Lords Sitting of 10 May 2004

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth.

European Union Legislation
Lord Lamont of Lerwick Lord Lamont of Lerwick asked Her Majesty's Government:
What proportion of legislation put before Parliament in recent years has originated from the European Union.
The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Amos): My Lords, figures are not held centrally for all legislation. About half of all legislation with a significant impact on business, charities or the voluntary sector is introduced to implement European Union decisions with the proportion varying considerably from one policy area to another.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for that reply which is slightly different from that on the Cabinet Office website which states that 50 per cent of all major legislation starts in the EU. Is it not a remarkable admission that 50 per cent of major laws—and presumably an even higher proportion of minor laws—are made in the EU? Does the Minister agree that the relevant figure might become 60 or 70 per cent in a few years' time? Given that much EU legislation cannot be amended and cannot in practice be rejected by Parliament, how can it seriously be disputed that parliamentary proceedings are increasingly becoming a charade, and that because so much legislation is coming from Europe, the EU is acquiring the characteristics of a government?
Baroness Amos: My Lords, the noble Lord will not be surprised to hear that I do not agree with him. As regards
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the degree to which the legislation of individual departments comes from the European Union, the position in December of last year with respect to the Home Office, for example, was the following. During the 2002–03 Session it sponsored five Bills of approximately 868 pages. One of the Bills predominantly implemented EU requirements, another partially implemented EU requirements. The situation differs depending on the department. The 55 per cent figure related to Defra. The figures were very different for other departments. With respect to the noble Lord's point about amending or rejecting EU legislation, he will know that significant negotiation is conducted by our Ministers and others, usually in Brussels, before we reach the point where we agree anything.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, how many of the regulations to which the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, referred stem from the Maastricht Treaty to which he gave such strong support? As an alternative to the suggestions that he made, has my noble friend had any serious proposals to amend the present situation other than that Britain should leave the European Union?
Baroness Amos: My Lords, my noble friend is, of course, quite right in the sense that the party opposite negotiated the Maastricht Treaty. A significant proportion of regulations came out of that treaty. With respect to the current proposals for a constitutional treaty, our proposal is to negotiate because we believe that Britain's role is at the heart of Europe. So far as I understand it, the alternative being offered by the Leader of the Opposition is withdrawal from Europe.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, following the perfectly proper question of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, will the noble Baroness the Leader of the House at least reassure us that in the current negotiations the Government really will support proper blocking powers for national Parliaments against inappropriate and excessive EU legislation; in

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other words, that they will adopt the red card and will not let us down on this matter as well as on some of the other red lines which they claim to defend?
Baroness Amos: My Lords, I do not know to what the noble Lord refers when he says that we have let ourselves down with respect to any red lines. The Government published a White Paper in which they made clear our red lines. My right honourable friends the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have made it absolutely clear that those red lines will remain. We have been absolutely clear about the areas where we see some extension of qualified majority voting and those areas which have to retain unanimity.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, does the Minister accept the figures regarding the percentage of British legislation that is shaped by international obligations such as those under the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations or other international and UN agencies? Does she further accept that even if Britain were to leave the EU, we would still be bound in our domestic legislation by a whole series of international obligations of this kind and that the experience of the one administration that has set out to declare that it is outside and above international law—the Bush administration—has not been entirely happy in disregarding its obligations under international law?
Baroness Amos: My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very important point. Of course, a great deal of our legislation is shaped and influenced by international obligations that go beyond the European Union. One of the difficulties in answering this Question is that when you begin to look at the shaping and influencing of legislation, it is sometimes much more difficult to pin down than is suggested by the way in which the Question is framed. The noble Lord is right to draw our attention to the fact that even if this country were to leave the European Union, which, of course, I and my party do not want to see, we would remain bound by some of its provisions.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, will the Government now consider collecting these figures centrally? If they are not collected centrally, how are we to have an intelligent argument about what influence the European Union has on our legislation? My second question is the following. Since most of this legislation is automatically translated into British legislation, is there any longer a need for a House of Commons of 659 Members and a House of Lords of nearly 700 Members?
Baroness Amos: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon is, as usual, robust. With regard to collecting that information centrally, individual departments keep the information on the proportion of legislation that is introduced to implement EU decisions. It would be helpful if I reiterate the point that it would be wrong to see the issue as an imposition of regulations from outside. We
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take a very active part in collective decision-making in the EU and information on that is kept by individual departments. The size of the House of Commons is a matter for the other place, but it is important that we have MPs representing the constituencies that there are. The size of the House of Lords is a matter that your Lordships may wish to look at and think about in terms of the future of House of Lords reform.

Carbon Emissions: Household Sector
2.43 p.m.
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra asked Her Majesty's Government:
Why their document Energy Efficiency: The Government's Plan for Action lowers the expected savings in household carbon emissions by 2010 which were set out in the energy White Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Whitty): My Lords, Energy Efficiency: The Government's Plan for Action contains an aim of securing carbon savings from household energy efficiency of 4.2 million tonnes of carbon per annum by 2010. The figure of 5 million tonnes of carbon in the energy White Paper was an initial indication of what might be delivered. But detailed analysis since the energy White Paper has led us to conclude that 4.2 million tonnes is a realistic figure to set as an aim for the household sector. Latest revisions of projected carbon savings from other sectors more than offset this recalculation.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer, but in view of the prime importance attached by the Government to energy saving, why was the anticipated shortfall not made up in other ways? Bearing in mind that the objectives for energy saving are now somewhat reduced, that the target for renewables on present trends is unlikely to be achieved, that the target for CHP has been reduced by 20 per cent and that the latest indications for emissions show that there has actually been an increase, do the Government still expect to attain their Kyoto and EU objectives by 2010?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, there has been a recent and short-term increase in coal burn, which has accounted for the very recent increases in carbon use, but the overall Kyoto objective of 12.5 per cent by 2008 to 2012 will be achieved. We are confident of that. The Government also have a 20 per cent domestic target, which is more stretching and is one that we are confident that we can achieve, but with substantial intensification of those measures. Regarding energy efficiency, my point is that although the household component has been reduced, other sectors have been increased by more than that. Therefore, that contribution is still valid and robust.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, can the Minister say how atmospheric carbon can be reduced to target in 2010

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by killing off nuclear power generation by 2007, or by supporting the Ministry of Defence's objections to the erection of wind turbines all across the country? If the Government cannot meet the objectives published in the energy White Paper for renewable energy sources, does the Minister intend to reduce atmospheric pollution with a new carbon tax on business and power generation, or will it be, in the words of his right honourable friend, by,
"taxing the motorist out of the car and on to public transport",
or will it be a bit of both?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, every sector has to bear its responsibility, and fiscal measures are part of the way that that is achieved. We already have fairly high fuel taxation and the climate change levy has proved an extremely effective way of achieving carbon savings with energy efficiency in the business sector. The renewables target is ambitious but, we believe, is one that we can achieve. The run-down of nuclear power stations is unlikely to affect the situation for 2010, although renewables will have to begin to replace some of that, alongside other measures outlined in the White Paper, beyond 2010.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I can understand the Minister's optimism, even if I do not accept it with regard to the national situation. However, is he satisfied that we are not escaping from reality, because while we work hard in this country, we are still exporting to other parts of the world plant that generates a great deal of carbon dioxide?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, just as every sector in the United Kingdom and the EU needs to bear some responsibility for reducing carbon emissions, so does every country in the world, particularly the developed countries which have by far the largest element of carbon emissions. It is important that not only all EU countries meet their commitments—although not all are currently on track to achieve them—but that other countries such as the United States also meet those targets.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, what assumptions are the Government making about the contribution of nuclear generated power from France towards the reduction of our Kyoto targets?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the presumption on importing energy from France is that that will continue at the present rate. Therefore, it does not affect the calculations of the reduction.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, was it not clear from the interesting speech made on Thursday by the Minister's colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury of Turville, that the Government are now clearly having second thoughts about embarking on a new programme of nuclear generation? Is the Minister
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aware that many of those who took part in that brief debate detected a marked change of emphasis on the part of that Minister?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I was not present for that debate but I am aware of what my noble friend Lord Sainsbury indicated, which is what we have indicated throughout the proceedings on the Energy Bill and before; namely, that we are keeping the nuclear energy option open but that we believe and are confident that we can meet the targets outlined in the White Paper without new nuclear build—but we would always keep that technology open as an option to help to meet both our energy requirements and our carbon reduction aims.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, neither the noble Lord nor anyone else in the Government have yet said what they are doing to keep the option open. Are they investing any money, because such options do not stay open automatically, they are not fixed open doors—far from it?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I disagree with the presumption there. We continue to maintain a substantial nuclear element at present, which brings us technological advance, and we are funding significant amounts of nuclear research. However, in most respects, nuclear technology is known, available and can be established. Were we to require nuclear energy to meet our objectives, it would be possible for us to do so; we have the expertise, knowledge and research and engineering base here to do it.

Criminal Records Bureau
2.51 p.m.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I declare an interest as an employee of Age Concern England.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to develop the work of the Criminal Records Bureau.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My Lords, the Criminal Records Bureau has recently published its strategic plan, which sets out its agenda for the three years 2004–05, 2005–06 and 2006–07. The plan sets out four key aims, which are to improve quality and accuracy; to reduce costs and bureaucracy, including achieving self-funding status from 2005–06; to develop capacity and to improve delivery times. Copies of the strategic plan have been placed in the Library.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. She will no doubt be aware that CRB clearance is currently taking between two and four months to process. In the light of that, does she agree

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that the relaxation of the requirement for people carrying out domiciliary care to be cleared by the CRB so that they are required only to have applied for CRB clearance potentially leaves vulnerable adults in their homes at great risk?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I certainly understand the noble Baroness's anxiety about that. She will know that there has been significant improvement in clearance times. I hear what she says about it taking two to three months; I cannot confirm that that is correct. She will know that the CRB's performance has been transformed since autumn 2002. Since June 2003, the CRB has, on average, been issuing 93 per cent of standard and enhanced disclosures within two and four weeks respectively, against a public service standard of 90 per cent. So I cannot agree with the noble Baroness that it is not doing well. I accept that safety is a matter of acute concern and we believe that the system that we now have in place is robust and working far better than it did before.
Baroness Greengross: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that, despite the great improvements in timing, it still takes too long for many people—employers, employees and would-be employees—working in the social care sector? Would it not be possible for some portable, time-limited CRB check to be initiated for people who move from job to job within the care sector? I understand if people need a long check when they start working in the sector but, after that, existing employees might need only quickly to update their check, rather than to submit a new one.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I understand that that anxiety has been raised. The noble Baroness will know that we have taken steps to respond to the whole issue of portability so that, if someone moves from one job to another within a short compass or, for instance, has a CRB check for being a teacher and wants to be a Scoutmaster or mistress too, he or she can use the CRB check for the one purpose. Obviously, it will then be a matter for the employer whether that is sufficient or whether a new check needs to be made. We have given that matter a lot of consideration and think that the new arrangements have responded fairly well to the concerns raised.
Lord Dholakia: My Lords, has the Minister considered the impact not only of the delay but of the charges on voluntary organisations, especially charitable organisations, bearing in mind that the income—especially the core income for the appointment of staff—of many such organisations has dropped? Will she please hold a discussion to ensure concessions for voluntary organisations, which provide such valuable services in this country?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, your Lordships will know that we have already taken steps to ensure that volunteers are processed without charge. That has been a significant benefit to voluntary organisations, which rely on the service of people who come forward with great generosity to help. That has been significant and, at present, we intend to maintain that position.
Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, will not the introduction of a national identity card make the whole process far faster?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, it will certainly make identification far faster and more secure, but whether it will change the need to have the CRB check is by no means certain, because the whole point of the CRB check is to discover whether there are criminal or other convictions or other material that needs to be taken into account before someone is given a job of some sensitivity.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, with regard to the matter of matching information against police computers, is the Minister still concerned about the number of instances when checks have thrown up apparent convictions of which the person has not in fact been guilty?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, of course I am concerned about that, but the noble Baroness will know that the whole purpose of the CRB is to err on the side of safety and caution. What has happened, which is a matter of regret, is that where two people have very similar names and details, on occasion, a report of a conviction has been triggered that has not been founded. However, I hope that the noble Baroness will agree that it is better for us to be safe rather than sorry. Although we bitterly regret that that happens, we would prefer it to be that way round than for someone who is guilty of a fairly unpleasant offence to be allowed to look after vulnerable people.
Lord McNally: My Lords, the Minister will recall that in the Soham tragedy, one problem was a change of name, which prevented proper checks on one of the individuals concerned. Is she convinced that the new procedures take account of the ease with which people use different names as they move through the system?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, it would be foolish ever to say that we have honed the system so keenly that no further improvements can be made. I do not suggest that. What I say is that we have taken all the steps that we can at present to ensure that it is as robust as possible. Of course, we must wait to see what the inquiry recommends. When those recommendations are to hand, we will take them very seriously indeed and consider what more, if anything, needs to be done.

Interest Rates and Consumer Debt
2.58 p.m.
The Earl of Northesk The Earl of Northesk asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their view of the effect of increases in interest rates on the level of consumer debt.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord McIntosh of Haringey): My Lords, despite last week's rise, interest rates remain low by historical standards and households remain confident in the future of their own finances, reflecting the sound fundamentals of low and stable inflation with unemployment at its lowest level since the 1970s. The Government aim to provide a framework of macroeconomic stability and awareness of financial issues within which people can make informed, responsible decisions about how much debt it is prudent to incur.
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Is it not a cause for concern that there is growing evidence that people, particularly the most disadvantaged, are resorting to debt to fund their day-to-day living expenses?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No, my Lords, I am not aware that there is such evidence. The Department of Trade and Industry published a White Paper on consumer credit last December, following—but not, of course, because of—debate in this House. There is concern about some aspects of consumer and household debt and there are remedies in the responses being made to the White Paper.
Lord Davies of Coity: My Lords, for as long as I can remember, society has always encouraged home ownership. That could not be demonstrated more clearly than in the widespread sale of council houses in the 1980s. What proportion of debt results from home purchase and home improvement, and what proportion occurs as a result of buying consumer goods?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I do not think that it is possible to make that breakdown of consumer debt, although I acknowledge that it is a legitimate question. Since my noble friend draws attention to mortgage debt, he will be aware that the Financial Services Authority is taking over responsibility for regulating mortgage business from 1 October this year. It seeks to control, among other things, the loan to value ratio. It wants to see to it that mortgage providers must take into account before concluding an agreement the purchaser's ability to maintain payments on the loan.
Lord Pilkington of Oxenford: My Lords, does the Minister see, as I do on the History Channel, that very attractive advertisements are being broadcast on Sky
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Digital to encourage people to go into debt? All sorts of attractive options are offered. Are the Government thinking of doing anything about that?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, there are a number of problems with personal debt which are identified in the consumer credit White Paper. One of them is advertisement, to which the noble Lord refers; another is the responsibility of trading standards officers in the enforcement of the law against loan sharks. Understandably, trading standards officers concentrate on issues of public safety. As a result of the White Paper, a pilot is setting up specialised teams of trading standards officers with enforcement officers, using the Proceeds of Crime Act to penalise those who are loan-sharking poorer people in particular. I hope that that, among other solutions, will make some difference to the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, rightly identifies.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, further to the Minister's Answer to the noble Earl, is he aware of the experience of citizens advice bureaux and the huge burden on it in the amount of debt counselling that it must provide? Is there any sense in government that the escalating reliance on debt is a massive turnaround from the wisdom of earlier generations? Notwithstanding the prosperity that seems to support it, does not the Minister sometimes feel that we are getting to a point of corporate and social imprudence that we shall live to regret?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, as is appropriate, the right reverend Prelate takes a very long view. Of course, if we go back to a prohibition on usury, we could say that there has been a significant increase in indebtedness. In point of fact, in recent years there has not been an increase in indebtedness. Interest payments as a proportion of disposable income are now at 7.1 per cent, compared with an average in 1979 to 1997 of 9.4 per cent, with a peak of 15 per cent. In the shorter term, which I am obliged to address, it is not as bad as the right reverend Prelate thinks.
Lord Newby: My Lords, does the Minister agree with the FSA that the number of families facing financial difficulties has risen by some 15 per cent over the past 12 months to 6.9 million families, a very significant number? Many are poorer families who have found themselves the victims of aggressive marketing and then extortionate loan rates.
The Minister has mentioned the consumer credit White Paper on several occasions. Will he urge his colleagues in the DTI to speed up the review of the consumer credit system? I understand that it could be three or more years before any new measures are introduced to implement changes to deal with these unsatisfactory current practices.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, there are different ways of looking at the figures. The Bank of England, for example, thinks that some of the increased borrowing, particularly for mortgages, is from higher-income families rather than lower-income ones. It depends on the kind of borrowing in question.

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As to the review started by the consumer credit White Paper, we should not assume that much of what is wrong is in the Consumer Credit Act 1974. As I mentioned when I talked about the role of trading standards officers, much of it is in the implementation. I assure the noble Lord that the Department of Trade and Industry is pressing ahead for reform without waiting for further legislation.

Business
Lord Grocott: My Lords, with permission, there will be a Statement later this afternoon, at a convenient time after 3.30 p.m. The subject is "Iraq: current security arrangements and allegations of mistreatment". The Statement will be repeated by my noble friend Lord Bach.
Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and ordered to be printed.

Charities
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Commons message of 4 May be now considered, and that a committee of six Lords be appointed to join with the committee appointed by the Commons to consider and report on any draft Charities Bill presented to both Houses by a Minister of the Crown;
That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following be named of the committee:

L. Best,

E. Caithness,

L. Campbell-Savours,

B. McIntosh of Hudnall,

L. Phillips of Sudbury,

L. Sainsbury of Preston Candover;

That the committee have power to agree with the Commons in the appointment of a chairman;
That the committee have leave to report from time to time;
That the committee have power to appoint specialist advisers;
That the committee have power to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom;
That the quorum of the committee shall be two;
That the reports of the committee from time to time shall be printed, notwithstanding any adjournment of the House; and
That the committee do report on the draft Bill by 30 September 2004.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to; and a message was ordered to be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Higher Education Bill
3.6 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Baroness Ashton of Upholland): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Arts and Humanities Research Council]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 9, after "instruction" insert "and post-graduate studies"
The noble Baroness said: This minor amendment relates to Clause 1, which sets out the objectives of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Looking at the objectives, I was struck that paragraph (a), as well as requiring the council to carry out research in the arts and humanities, also requires it to facilitate, encourage and support,
"instruction in the arts and humanities".
Traditionally, research councils have not supported undergraduate teaching but are major supporters of postgraduate teaching. As is clear from the detail on the Arts and Humanities Research Board, around 50 per cent of moneys going to the board today support studentships.
The wording of the first part of the Bill has been taken substantially from the wording relating to research councils in the Science and Technology Act 1965. That legislation was enacted 39 years ago, since when practice has changed. In particular, today we see in many universities both formal teaching of postgraduate students and the incorporation of postgraduate students into research teams to a degree that was not prevalent in 1965. The formal instruction of postgraduate students is an extremely important part of the function of the research councils. I felt therefore that it would be appropriate to have a reference not only to "instruction" but to "instruction and postgraduate studies". That would reflect modern-day practice.
I felt strongly that it was all very well to borrow from the 1965 Act, but we want to bring it up to date. It is appropriate, given the importance of the role of postgraduate support and teaching on the part of the research councils that such a reference should be included in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Dearing: If there is any doubt about the inclusion of postgraduate studies in the clause, I would commend the inclusion of the words recommended by

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the noble Baroness. As she says, such work accounts for getting on for half of the funding that goes through the present board.
Apart from that, I welcome the clause. It completes the Government's implementation of the recommendation made by a committee that I chaired in 1997 that there should be such a council. In welcoming that final stage of implementation, I must say, as we recognised in 1997, how important research in the arts and humanities is to the social and economic well-being of the country. We noted at that stage that the performing arts, fine arts, literature and historic buildings—even if narrowly defined—employed twice as many people as the motor industry and as many as the building societies and banks put together. I hope that, as the council moves into its new life, the Government will ensure that the importance of the arts and humanities is borne well in mind.
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for moving the amendment and for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. It is not an ideologically driven amendment, although it is an important one. I hope that the Minister will respond constructively. Well, she always is constructive, but I hope that she will respond positively to the amendment.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: Whenever someone says that something is not ideologically driven, I feel an instinct to find an argument against it. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, has put her finger on an important point.
I know that the Minister will have been told by her officials that the words suggested by the amendment are unnecessary because the meaning of the clause is apparent to all concerned. I studied the amendment, and it was not apparent to me that the meaning of the clause was obvious, so I hope that the Minister will think about the matter and table an amendment in similar terms, if this one is technically defective, which is the other piece of advice that she may be getting from her officials in the Box. It would be a very good thing to make it explicit in the Bill that there is a responsibility in respect of postgraduates as well.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I begin by saying to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, that I did not get either of those pieces of advice from officials. I recognised the words that the noble Lord used from other discussions that I have had in the House and will have in Committee.
I am pleased by the welcome that the introduction of the Arts and Humanities Research Council has had outside the House. I also feel that, although we may be debating some of the issues relating to the council today, the council has generally been welcomed. To the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, I say that I accept that practice has changed, but the basis of the legislation, albeit 38 or 39 years old, is still sound. It is important, as we will see when we discuss later amendments, that we make sure that the research councils can operate together, when that is appropriate. I also recognise that this is another example of how we are catching up at a later date with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing.
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I appreciate the importance of the issue of adequate support for postgraduate studies. As noble Lords will know, Clause 1 defines the new research council as a body set up by Royal Charter and outlines its objectives. Postgraduate studies, although not explicitly mentioned, as noble Lords said, are implicit in paragraph (a)(ii) of Clause 1.
Noble Lords may have seen the draft Royal Charter, which we made available. It creates the Arts and Humanities Research Council and sets out its constitution in detail, along with the detailed objectives for which it is established and incorporated. I draw the Committee's attention to Article 2(1)(a) of the draft Royal Charter, which expressly states that one of the objects for which the research council is established is,
"to promote and support by any means high-quality, basic, strategic and applied research and related postgraduate training in the arts and humanities".
I hope that that will reassure the Committee that the promotion and support of postgraduate training in the arts and humanities will be at the heart of the research council's role and remit.
The Committee will be aware that the charter that creates the new research council will have the weight of law. It is the right place to spell out in detail the requirements on the council. We intend that the charter will be similar, if not identical, to the one that we have made available in draft form. I hope that, on that basis, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
3.15 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I am interested in the drafting of the clause. Why does the reference in paragraph (a)(ii) to,
"instruction in the arts and humanities"
preclude undergraduate studies, which, presumably, it does? Can the council fund undergraduate studies?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: As the noble Baroness will be aware, funding for undergraduate study comes from HEFCE. This is a research council, which is why the clause is set out in that way.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I recognise that, but the Bill defines the function of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Universities UK says that it is satisfied that the position is as near as possible to the funding of the other research councils. Is the wording taken from that applying to other research councils?
The Bill says that the council will have,
"objects consisting of, or comprised in, the following—
(a) carrying out, facilitating, encouraging and supporting …
(ii) instruction in the arts and humanities".
The wording does not confine it to postgraduate work. Is the position made clear somewhere else in the Bill? It is a question of the wording of the Bill.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I refer the noble Baroness to the charter, which makes the position

