

I was most interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Parry, had to say. I am very glad to have reassured the West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education—a splendid institution, if I may say so. The international relations which it has and promotes are very important. I wish it very well for the future.

In conclusion, perhaps I may repeat the Government's view that legal independence and the managerial freedom that goes with it is the right way forward for the Welsh institutions of higher education. I ask for the support of your Lordships in approving the draft order that will enable that to happen.

On Question, Motion agreed to.