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clear. If the noble Baroness is still not satisfied that the link is clear, after looking at the charter with reference to that part of the Bill, I will write to her and make it explicit.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I apologise for coming back again on the matter. The Minister said that she had not had either of the arguments that I suggested put by officials. One of them was that the matter was already covered elsewhere in the Bill. She said that it was already covered in the charter. That is almost the same point.
Does not the charter also cover research in the arts and humanities and instruction in the arts and humanities? If we are relying on the charter, which I understand is not a legal document, to spell out the duties, why is it necessary to have sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii)? If it is all right to have those sub-paragraphs, why cannot they be amended in the way suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: When I said to the noble Lord that that was not the advice of my officials, I meant it. The particular reference that, I thought, the noble Lord was making was to advice about the specifics of the Bill. I saw the charter slightly separately. It is a nuance, but, none the less, I shall stick to it.
As I understand it, the legislation has been drafted to ensure that what is in the Bill is appropriate to the establishment of the research council, linked to the legislation of 1965, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, referred. The detail is in a Royal Charter and has the weight of law because of that. My understanding is that, if the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, examines the detail in the charter, which has the weight of law, and links it back to the relevant clauses, she will see that all is conjoined in the right way. If that is not the case, I will, as always, write to the noble Baroness, copy the letter to the noble Lord and put a copy in the Library.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I am also grateful to other noble Lords for their support on the amendment.
The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, expressed precisely my feelings on the matter. The wording in the Bill is misleading. It implies that there is support for undergraduate instruction as well as graduate instruction. The emphasis on postgraduate studies on the part of research councils nowadays is significant. I accept that that is spelt out in the charter. But I come back to my point: as it appears in the Bill, the wording is slightly misleading.
However, for the moment, I shall accept the explanation—
Lord Roberts of Conwy: Perhaps I may intervene before the noble Baroness withdraws her amendment, as I suspect that she will. I support her view, and that of others, that the scope of the charter—Section 2(1)(a)—is
16
quite different from the scope of the Bill as it applies to these matters. The Bill is somewhat broader and the charter is narrower in its scope.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, for his intervention, which probably reinforces my inclination that, in withdrawing this amendment now, we shall probably return to this issue at Report stage and have another shot at it. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Expenses of Council]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 2, line 7, at beginning insert "The Council shall be responsible for developing a programme of activities consistent with the objective listed in section 1 and"
The noble Baroness said: In speaking to Amendment No. 2, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, which apply to Clause 3. They are probing amendments that relate to the relationship between the new research council and the Secretary of State. As in Amendment No. 1, they question whether the current wording of the Bill reflects present-day practice in relation to research councils and the desirability of giving research councils slightly greater autonomy and freedom of action than implied by the current wording of the clause.
I confess that I have put down those amendments because it is important that the Committee should have a chance to debate the detail of the Bill in relation to the setting up of the new research council. Like others, I welcome the fact that the current Arts and Humanities Research Board will finally obtain the status of a fully-fledged council. In no sense, do I want to detract from that achievement.
From the debate at Second Reading, it is quite clear that there is support for this research council on all sides of the House. However, it became apparent in the discussion on Amendment No. 1 that the structure still reflects that created in 1965. Therefore, the Bill presents us with an opportunity to review that structure and to consider how appropriate it is almost 40 years on.
I turn now to Amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 4. Clause 1 sets out the functions of the council. As it stands, Clause 3(1) states boldly and baldly that,
"The Secretary of State may pay the Arts and Humanities Research Council such sums as he determines in respect of the expenses",
incurred in carrying out those functions. Yet, for some time, it has been the practice of the research councils to develop programmes of activities that reflect and balance the priorities of their different functions and the expenses that derive from these activities.
I would therefore argue that it would be more accurate for the Bill to lay down that the council should develop such a programme of activities and that the Secretary of State's role is to provide the

17
funding for that programme. By changing the word "may" to "shall", I am also arguing that while it is recognised in the words,
"such sums as he determines",
that the Secretary of State has discretion to decide how much money he gives to the research council in respect of its activities, it is, nevertheless, his duty to pay something towards those expenses. The word "may" leaves to the Secretary of State's discretion not only how much shall be paid, but also whether he will pay anything at all. Implicitly, in setting up the research council, I would argue that the Secretary of State is willing that the activities described in Clause 1 should be undertaken. Therefore, he should accept an obligation to fund those activities—hence, the word "shall" should replace the word "may"—while retaining the discretion through that funding function to have some say over the scale of those activities.
Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 relate to subsection (3). As it stands, the wording is stark; that is,
"The Council must comply with any direction of the Secretary of State as to the use of expenditure of payments made under subsection (1)".
The amendment would make clear the relative autonomy of the research council to determine its own programme while recognising that, ultimately, "he who pays the piper calls the tune". But, on such occasions, that should be transparent. If the Secretary of State disagrees with the priorities developed by the research council and fails to persuade it of his way of thought, it is open to him to insist on his way, but only by issuing a direction to the research council that is open and transparent.
The Minister may argue that this wording is no different from that in the Bill; that the research council is obliged to comply with any direction from the Secretary of State and that the word "direction" implies an open transaction. I would argue that by breaking the sentence into two parts—making it clear the Secretary of State has to issue a clear direction and that the research council has to comply—we are subtly endorsing the relative autonomy of the research council in relation to the Secretary of State. It does not have to do everything that the Secretary of State tells it to do. Where there is disagreement, the Secretary of State must be open and transparent about why he is insisting on his way.
On reading the debate that took place in Committee in the House of Commons, the Minister may respond that the wording cannot be changed because it is taken from the Science and Technology Act 1965 and applies to all research councils. As I have said before, much has changed since 1965. The whole function and relationship between government and research councils has changed. We now have a director general of the research councils sitting within government. In 1965, the research councils were set apart from government and were relatively autonomous with a board pulling together the workings of the research councils in a very loose way.
That has now changed. There is a direct line of responsibility from the Minister to the director general of the research councils sitting in the Office of Science
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and Technology. It is a different relationship now, which should be reflected in the Bill. I would argue strongly that it would be a good thing to incorporate within the wording of the Bill that relative autonomy and that where there is disagreement the Secretary of State must issue a directive to the research council. I beg to move.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I am delighted to have an early opportunity to speak in favour of this part of the Bill. In so doing, I declare my interest as chief executive of Universities UK, which has long campaigned for the establishment of a research council for arts and humanities. We have been a partner in bringing forward these proposals.
Perhaps I may draw attention to the role of UUK's former president and the current president of London Metropolitan University, Professor Roderick Floud, who played an enormous part in pressing for the establishment of the AHRC. Together with a number of vice-chancellors, he felt passionately that research into arts and humanities should be treated in the same way as other research councils.
I know that academics in arts and humanities have sometimes felt that their work is not taken as seriously by the Government as that in other fields. I am sure that, in her reply, the Minister will want to reassure them that the Government recognise the importance of research in these fields to our national and cultural life, as well as to our international reputation.
Research in the arts and humanities underpins our understanding of science and technology and their impact on society; that is, its history and the legal, ethical and social implications.
The current world climate convincingly demonstrates the need for experts in the arts and humanities. Like their counterparts in the sciences, our academics in the arts and humanities help us to understand the world in which we live in all its religious, cultural, geographical and historical diversity. This is not about window dressing; it is essential.
I should like to make one further point. In the past I and others have had some cause to criticise Ministers, in particular following the publication of the White Paper, The Future of Higher Education, for tending to assume that all research is like big science. It is not, and I hope that the Arts and Humanities Research Council will help to work, within the Office of Science and Technology, to redress the balance in government thinking.
In my view, the legislative framework is sound. It closely resembles the framework for the other research councils contained in the Science and Technology Act 1965, and where there are differences between the structure used in that Act and what is set out in this Bill, the reasons for them are good. Therefore I do not support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, although I am grateful to her for providing the opportunity to say that Clause 3 provides the right balance between the legitimate influence of the Secretary of State in directing the way in which public money should be spent and freedom of operation for the council.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I hesitate to disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, after our love affair on the last amendment. I should say that I agree with her objectives. We have now a more centralising, control freak Government than we have ever had, or at least in my lifetime. Again and again we see the Government determined to bring power and control to the centre and to Whitehall. Therefore when I first saw the amendment, I thought that it marked a step in the right direction. Moreover, when listening to the noble Baroness introduce it, it is clear that that is what she has in mind. But I do not think that it does the job.
To seek to change "may" to "shall", so that subsection (1) would read:
"The Secretary of State [shall] pay the Arts and Humanities Research Council such sums as he determines",
means that he could determine to pay the council nothing. The amendment would not meet the objective of securing for the council a degree of independence over the use of its funding. Although I have not tabled an amendment in my name, I think it would be better to be altogether more radical by proposing that the role of the Secretary of State should be to set out the broad strategic approach and objectives rather than that of issuing directions.
Amendment No. 5 seeks to delete subsection (3), which states:
"The Council must comply with any direction of the Secretary of State as to the use or expenditure of payments made under subsection (1)".
I say amen to that. Unfortunately, however, in a later amendment the noble Baroness seeks to put in something almost as bad, thereby defeating the object of the exercise. I do not know whether the noble Baroness will return to this point at a later stage in our consideration, but I think that she is on to something here, which is the need to set up a body, give it a clear set of objectives and let it get on with the job. Otherwise there will be a continual determination on the part of others to make changes—I hope that that ringing is not from my telephone. No, it is not, although the ring tone is similar to mine, which is always alarming. As I said, there will be a determination to second-guess these bodies which have been set up with clear objectives and which are staffed with able people. That is true of all governments; it may even have been true of previous governments.
I do not know what the noble Baroness intends to do, but if she returns with a slightly more robust amendment that seeks a greater degree of independence for the Arts and Humanities Research Council, then we may be in a position to give her some support.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: I wish to endorse rather than repeat the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, on the importance of the research council. She made the case very well.
I plead for one principle to operate in this area, which is that of consonance and congruity in the arrangements between the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Government, and other research councils and the Government. For a long
20
time the arts and humanities community has felt itself to be two or three steps behind the other academic areas and I see this part of the Bill as a move to change that situation. Whatever further amendments or changes may be proposed in due course by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, we must look for consonance and congruity between this proposed new research council and the other research councils.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: It is clear that many noble Lords in the Chamber know exactly how research councils function because they have worked with them in various different contexts. However, we do not all do so and I am finding it hard to envisage exactly how this is to operate. Does Clause 3(1) mean that a research council should always hold discussions with the Secretary of State before embarking on any operation in order to ensure that funding will be provided, or is that not the case? What is the process here?
The subsection states that:
"The Secretary of State may pay … such sums as he determines in respect of the expenses that the Council has incurred, or expects to incur, in carrying out the objects listed".
How would the council ensure that the Secretary of State will provide the necessary funding?
Lord Morgan: I too strongly support the proposed Arts and Humanities Research Council and I am sorry that, due to circumstances beyond my control, I was not able to express that support at Second Reading. I should declare an interest as one who has spent the past 48 years doing research in the arts and humanities, and not much else. So I warmly endorse what was said by my noble friend Lady Warwick.
I do not think that the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, are necessary. However, she has made an extremely important point; that is, to encourage the underlying autonomy and freedom of operation for the board. I say that for one particular reason: research in the arts and humanities is commonly different in character from that undertaken in the social and natural sciences. Most of us are single scholars. Broadly speaking, my own methodology has been that of the Venerable Bede, and I do not think that things have changed very much. I hope, therefore, that the new council will be encouraged to appreciate the different character of research in this area. It has been observed that this is crucial work and we should not try to impose inappropriate models on it. Having said that, I warmly welcome the proposal in the Bill.
Lord Walton of Detchant: It has been 26 years since my membership of the Medical Research Council ended, so perhaps my experience is somewhat out of date. In those days the financial allocations made to the research councils were provided as a total sum by the government. The then advisory board for the research councils then recommended allocations to individual research councils. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, observed, at that time it was quite clear that the research councils were totally independent of government and were absolutely autonomous in their decision making.

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However, the situation has changed. In those days we would not have accepted Clause 3(3) relating to a direction by the Secretary of State because independence was one of the principles underlying the activities of the research councils. However, today there is a Director General of the Research Councils who presumably is the agent of the Secretary of State and who may direct in this way. That, I think, was conceded many years ago.
Although I sympathise with the reasons why the noble Baroness has tabled these amendments, in retaining the principle of equity between the different research councils—and I welcome very much the establishment of this new body—it is reasonable to keep the clause as drafted.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: I rise to make a tiny point and in doing so I mean no disrespect to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. She has taken great trouble with her amendments to make sure that they observe the consequential order, but I observe that were Amendment No. 2 to be carried in Committee, I would move an amendment on Report that the words "Arts and Humanities Research" should be substituted between the first two words of her amendment, and that the subsequent reference in line 7 to "Arts and Humanities Research" should be deleted.
I appreciate that the words "the council" stand by themselves towards the end of Clause 2, but that is because the Arts and Humanities Research Council has already been referred to earlier in the clause. It is a purist's point. but it is sensible to be vigilant.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: Let me begin by saying that it is interesting to see how keen noble Lords are to see this research council come into being, and I am very grateful for the support for the Arts and Humanities Research Council from all sides of the House. It is an important step.
When we talk about the 1965 Act, and the underpinning that it gives this new legislation, it is important that we recognise that it is not precisely what is needed. That is why the Bill seeks to mirror that Act and to bring it up to date. It is important to recognise that that is a 39 year-old piece of legislation. When I was looking into this area of policy, I asked when we had last looked at the way the research councils were functioning, and how well they were functioning. I know that noble Lords in the Chamber will be aware of the quinquennial review in 2001, which found the system to be working well. It made a number of recommendations—about the strategic framework, about working with other stakeholders—but overall it was felt that the research councils were performing well. Adding this new research council is done on the basis that, in general, this is the right way to go. As the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, indicated, it is important, in setting up a new research council, to ensure a synergy of activity and the opportunity for councils to work together in areas where there is an overlap between the arts, humanities and science.
We wanted to avoid a situation whereby, for example, the Office of Science and Technology—to which the research council will report—or even the
22
Department of Trade and Industry would need to offer different guidance to different research councils in advising them of their legal responsibilities. Nor did we want one reporting framework for some councils and another for the AHRC, which could make crosscutting programmes more difficult to achieve.
So we have sought to mirror arrangements which we believe are working well, with the necessary updating of terminology. We will be setting out the detailed requirements for strategic and annual planning in the "management statement and financial memorandum". That will be similar to that of other research councils and modelled on the guidelines applying to non-departmental public bodies.
That is the backdrop to the approach that we have taken on these amendments. Amendments Nos. 2 and 4, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, are inter-linked. They would require the council to develop a programme of activities consistent with the objects set out in Clause 1. The Secretary of State would then be obliged to fund the carrying out of those activities. We looked very carefully at the effect of these amendments, and I can reassure the Committee that the development of a programme of activities is already implicit within the research council's fulfilment of its objects, as outlined in Clause 1. That is the advice I have received. I hope that that will satisfy the noble Baroness.
I am mindful of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, on Amendment No. 3 about the way in which the research council will operate in terms of receiving its grants within the strategic overview that the Government will set. There are good examples of research councils receiving additional moneys for specific, additional special projects that the Government may wish them to look into. That has worked successfully in the past.
We believe that the way in which research councils function—receipt of their grant, strategic overview, reporting, because this is public money, but with autonomy over whom they choose to support—is the right balance. If the noble Baroness would like more information, I would be more than happy to write to her and set that out in greater detail.
In Amendment No. 3, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, suggests that we replace "may" with "shall". I understand the objective of ensuring that the council is properly funded, but the existing "may" ties in with the discretionary power being given to the Secretary of State to determine how much she pays in respect of the expenses of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The word "shall" would imply that the Secretary of State was obliged to pay the money and this would sit awkwardly with her discretionary power under this clause to determine how much she pays.
I am categorical in saying that the Secretary of State has every intention of supporting the AHRC financially, and would certainly wish to pay the sums that are determined to be paid. Pending this Bill gaining Royal Assent and the secondary legislation gaining approval in the Scottish Parliament, and both in this House and the other place, we will be ensuring

23
that there is a once-and-for-all transfer of funds to the Department of Trade and Industry. This will be from the departments responsible for the funding councils in Scotland, Wales and England as well as the Department of Education and Learning in Northern Ireland. Our objective is to ensure that the proposed Arts and Humanities Research Council is able to operate from 1 April 2005.
Turning to Amendments Nos. 5 and 6, I want to establish a point of principle with regard to the funding. It is, as your Lordships will be aware, taxpayer's money. It will be important, as I have indicated, that there is accountability for the use of that money. The seven science research councils work in support of the Government's strategic objectives for science and research, under the auspices of the Office of Science and Technology. Taken together, Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 would replace the existing subsection (3)—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has indicated—with similar wording which would have the same effect. We see no additional benefit gained by the proposed wording. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, mentioned amendments that might come at a later stage in this area. We shall see, and I look forward to them if that is the case. We believe that the use of the Royal Charter is a means by which we can ensure that the research councils operate in an autonomous way within the strategic objectives that have been laid down.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: Perhaps I did not make myself very clear, as I was distracted by someone's telephone. Could the Minister perhaps give us an example of when and how Ministers might wish to use the power contained in Clause 3(3)? In what circumstances would Ministers use this power to give a direction? What concerns me is the possibility of having a government which did not like some research which had been commissioned. We are not talking about pure science. It could be social research which went against the flagship policy of a particular government. There is always a worry that politicians might be tempted to use their power in a way which would minimise their embarrassment.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: It is hard to find an example of such behaviour on the part of Secretaries of State, although I am prepared to dig and find any that might be pertinent. The general way this clause would apply is if, for example because of changes in technology or because of a particular issue of great import to the nation, the Secretary of State felt it right and proper for the research council to undertake some research, then the Secretary of State would provide additional moneys and would direct the research council to undertake that research in whatever manner the research council felt was best. That is the normal usage to which this power has been put. If I am able to indicate some circumstances beyond that, I will of course write to the noble Lord, and place a copy in the Library of your Lordships' House.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I am sorry to press this, but I cannot believe that any research council, offered some money by the Minister to do some research, would say "No thank you, we don't want the money to do that". That is not an example of using the power of direction. If the Minister cannot think of an example where the power would be required, would it not be better to take it out of the Bill?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: It is precisely the power of direction that says the Government wish to undertake a specific piece of research, have indicated which of the research councils is best placed to do that, and thereby, through additional resources, as I have indicated, directs the council so to do. My clear understanding is that that is the case. If my understanding is wrong, rather than prolong the noble Lord's concern, I will of course put that right in a letter in the Library of the House. I have before me a couple of examples that may help the noble Lord and no doubt help the Minister as well.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I am not the Minister.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I meant myself, actually; though far be it from me to take it away from the noble Lord. He has been there. He knows what it is like.
The increasing stipends for PhD students are increasing the funding for some specific research priorities; post-genomic research is an example. I think that that fits within what I have indicated. As far as I am concerned, that addresses the issue. However, as I said to the noble Lord, I am very happy to return to the point if it would enable us to bring this to a suitable and satisfactory close.
Lord Walton of Detchant: One concern which may arise relating to Clause 3(3) is not so much that the direction should invite or direct the research council to carry out research in a particular field—there have been many examples of that in the Medical Research Council, and in the other research councils, over the years; I could cite the example of HIV/AIDS and very many more—but that the Secretary of State may direct that certain research given priority by the research council should not be carried out. I think that that is the concern we would like to have allayed.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: As I understand it, there is no indication that that has happened. However, noble Lords have pressed the point and I shall take it away and look at it further. It is very clear to me that there are no indications from the work of the research councils or from the quinquennial review that the issue is of concern in the actuality of the circumstances, if I may put it like that. However, I undertake to look at it again on the understanding that the Government are clear about our intentions. However, I have heard the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Walton.
Amendment No. 7 would specify that the research council should have to provide details of its programmes and estimates of its expenses to the Secretary of State. We

25
believe that this amendment could make the situation less clear. There is a risk, albeit a small one, that the addition of "details" could be interpreted as narrowing the scope of' information provided within "programmes and estimates".
With those provisos, and on the understanding that I shall write to noble Lords on any points not covered—and I pick up the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Walton, about ensuring that the wording entirely reflects our desires—I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I thank the Minister for her response and other noble Lords for their contributions—although they have not wholly supported my amendments.
I turn to the issue of examples and where it might be appropriate to give an explicit directive. The example that I had in mind, although it relates not to the research councils but to one of the funding councils, occurred about a year ago when the Minister put pressure on the Higher Education Funding Council to withdraw funding from those rated "poor" in the research assessment exercise. There was a dispute, as I understand it, and it became explicit in hearings before the House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills that the funding council leadership was not too happy at that time to comply. I believe that an explicit letter was exchanged.
The point I was trying to make is that on these occasions it is better that the situation comes out into the open and there is an explicit letter of direction, as distinct from the Minister simply putting pressure on the research council chief executive and compliance behind the scenes. In the interest of public accountability we want to know about these matters. Implicitly, what I was trying to get at is that where such a direction is issued it should be an explicit direction in the form of a letter that goes to the research council and to which the research council has to respond. I think that most noble Lords understand that my wish in these amendments is to try to reinforce a degree of relative autonomy. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, thought that I had done completely the opposite. Perhaps we can get together and think about how to come up with something better.
I was not clear about one aspect of the Minister's reply. I had understood that the wording in Clause 3 was precisely that used in the Science and Technology Act 1965 and that one reason it could not be changed is that this wording applies to all other research councils. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said, we do not wish to have separate rules relating to separate research councils. I would argue that this is an opportunity to update the rules of the research councils to bring them partly up-to-date with current practice. That was another reason why I tabled the amendments. Perhaps the noble Baroness can write to me on whether it is the 1965 Act. She implied that it had already been updated, but I did not think that that was so.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: We took the 1965 Act and updated the legal terminology, for example. As noble Lords have indicated, that legislation was passed 38 years ago. However, the thrust of what we were trying to do was to put the research councils on an equal par. Based especially on the quinquennial review, we were content that the research councils were functioning very satisfactorily. That was the underlying principle. Off the top of my head I cannot remember whether the words exactly mirror the earlier ones, but I am happy to write to the noble Baroness. However, I think that the principle to which she alluded is right. We want these research councils to be the same. They work well. We believe it would be wrong for the Bill to change in any way the underlying way in which they work.
Baroness Blackstone: I support the Minister's comments, and I speak now not as a former Minister but as a former deputy chairman of one of the main committees of the social science research council. The issue must surely be whether the arrangements that are in place are working well. I have not heard any serious criticism from the existing research councils that the relationship with the Government, in terms of the kind of powers of direction that exist, is in any sense a problem. Were it one, then I think that we should be pressing the Minister to make changes. However, I honestly do not believe that there is an issue.
My only question is on the drafting of the last provision of Clause 3. I think that it is improved by including "details of". The Bill reads very oddly by dealing only with "programmes and estimates". I ask the Minister to think again about that. I was not totally satisfied with her reply to that minor detail.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I am very happy to look at that. Noble Lords have made very good points. As I said, the underlying principle—that we wish to have parity—is clear. I am grateful for my noble friend's comment that issues or complaints have not arisen in this regard. Of course we will look at the wording. The value of Committee stage is to enable us to do precisely that. I am very happy to do that.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her suggestion. It reminds me that Amendment No. 7 was a purely drafting amendment. I am glad to have some support for it. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 3 to 7 not moved.]
clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 [Pensions]:
On Question, Whether Clause 5 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Skelmersdale: One is always told when one starts public speaking never to begin with an apology. But I am afraid that, today, I must begin with an apology to Members of the Committee. There are a couple of points on Clause 5, which is to do with the existing and future employees of the council and their

27
pensions. I must admit that these points occurred to me rather late in the day; hence my not giving warning, publicly anyway, in accordance with the Companion. But the Companion is mercifully rather vague on this, so I am not conducting what my children were brought up to call a no-no.
The beginning of Clause 5 states,
"section 1 of the Superannuation Act 1972 … can"—
I stress the word "can"—"apply", or, I suppose one could say, "from now on be applied" to anyone employed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The first question is why "can"? Surely to goodness that has always been the intention. Any member of any research council has always come under the Superannuation Act 1972 and no one has the slightest intention of changing that. Surely, "will" or "must" would be much more appropriate, especially as the word "must" has come into the modern vocabulary to replace "may" or "shall" in some pieces of legislation. We may come to that matter a little later in the Bill.
The Minister's right honourable colleague, Mr Johnson, said in Committee in another place:
"all we are doing in clause 5 is ensuring that employment by the arts and humanities research council is included among the kinds of employment covered by the Superannuation Act 1972",
as I have just said and as Clause 1 more or less states. But he went on to say something rather mysterious:
"The employees of the AHRB are already covered by the Superannuation Act 1972 … This is a belt-and-braces job—my understanding is that the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 would cover them anyway".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee H, 10/2/04; col. 51.]
What on earth is the Superannuation Act doing in this part of the Bill?
4 p.m.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The noble Lord could never commit a no-no on something as important as this. I am grateful to the noble Lord for indicating to me outside the Committee that he would raise this matter. My understanding is that the word "can" is used because one could look to another kind of superannuation programme if one wished. That is why the wording is as it is. If that is incorrect I shall be corrected, but that is my understanding.
The noble Lord is absolutely right that employees are already covered under the Superannuation Act 1972. My understanding of the purpose of the clause is that it ensures that once people transfer into the research council their pensions will transfer across and be unaffected. The clause enables us to be certain that that is the case.
The noble Lord may feel that it is unnecessary. However, with an area as important as this we wanted to make it absolutely certain that that will happen. If I can supply further information to the noble Lord I shall be happy to do so.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn moved Amendment No. 8:
After Clause 6, insert the following new clause—

ACADEMIC SALARIES REVIEW BOARD
(1) The Arts and Humanities Research Council shall set up an Academic Salaries Review Board ("the Board") whose purpose is to report to the Council and through the Council to the Secretary of State on the level of salaries of teachers and research staff in higher and further education institutions in the United Kingdom and to advise on issues of parity—

(a) by comparing the level of salaries of teachers and research staff in the arts and humanities with those in other disciplines, including the biological, economic, engineering, environmental, medical, physical and social sciences, and

(b) by comparing academic salaries with those of other professions and fields of employment as they were in 1945 and in successive decades up to the present.

(2) The members of the Board shall include one nominee appointed by each of the following—

(a) The Secretary of State;

(b) The Arts and Humanities Research Council;

(c) The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council;

(d) The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council;

(e) The Economic and Social Research Council;

(f) The Medical Research Council;

(g) The National Environment Research Council;

(h) The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council;

(i) The Royal Society;

(j) The British Academy;

(k) Universities UK;

(l) The Association of University Teachers.

(3) Members of the Board shall serve for a period of up to five years, and the chair of the Board shall be appointed by the Secretary of State.
(4) The annual report of the Board shall be included as an appendix to the report which the Arts and Humanities Research Council gives the Secretary of State on the performance of its functions after the end of each financial year.
(5) When the Secretary of State lays the annual report of the Council before each House of Parliament, as provided under section 4(3), he must accompany it with a statement indicating the measures which he may undertake in response to the advice of the Board."
The noble Lord said: With Amendment No. 8 we move away from the detail of the working of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to which we shall no doubt return in Amendment No. 9. Like all noble Lords who have spoken, I welcome the upgrading of the status of the Arts and Humanities Research Board to that of a research council.
I have wondered how to address a matter which is not explicitly referred to in the Bill, but which is one of deep concern to all who have an interest in higher education. At this point I declare an interest of a different kind; namely, that I am remunerated as a professor, but that is not the point I seek to make. My point is one to which many noble Lords addressed themselves in their Second Reading speeches which is the issue of academic salaries. I ask myself, first, why there is no explicit mention of the issue in the Bill. As the matter is not addressed substantially in the Bill, it is very difficult to address in an amendment. The amendment could find a place, with a modification in

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the wording, elsewhere in the Bill. I would be happy to consider that if the Minister felt that that were more appropriate.
Many noble Lords feel that one of the great problems, which is not directly addressed in the Bill and scarcely addressed even indirectly, is that of academic salaries. That means that there is nothing that an amendment to the Bill can do to rectify the situation on academic salaries, but it is one of the most substantial problems in our universities today. An important component of the decline of our universities, which I and other noble Lords believe is taking place, is the decline in the level of academic salaries in comparison with other professions. I believe that the matter should be highlighted and kept constantly under review.
That is why I believe that it is appropriate to propose that there should be an academic salaries review board which should report annually to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State should be obliged to bring those comments before both Houses of Parliament annually, together with his observations on how he would seek to do something about the situation. I do not see how, by amendment, one can do more than that with the Bill, but I believe that that would be a useful step.
The amendment needs little explanation. I remind the Minister that it was her noble friend Lord Eatwell who drew comparison between the level of academic salaries and the level of ministerial salaries, including her own—very much to the detriment of academic salaries. The duty of setting up an academic salaries review board is here assigned to the Arts and Humanities Research Council simply for convenience. It could equally be set up as an independent entity and perhaps it should be. The main point is that it brings in a range of expertise and experience concerned with academic salaries and that it will report, as proposed, through the AHRC to the Secretary of State, who is obliged to lay it before Parliament, along with his comments.
My intention is not to argue for parity of salaries among and between academic institutions; I want to bring into scrutiny the way in which, over the years, professional—or non-manual salaries in general—have risen much more than academic ones. The National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education referred in their written evidence to the House of Commons Education and Skills Select Committee, as published in The Future of Higher Education to,
"the 45% relative decline in [academic] earnings compared to non-manual income over the last 20 years".
I am reasonably confident that if one made the comparison over the past 30 years the decline would be more than 45 per cent. That is the problem to which the amendment seeks to draw attention in a systematic and, I hope, constructive way. I beg to move.
Lord Dearing: I am glad that the noble Lord has recognised in his address that if there is to be such a mechanism this is not the appropriate place. I suggest that a body concerned with research in the arts and
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humanities is not constituted to assess, nor would it be entirely disinterested in assessing, the levels of salaries in those areas. In fact, we had a review of the whole situation through the Betts Committee after my report several years ago. There is absolutely no doubt at all that academic salaries have fallen well behind comparators. I endorse the kind of figure that the noble Lord indicated, but if that is so well known I am unsure that there is a need to set up a committee to declare again that academic salaries are far lower than comparators. We need the funding to do something about it. I believe that through this Bill we can explore new sources of funding so that the employers, with whom this responsibility resides, can do something about it.
Lord Morgan: I entirely endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, has said. However, the noble Lord is to be congratulated on raising the matter of academic salaries, which have been a scandal in public life for many decades. We have rehearsed the points in previous debates. The starting salaries are very low; the basic spine is very long; it takes a long time to receive a decent stipend; the people who enter academic life are commonly older, having done degrees; and women are likely to be in their late 20s, rather than mid-20s, and they have not been able to exert the kind of industrial muscle that others have.
So there is a real point, which is deeply worrying, that the extra funding that universities will have is liable rightly to go into academic directions to provide for bursaries, access and so on, and that university teachers therefore will not benefit. However, I absolutely agree that attaching it to a body for funding research in humanities does not seem to be appropriate. The determination of stipends and the fostering of research are quite different entities. In determining academic stipends, a whole range of considerations applies—the abilities of teachers and colleagues and the ability to innovate, other than, of course, the primacy given to research. I therefore hope that this issue can be dealt with in another place.
Lord Winston: Although I completely understand and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, on his sentiments, I cannot but agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, in this respect. This does not seem to be the right place for the amendment, nor do I believe that it would provide the clout to change matters at all within the universities. Moreover, the composition of this board would not seem to be adequate for its purposes. While that may seem to be special pleading—and I raised the issue at Second Reading—at present there is a major problem within the medical schools whereby there is no parity and an increasing gap between National Health Service salaries and academic salaries.
If one is to have representation, one would need to include representation from the Academy of Medical Sciences. I would argue that, as an important fancier of research in Britain, the Wellcome Trust should also be involved, as well as representation from the nursing and other caring professions, which should have a

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major influence on the salary structure related to the academic aspects of caring in universities. Sadly, therefore, I do not believe that this is the place for this amendment, though I understand the reason for its introduction at this stage.
Baroness Lockwood: I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, on his ingenuity in tabling this amendment. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister does not need any arguments from the Back Benches as to why she will not be able to accept the amendment. It is unfortunate that we have a Higher Education Bill that deals with the funding of higher education but does not contain any provisions for improving academic and related salaries. It has been said today, and was said at Second Reading, that it is a disgrace. It is only because of the dedication of the staff in the universities that they continue to produce the excellent, first class work that they do.
When the Minister responds to the amendment, will she indicate whether there are any plans in her department to deal with this particular problem? The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, referred to his report. At that time we had a comprehensive review of university salaries, but very little has happened since. It is time that some real action was taken to bring universities into line with other professions.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: I, too, appreciate the intention behind this amendment. I declare a former interest as someone who used to teach philosophy and discovered that philosophy was not very well rated in the marketplace but tended to be at the very lowest end of the salary scale in the university system. Nevertheless, I believe that this amendment is misplaced, for two reasons. First, we have here not even a baby Arts and Humanities Research Council, but an embryonic one. The prospect of it being redirected from its main objectives and effectively becoming the salaries review body, with a subcommittee that is the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is considerable, because that is what would get all the attention and publicity, and that distraction would annul the main point of this part of the Bill.
Nevertheless, will the Minister reassure us that if such a research council took the view, I believe quite properly, that the salary levels in this area of the academic world were so low that they imperilled the contribution made in Britain to this kind of research, it would be perfectly proper for such a research council to constitute a panel to review them and to make a public report, and that there would be no risk of it being told that it was ultra vires or that the Minister did not like it? Such an indication would reassure me immensely that the intention here, which is perfectly proper, can perhaps be realised within the existing proposals.
Lord Tugendhat: I support my noble friend Lord Renfrew in respect of both the spirit in which he has tabled his amendment and the flexibility that he
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has shown in raising the issue. Unlike the noble Lord, who has had a distinguished career as an academic over many decades, I am very new to the world of academe. As a chancellor of a university rather than someone who works in one, I am in some respects perhaps somewhat semi-detached. I am proud to be the chancellor of the University of Bath.
For anyone who has earned his or her living in other fields of endeavour, the level of salaries in the universities is perfectly shocking: there is no other word for it. When I consider the quality of people whom I meet at the University of Bath or at Cambridge, to which I am also attached as chairman of the development committee of my old college, Caius, and compare it with the quality of people whom I meet in the financial sector or in other areas in which I have earned a living, it seems to me that the discrepancy between the quality of such people on the one hand and their remuneration on the other is blatant to a degree that one would not have believed possible.
As some Members of the Committee have said, it may be that this is not the ideal place in which to deal with the point raised by my noble friend Lord Renfrew, as he himself recognised. However, it seems to me to be symptomatic of the problem with which we are confronted that we can have a Higher Education Bill of this importance, including, in my view, a number of desirable and quite radical propositions, which makes no reference whatever to the question of remuneration. If in any other walk of life one tried to undertake serious and far-reaching reforms designed to improve the performance of the operation, the issue of remuneration would invariably be considered. That one can have a Bill of this kind, which makes no reference to academic salaries, seems to me to indicate the way in which they have fallen not only so far below the level at which they should be fixed but also so far outwith serious consideration.
I hope, therefore, that the amendment tabled by my noble friend will lever out of the Government a counter proposition. I hope that the Minister will feel able to express a view about where academic salaries will fit into the Government's overall approach to improving the status and performance of the universities. In response to what my noble friend has said about the amendment and what other Members of the Committee have said in opposition to it, perhaps the Minister will also indicate how she will confront the issues about which concern has been expressed. In that spirit, I very much hope that the Government will give serious consideration to my noble friend's amendment.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Noble Lords may know that as a former General Secretary of the Association of University Teachers as well as the chief executive of Universities UK, I feel passionately about academic salaries. Indeed, I feel passionately about salaries for academic-related and support staff as well.
There is no doubt that as the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, said, along with just about every other noble Lord who has spoken, salaries for academic and support staff have fallen woefully behind those for

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their comparators elsewhere. A university's key resource is its staff. Staff pay accounts for 58 per cent of universities' expenditure, and if they cannot pay their staff adequately, all our universities will struggle to recruit and retain the best and the brightest.
Universities have worked hard to make the initial academic careers of newly qualified researchers more secure. Noble Lords will know that the Universities and Colleges Employers' Association—the employers' association for the higher education sector—has just agreed a new pay framework for higher education with the seven trade unions, which will result in pay increases totalling at least 7.7 per cent by August 2004. However, calculations show that a total of £602 million of additional investment will be needed over the next spending review for human resources in England and Northern Ireland.
That said, the amendment, as others have said, is not really the answer to the problem. The Bill is an important step in the right direction, addressing the overall funding needs of universities. If there is also adequate public investment so that the fee income which the Bill will guarantee is indeed additional, as we have been assured is the case by the Secretary of State, then universities will be in a position to begin to reverse the relative decline of university salaries. I hope that the Minister might take the opportunity to confirm this in her reply.
Research staff in humanities departments will continue to be supported by funds other than those applied by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which will fund research on a project basis. Researchers will be financed through the university's general resources from the Further Education Funding Council's funds and fees, not from research council grants. UCEA already provides a single employers' association for the higher education sector and a framework mechanism through which universities can negotiate pay for all their academic and support staff, taking account of the overall resources that can be made available for salaries.
Since, as other noble Lords have said, the amendment would radically extend the functions of the AHRC, giving it a role far greater than its funding responsibilities, I do not believe that it would be helpful to the research council's functioning, and consequently I cannot support it. However, like other noble Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, for providing the opportunity to debate this issue.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I, too, congratulate my noble friend on his ingenuity in raising this matter. I do not think that the amendment is in the wrong place; I think it is perfectly legitimate for us to discuss the issue in this context. However, I think the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, hit upon the kind of example which might tempt a Secretary of State to use his or her powers, which we discussed earlier, under Clause 3(3). If the research council were to set up the equivalent of a pay review body, I think that those in the Treasury would have a heart attack, and a direction would come from the Secretary of State. That is one of the reasons I still worry about the clause as it stands.
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My noble friend is right to draw attention to the problem of academic salaries. There is no one in this House who does not feel strongly, indeed passionately, about it. However, the fact is that nothing will be done about it until the universities have the resources with which to pay people. The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, talked passionately about her concerns, but she has supported a government who have seen the unit of resource fall in real terms. So all this talk about how we need to do more on academic pay is just hot air unless there is a way of increasing resources. Tearing up the Bill would save the taxpayer £200 million—it will cost £200 million more than it will raise in revenues from fees—which would be well spent, I suggest, on academic pay.
I do not think that the solution lies in having a salaries review board. All kinds of pay review bodies have come and gone with their recommendations and, ultimately, it is a political decision about the priorities of government. The reason that academic pay is so scandalously low is that the continual decline in the unit of resource for universities, coupled with expansion plans, which have seen lecturers have to teach smaller and smaller classes, has not been funded. It was not funded properly by the government of whom I was a member—I freely acknowledge that—and it is funded considerably less well by the present Government. That is why this continues to be an issue and the Bill does not in any way address it.
I congratulate my noble friend on raising this matter and drawing to our attention the fact that the Bill makes no progress in this direction. If he did not make this point, then I certainly shall: the Bill actually makes the problem worse by spending scarce resources on paying for the financing of a fees regime, which we will no doubt discuss when we come to Part 3 of the Bill.
I believe that pay among academics has actually fallen by about 40 per cent since 1980. In his speech on Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, drew attention to something extraordinary—if you visit institutions overseas, again and again you see some of our brightest academics. Why are they there? Because they are able to pursue their research and teaching interests with a degree of freedom and because their salaries are considerably higher. What is needed is a much broader view about how to restore excellence and standards in our universities and find the very considerable resources that will be needed to achieve that.
Baroness Blackstone: I should like to declare an interest at this point, as I am both a visiting professor at the London School of Economics—unpaid—and the Vice-Chancellor designate of the University of Greenwich, where I will be paid.
I am a little worried about the tenor of this debate. Like others, I share the view that academic salaries have fallen far too much relative to many other similar professions. I admired what my noble friend Lord Eatwell said on Second Reading; it was a very interesting rhetorical gesture to suggest that the Minister was overpaid compared with academics. I want to cone in on the side of the Minister, since she is, in my view, not

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terribly well paid, and not terribly well paid compared with a lot of senior people in management in universities. However, that is an aside.
My real concern is that although it is ingenious to introduce an amendment relating to the Arts and Humanities Research Council about academic pay, this really is not the right place to introduce an amendment for an academic review salary board, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, admitted. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who I think has just admitted this, that it has been the view of not only this Government but previous governments that it is not really appropriate to set up a review body of this sort. I was, incidentally, extremely surprised to hear my noble friend Lord Sutherland—my old sparring partner in the University of London—suggest that the AHRC should be allowed to set up a committee to look at academic salaries among people who work in the arts and humanities. I think that that would be an inappropriate use of the time of members of that research board. They should be focused on the real issue of funding excellent scholarship and research in the fields for which they are responsible.
My main reason for being concerned about this debate is that a number of noble Lords have forgotten that this Bill will bring about a substantial amount of additional funding through fee income which will allow universities to pay higher salaries if they so choose. I make that point to my noble friend Lord Morgan.
In the spending review that followed the Betts Committee's report, some additional public money was ring fenced for academic salaries. I make that point to my noble friend Lady Lockwood. However, governments should not do that too often because it jeopardises the autonomy of universities.
It is up to universities—and to people like me in my next job—to ensure that at least some of any additional funding that comes through either as fee income or as proper public support for universities should be shared with academics who work so hard across our university system. They deserve to be paid better. I remind your Lordships that this House is normally very concerned about preserving the autonomy of universities, and, in the last resort, it is for them to decide what they pay their staff.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Morgan: My noble friend makes some very fair points but does she not agree that the problem is immense? We are dealing with not a temporary irregularity in pay comparability but a backlog of 20 or 25 years. That is the problem of the new funding arrangements.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: I would like the Minister to respond to the point that I made, rather than the version of it given to her by my noble friend Lady Blackstone.
My point is that an arts and humanities research council may well properly say that the quality of research—and the quality of people whom we recruit
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to research in these areas in the UK—is declining very sharply. One of the reasons may well be that the salaries in this area of the academic world are very bad. If that is so, I would have thought that it is a perfectly proper interest for a research council to have.
There is a precedent in this context. I was chairman of the postgraduate studentships committee in the arts and humanities, which was an earlier predecessor of what it is now hoped to bring to birth. At that stage we looked at postgraduate scholarships. They were evidently very low—lower than in some of the other areas—and we hitched ourselves up, firstly on the back of the Science Research Council, and above them, the Medical Research Council, and above them, the Wellcome Trust. It was a proper issue for us to discuss at that stage, and I hope that, in extreme situations, an analogy with that would be possible for such a research council.
Baroness Blackstone: There is absolutely no problem with the suggestion of noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that the Arts and Humanities Research Council should comment on the position of researchers or more senior academics in teaching posts. This includes the numbers of good people coming forward and the possibility that this may be related to pay. When he spoke for the first time, I think he suggested that it would be reasonable—and that the Government should accept—that the AHRC should set up a special committee to look at salaries. That would not be a sensible use of its time, nor would it be appropriate for one research council alone to start doing this. The other research councils would then feel they had to follow, and that would be a distraction from their main task.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: In my notes against this amendment I have written, "Support in spirit, but it's the wrong place". I therefore fall with the majority of noble Lords who have spoken in this debate: we are all very well aware of the erosion of academic salaries in real terms, and would like to see a solution to that issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, spoke about those coming from other walks of life. This morning I had a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge who, as many noble Lords know, has just come back from America. She said that she had not realised how drastically academic salaries had fallen in real terms in this country, and how difficult it was to recruit people—young people, in particular—to academic jobs these days. As we know, they have to face substantial house prices. If they wish to move to somewhere in the south-east of England it is very difficult for them.
We should be aware of this, and of the degree to which this erosion took place over a long period of years. Some Noble Lords may know that I was an active member of an organisation called Save British Science in the 1980s and early 1990s. When we talked about the problems that the erosion of academic salaries would create in the recruitment of new postgraduate students, we were called "moaning Minnies". If only something had been done then.

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The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, was the general secretary of the AUT at that time, and it fought for improvements in salaries. But on the other side of the table, the CVCP did not fight for real improvements in salaries as hard as it might have. That has continued over the years. As somebody who was at the coal face, I have seen vice-chancellors' salaries do very well thank you very much, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said. It is a real problem.
If the Bill goes through I hope that it will create the funds, and that those will be directed towards increasing salaries. I share some of the doubts that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has put forward on whether it is going to generate the funds. In net terms, the Exchequer is going to have to fork out a lot in order to generate these funds. In spirit we are very much with this amendment.
Lord Walton of Detchant: I will be brief. If your Lordships will forgive the medical analogy, it is true that the state of academic salaries has been a running sore which has continued to fester for decades. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, for raising this issue, but I agree with other Members of the Committee who have said that the function of a research council is not to be a salary negotiating body.
As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, the establishment of a salaries review body might well give the Secretary of State a heart attack. Part 4 of the Bill deals with student support. Is there not a case for having a new part 5 for staff support, in which the issue of a salaries review body to look at the state of academic salaries could be considered? I raise that in a purely speculative sense.
Lord Eatwell: Since my noble friend Baroness Blackstone referred to my contribution at Second Reading, I should clarify what I said. I did not say that the Minister was overpaid. I said that the salary of her post in 1980 corresponded to a middle-ranking to senior university lecturer at that time. Her salary now is £30,000 per year more than that person.
In summing up, the Minister said, "I think I earn my salary". I think that university lecturers earn her level of salary too. What has happened over this period is that for a variety of reasons university salaries have fallen dramatically behind.
However, I did not rise simply to clarify that point. We must be very careful about spending the money that we generate by this Bill over and over again on different things. That is what I have heard today.
I hope that the Minister will not claim that the fee income which will be generated from the fee proposals in the Bill will solve the problem of salaries, because it is not. I hope that the fee income generated in this Bill will be invested in excellence—excellence in teaching and excellence in research—and providing equipment for researchers in universities. The salaries problem is so serious that it requires an entirely separate endeavour. It requires to be considered in and of itself and not to be rolled up for us to be provided with the
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excuse that somehow this money, which is being spent several times over, will help to solve the salary problem as well.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I hesitate to rise again, but perhaps the Minister could deal with that point when she replies to what has turned out to be a wide-ranging debate. I noticed that the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, was attempting to spend the money on pay. She said that the additional funding of £900 million would help with pay, and that we had forgotten it. However, north of the Border there will be no increase in tuition fees, which means that if any of the money were to be spent on salaries it could not be spent in that way north of the Border.
Certainly, north of the Border, there is widespread concern among academic staff that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, is predicting, some of the money will be used on pay and that there will be a salary gradient between Scotland and England. In that case, some of the most talented brains in the country— being Scottish—would move south towards the lure of extra cash, which would be extremely damaging to the universities.
The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, made the point that there was a separate issue here—the problem of university salaries. The Bill will make that problem urgent. Will the Minister say, in responding to this cleverly worded amendment, whether the Government might commit themselves to addressing the problem? The integrity of the institutions north of the Border could well be damaged by being kept in the same position as those south of the Border, which have been damaged already by having insufficient funds to meet their salary needs.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: I hesitate to interrupt the mutual and reactive cut and thrust of interventions between those who are taking part in this debate. I was in Ireland on parliamentary business at the time of Second Reading and therefore did not have the chance to visit the subject raised by my noble friend Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, who has proposed his new clause as a probing amendment.
My noble friend's new clause is worded in such a way as to provide it with a locus in the Bill. The arrangement for settling these matters was different in the early 1980s, when I was parliamentary secretary to the late great Sir Keith Joseph and had to deal with the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, when she represented the AUT. However, I had to respond, not statutorily but spontaneously, to a revisit by the Brookings Institute to its very comprehensive UK report of 1968. In it, the institute criticised engineering and scientific salaries in the UK, which it said were so distorted as to cause jobs of one discipline to be done by the other and vice versa, to the detriment of the national interest. In the early 1980s, it reported that no serious or significant change had occurred in the intervening 15 years since the first report.
My noble friend Lord Renfrew made it clear in his speech that there was an element of force feeding in his new clause. He should not be disturbed by the

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comments made by other Members of the Committee. I wholly support the curiosity of the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, which my noble friend's new clause has provoked, about what the Government's general intentions are in these matters. It seems to me that the subject cannot be raised too often, so no harm whatever has been done by having this debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, expressed anxiety about philosophy salaries, but I can give him one word of comfort. My late noble kinsman read philosophy at Balliol and was interested when his philosophy tutor, at the beginning of World War II, was made metals controller for the United Kingdom. He asked him what his qualifications were—to which his former tutor replied that his qualifications were unique and incidentally invaluable. First, as a philosopher, he was trained to ask questions, and the metal industry was one with a great many questions to be asked about it. Secondly, everybody else in the industry besides himself had an emotional involvement in one metal or another—whether wolfram or tungsten. His unique contribution was that he had no emotional involvement in any of them.
That anecdote seems neatly to underline the vicarious logic of my noble friend's new clause. I hope that his probe receives an encouraging reply.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Desai: I am no longer actively employed. I am retired but, after 38 years of low pay, I have deep feelings about the matter. I joined the London School of Economics at £1,400 per annum plus a £60 London allowance. I dare say that someone who starts today is paid less in real terms than I was then. That is how tragic the situation is.
I want to say one thing about the noble Lord's proposal. The problem is the rigidity of the grid and the inflexibility of the way in which salaries are defined. If we have to keep the present regime, the least that he could do is to have on his board nobody except the Secretary of State and one American academic, who will tell the Secretary of State what pay is really like. Perhaps there could be a couple of people from the real world, as the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, said. We should not have chairmen of research bodies on the board—they do not know anything because they are equally low paid. There should be some outside people—not academics. Then they will find out how bad things are.
Lord Baker of Dorking: My noble friend Lord Renfrew has received several oblique compliments, in that everyone in the House feels that he has done the right thing, but not at the right moment. He has done the right thing by bringing to the attention of the House the agreement of the whole House that academic salaries have fallen dramatically over the past 30 years, under both Conservative and Labour governments.
Anyone who is involved in the academic world knows that there is a constant brain drain going on of those in British academia to America. Two of our
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leading historians now work in American universities and there has been a drain of Oxford philosophers over the past three or four years. One could give many examples of the brain drain at all levels, from postgraduates onwards.
Having had responsibility in this area, it is my experience that no government of any complexion will give the universities the money that they need or deserve. Indeed, I see that on the list of priorities of the Conservative spokesman, Mr Letwin, universities do not feature. I do not believe that the money is going to come from any government. That is why I find the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, rather strange. He said that the free income, which is an essential part of the Bill, will be used on many things rather than salaries. Judging by the institutions with which I have talked, I believe that the first claim probably will be salaries. In that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone—the money will be used to stop the brain drain.
The noble Lord believes that the problem with salaries is so great that it requires a great deal of attention, but I do not know who is going to give it that attention. No government will come forward and give enormous sums of money to the universities to catch up for the past 30 or 40 years. It is unrealistic to believe that that would happen.
The fundamental part of this Bill will give universities an alternative source of income, in fees which over the years will build up and will give them an opportunity. Ultimately, one wants not a salary review body but freedom for the universities. That is the golden vision on the hill—that universities should be free to teach what they want, recruit whom they want and charge what they want for the services that they provide. This Bill is a hesitant step along that road. Until we get to that point—and it will take some years and perhaps a decade or two to overcome that deficiency—we have to start out along that road.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The issue of academic pay has quite rightly caused great debate in the Chamber. I am most grateful to all Members of the Committee who participated in it, and especially to the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, for tabling the amendment.
I can assure my noble friend Lord Eatwell that when I said in my closing remarks that I thought I earned my money, I did not wish to suggest for one moment that academics or many other people involved in working life do not earn theirs. My privilege and pleasure is to stand before this Chamber, and I am overpaid for the privilege of so doing. I would not wish to suggest anything about anyone else in what was meant to be a moment of levity. That will teach me!
As Members of the Committee have said, academic salaries have increased by an average of only 20 per cent since 1980, while average earnings have increased by about 60 per cent and graduate earnings by even more. I recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, in seeking to put the amendment within the remit of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has done

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so primarily to ensure that it falls within the scope of the Bill. I shall seek to address the issues of generality in the noble Lord's remarks, rather than the specifics relating to the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I believe that is what the noble Lord intended.
I can tell my noble friends Lord Sutherland and Lady Blackstone that, if the research council wished to consider this issue, it would not be ultra vires to do so. It could commission such a report. It would fit within its responsibilities to provide advice but it would have to relate specifically to the research council's responsibilities, that is the arts and humanities. But I agree with my noble friend that this is not the best focus for a research council, especially in the early stages. As noble Lords have indicated, salaries are the responsibility of individual institutions as employers. However, if the research council felt that it was an appropriate report to commission, because it was relevant to work that it was undertaking, it could do so. It is important that I say that immediately.
We recognise that there is much to be done to improve academic salaries but it is not for the Government to regulate them or to dictate what they should be. As my noble friend Lady Blackstone has indicated, we believe very strongly that educational institutions are independent, autonomous bodies that must have the power to manage their resources as they see fit As employers, they are responsible for determining the level of pay for their staff through negotiation with the staff and the relevant unions. I am sure that noble Lords would agree that, in principle, institutions are the best judges of how to deploy the resources made available to them.
However, as noble Lords have said, public funding levels indicate what institutions can pay their staff. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, that the fact that this is not specifically within the Bill does not mean that its importance is not recognised, nor that we do not wish to see this debate take place in your Lordships' House on this and other occasions. It is an important issue, but it is not one for legislation. Inevitably, in looking at issues around the White Paper on higher education, the Bill focuses only on issues where legislation is required.
Noble Lords will be aware that overall funding for higher education will reach £10 billion a year by 2006. We have provided a total of £330 million to improve institutions' human resource capabilities between 2001–02 and 2003–04. A further £167 million will be provided between 2004–05 and 2005–06 through the Rewarding and Developing Staff in Higher Education initiative. The intention of this funding is to help institutions recruit and retain staff by improving their human resource capabilities. As noble Lords will be aware from their involvement in universities, recruiting and keeping staff is an issue that often does not come down to pay alone. It is important that we support universities in all the ways in which they try to ensure that they have the right staff at the right level. However, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, with his knowledge and deep experience, is right about the issue of academic pay. We hope that, with the additional resources available to institutions, there will be opportunities to consider the
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issue of academic pay because it is such an important factor in the quality of universities. The Office of Science and Technology and the research councils take this issue very seriously and they have mechanisms in place to respond to the requirements of their respective research communities.
As a direct response to the Roberts review of the supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills,SET for Success, which has been discussed in your Lordships' House, action has been taken to encourage the best scientists at undergraduate level to continue their studies and to pursue careers in research and development in the UK. As noble Lords are aware, this has included increasing the PhD minimum stipend from £8,000 in 2002–03 to £12,000 by 2005–06 and creating 1,000 new academic fellowships to provide attractive routes into academia.
Noble Lords will also know that in further education we are planning an additional investment of £1.2 billion in 2005–06, a real terms increase of 19 per cent compared to 2002–03. In 2002–03 the total planned FE expenditure allocated to the Learning and Skills Council was £4.4 billion. This will rise to £5.6 billion in 2005–06.
I share the concerns of noble Lords about academic salaries. I have listened very carefully to all the comments that have been made by noble Lords today, but I do not believe that it is the Government's job to dictate the level at which they are set. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me say that monitoring academic salaries is not an appropriate role for the research council. Our proposals for higher education are intended to empower institutions to use their freedom to ensure that they flourish, doing what they do best. We do not wish to micromanage universities, rather we want to give them the support that they need.
The noble Lord, Lord Baker, spoke about a matter that has been raised on many occasions by noble Lords: the issue of the brain drain of UK academic staff to overseas institutions offering higher pay. Noble Lords have often indicated individual cases, which I am certain are correct, where individuals have been attracted to posts elsewhere. However, we have no evidence to suggest that this is a trend. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the UK is a net beneficiary of the increasing migration of science and engineering talent, which is the area about which we have information. However, as this is important, I can assure your Lordships that the Office of Science and Technology is looking at what further work can be done to obtain better evidence on this subject, not least in view of the comments that have been made by noble Lords about their experiences.
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, specifically spoke on the situation north of the Border in Scotland. The noble Lord has already indicated to me that this is an issue that is of particular importance to him. He will not be surprised to hear me say that it is the job of the Scottish Executive to determine fees in Scotland. Under the Barnett formula, they will have resources equivalent to those available in England to address the needs of higher education. The Scottish Executive have choices to make about what to do with that

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resource and are in the middle of looking at a report. I gather that we will have some conclusions on it in June, no doubt in time to discuss it in your Lordships' House during the passage of this Bill.
It is the responsibility of the sector to monitor its own salary arrangements. Noble Lords referred to the Bett report, conducted by Sir Michael Bett. It has just finished its first full year and we look with interest to see where it will develop in future. My noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe described in some detail how the 10 negotiating arrangements have been replaced by a national council and the importance of that change, so I shall not repeat it. We believe that we will be able to obtain better data on staffing in higher education through the Higher Education Statistics Agency. As noble Lords will know, it currently covers only academic staff working 25 per cent or more of a full-time equivalent. From 2003–04, this will be extended to all academic staff and will include non-academic staff for the first time so that the basis upon which information is available will improve. Sir Michael Bett's work is under way and should be given an opportunity to develop. The negotiating councils have come together into the national council and I believe that these are opportunities to address some of the concerns that have been raised. I argue that it is a better way of addressing the issues that have been raised than that suggested by the noble Lord's amendment.
It is absolutely true that the unit of resource in higher education is lower than it once was. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will not be surprised to hear me say that between 1989 and 1997 it was cut by 36 per cent in real terms. But we are raising funding by 7 per cent in real terms between 2002–03 and 2005–06. I know that we will have the opportunity to debate all of these issues in more detail later, but I want to state categorically that we are committed to the funding of higher education. I say to my noble friend that, in terms of this being additional money, she need look no further than to the Chancellor's comments in his Budget Statement, which I shall be happy to supply to noble Lords to make that point absolutely clear. I look forward to any proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, may wish to put forward in the course of our discussions about higher education funding to see what he might wish to offer to noble Lords and to the institutions represented here. I await his proposals with great interest.
All in all, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, for a very important debate. I understand and agree completely with the sentiments that have been expressed. It is right that academic salaries have slipped badly behind. It is the purpose of the Bill to try to gain additional resources for the sector. We recognise the importance of autonomy within institutions. Although I support the sentiments behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, I do not support it and on that basis I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw it.
5 p.m.
Lord Winston: Before my noble friend sits down, she made the assertion that we may be a net beneficiary of the brain drain. I wonder whether that is true of the sciences. Will she undertake to publish metrics to demonstrate whether or not that is the case and where the evidence for that lies because it is a very important issue for British universities? Perhaps we could look at those figures in the full light of day.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The Roberts review concluded that while there is anecdotal evidence of top scientists being tempted to work abroad by better pay and conditions, there was insufficient evidence to suggest that the UK is suffering from a serious brain drain. Indeed, the report's conclusions were that we appeared to be a net beneficiary. However, as I indicated, not least because of the experience of many noble Lords, including my noble friend, work is under way at OST to consider what further work needs to be carried out to gather more substantial evidence to address the concerns that the noble Lord has indicated. If figures are available to be put in the public domain, I shall with pleasure ensure that that is done.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: I am very grateful to noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I am also grateful to the Minister for her sympathetic response. I meant to say earlier that I was grateful for her letter after my speech at Second Reading in which she made one or two relevant points.
If there is one point on which there is general agreement, it is that my amendment is in the wrong place. I see the truth of that point. Since tabling it, I have been advised by people competent to advise that I may have been over modest in seeking an umbrella, as it were; that is, in seeking to establish the Arts and Humanities Research Council as an umbrella body. I am advised that it may well be possible for me to set down such a proposal as a freestanding item rather in the manner which the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, suggested.
I shall not try to respond to every point that has been made. However, given that the amendment probably is in the wrong place, two general sentiments have been expressed. The first is that there is a serious problem which is not being adequately addressed. I felt that the second sentiment was present, for example, in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. I thought that it contained an element of complacency, if I may be so bold as to say so, in the sense of saying, "We know this already. Do we need to say it again?" I am not at all happy with that position. Likewise, I am not happy with the position that I felt was expressed on behalf of Universities UK by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, who suggested that the matter is being addressed by the present Bill. I hate to disagree with my noble friend Lord Baker, but there was an element of that in his speech.

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I do not believe that the position is being effectively addressed by the present Bill. As I understand it, in reality the money raised in top-up fees and so forth—some of it, of course, will be paid in other ways, for example, in bursaries to reduce the net income to universities—will cover about half of the recurrent deficit of many university budgets. That means that universities will probably be worse off in the near future than they are now. It is clear from what is happening at my university, Cambridge—I believe that this applies to many others—which is looking seriously at current deficits that a number of posts will be blocked when they become vacant. I do not know whether there will be obligatory redundancies. I hope that that will be avoided. I do not see any prospect in the present climate of academic salaries being significantly enhanced. I should be interested if anyone connected with the finances of the university world could speak to the contrary.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Tugendhat for speaking as one who comes to the university world from outside, although he has a distinguished role in it as Chancellor of the University of Bath, and is astonished at the disparity between academic and other salaries. I very much take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that if there is to be such a board as I propose, it would do well to have some outside opinions on it. That point was very well made.
I do not consider that the problem is going away. I am not optimistic that an academic research board, even if properly set up and set up in the right place, would do very much about it, but if the Secretary of State were obliged to comment annually on the matter to both Houses of Parliament, it would at least give the matter some of the attention which it deserves. I shall read speeches with care and take further advice. I may seek the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, not only in the spirit but also in the letter on Report. In the mean while, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Dearing: Before the noble Lord sits down, may I dispel my complacency? I totally agreed about the facts; I said that what we wanted was action.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: I accept that. I withdraw the word "complacency". I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, for his intervention. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Lord Triesman: I beg to move that the House be resumed. In moving this Motion, I suggest that the Committee stage begins again not before 10 minutes to six.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Iraq: Security Situation and Allegations of Mistreatment
5.6 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence earlier this afternoon in another place on Iraq, the current security situation and allegations of mistreatment. The Statement is as follows:
"First of all I would like to bring the House up to date in relation to the current security situation in Iraq.
"Recent weeks have seen British forces, our coalition allies and the Iraqi police facing violent attacks in southern Iraq. This weekend saw the most violence so far, with more than 100 engagements between violent insurgents and coalition forces. Eleven British soldiers and one Dane were injured in these clashes. Our forces have captured a very large quantity of arms and ammunition from the Muqtada militia. The insurgents are armed with mortars, rocket propelled grenades and a wealth of automatic weapons. We have captured 10 multi-launch rocket tubes, 300 mortar rounds and three wire-guided missiles over this weekend.
"This upsurge in violence appears to have followed calls at some Friday prayers for attacks against the coalition. Many of those who responded have a violent and criminal background that predates the arrival of the coalition in Iraq last year. They are thugs, not freedom fighters. They do not enjoy the support of the majority of people in Iraq who welcome the strong security action we are taking. These attacks against Iraqis and Iraqi institutions are a challenge to the rule of law, an attempt to disrupt reconstruction efforts and an attempt to deliberately damage the transition to a democratic Iraq. No sensible person can condone these attacks—everyone should support our efforts to deal with them in the interests of the Iraqi people.
"The situation in both Basra and Al Amarah remains tense, but Iraqi police are patrolling and are engaged in other security tasks. Further violence is likely in the coming days. British and Iraqi forces will continue to confront such challenges. As ever, they will do so with the minimum necessary use of force and with great care to avoid an unnecessary impact on the wider population.
"Last week my right honourable friend the Minister for Armed Forces made a Statement about allegations of abuse by UK forces in Iraq. I would like to deal with developments since that Statement.
"There have been further details and images of abuse by US forces, and further claims against British soldiers published mainly in the Daily Mirror. Last week my right honourable friend made clear that if allegations are found to be true, then those responsible for damaging the otherwise excellent reputation of our Armed Forces will be rooted out and dealt with.

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"The unauthorised actions of a very few must not be allowed to undermine the outstanding work of tens of thousands of British soldiers and civilians who have served with distinction, compassion and sensitivity in Iraq now for over a year. We regret the shadow that has been cast across the excellent work being undertaken, under very difficult circumstances, to establish security and to rebuild Iraq.
"The UK requires its forces to act at all times within the UK law, which means that they must comply with the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law. Allegations of improper behaviour will be thoroughly investigated. We are not in any way complacent about such allegations.
"The 33 cases of Iraqi civilian deaths, injuries and ill-treatment, which my right honourable friend mentioned last week, that have been or are under investigation, testify to our determination. These investigations were not begun in response to the ICRC, to Amnesty or as the result of media pressure. We investigate ourselves through the Royal Military Police Special Investigations Branch immediately evidence is to hand.
"In these investigations it is essential that the integrity of the criminal justice process is maintained. This can involve detailed and lengthy processes, but these are crucial to allow the necessary impartial evaluation of the evidence. I can confirm today that two cases have reached an advanced stage with decisions on prosecution pending.
"Obviously, it is important that the legal processes should be completed independently, but I want to say on behalf of the British Government that we unreservedly apologise to any Iraqis, where the evidence shows they have been mistreated—whether, as Amnesty has set out in recent correspondence, in the general interactions between British troops on the ground in Iraq, or in the more specific issues raised by the ICRC about Iraqis detained in British controlled facilities.
"The confidential report from the ICRC to Ambassador Bremer in February dealt with detention issues. We have always maintained a close and constructive relationship with the ICRC in Iraq. My right honourable friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces had a meeting with Dr Jacob Kellenburger, ICRC President, in May last year, and officials in the Ministry of Defence met the ICRC in April 2004.
"It has been the practice of the ICRC to keep these reports confidential—not simply to maintain a positive working relationship between governments and the ICRC, but also to protect those mentioned in the reports. It is important that this confidentiality is respected. Roland Huguenin-Benjamin of the ICRC said at the weekend:
"We usually do this in direct confidential contact with the detaining power. We do not believe very much that there is a lot of interest for the prisoners themselves of having those kind of issues exposed in the public domain".
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"The interim report in February dealt with ICRC visits to coalition facilities between March and November last year. It raised three specific concerns in respect of British forces treatment of prisoners and internees. Since these issues are already in the public domain it is appropriate for me to comment further.
"The first is in respect of the death in custody of Baha Mousa, also known as Baha Maliki, in September last year. A Royal Military Police investigation was launched at that time. The case has featured frequently in the media since then and was raised by the honourable Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr during an adjournment debate in January this year. It was also the subject of an Amnesty International letter writing campaign. My right honourable friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces wrote to Amnesty about the case on 11 November and again on 27 January. It follows that, by the time the ICRC referred to the case in its February report, a thorough investigation was well under way and the Government had made frequent public comment about it.
"The second concern raised by the ICRC related to the United Kingdom was in respect of the routine hooding of prisoners. This practice had already ceased in UK facilities from September last year, and this change has also been confirmed publicly.
"In the third case a detainee had claimed that his car was confiscated. We were not able to shed light on the case. The individual was briefed on our claims procedure and provided with a claim form, but nothing more has been heard from him.
"The interim ICRC report was not seen by Ministers until very recently. This was because it was an interim report to Ambassador Bremer, passed to the UK in strict confidence. A follow-on UK-specific report was, in any event, anticipated; and, in these cases relevant to UK forces, the action necessary to address the ICRC's concerns had been taken some five months before the report was issued. In February, therefore, officials at permanent joint headquarters judged that there was no action that Ministers needed to take, at least until any further reports were received.
"Since the programme of ICRC visits last year, we have opened a new divisional temporary detention facility in southern Iraq. The ICRC visited the site before it opened, has visited twice since—in February and April—and is due to visit again next week. We remain committed to consultation with the ICRC and comply fully with its requests for access. The ICRC has yet to submit a formal report to the Government in respect of the two visits it has carried out, but has provided working reports to our forces in theatre. It is fair to say that the ICRC is generally satisfied with our approach and that it described conditions of internment as, 'fairly good'. We will continue to work closely with it to ensure prisoners' concerns are addressed.
"There have, in addition, been representations made by a number of other groups, including Amnesty International, making allegations about incidents, of some of which the Ministry of Defence

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was not previously aware. These incidents do not involve allegations about detainees. We will always take any such credible allegations seriously. Consequently, at the beginning of March, we began the process of a thorough trawl of the records of units produced in Iraq since the commencement of operations last year. This is a considerable task which we expect to last a few more weeks yet. But I can assure the House that if it reveals further examples of incidents that merit formal investigation, then those investigations will follow. And in turn, if British forces are found to have acted unlawfully, then the appropriate action will be taken. That has happened in every single case so far.
"Those thorough and detailed investigations have also been necessary in relation to the photographs published by the Daily Mirror some days ago. These photographs are central to accusations concerning the behaviour of British troops, in particular, the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.
"I can tell the House that as a result of those further investigations the Special Investigations Branch has informed me that there are strong indications that the vehicle in which the photographs were taken was not in Iraq during the relevant period. Additional lines of inquiry are being pursued to corroborate this fact.
"The SIB have interviewed at length the soldier described by the Daily Mirror as "Soldier C". We are grateful to "Soldier C" for coming forward. However, I can assure the House that the allegation at the centre of his evidence, which is once again the case of Baha Mousa, has already been investigated and the case is currently with the Army Legal Services for consideration. When interviewed by the Royal Military Police, "Soldier C" did not have any new evidence to add to what was already known as a result of our own investigations. Indeed, as I have already mentioned, these allegations were widely covered in other newspapers many months ago. I leave it to the House to judge why they have been recycled in this particular way.
"In conclusion, we are determined to see through the task in Iraq according to the normal behaviour set out in the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law. We will not hesitate to act where these high standards are not followed and we will investigate when allegations are brought to our attention. But we should not lose sight of the fact that thousands of our service personnel continue to serve their country with great distinction in Iraq and around the world. We are appalled at the allegations made against an unrepresentative small number, but that will not diminish our admiration for, or our respect and our pride in, those who continue to serve their country with such distinction".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for bringing the House up to date on the current security situation and allegations of mistreatment. Given the current atmosphere of public
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disquiet over the continuing and apparently deepening involvement of British troops in Iraq, the Government had little alternative but to make a Statement to both Houses.
The Statement is right to say that the possible unauthorised actions of a very few must not be allowed to undermine the outstanding work of tens of thousands of British soldiers and civilians who have served with distinction, compassion and sensitivity in Iraq.
There are no circumstances under which the brutal humiliation of disarmed and helpless prisoners can be excused. The replaying of these images day after day has the potential to undermine the significant gains that have been made towards the goals of peace, stability and freedom in Iraq. But it is very important to separate fact from opinion and rumour. We are bound by the Geneva Convention and the protocols. Our interrogators are scrupulously trained in tactical questioning and interrogation. They do an excellent job, often under the most trying circumstances, of producing relevant and timely human intelligence. That "HumInt", which must by its very nature remain secret, contributes significantly to the operational effectiveness of our forces in Iraq.
The House will be aware that Britain ratified the additional 1977 protocols to the 1949 Geneva Convention six years ago, and that Article 75 of the first protocol significantly prohibits,
"outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment … and any form of indecent assault".
I understand that Amnesty International reported to the MoD on several occasions since May last year alleging that abuses by British soldiers were taking place in Iraq.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. When did Her Majesty's Government first see those reports? What steps did the Government then take, and what actions were taken by the chain of command to deal with them? Since the document has been published today in the Wall Street Journal, will the Government now officially publish the ICRC report in full on this side of the Atlantic? Can the Minister confirm that the ICRC brought its concerns to the attention of the coalition forces on several occasions, orally and in writing, throughout 2003? When were British commanders in MND South East first made aware of the alleged abuse of prisoners by British forces? Finally, given the seriousness of the cuts in the military training programme, is the Minister entirely satisfied that British troops deployed to Iraq, including members of the TA, were given a full and detailed training package in handling prisoners and in the obligations of the Geneva Conventions'?
5.24 p.m.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. In reference to the 33 cases of civilian deaths, injuries or ill treatment, the Statement says:
"These investigations were not begun in response to the ICRC, to Amnesty or as the result of media pressure".

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That may be the case, and we support the ongoing processes of the Royal Military Police and its investigations in Iraq. However, why did the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross not cause alarm bells in government? Although the report was an interim one, and it was some months before the final report was to be viewed, its allegations are so serious that I find it difficult to believe that Ministers did not read it. Like many others, I downloaded it from the web today.
Although the word "confidentiality" is used far too often to describe information coming from Iraq, that confidentiality obviously could not include Ministers. It is therefore worrying that no Minister, as we are to believe, read the report or even had it brought to their attention until a few days ago. As I understand it, the report gives the impression that, although some of the abuses highlighted were stamped down in Iraq, it appears that the Red Cross believed that they were going on in a routine manner between May and September last year. That would cause considerable concern.
The British Army has an enviable reputation for its training and discipline. However, it is unfortunate that, although the Army is there to bring stability and peace to Iraq—it is not an army of occupation—the Government have not accepted that the European Convention on Human Rights should be applicable in Iraq. I find it strange that, when I raised that question last week, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said:
"It is our belief that, strictly speaking in law, it does not apply in Iraq. Whether it does or not may one day be tested".—[Official Report, 4/5/04; col. 1030.]
That is a rather unfortunate attitude to take as regards the convention and whether it applies to British soldiers.
I had planned to ask many of the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, has already put; I shall not repeat them. Has there been a review of British methods of intelligence gathering and interviewing prisoners? It has been quoted in the press—I do not know whether it is true—that techniques have been shared between US forces and British forces. Considering the fundamental abuses that have taken place under US soldiers' administration of prisoners, have joint operations procedures been reviewed? Have the Government requested urgent talks with the Americans about the abuses carried out and about remedial or any other training to be given to American forces in the future?
5.28 p.m.
Lord Bach: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their remarks and questions, which I shall do my best to answer. I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Astor, that there cannot be any circumstances in which the behaviour alleged, if proved, is acceptable—no circumstances at all. I think that that is very much the view of all Members of this House, which is why the allegations are so serious and need to be sorted out.
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I also agree with the noble Lord, if I may, that we must separate fact and rumour in such cases. We must understand that not every allegation is necessarily true. That does not mean to say that we do not have a duty to investigate each and every allegation, but as anyone who knows the criminal law in this country will be aware, not every allegation turns out to be true. It is a matter of common sense. I do not deny for a moment the seriousness of the Statement that I have made and the questions that have been asked about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Astor, asked questions about Amnesty International. We have received from Amnesty, not so much reports, but a number of letters, starting in May 2003. As the Statement said, there was a letter-writing campaign about the death of Mr Mousa, which my right honourable friend the Minister for the Armed Forces replied to and made public. We have looked into and are investigating every inquiry that Amnesty has made.
As concerns the ICRC report, we are not hiding behind confidentiality as Ministers. We are asked to publish it because it has appeared on a website on the other side of the Atlantic, but I must remind the House, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, that the report belongs to the ICRC. It is the committee's report, and, unless it wants to publish it, we cannot do so. Those are the conditions of the good relationship between the ICRC and us. If the committee is prepared to give its permission to publish, we would be minded to do so. It is known that the report is now on a website, and noble Lords have quite properly taken advantage of that.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, asked—more rhetorically than in fact, I think—whether Ministers had seen the ICRC report, when they say that they had not. I assure him that Ministers did not see the ICRC report; that is, the interim report that was sent to us in February. The reason, as was set out in the Statement that I read out a few minutes ago, is that the three matters relating to alleged British wrongdoing had all been looked into—off our own bat and at our own instigation—five months before the latest matters. The three matters raised in that report had all been looked into and investigated. That is why the decision was taken at PJHQ not to send the report to Ministers. That is why Ministers did not see the report until very recently.
There was a query about whether we were satisfied that there was sufficient training. I shall make the position clear: the Armed Forces are aware of their obligations under international law. I repeat to the House what I said last Tuesday: they are given thorough, mandatory training that includes specific guidance on handling prisoners of war. All personnel must attend refresher training every year. Before going to Iraq, all personnel are briefed on the rules of engagement and procedures for dealing with prisoners of war or other detainees. Each combat unit is required to have eight senior non-commissioned officers trained in handling prisoners of war. All units responsible for the routine handling of detainees

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conduct further specialist training. So, I am satisfied that we train our Armed Forces sufficiently in that regard.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, asked about intelligence gathering. The training in methods of questioning is of a high standard and is well within the terms of the Geneva Convention. The joint services intelligence organisation's training documentation states that the following techniques are expressly and explicitly forbidden: physical punishment of any sort; the use of stress privation; intentional sleep deprivation; withdrawal of food, water or medical help; degrading treatment, including sexual embarrassment or religious taunting; the use of what is called "white noise"—I understand that to be very loud noise—and torture methods such as thumbscrews. I repeat: all those are expressly and explicitly forbidden.
5.35 p.m.
Baroness Boothroyd: My Lords, my concern is the breakdown of the reasonable relationships that were building up between British service personnel and the Iraqi people. In view of the damage done by the horrendous photographs and videos that have been displayed continuously throughout the Muslim world, what steps are the British authorities taking to make it clear to the Iraqi people that no effort is being spared in investigating the allegations and that, if the allegations are well founded, those concerned will be dealt with through the rule of law?
Lord Bach: My Lords, the noble Baroness is right: one of the effects of the allegations, whether or not they are true in every case—something that newspapers might want to consider—is that the relationship that has been established over the previous months between British troops and Iraqis, particularly those in the south of the country, is put in danger. Even more obviously put in danger, perhaps, are the lives of British troops.
We are making every effort to get across to the Iraqi people our disgust at any case of this kind that is proved and our view that such behaviour is completely unacceptable. The Prime Minister has spoken on the matter twice, I think, in the past two or three days. The very reason that we went into Iraq was to stop not this sort of treatment but any treatment of this kind taking place. We wanted to stop it for good. In answer to the noble Baroness's question, I say that those who are found to be responsible will be punished. We are using all the methods that we can to get that across to the Iraqi people, but the noble Baroness and the House will know that there are people in Iraq who will do their best to pervert the message that we are sending.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we are not dealing with a nicety? We are dealing with the criminal law, which is on trial. Does not the burden of proof in all cases fall on the prosecuting authorities, however grave the allegations? Will my noble friend also underline the fact that the proposed defendants are entitled by our law to be treated as innocent, until the jury finds them guilty? Is it not right
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that, as is customary, the burden of proof should fall on the prosecution? All I ask is that there should be a fair trial. Does my noble friend agree?
Lord Bach: My Lords, my noble friend speaks with huge experience of such issues. He knows that I agree with him. It is essential that the interests of all parties in criminal matters are considered fairly and evenly. That includes the interests of potential defendants, which is why the system that we adopt in the Armed Forces is designed to make sure that independent bodies—the Army Legal Services and the Army Prosecution Authority, which are not part of the chain of command in the normal way—are obliged to examine the result of investigations to see whether it is appropriate for a charge to be made. If a charge is made, it is essential that a fair trial should follow.
Lord Hurd of Westwell: My Lords, I refer the Minister to the earlier part of his Statement, which dealt with the security situation. Understandably, he dealt only with the part of Iraq that is under the direct control of British troops, but does he not agree that experience tells us that the security of that part of Iraq—Basra and the surrounding towns—depends crucially on decisions taken and words spoken elsewhere? I refer, for example, to Imam al-Sadr's remarks on Friday, which the Minister mentioned, but also to American decisions made in Baghdad. They affect our troops crucially. Is the Minister satisfied that we have sufficient influence, day by day, on those decisions?
It is now 10 May. On 30 June, there will be a transfer of power to a sovereign Iraqi government. In the Minister's particular sphere, is it the view of Her Majesty's Government that if the powers to be transferred are to be at all credible to other Iraqis and the region, they need to include Iraqi command of Iraqi security forces and some at least effective Iraqi day-by-day say in the major military decisions of the coalition?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I disagree with nothing that the noble Lord has said. Of course, what happens in the south is affected to an extent by what happens elsewhere in Iraq. In discussions with our coalition partners—in particular, the Americans—we are satisfied that they are doing their jobs elsewhere in Iraq, which, it must be remembered, is sometimes extremely difficult in certain parts of the remainder of Iraq.
Of course, 30 June is now less than two months away. From a recent, if very short, visit that I made to Iraq about two weeks ago, I know that our minds are set very much indeed on what will happen on 30 June and on the days afterwards. Of course, it is intended that security should be handed over to the Iraqis on that day. But the vast majority of them would say that they want and need a coalition presence in the following weeks and months to ensure that security is satisfactory.
There is a huge amount of effort being made by the Americans, who can speak for themselves, and us in order to ensure that the various parts of the Iraqi

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security forces are being trained and made up as best we can. It is a hard job, but we are very conscious that if 30 June is to mean anything it must involve some transfer of security influence to the Iraqis.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Red Cross report was potentially extremely embarrassing for this country? Who took the decision that the report should not be disclosed to Ministers? Who took the decision that it should not be disclosed to the Prime Minister? Potentially, the report was a time bomb. It is not a question of a prosecution being brought or anything like that. It is exactly the same as a newspaper potentially reporting a possible crime, but not the prosecution of the crime. Therefore, there was a time bomb under the Government. Yet, there was a procedure whereby this report and its implications do not seem to have been disclosed to the Cabinet.
Lord Bach: My Lords, I have no idea whose decision it was not to let Ministers know.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Bach: My Lords, I do not have any idea. I shall repeat myself. The three issues to which that interim report referred in relation to British troops had all been investigated—not because we were asked to investigate them but because we chose to do so many months before the interim report arrived—and were being investigated at the time the report reached the Government. So all three issues have been dealt with, each of which was set out clearly in the Statement that I have just read.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I am sure that the Minister is aware that no one in this House or in the country would expect the Government to do other than they are doing in taking these allegations extremely seriously. We would expect no less. There is a high level of trust that the Government are doing no less than they should. That support will come from people irrespective of what they thought about the original decision to engage in the coalition's campaign.
However, those who opposed the campaign are bound to feel that allegations and divisions of this kind in our country and the evidence—if such there be—of particular, however small, numbers of soldiers crossing the boundaries of acceptable behaviour are a consequence that too often follows from contentious and divisive decisions. Were the Government aware that that might happen and that this type of military activity had a particular propensity to cause that kind of thing to occur? If the Government were aware, do they understand that there are many people in the country who will feel that what so far as we can tell currently has happened—I absolutely agree with the need for a fair trial in individual cases—is some indication of the fragile support that there was for this event?
Lord Bach: My Lords, with the greatest respect to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, I cannot agree with him on this occasion. Of course, there were
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divisions in this country about whether we should have gone to war with Iraq, which were expressed as legitimately as they can be in a democracy. But I do not think that that has any connection with the allegations that are currently circling around and, if those allegations are true, any of the acts that took place.
We must be realistic about this. I doubt that there has been a war, a conflict or a post-conflict situation in history, whether it involved disagreement or agreement about whether it was sensible to enter into, in which there has not been some examples of bad behaviour by armed forces. There always has been. As I think that I have made absolutely clear to the House today, none of it is acceptable. But I really do not see that that is in any way connected to the fact that this particular conflict divided the British people.
Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, my noble friend referred to "working reports" by the ICRC being provided to forces in theatre. I presume that those working reports cover actions by all coalition forces. The in-theatre reports are the ones that are of interest to me. Do or have Ministers or civil servants in the MoD or the Foreign Office have access to those working reports that were provided to forces in theatre?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I do not know the answer to that question, but I suspect that it is, "yes". I shall find out the answer, let the noble Lord know and, of course, put the answer in the Library of the House.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, many of us are very concerned that the spirit of Guantanamo Bay should not descend on operations in Iraq. As the noble Lord will understand, I am referring to the wilful disregard of the Geneva conventions that are said not to apply there. Of course, they apply in Iraq, but I should like to ask the Minister three questions.
First, I should like to have the Minister's assurance that, in future, reports from the Red Cross—the ICRC—or Amnesty International will reach the tables of Ministers at once.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, I am surprised that the noble Lord does not know who made the decision that they should not. At a later stage, will the Minister inform the House at what level that decision was made?
Secondly, with reference to the Geneva conventions, can the noble Lord confirm reports that, initially, prisoners and detainees in UK care were being interrogated hooded and whether that is in line with the Geneva convention? I believe that practice has now ceased.
Thirdly, in the very good report by the American general on the situation in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, a note was made of very curious incidents of so-called "ghost detainees". Detainees were being brought into Iraq for interrogation, perhaps from Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan, in circumstances the

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general himself viewed as counter to the Geneva Convention. Does the noble Lord know anything about that matter? Can he give a categorical assurance about "ghost detainees"—people detained outside Iraq and brought into the country for interrogation—that this has not happened under British supervision and jurisdiction?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions and I shall do my best to answer them. The answer to his first question is that I do not think that this situation will arise again. I suspect that, in the future, any report will be put in front of Ministers pretty quickly. That is my guess.
Secondly, the noble Lord should not be surprised that I am not prepared to name the person who decided that Ministers should not see the report. In this House we are not in the habit of talking about individuals in that sense. His question about the level of the decision is a much better inquiry and I shall do my best, if I am able, to find out and inform the House.
I turn to the matter of hooded detainees. That practice ended in the autumn of last year. I have read the same stories in the newspapers about "ghost detainees" as has the noble Lord. So far as I am aware, there is no question of that happening under British supervision at all.
Viscount Falkland: My Lords, all Members of your Lordships' House will be extremely disturbed by the allegations and rumours that have been spreading about British troops in Iraq. Will he take it from me that among those most devastated by this are those who at some stage have themselves had military training, who have served in Her Majesty's Armed Forces, or whose fathers, sons or other close relatives have done so? Indeed, that would include many in your Lordships' House. They will be aware of the traditional saw within the British armed services that the fish rots from the head.
If there is any truth in these allegations, then sooner or later we shall have to get to grips with the old standards which now seemed to have slipped. A famous commander once observed that there is no such thing as the British Army, rather it is a collection of regimental families. In the regiment in which both I and my son served, it would be unthinkable that such things could take place. If soldiers have been responsible for this kind of behaviour, then their officers are ultimately to blame. We have heard no mention of officers in any of our exchanges in this House. We have heard only generalities about a drop in standards overall, including among the Americans. I do not care what the Americans do—or at least I do care about it, but we have no influence over that.
If these allegations are true, can the Minister say whether Members of this House will have a chance to discuss what has happened to that great family, the British regiment, and the ways in which the honour of the regiment is maintained?
Lord Bach: My Lords, I very much take the point made by the noble Viscount about the upset that this will cause to those with a background in the Armed
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Forces. I also believe that it will cause huge upset to those many thousands in the Armed Forces who fought in the war in Iraq and are now helping to make that country once again a decent place. They will be as upset as anyone at the suggestion that there has been mistreatment of the kind described.
I am sure that this House will have an opportunity to discuss the matters raised by the noble Viscount. Let us see first what is brought out by these investigations. If at that point we want to discuss the matter, noble Lords are quite clever enough to ensure that it is put on the Order Paper.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords—
Lord Marlesford: My Lords—
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords—
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the Conservative Opposition have had their ration and therefore it is the turn of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am sorry, I have done my best to be fair. The 20 minutes for questions are up.

Higher Education Bill
5.55 p.m.
House again in Committee.
Clause 8 [Activities outside United Kingdom]:
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 3, line 29, at end insert "nor prevents the Council from making grants in response to applications from properly accredited and publicly supported British research institutions operating overseas, including those institutes and research schools, which are funded principally by the British Academy"
The noble Lord said: Unlike Amendment No. 8, this amendment is tightly focused and does not address the generality of an issue. It seeks to rectify a serious anomaly which falls squarely within the scope of research councils, in particular the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It would put right an anomaly in the funding for research carried out by British research institutions overseas, and specifically by those overseas institutes and societies which are represented on the British Academy's Board for Academy-Sponsored Institutes and Societies, generally abbreviated to BASIS. These include the research schools in Ankara, Athens and Rome, as well as the Egypt Exploration Society, the British Institute in Eastern Africa, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq—currently in eclipse—the British Institute of Persian Studies and other such bodies. At this point I declare an interest as chairman-elect of the British School at Athens.
First, perhaps I may remind noble Lords of the splendid gaffe committed by my right honourable friend Kenneth Clarke when he had recently become Secretary of State for Education and Science and about which, with refreshing candour, he told me himself only a couple of days later. Noble Lords will be aware that these research institutions are active in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and study of the history and geography of the lands where they are situated, and so forth. The British School at Rome also has an excellent and well respected scholarship programme for visiting artists. In general they are used by British research scholars.
When the secretary of the British Academy raised with my right honourable friend the matter of the parlous financial position of the British schools overseas at the time—he had not been terribly well briefed by his officials—his bluff and well meaning reply was, "Well, can't they put up the fees?". Noble Lords will realise that these institutions do not charge fees. Their work is based on research; they do not run courses such as those organised by the British Council in various countries.
The institutions are used in the main by research workers from British universities, including doctoral students and academic staff, but they do have some highly qualified personnel of their own. The director of such an institute has roughly the status of a university professor. It is thus highly anomalous that the current regulations of the research councils apparently prevent those councils receiving grant applications from such staff or then awarding research grants to them in the same manner as they are able to do for the staff of all British universities. I am told that they follow this negative practice on the grounds that these institutes are based overseas, even though they are funded principally by the British Academy in London and so, ultimately, by the Office of Science and Technology. This is a serious matter, for research is the lifeblood of such institutions. Most postgraduate research in Britain is funded through the research councils.
I should stress that this is not a matter just for the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It would apply with equal force to the Economic and Social Research Council or to the National Environmental Research Council. Perhaps the Minister can reassure the Committee that if the amendment were carried, so that it applied to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, its effect in eliminating the present restriction could apply with equal force to the other research councils.
Indeed, perhaps the Minister could inform the House—I hope she received my fax saying I would ask her this question—precisely where the objection lies to the British institutes overseas, and personnel such as their directors, receiving such funding from the research councils. Is there really some obscure law preventing research councils dispersing grants to suitable applicants with alpha-grade projects in the same manner as they would to applicants from UK
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universities? That is the message the British Academy gets from the research councils when they raise the matter on behalf of BASIS.
This may therefore be regarded as a probing amendment. If the Minister would inform me that the amendment is entirely unnecessary, and that a simple instruction from herself or the Office of Science and Technology would set the matter right—and if she will give an assurance that such an instruction will be rapidly forthcoming—I shall happily withdraw the amendment.
Perhaps I might ask the Minister in passing whether there is the possibility of some additional funding, once the situation is calmer and safer, to set the British School of Archaeology in Iraq on its feet again. These institutions can create a great deal of good will in the countries in which they operate, and do so in a way which is entirely non-political and which respects and often enhances the cultural heritage of the countries concerned. I beg to move.
6 p.m.
Baroness Perry of Southwark: I offer this amendment my support. As this is the first time I have spoken in Part 1, I would like to add my welcome to that of many other noble Lords to the establishment of the AHRC. My own experience was as a member of the Economic and Social Research Council, which has many areas of overlap with the humanities, particularly in areas such as geography and economic history. It was often very difficult to have them operating under two different kinds of legislation.
I would like to support what my noble friend Lord Renfrew has said, because this was drawn to my attention some time ago. There is a real problem in research councils being able to fund applications for grants from very distinguished people, working in institutions of very high international repute. I hope that, as we put our probing amendment to the Minister, she will be able to tell us that what is already on the face of the Bill will be sufficient to cover the points we make.
Lord Morgan: I would hope that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, is, as he says, superfluous. It is an enormously worthy cause. I am a fellow of the British Academy, so—if I have to—I declare a kind of interest.
First, the value of these British schools abroad goes far beyond the purely academic. They have been an enormous factor in establishing a British cultural presence, particularly in the Middle East, in a way that has been wholly beneficial for this country. Secondly, if we do not support these areas of research—which are very often very meagrely financed as the noble Lord explained—many areas of study, such as Egyptology and papyrology, might actually disappear. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister does not wish these important subjects to disappear, and I am sure she will be supportive.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: I too declare an interest as a fellow of the British Academy. I believe that these are astonishingly economical programmes,

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which have a very high cultural impact and a high impact on cultural diplomacy. When I was on the council of the British Academy, it was breathtaking to see how little money was available to run these programmes. One of the important things about them is that they are very long term, ensuring that we have experts and scholars in this country who have spent long periods of time in the relevant places, and who understand not merely their own subject, but the cultural politics of those societies. They understand the ways in which research can be most usefully conducted and how it can be focused, as well as the delicacies of conducting certain kinds of research. It is not only the scholars in the various schools, but also those who visit them occasionally who benefit from that expertise and sensitivity. I hope that the Government may be disposed to support this amendment.
Lord Walton of Detchant: Is the Minister aware that the Medical Research Council has funded research overseas for many years? There have been a number of units funded by the MRC, and there is currently a very active one in the Gambia. Is giving grants different from actually funding established units? Surely the principle is the same?
Lord Stewartby: I would also like to add a word in support of my noble friend Lord Renfrew. I share the privilege with him of being a member of the archaeology section of the British Academy. As the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill of Bengarve, has just said, there are many people, including myself, who have been able to take advantage of the facilities provided by the British schools abroad during their student days. I do not think there is any doubt about their value—there is a doubt about their price. We need to ensure that they can get this sort of support.
I suppose it is not outside the realms of possibility that the Minister will be so sympathetic to this amendment that she will accept it on the spot. But, just in case that is not the situation, I hope she will be swayed by the power of the argument which has been put forward by many distinguished Members of your Lordships' House. We shall see that the purpose of my noble friend's amendment is achieved, even if not by this precise route.
Baroness Blackstone: The Arts and Humanities Research Board, which is being replaced by the AHRC which is still being set up, and indeed the British Academy before that, funded these institutions abroad. I cannot understand quite what the need for this amendment is, since Clause 8 allows the AHRC to do just the same.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: Perhaps I might respond to that point. It is the case that BASIS, which is the group of these research institutes operating with the British Academy, has on many occasions sought to persuade the research councils, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board, to take applications for research projects in just the same way that they take
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applications for research projects by scholars in universities. Again and again, the British Academy has been advised that the research councils cannot take such applications because the British institutes overseas are not UK universities, and they receive the response that they are prevented by regulation or by law—and I am looking forward to clarification from the Minister as to just where the impediment lies.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, I am bewildered by the situation, but I can assure her that it is the case. I believe I am right in saying that no member of staff based at one of the British schools or institutes overseas under the umbrella of the BASIS board at the British Academy has ever had an application for a research grant accepted for consideration.
Lord Winston: Will the Minister not agree that this amendment is useful in that it allows a certain amount of reciprocity? A number of us in this country have been in receipt of grants from the American Government to pursue research under the National Institutes of Health, for example. The other advantage of this approach is that it allows a degree of mutual interaction and collaboration between academic units which may not be primarily based in Britain. That must be, in the long term, an advantage to our academic system.
Lord Shutt of Greetland: I rise to support this amendment, if it is needed. Having read the clause, nothing in this part restricts such activities, and I would hope it is not needed. There is a sense in which, although I am happy with the amendment up to a point, the amendment itself could be a hit restrictive. Therefore, I hope the Minister can tell us it is not needed and that these opportunities exist.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, for that. I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, that my intention in responding is to make him a happy Peer. I am grateful to him for writing to me. I know he is a keen advocate for British research institutions overseas; that is obvious from his contribution. I pay tribute to his distinguished record in supporting and championing those bodies. I understand that he is due to take on the chairmanship of the British School at Athens later this year. I wish him all the best in that role.
I understand the noble Lord's concern about the position of these institutions as regards access to UK public funds for arts and humanities research. At present, because of restrictions on the use of funding from the UK funding councils, the AHRB is unable to fund the British overseas research institutions. However, I can reassure the noble Lord that his amendment is entirely unnecessary. Indeed, while trying to clarify the scope of the AHRC, it is possible— as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, indicated—that the amendment might inadvertently restrict its activities outside the UK.
As the AHRC will no longer be funded by the UK funding councils, but—as we discussed in earlier amendments—by the Office of Science and Technology,

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it will no longer be subject to the same restrictions. As noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Blackstone, have pointed out, Clause 8 already makes it quite clear that nothing in the Bill restricts the AHRC's activities to the UK or to any part of it.
It is our intention, as I have indicated, to establish the Arts and Humanities Research Council on an operational basis and underpinning framework that are broadly similar to those of the science research councils. That will extend the range of organisations and institutions eligible to apply for support. The noble Lord will not be surprised that it will be for the AHRC to determine the eligibility criteria for institutions applying for funding, consistent with enabling it to deliver its strategic objectives and research priorities. This funding will be allocated, I am sure, on the basis of merit and excellence, irrespective of the institution that applies.
Once in operation, the AHRC will establish a transparent process for determining, on a case by case basis, whether organisations such as the British institutes referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, should become eligible to apply for AHRC funding. I understand that the British Academy has not yet approached the Office of Science and Technology or Research Councils UK. However, the British Academy has indicated to the Office of Science and Technology that it is considering raising this issue when it is appropriate to do so.
As I have already emphasised, nothing in the clause as it stands will prevent the AHRC from determining where in the UK or overseas it is most appropriate to fund research activities in fulfilment of its objectives and priorities. I hope that that offers the reassurance that the noble Lord is seeking and that he is able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: I find myself in the unusual position of being a happy Peer, and being made a happy Peer by the noble Baroness opposite. At first perception I find her remarks very helpful and very constructive. I am very grateful to all of the very distinguished noble Lords who spoke in the debate and gave such warm support for the British schools and research institutes overseas. As I understand the noble Baroness's comments, she has given a response which seems entirely satisfactory and will be entirely satisfactory to the British Academy. I shall check that with the British Academy. On the basis of that, unusually, for me, happy experience, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clause 10 [Research in arts and humanities]:
Baroness Seccombe Baroness Seccombe moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 4, line 3, leave out paragraphs (d) and (e).
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 10 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 12, 13 and 14. This group of amendments removes the ability of the Secretary of State, the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Executive and the Northern Ireland Department to set up,
"advisory bodies for the purpose of assisting the department in matters connected with research in the arts and humanities".
appointing the members, and organising the technical details that that would require.
These subsections within Clause 10, along with the aspects of the White Paper and the Bill's regulatory impact assessment, make it obvious that the Government are intending to, or "may", create more bodies and organisations that are designed to play a role in the higher education arena. In the case of Clause 10, those would be within the area of arts and humanities. The AHRC is a welcome and overdue body that has cross-party support and its creation addresses all the necessary needs. Its remit is to advise on the support of research and to identify academic excellence. However, can the Minister please explain to the Committee why we need yet more bodies?
6.15 p.m.
This issue raises a whole range of concerns. Not only does every new organisation that is set up require a building, a secretariat, IT equipment and accounting support, it has to produce publicity material and an annual report. In short, it results in a proliferation of administration, and the costs of that administration, even for bodies that have the relatively informal status, would be substantial. Where does the financing for these extra costs come from?
The Bill as it stands enables advisory bodies to be set up in a blanket way, with no restrictions and no financial limitations placed upon them by the Secretary of State and the three devolved institutions. I recognise that these are but enabling powers, and no doubt it can be argued that they may not be taken; but to that I respond simply that there is nothing to stop them being taken. I am particularly concerned as we are dealing with a Government who, we can safely argue, have a track record for pushing up spending on central units, task forces, teams and advisory bodies.
No doubt the Minister will, in her reply, give such deserving examples of advisory bodies as the Scottish Science Advisory Committee or the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission. I am the first to admit that an increasing number of ethical issues have arisen in the past 10 years on which the Government and indeed the public have sought detailed guidance. However, does the setting up of such bodies simply delegate responsibility to the research councils under which these bodies will fall? They add another layer in the decision-making process. It can be all too easy to set up organisations of experts to think about questions and so delay the answers.
It has been argued in another place that such work could just as easily be achieved by a simplified streamlined system without a proliferation of organisations. Issues

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such as changes of technology, knowledge or ethics within the different councils could and should be addressed by them. That way the additional layers of cost imposed by the creation of a multiplicity of organisations are not incurred and the costs are kept to a minimum. I beg to move.
Lord Shutt of Greetland: In speaking to Amendments Nos. 10, 11, 12 and 13, I should like also to refer to Clause 10 itself. This is the clause that also says that the Secretary of State may carry out and support research, disseminate and so forth. It is worth putting that in the context of the clauses to which my noble friend Lady Sharp referred in speaking to Amendment No. 2 onwards. She was rightly trying to achieve an arm's length council that is not pushed around. This provision, however, almost ought to say that, regardless of setting up that body, the Secretary of State can still do something that is not appropriate for that council or tell it to do something that he wants it to do although it does not particularly want to do it.
We do not oppose the fact that the Secretary of State, a Scottish Minister or Northern Ireland Minister or one of the devolved institutions may decide to do a certain piece of work. However, I should hope that that would be a largely one-off objective. If advisers are needed to do that work, it might help some of those with depleted salaries to serve on those bodies—but perhaps not. It seems right that if it is appropriate for there to be advisory bodies—in some circumstances it will be and in others not—it may be appropriate for them to be paid. We do not believe that there is any harm in leaving this matter there. It is worth stating that this would be direct work carried out by the Secretary of State alongside the arm's length work carried out by the council.
Lord Morgan: These amendments are unnecessary. I hope that the Government will not accept them. It seems to me that they are not in place of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, but a supplement to it. I can think of all kinds of matters in the humanities—for example, the history of architecture—where research has been fostered directly by departments. I also hope that advisory bodies will be allowed to remain. They will almost certainly consist of academics and from what we have heard they will, therefore, come cheap. They will not be paid; they will give their expertise in the way that I did for many years in Wales on the Board of Celtic Studies. I do not recall becoming rich out of that kind activity, of which there are many. I hope that the Government will simply adhere to the terms of the clause as it stands.
Lord Baker of Dorking: I understand the argument against setting up another scattering of quangos, but on the other hand, when one establishes a new research council., it will not have many friends at court. I remember my days in the department. Of course there were civil servants who had studied humanities and the arts, but they were overwhelmed by those in the department who had responsibility for science, engineering and medicine because there were huge
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research councils with huge amounts of money—hundreds of millions of pounds a year was spent. Therefore, there was a solid flank of support for or criticism of or doubts about the proposals that came from the various bodies. In the case of the humanities and the arts, the voices were not raised because the sums involved were exceedingly modest.
I would not want the disposition of research funds to be entirely in the hands of the Secretary of State. One thing that we know about the present incumbent of the office of Secretary of State is that he is against medieval history. I studied medieval history and found it a fascinating and immensely worthwhile subject. I recommend to anyone who wants to embark upon a political life that a close study of the Wars of the Roses is invaluable. I do not want the Secretary of State to be able to strike out something and say, "I don't support that", or the Welsh Assembly to be able to say, "We don't actually approve of that in Wales", or "we have no research on castle building", or something of that kind. While the councils get going, they will need a body of support to guide them in the right way and to marshal the various lobbying groups in the various humanities and arts and so on. I think that would be quite a useful body.
I do not know whether such bodies will be paid. Nobody knows yet. Perhaps some research can be done on that. The noble Lord on the Liberal Democrat Benches said that this may be one of the few ways in which academics can receive a little more in the coming years, which will please the noble Lord. Lord Renfrew. On the whole, I think it will be helpful.
Lord Walton of Detchant: They are paid an attendance allowance and expenses. I believe that that is the policy that should be pursued throughout the research council structure.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: The Bill applies only here and there to Scotland. Curiously the part of the Bill that affects Scotland most—we shall come to it later—is Part 3 Universities are devolved under the Scotland Act and so the legislation in Part 3 of this Bill relating to fees does not apply to Scotland. Yet it will have an absolutely devastating effect on Scotland. Scottish students who want to study in England will find it extremely difficult to do so because they will not be supported in the way that English students will be. English students who want to study in Scotland will find universities will be greatly depleted of funds compared with the universities that they have left at home. Every university in Scotland will suffer. That is a point to which we shall turn later and it is a very big matter. At an earlier stage, the Minister said that her Secretary of State was at that moment discussing the matter in Scotland. It is pretty strange that it had not been discussed before that. That is very worrying indeed.
The clause applies to Scotland, as it does to Wales and Northern Ireland. Research councils under the Scotland Act were left to Westminster. I was one of those who fought for that before the Scotland Act came into being and my late noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish

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laid great stress, from the Opposition Front Bench, on the fact that research was a UK matter, a UK market and an international market and that it should not be devolved.
I do not understand why it is necessary to have this clause. Is there anything to stop a Scots university, if it wants, conducting some research on a matter that is in the hands of the research council? The noble Lord on the Front Bench, who understands this matter very well, is shaking his head. There is no reason why they should not. Why is this clause in the Bill? I do not understand.
The idea that someone could prevent there being a committee of academics in Scotland to advise the Scots Parliament on research is very strange. The research councils are reserved—not research itself. No one knows where research begins and ends anyway. Surveys are often claimed to be research when they are simply surveys carried out by the Scots Parliament to find out something. I do not understand why the clause is in the Bill. If it has to be in the Bill, and if the Scots Parliament can set up only a committee of the kind described in the Bill, I would have thought that that was rather strange too.
As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, this is a very expensive way to do things. It should be for the Scots Parliament to deal with such matters without necessarily setting up a committee. I hope that the need for the clause will be explained by the Minister. If it is necessary, then I certainly support my noble friend.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: Will the Minister take this opportunity to explain the possible relationship between the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the areas of devolved government—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? It is somewhat strange to see that England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are to have the same duties of carrying out research in the arts and humanities, but they are optional as far as the devolved assemblies are concerned. Surely, there must be a connection that has not been defined at all between the UK council, with its entire UK remit, and the regional governments with similar duties.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: By the time we conclude this Committee stage we will all know each other extremely well. That is based on a number of exchanges which have already occurred. I have realised that this is the third speech I have made in Committee and I have not yet declared my interest as pro-Chancellor of the University of London. I do not propose to make that declaration again, but I should have done so earlier.
My noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking asked the Minister whether such people would be paid. I suspect that the Minister may have identified my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking as being a potential ally on this Bill and, therefore, in her reply she may not draw his attention to the fact that subsections (1)(e), (2)(e), (3)(e), and (4)(e) of Clause 10 indicate that they will be paid and therefore we shall carry on in exactly the same way as the
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noble Lord, Lord Walton, indicated. As my noble friend asked the question without indicating whether or not he approved of it, but simply commented that no one seemed to know, I hesitate, in view of his relationship with our noble friends on the Front Bench, to indicate that they are against subsections 1(e), 2(e), 3(e) and 4(e). However, I do not know whether or not that will irritate my noble friend.
6.30 p.m.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: Perhaps I should seek to clarify for the benefit of all noble Lords that, even at this late stage in my career in the Chamber, I find it very difficult to know how I am supposed to answer a question when I am not actually replying. Therefore, trying to reply silently, I gave the noble Lord, Lord Baker, the wrong impression, for which I apologise.
As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, quite rightly said, under the provisions of subsections (1)(e), (2)(e), (3)(e) and (4)(e), the appointed members of such bodies "may" be paid, as the noble Lord, Lord Walton, clarified for us, and as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has just reminded me. Thank you so much for that intervention in my ear. The option for payment is therefore available, though many noble Lords will know that they have served on such bodies and have not received payment. However, the noble Lord, Lord Walton, is right that, in the nature of such bodies, payments are made in the form of attendance allowances and so on.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, set out the purpose behind the amendment, which is to limit the power of the Secretary of State and the devolved administrations to establish and fund any advisory body that is needed on issues associated with the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Noble Lords have queried from the beginning the way in which the amendment is tabled in the Bill. I should point out—I hope that it will help the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy—that these measures were based on legislation passed in 1965. Of course, there was no devolution in 1965. Under the 1998 devolution legislation, the other seven boards were covered. The amendment is therefore tabled in that way to mirror what has already occurred with the other seven boards.
To link to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, the research councils are UK-wide and have been put together, as the noble Lord knows, with the support of the Welsh Assembly, Scotland and Northern Ireland. They will operate in that way. We need to enable those bodies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to carry out additional, complementary research of the kind that I shall describe. That is why the amendment is tabled in this way, which I hope will clarify the matter for the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy. I hope to clarify more points as I continue.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: Will the Minister confirm, first, whether or not there will be a positive connection between such bodies that are set up in the regions and

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the UK council? Secondly, will the devolved administrations be expected in any circumstances to contribute financially to the UK body?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: It depends on what the devolved administrations think. It will become clear as I explain what kind of bodies I am talking about. For example, if the Welsh Assembly wanted to undertake sonic research, I am sure that it would consult with the UK-wide Arts and Humanities Research Council in order to establish whether it was necessary and appropriate. I hope that the noble Lord will be assisted when I come to explain the kind of body that we are describing, and I am sure that he will come back to me if I fail to do so. We have established, I hope, the purpose behind the clauses, why they are there and the fact that they mirror what we have done within the devolution legislation.
It will come as no surprise to any noble Lord that the Government and the devolved administrations receive scientific advice from a variety of sources. Their powers have already been put to good use so far as science and technology is concerned. For example, the premier scientific advisory body for the Government is the Council for Science and Technology, originally established in 1993 to provide independent, high level advice on science and technology policy. It was re-launched in March of this year after review, with new terms of reference and a new membership, to include, according to my brief, "more softer sciences". I shall have to seek an indication of what a softer science is. I would interpret it to mean social sciences. Even in a previous incarnation, of course, the body took an interest in arts and humanities research, considering in its report in 2001, which I found very interesting, the question of the division between the arts and the sciences and how it could be reduced, which, of course, included the recommendation for the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, indicated, there are a number of highly valuable, strategic scientific bodies. The Human Genetics Commission and the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission were specifically mentioned by the noble Baroness. The membership of those bodies, which is also important and partly addresses the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, concerning the differences and synergies between those bodies, consists of consumer, green and other interest groups, media experts, social scientists, lawyers, philosophers and scientists. They consider the bigger picture issues of ethical and social questions as well as the sciences. I believe that they are very important. In another place, Mr Thomas drew attention to the specific role that the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission has played in advising the Government on GM crops, which I know is a matter of great significance in your Lordships' House, in another place and elsewhere. Those are some examples of very important bodies that have played strategic roles in offering advice on some very big questions that face both the Government and the scientists.
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Neither the Government nor the devolved administrations have any intention of creating bodies for the sake of it. As my right honourable friend the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education indicated, we would not have thought a decade ago that genetically modified crops, cloning, ethical issues and post-mapping of the genome would have become such important issues in our economy. I believe that it is appropriate for those powers to exist in order to have the kind of strategic advice that I have indicated.
I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, is anxious that we should not create unnecessary bodies with additional resources. However, I think that there would be some undesirable consequences of the amendment. It would remove the opportunity from the Secretary of State and the devolved administrations to secure the kind of strategic advice that I have indicated is very important. I also believe that it would undermine further our intention to set the Arts and Humanities Research Council on the same footing as research in science and technology and to create the best possible framework for it.
It is probably also worth saying that the Office of Science and Technology has just published guidelines that address the role of government departments in the process of obtaining and using scientific advice. Those draw on key principles enunciated by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, in his BSE Inquiry report and are consistent with those underlying the Government's drive for evidence-based policy. Though primarily aimed at individual departments, those principles have applications in wider fields and to issues beyond science.
To reassure further the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, among the key messages is that the department should actively seek a wide range of advice from the best sources to support policy making and development; namely, that reliance should not be placed on a single source. It would be too easy simply to go to the research councils, important, valuable and critical institutions though they will be. I believe that it is important to have an ability to look beyond them and to involve the kind of groups that I have indicated have been used previously.
I have attempted to explain, first, why the clauses are expressed in the Bill in the way that they are; secondly, the critical role that some of the advisory groups have played in the past; thirdly, the principles that resulted from the findings of the BSE inquiry under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips; and, fourthly, the critical relevance of having flexibility within the devolved administrations, who are very supportive of this part of the Bill, and within the Secretary of State's cross-government to be able to achieve the kind of strategic advice and support that is needed. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Walton of Detchant: I hope I shall be forgiven for intervening further. I again apologise for using a medical analogy, but the Medical Research Council is a UK-wide body that gives programme, policy and project grants to anyone from the United Kingdom. In addition, the Department of Health in England, the Scottish Home and Health Department and the relevant departments in Wales and Northern Ireland

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each have research programmes to which individuals can apply for research grants of particular relevance to those countries. Similarly, the new research council will have a UK-wide role and each of the devolved administrations may, if they wish, promote research in the field of humanities and so on, which may, for instance, be relevant to the culture and history of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Surely, that is a comparable situation to that which exists in the other research councils and is framed in exactly the same way.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The noble Lord, Lord Walton, is absolutely right, and I endorse his example. This is about setting up this research council on exactly the same basis, and that flexibility is very important.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I do not remember ever before being told that the Government were putting something into a Bill which did not have to be there in order to make it match another piece of legislation. Subsection (3) simply repeats what the situation is under the Scotland Act 1998. The noble Baroness has said that; when the universities became a devolved matter, Scotland could do all these things. The research council was not devolved but all these things became possible for Scottish Ministers, and I expect they are doing them.
I am not saying that the provision should not be in the Bill. However, it seems rather strange to repeat a part of the Bill simply to remind people that under the Scotland Act, the Scots Parliament can make these provisions. That is how I see the matter. In fact, if paragraphs (d) and (e), the subject of a further amendment, were removed, it would make not the smallest difference because the Scots Parliament can do this anyway.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I shall clarify my understanding of this and am happy to write further and clarify it again if it is not right. In 1965, when the research councils were established, there was no devolution. In 1998, the research councils already in existence were covered in the Scotland Act to make sure that this would apply. Because we are creating a new research council, it is not covered by the 1998 Act. Therefore, this provision is to give it parity with the other research councils. It is not an unnecessary provision; it is necessary to ensure that we make this clear. The noble Baroness is right that this provision exists for all the other research councils. However, it does not exist for this one, and it would not if we removed this part of the Bill.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Does that mean that the research councils are all listed in the Scotland Act?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The noble Baroness defeats me regarding exactly how this was done. I know that it was done in the legislation but I do not have it to hand and I will write to her on that point.
Baroness Seccombe: The proliferation of quangos is one of my concerns. Does this mean that four advisory
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bodies will be set up countrywide, one in each of the devolved administrations and one in this country? It seems to me duplication gone mad to have four bodies, perhaps discussing the same thing. I should have thought that one body, the research council itself, could have done it all.
How many advisory bodies are working within the DfES at present? What is the total cost of running these quangos, and where does the money come from?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I think the noble Baroness is asking a slightly wider question about advisory bodies and whether they are quangos. As always, I am happy to write to her with the details. However, the point about the Bill is not that each devolved administration has to set up anything; it is for them to choose. If the devolved administrations feel it is necessary, they should have the right and the power to do so, as they have with the other research councils. I am quite sure that on a number of these issues, as the noble Baroness has indicated, the work will go through the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which will be a key player in determining what happens.
As I have indicated, there are very good examples where people beyond the research community—consumers, for example—could be involved in bodies that help to determine the future of policy and some of the big questions to which I have already referred. That is the flexibility we are seeking in the Bill.
Baroness Seccombe: It seems to me that setting up ad hoc advisory committees does not mean that one has to set up another quango. I shall read with great interest all the contributions on this, and I am grateful to those who have contributed. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Roberts of Conwy Lord Roberts of Conwy moved Amendment No. 11:
Page 4, line 10, leave out "may" and insert "shall"
The noble Lord said: The amendment would appear to be comparatively minor, making it obligatory upon rather than optional for the National Assembly for Wales to support research in the arts and humanities. But a considerable number of similar amendments could be put down throughout the Bill, not only in relation to Wales but to Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. At this point, I think I had better declare my interest as president of the University of Wales College of Medicine.
There are some 14 clauses and three schedules in the Bill which relate to Wales. In effect, they set up separate systems and separate bodies from those proposed for the UK, or England, to achieve exactly the same ends. As we noted in the previous debate, Clause 10(2) relating to Wales replicates Clause 10(1) relating to England, and so on.
Similarly, later the Bill provides that there "may" be a Welsh corporate body to deal with students' complaints and there "may" be a separate system of approved plans on which student support will be

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based. I stress "may" because the Bill is largely permissive rather than prescriptive as far as the National Assembly is concerned, and I believe that that is generally true of Scotland and Northern Ireland as well.
My noble friend Lady Seccombe is absolutely right that multiple duplication of this kind always comes at a cost. So let us be clear that the Government's justification for that extra cost is devolution rather than education or any of the real subjects of the Bill. I am bound to say that much of the unity of the higher education system in the UK will go out of the window in the process of implementing the Bill.
Some of the clauses relating to Wales are straight copies of English clauses. For example, Welsh Clause 26 is almost a straight copy of English Clause 23, except that the power to impose conditions for student fees is derived in Wales from the National Assembly and in England from the Secretary of State. At the end of the day, I suppose, it all comes from the same Treasury pocket.
Because the funding of higher education in Wales comes from the National Assembly it is, I suppose, understandable that the Government should seek to implement their principles in the dualistic fashion proposed in the Bill. However, there is a complication, as I have implied. Under the Bill, the National Assembly is not bound to implement its provisions and there is evident reluctance in the Assembly government to do so. The Assembly has decided that it will have its own independent review of higher education funding under Professor Teresa Rees, and her report is not due until April of next year. An interim report is due in February. Let us assume that they will eventually toe the central government line. The consequences will be that differences will inevitably emerge in the support given to students depending on where in the UK they come from.
The Explanatory Notes tell us on page 11 in paragraph 61:
"The Assembly intends in practice to make regulations affecting students who have a prescribed connection with Wales when they start their course, regardless of the location of the institution at which they are studying and of their place of residence after graduation".
In short, there are to be special measures to support students who have the good fortune to have the prescribed connection with Wales, however that connection is finally defined. That will not be an easy task.
There is nothing new in such geographical differences in student support. Some of your Lordships, like myself, will remember the old county scholarships, whose plenitude and value depended on the wealth and generosity of the county where people received their secondary education. Although the National Assembly's intentions may be to favour Welsh students, the extent to which it will be able to do so will depend on the resources available, which may not always be as copious as they appear to be today.
The underlying question is whether this geographical consideration is appropriately placed in the UK scheme of things in relation to educational
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merit and the ability to benefit from higher education. The same applies to access, which appears to have supreme pre-eminence in the Government's thinking.
A substantial proportion of higher education students in Welsh institutions—over 40 per cent—are from outside Wales. How will the Bill affect them? My noble friends on the Front Bench have put down a new clause to prevent discrimination against them in the charging of fees. Whether the Government will accept the new clause remains to be seen.
There are to be no variable fees in Wales until 2007—a year later than England—and an undertaking to that effect has been given by the Welsh Assembly government. Will there be a sudden influx of students to Wales from the rest of the United Kingdom for that reason? One of the reasons why Professor Rees is not to report until next April is to enable her to take account of the effect of variable fees in England. That was said by the Minister for Lifelong Learning in Wales.
If variable fees are not introduced in Wales and an alternative stream of alternative funding is not provided, Welsh higher education institutions will be financially disadvantaged compared with their counterparts in England. The Ministers on the Front Bench opposite look a little mystified, but I can tell them that that fear was expressed in a report by the Council and Academic Board of the University of Wales to a meeting of the University Court on 16 April.
Will there be an exodus of the best academics to better-paid posts in top-up institutions in England as is feared in Scotland, as we have already heard?
The blatant fact is that there will be differences in the extent and method of support for students and institutions, and where there are differences, discrimination will creep in.
We are assured on page 17 of the Explanatory Notes that, "There is no discrimination", at least within the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights. But I suspect that that will not be the end of it.
I am bound to tell the noble Baroness that there is a great deal of confusion, not only within the terms of this Bill, but in attitudes towards it, particularly in the devolved administrations. Its practical implications and consequences have not been thought through, and this is as apparent in Wales as elsewhere. Great uncertainty prevails. If I may mix my metaphors, this Bill has all the hallmarks of a dog's breakfast.
I have given a foretaste of debates to come, and your Lordships have been very tolerant. With regard to this specific amendment, can it be right that arts and humanities research has the imprimatur of statute and Royal Charter in the UK, but appears to be optional—it is a "may" situation—in parts of the UK?
We have not had a clear answer to the question of what the relationship is going to be between the regional bodies established for arts and humanities research and the UK body. It seems odd that all the Minister can say is that she would expect the regional bodies to consult the UK council. I would have thought that there would have been a closer connection than that, and that that connection would have been defined in the Bill.
Once again I ask her whether she can amplify on what she said about the proposed interconnecting arrangements between the regional arts and research bodies—which may, or may not, be established depending on the institution concerned—and the UK council with its UK remit. I beg to move.
Lord Morgan: The amendment—
Lord Baker of Dorking: The amendment—
Lord Skelmersdale: I think it would be appropriate to let the Lord Chairman put the question first, before my noble friend gets questioned.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Carter): Amendment proposed, page 4 line 10. Leave out "may" and insert "shall".
Lord Baker of Dorking: My noble friend ranged rather widely, but could he give us the benefit of his views in one matter? He pointed out the disadvantages that Welsh universities have in the new regime. In view of his presidency of the University of Wales College of Medicine, does he favour the introduction of variable fees in Wales?
Lord Roberts of Conwy: I certainly do. But at the moment we are prohibited from having variable fees, and therefore we are going to be at a considerable disadvantage to England. That situation is inevitable, because there is a pledge given by the Assembly government that variable fees will not be introduced before 2007.
Lord Morgan: I would like to confine myself rather narrowly to Amendment No. 11. This may seem parochial and pedestrian, but my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, built up a mighty edifice of Welsh eloquence about this and ranged over practically the whole of the Bill. He succeeded in eliciting my disagreement the more he went on.
The point he makes concerns something that is constitutionally improper. It is a devolved matter. It is a remit of the National Assembly to handle all aspects of education, and that applies to research in the humanities as it does to everything else. Therefore to propose it is constitutionally improper, if not illegal.
The noble Lord raises the important point of the essential need to have research in the arts and humanities fostered in Wales, and on that basis there is no reason for concern. There is every sign in every organisation that I know that the National Assembly takes its duties—in history, in archaeology, in the social sciences—extremely seriously. One reason for that is the Welsh language. It is a prime consideration of the Welsh Assembly to foster study of the culture and language and literature of Wales, and, necessarily, research in those areas follows.
The noble Lord raises the question of the interconnection of research in Wales with other parts of the United Kingdom. Of course they will interlock
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and collaborate, because—and I speak for myself—Welsh historians do not only work on Wales; they work on collaborative matters. History and other subjects know no boundaries, so necessarily there is a community of operation within Wales and the other parts of the United Kingdom.
Broadly speaking, we should not discuss Amendment No. 11 at all.
7 p.m.
Lord Shutt of Greetland: It appears to me that the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, is trying to introduce compulsion. "Thou shalt carry out research in Wales". That is what the amendment is about, regardless of the speech that he made. Whichever way one looks at it, the proposal is either a backstop or an opportunity. If a Member of the National Assembly for Wales was contemplating research in this area, the research council may well undertake that research—or it may not. It may be that the Secretary of State in this Parliament decides to undertake some research. The backstop is that if there is a burning desire for that research to take place in Wales, the proposal would permit it to take place. We have been told that, although we have devolution, this little bit has not been devolved yet. That means that it can be done in that way. I should have thought that the National Assembly for Wales would be more appreciative of legislation that says that it "may" do things rather than legislation compelling it to do something.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I was rather against devolution, and I must say that the impact of devolution has exceeded all my expectations. Listening to my noble friend move his amendment, I was struck that he ranged a little beyond the focus of Part 1.
Incidentally, I may have misheard the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, but, given that he suggested that we were discussing devolved matters, he may want to take a look at the Explanatory Notes. In the summary of Part 1, they say:
"As with the existing research councils, the new council will operate throughout the UK and will be a reserved matter for the purposes of the Scotland Act 1998 and the Northern Ireland Act 1998".
One difficulty is that we have different degrees of devolved power throughout the United Kingdom, with Wales probably having the least. When I was in the Scottish Office as Secretary of State, I operated very closely with the Secretary of State for Education. That was essential, because we recognised that it was important to have a common policy on research and students throughout the United Kingdom. I do not want to follow my noble friend into subjects that are matters for later debates in the Bill, but that does not seem to be happening. Even at this late stage with the Bill, we do not know what the arrangements will be for Scottish students. The Minister answered some of my questions about what will happen to Scottish students who go to English universities with the statement that that is a matter for the Scottish Executive.
I have sympathy with my noble friend's amendment, because he is trying to tease out what is happening. We are going to have a whole set of new bodies. In my

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experience, if one tells a bureaucracy that it may set up a new bureaucracy, it tends to do so. If a whole new range of bodies is competing with a body that has United Kingdom responsibilities under charter, a whole load of people will argue for their research to separate bodies, playing one off against the other. In the end, the authority of the United Kingdom body will be damaged.
My noble friend is wise to put the proposal down as a probing amendment. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response, although the response to the probing question from my noble friend Lord Baker did rather give the game away. The situation is an odd one. We have one party in power in Wales and England, using the votes of people throughout the United Kingdom but apparently pursuing different policies and justifying them out of conviction.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: Half my blood is Welsh, and my grandfather played scrum half for the principality, so I am delighted to speak in support of the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Roberts. He seems to me to be a harbinger crying in the wilderness. He has given us a clear indication of where his logic will take him at a later stage, and has achieved the remarkable accomplishment of tabling a probing and a paving amendment simultaneously. It will be very interesting to hear what the Minister has to say—and I am quite certain that my noble friend will take it down to use in evidence against her.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood: The debate has brought out an infelicity in the wording of the Bill, and asked whether it should say "may" or "shall". I should perhaps share with Members of the Committee the amendment that I had thought of tabling. Transferring the logic of this amendment to subsection (3) and the Scottish Ministers, it might read:
"The Scottish Ministers shall … carry out … research in the arts and humanities".
With all due respect to the Scottish Ministers, some of whom I know very well, I cannot really conceive that they should be required to carry out research, other than in their spare time, on Sunday mornings or after retirement. Even suggesting that they "may", other than on Sunday mornings or after retirement, that seems to be going a bit far. I presume that there is some dreadful legal reason that I do not understand for the clause being worded in such a way.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I am sure that there is some dreadful legal reason, but I fear that it escapes me at this precise moment. Clearly there are Ministers and representatives in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—and indeed, there is the noble Lord, Lord Baker—who would be perfectly capable of carrying out research on that basis, and I would not wish to suggest otherwise. However, I believe that the noble Lord is right in saying that legally that is the way the legislation must be written. I shall confirm that in writing if I feel the need to.
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I am very mindful of the arguments put by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, which ranged widely across the issue. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, expressed his concerns, too. I do not propose to broaden my response very far this evening, mainly because I want to read with great care what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said and ensure that when we get to the areas of the Bill when there is a need to discuss those issues in detail, we are able to do so. However, I do not want to underestimate the strength of feeling within the Chamber about addressing these issues. I am very keen that we should have a full and wide-ranging debate on them as the opportunity arises. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, has indicated through his amendment the aspects that he wishes us to consider. I will ensure that I am able, when we get to later parts of the Bill, to respond to the points that he has made.
The noble Lord was very keen that we should talk about interconnectivity. I clearly have not put my remarks on the matter very well, so I shall endeavour to do so again, always with the proviso that if I fail I shall put them in print. That works sometimes when I fail to get things over in my speaking.
Lord Skelmersdale: Only sometimes.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I think that is a hit off. Sometimes I am very capable of putting things well in my eloquent prose.
There are no Welsh equivalents to the Arts and Humanities Research Council. There are advisory bodies to the Secretaries of State for the devolved administrations. The administrations may choose, or not, to set up bodies that they feel are appropriate. It is not as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, described it—that if one tells a bureaucracy that it can set something up, it automatically does so. There are good examples over the years of research councils, when those bodies have been set up. I have not heard anyone involved in those research councils say, nor have I seen anything to suggest, that the process has been in any way contradictory or inappropriate. The focus of the bodies is on different issues, working closely on specific and wide-ranging points of interest, not only to the Government but to society at large. An acknowledgement should be given that the Welsh Assembly should be able to do that, if that were what it wished to do.
It is appropriate for the Arts and Humanities Research Council to ensure that there is interconnectivity in the United Kingdom, with the Welsh Assembly in discussion with the UK body. The matter is now reserved, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, indicated. The process should take place with the support of the devolved administrations to ensure that research is carried out in the right way and that the advisory bodies work appropriately in advising the Welsh Assembly. There would be no need for interconnectivity between a body considering a specific issue of concern to the Welsh Assembly and a body considering a specific issue that concerned the Scottish Parliament. The interconnectivity would not exist in that way, but would exist in the role of the strategic Arts and Humanities Research Council.
The purpose behind the provisions is to enable each of the devolved administrations to fund the work that they consider important in promoting research into

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cultural aspects of their parts of the UK. As I have indicated, that will be different in each devolved administration. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, is aware that his amendment makes that mandatory rather than discretionary. We believe that that cuts across the discretionary powers of the National Assembly to determine priorities and activities. If this were on the face of the Bill, it would be obliged to put activities in place, regardless of the need for such activities and in the face of changing strategic requirements. I appreciate the intention, but it is important that the Assembly should be able to prioritise resources as it sees fit.
For example, the Arts Council of Wales is responsible for funding and developing the arts in Wales and advises the Welsh Assembly on issues associated with the arts. Through the council, the Welsh Assembly has demonstrated its commitment to the furtherance of the arts and, of course, it is very committed to maintaining a strong cultural identify for Wales and has a strong commitment to the Welsh language, as my noble friend Lord Morgan indicated. This is an area in which it might be very appropriate for the Welsh Assembly to wish to do further research or work.
So, on that basis, we can recognise the importance for the individual administrations of being able to set up appropriate advisory bodies. As I have indicated, this works extremely well with the other research councils and I see no reason to suggest that it would work any differently. On that basis, and with the proviso that, as I have indicated, we will be looking at the broader issues raised by the noble Lord as we proceed with the Bill, I hope that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: I am very grateful to the Minister, not least for appreciating the point I was making: that my simple amendment, which substitutes shall" for "may", could be inserted into the Bill at any number of points, converting a permissive attitude, as far as the regional assemblies are concerned, into an obligation. I am very grateful to her for appreciating that point. I am sure that she also appreciates the point that if we do not impose an obligation upon the regional bodies to act in accordance with the Bill we shall have a very variegated pattern of higher education in the United Kingdom. That has all kinds of implications.
The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, is well aware of the point that is often made in devolution circles: that it is all very well now when we have the same party in government in Cardiff as in London. In fact, even when the same party is in government in both places, differences of view can occur—I see the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, smiling. That is the case as far as higher education is concerned. As far as I can judge, the whole system suggested by the Bill is being set aside for the time being by the Assembly, pending further researches by itself. It may be that the Government in Whitehall are happy with that situation but I dread to think what the consequences may be.
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With regard to this specific area of the arts and humanities, I also appreciate what the noble Baroness said about the anxiety in Wales to conduct research on their own on specific Welsh matters that have caused concern, such as BSE and the Welsh language. I am sure that this is right, but I am also sure that such advisory bodies as are established in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland would be very well advised to develop a formal connection with the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 12 to 14 not moved.]
Clause 10 agreed to.
7.15 p.m.
Clause 11 [Qualifying institutions]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 15:
Page 5, line 10, at end insert—
"() any institution offering further post-16 education"
The noble Baroness said: With Amendment No. 15, we move on to Part 2 of the Bill and the Office of the Independent Adjudicator. The purpose of Amendment No. 15 is to extend the powers of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator to cover further education as well as higher education. I am tabling this amendment as a probing amendment because, although it was discussed in Committee in the other place by my honourable friend the Member of Parliament for Harrogate and Knaresborough, the discussion was cut short and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State was able only to provide a very limited answer to the question raised. There is a real issue that merits debate.
Within the further education sector student complaints are handled in the first instance by internal college procedures, just as in the higher education sector. If the complaint is not satisfied the appeal may go first to the local learning and skills council, which is the financing organisation for the college, and then, if still unsatisfied, to the national Learning and Skills Council. If still not resolved, the student may finally raise the complaint with his Member of Parliament and the Member of Parliament may, on behalf of the student, take it to the Parliamentary Ombudsman.
The second two stages—to the local learning and skills council and then to the national Learning and Skills Council—are not, strictly speaking, independent because the Learning and Skills Council is the funder of the college sector. But resort to the Parliamentary Ombudsman does satisfy the requirement of Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 that there should ultimately be an independent arbiter of disputes. In raising this issue, I am in no way impugning these procedures. The Association of Colleges rightly points out a very high degree of satisfaction with the current position among its students. When questioned, 95 per cent of its students said that they were satisfied with the complaints procedures as they exist at the moment.
But there are ambiguities about the position of students who undertake higher education courses within the further education sector. Given the

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Government's plans, the scope of these ambiguities is likely to increase. The present position is that 11 per cent of those who are studying for degrees are already in the further education sector, not the higher education sector. As we know, the Government are planning a very substantial expansion in these numbers. An extra quarter of a million students are likely to be taken on between now and 2010 and, if the Government's plans are fulfilled, quite a number of these will not be studying for a three-year degree at a university but for a two-year foundation degree, many of which will be taken within the further education sector and many on a part-time basis. So we are likely to see a considerable increase in the number of students who are studying for a higher education qualification within the further education sector.
The present position is that any further education institution that has more than 55 per cent of students in the higher education sector comes under HEFC and would therefore be covered by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator. Clause 11(d) says:
"A designated institution, as defined by section 72(3) of the 1992 Act",
applies to these institutions. In discussion in the other place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State revealed that there were already some 23 such institutions covered by Clause 11(d). Clearly, given government plans for expansion, there may be an increase in the number of these organisations. Otherwise, as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State said,
"If someone is studying an HE course in a further education college, and the complaint has to do with the actions of the further education institution, it would not be a matter for this"—
in other words, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator—
"complaints procedure, but if the complaint referred directly to the course of study which is the responsibility of the higher education institution, it would be covered by this complaints procedure".— [Official Report, Commons Standing Committee H, 10/2/03; col 77.]
The problem arises if there is a dispute or, indeed, uncertainty about whether the issue is about the quality of teaching within the further education institution, or whether it derives from the content of the course set by the higher education institution. There is, indeed, much room for dispute on such issues.
In addition, it seems to me that there is a wider issue here. What I have been saying illustrates the increasing blurring of boundaries between higher and further education, but it also highlights the degree to which tertiary education, comprising both higher education and further education, is expanding, and is likely to go on expanding fast. Indeed, it is big business. It is one of the most profitable export businesses that we are running in this country. With the increasing "marketisation" of the sector, we can expect consumers to be more demanding and complaints to increase. We must have a robust complaints procedure and that is one of the reasons we are seeing the setting up of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator instead of relying on the archaic visitor system within the university sector.
But given the expected size of this sector, the increasing blurring of boundaries between divisions in the tertiary sector, the fact that we now have a separate ombudsman for health, local government, financial services, and we are looking at one, indeed, for children in the context of the Children's Commissioner, is there not something to be said for having an ombudsman for this whole sector? I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: I must confess that I am slightly confused by this amendment, but before I explain why I should say that I had a vocational education. All afternoon I have been surrounded by noble Lords who are either currently connected with universities, or have had a university education. I am not one of them. The further education system, as opposed to the higher education system, indeed conducts research. I remember at college years ago conducting research into naturally occurring root-producing hormones in willows and poplars. Therefore, the moment that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, raises the question of further post-16 education, I immediately take notice.
This amendment opens the possibility of appeal by further education students to an independent adjudicator. That is fine. The White Paper states at paragraph 4.11:
"Reforms to give students a greater voice must include providing them with a fair, open, and transparent means of redress when things go wrong".
That clearly is an unexceptionable statement with which we all agree. Paragraphs (a), (b), and (c) of Clause 11 cover universities and constituent colleges, schools or halls in universities and,
"an institution conducted by a higher education corporation".
We must be clear about our use of terms. The second page of the White Paper states that,
"the word 'university' is frequently used, for reading ease as a substitute for 'higher education institution'".
It is important that students are clear about whether they are to have access to this new complaints procedure or not.
My confusion with the noble Baroness's amendment concerns the Association of Colleges which made a clear statement that further education colleges have established effective complaints procedures and that the scheme, as the noble Baroness said, is approved by the Learning and Skills Council. It also says that,
"it would be extremely unsatisfactory for FE colleges offering HE to be subject simultaneously to two different complaint regimes".
It argues basically that if it is not broken, why fix it? As I understand it, that is what the noble Baroness's amendment proposes, unless, of course, she is proposing the removal of the system currently in place in further education colleges. I am sure that the noble Baroness will tell me that in a moment.
However, the amendment allows me to ask the Minister various questions; namely, whether the Government wish the provision in the Bill to relate to higher education and all higher education students, including those who are pursuing higher education courses in further education colleges. What we need to know, and, indeed, what I believe is important, is that

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whatever the new system is, it should be well publicised. The whole of the further and higher education sector—students, staff and everyone else—should know all about it at the soonest possible moment. Will the noble Baroness explain what steps will be taken to publicise the new complaints arrangements once, as I assume will happen, they are given Royal Assent? Will she also assure us that clarification will be provided to students and practitioners about who is and is not to be covered by the new arrangements because clearly neither the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, nor I is clear on this matter as we stand, or, indeed, sit, at the moment?
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: It might help the noble Lord if I were to clarify my position. Under the Human Rights Act an independent appeals procedure is required. Within the Association of Colleges within the FE sector at the moment that independence is given by appeal to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. What this suggestion would amount to is that rather than the ultimate appeal to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, through the college sector students should apply to what in effect would become a tertiary education ombudsman.
Lord Dearing: I seek clarification. I was not clear whether in all further education institutions a student pursuing a course of higher education would have access to some independent person. I have the impression that in the great majority of cases someone pursuing an FE course would have that access. In certain FE institutions where there is a high proportion of higher education, that would apply. However, the noble Baroness left me unclear whether a small minority of HE students in FE institutions would have access to an independent person. If they do, I should be content with matters as they are. If that is not the case, it is essential under the human rights provisions that they have such access. I wonder whether the noble Baroness can clarify the position.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I shall see whether I can help the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, on this issue. Two slightly separate issues are raised here. Later, in the group of amendments beginning with Amendment No. 19, I shall talk about the possibility of an ombudsman for the sector as a whole.
As I understand it, where more than 55 per cent of the students in a college are studying for FE courses, that is covered by paragraph (d) of Clause 11. Therefore, it would be covered by the office of the independent adjudicator. However, there are potential problems. If the student is pursuing a higher education course in an FE college, it depends whether the complaint is about the quality of the teaching—which is the responsibility of the FE college—or about the quality of the curriculum—which is usually the responsibility of a higher education institution because it is usually subcontracted from a higher education institution. If the complaint is about the quality of the teaching, it goes through the college procedures. If it is
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about the way in which the subcontracted university has set the thing up, it would go through the office of the independent adjudicator.
I was making the point that there is already room for ambiguity here. Given the expected expansion of foundation degrees and the role that further education colleges are likely to play with regard to foundation degrees, there is likely to be much more room for ambiguity. Perhaps the simplest solution would be to have just further education covered by the same procedures.
Lord Dearing: The noble Baroness undermines her case by explaining the matter with absolute clarity. I thank her.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Triesman: I should start by following the convention of the House in declaring past and present interests. I shall do that only once for the duration of the Bill and that should save time in the long run. I worked as an academic for many years at universities in the United Kingdom, where I was poorly paid, in the United States where I was rather well paid and, briefly, in India where I was hardly paid at all, but it was a wonderful experience. Like my noble friend Lady Warwick, I have also served as General Secretary of the Association of University Teachers, from 1993 to 2001, and I currently hold unpaid posts as Visiting Fellow in Economics and Fellow of Wolfson College at Cambridge University. I am also Senior Associate Fellow in the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick.
This amendment would extend the scope of the reviewer, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has said, to consider complaints from students at further education colleges. It is common ground that the noble Baroness and, mostly, everyone else, agree that the present position on student complaints in higher education is thoroughly unsatisfactory. That is why we are seeking to give legislative underpinning to a scheme that has already been established in the higher education sector for the review of student complaints. It is not as though the sector has been inactive on this question.
We have made clear that we intend to designate the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education—the OIA—which has the support, not just of the sector but the National Union of Students, as the approved operator. I pay tribute to the NUS, because its support and assistance has meant that this has been launched in probably as effective a way as possible. Our aim is to give a better right of redress to current and former students of higher education institutions.
The amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, proposes that students in further education should also have access to the same independent reviewer. There was, as noble Lords have already mentioned, an interesting discussion in the other place on the complaints procedures for further education students and whether the independent

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reviewer's remit should be extended to cover such students. One of the key arguments that was made by Mr Phil Willis in the other place was that it would be helpful if there was some connection between the two. He described the connection as "a scaffold", but which was an unfortunate term. None the less, he argued for a link.
Noble Lords will be aware that students at further education institutions have an established means of redress when things go wrong. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, mentioned that a few moments ago and he is right. Local learning and skills councils are the appropriate route. They have procedures in place to deal with and resolve issues that are brought to their attention about the learning providers that they fund. Of course, the Learning and Skills Council is not an independent body. It falls under the Parliamentary Ombudsman's jurisdiction and that is why there is a further recourse beyond its own machinery, where a student can take a complaint to the ombudsman.
Both the NUS and the Association of Colleges support the view—strongly, I understand—that it is inappropriate for the arrangements that are being underpinned in this Bill to be extended to cover further education students. There are fundamental differences between the further education and higher education sectors. For example, unlike most higher education institutions, further education institutions are learning providers and are not awarding bodies for qualifications. It is also true that where students at FE colleges have a complaint about the franchising or validation arrangements of a qualifying institution, say a university awarding their degrees, then they will have access to the reviewer.
I shall briefly dwell on that point, because it is about the point of redress and the distinctions, which have been mentioned by a number of noble Lords. I do not think that Ivan Lewis, in another place, could have made the point more clearly. The scheme that is envisaged will straightforwardly ensure that where a complaint relates to a university's degree, which is being taken in a further education college, the student will have recourse to this complaints system. I can understand that it might be argued that there could be ambiguities around some marginal issues—and they would be relatively marginal—but the LSC and the OIA would be able to advise students on the most appropriate route and they are fully prepared to do so.
That brings us back to the important point about publicity, made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. Of course, none of this would be of any use at all if people did not know about the scheme and did not know how best to use it. The scheme will require higher education institutions to inform students about their right of access to the OIA when they have exhausted the internal procedures. There will also be publicity through the NUS, which is developing a sophisticated scheme to ensure that everyone is in a position to act appropriately.
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If we added the further education system into that system, there would be a sea change. There are currently about 1.8 million students in higher education. There about 3.9 million more students—on a head count—in further education. There are 109 relevant institutions in higher education and 347 relevant institutions in further education. If we were invited to extend the system to ensure that it was as seamless as possible, I suppose that we would look, as we have been invited to, at tertiary education and begin to look at sixth form colleges—and the relations that sixth form colleges often have with sixth forms in mainstream schools. I do not know where that boundary would ever then be drawn. I do know that the system would be inoperable. It could not cope with that. In the other place the Official Opposition pointed out that it would be likely to break the system before it ever had the chance to establish itself.
I can see that there may well be further work required on how to reach a consensus about the handling of complaints from students in further education colleges and that is a matter which I am sure needs to be addressed—and will be; but not in this context and not without doing insurmountable damage to the complaints procedure that is envisaged. In that, I hope, sympathetic light, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I thank the Minister for his sympathetic response. There is a problem of ambiguity in this matter. He said that what the Minister said in the other place could not be clearer: if' it was a higher education course it would be dealt with by the OIA and if it is further education it would go through their own procedures. However, as I pointed out, he also said that if someone is studying a higher education course in a further education college and the complaint related to the actions of the further education institution, it would not be a matter for the OIA. But if the complaint referred directly to the course of study, which is the responsibility of the higher education institution, it would be covered by the OIA. So there is room for ambiguity because of the problem of whether it relates to the quality of the teaching or the curriculum set by the higher education institution—which is the point that I raised.
On the wider issue, the Minister said that we could not possibly cope with 3.5 million people. But we have a health ombudsman who copes with at least that number of people. We have a Financial Services Ombudsman who deals with that number of people. This matter relates to a subsequent group of amendments that I will speak to later. As we shall be returning to this issue, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 11 agreed to.
Lord Triesman: I beg to move that the House do now resume and that we do not resume consideration in Committee for one hour and 30 minutes.
Noble Lords: One hour.
Lord Triesman: I beg the House's pardon: in one hour. I was hoping to escape for longer.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Business
Lord Triesman: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, was inadvertently omitted from the speakers' list. The length of each speech should be kept under 10 minutes in order to finish in the allocated hour, as the time is not as long as I suggested. I understand that the speakers' list has been re-issued and that all the speakers, except the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, have been contacted and know about the new time limit.

United Nations
7.41 p.m.
Lord Ahmed Lord Ahmed rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they support strengthening of the United Nations.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to thank the Government and all your Lordships for taking part in this important debate. The United Nations remains the only global institution, with a membership of 191 member states, which has truly universal principles. The main objectives of the United Nations charter, being drawn up and coming into existence in 1945, were conflict prevention; to promote human rights, justice and respect for international obligations; and to promote social progress and better standards of life. The UN has evolved to deal with the challenges of peacekeeping roles as well as humanitarian work in times of conflict and during natural disasters.
The task for the United Nations is enormous, but the resources somewhat limited. Since 1945, its membership has increased from 51 to 191 and the world population has increased from 2.5 billion to more than 7 billion. The challenges of dealing with poverty, hunger and disease, such as HIV/AIDS, have also increased. Along with those problems, there have been many conflicts that have cost millions of lives in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, Kashmir, Chechnya and the Far East.
In my view, the United Nations Security Council is now facing the biggest challenge, which is its perceived lack of legitimacy since its birth. At least during the Cold War, debates took place within the Security Council, although with many vetoes been used by both superpowers. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, slowly, the role of the United Nations has been diminishing and recent events in the Middle East have
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proved that the sole superpower can and does ignore the United Nations—or at least, that is how it is perceived.
Much of the United Nations' work gets little publicity in relation to social development, gender equality, environmental protection, human rights, economic development and co-operation, international organised crime and other bodies such as UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, the IMF, the WHO—the list goes on of the successful work carried on by those UN bodies. The recent successful work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iran has been important and deserves to be commended.
The United Nations' credibility in preventing wars and genocides is also seriously damaged since the massacres of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 and the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. We have witnessed massacres of near-genocidal proportions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia, where the United Nations' response has been hesitant and slow. Much of the reason for that could be said to be due to the fact that the UN does not have available a rapid reaction force for peacekeeping and preventing wars and genocides.
The UN's ability to implement many outstanding resolutions is also seen as selective. Resolutions on the right of self-determination in Kashmir, for example, are outstanding from 1948 and 1949. The suffering of the Kashmiri people is continuing, with more than 80,000 deaths while both India and Pakistan continue to waste money on nuclear weapons rather than using their valuable resources for the eradication of poverty, which is desperately needed in both countries. India has more than 300 million people living below poverty, with half of Pakistan's population also living on less than two dollars a day.
The United Nations' biggest failure has been in relation to the Middle East, where the United States has vetoed resolutions in the Security Council in its support of Israel; and actions in Iraq have further undermined the authority of the Security Council.
There is a danger of the UN becoming ever more irrelevant in matters of world security, as did its predecessor, the League of Nations. If so, the job of stopping wars and genocides and of constraining tyrants would become even closer to impossible. For all those reasons, we must support the strengthening of the United Nations and help to regain its legitimacy. Otherwise, many countries will increasingly feel free to take unilateral action against perceived threats, further undermining world security.
I wholeheartedly support the Government's commitment and support for the reform of the UN in their Command Paper. I welcome the latest round of the Secretary-General's programme of reforms, launched in September 2002, entitled, Strengthening of the United Nations: an agenda for further change. I also welcome the Secretary-General's appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, to a high-level panel examining the ways in which the UN handles threats to international peace and security. I am delighted to see the noble Lord's name on the speakers' list and look forward to hearing his contribution.
Reform of the UN is inevitable and necessary. It must be democratic, less bureaucratic and more modern in all its services. The non-aligned movement must feel equal to the developed world; as the OIC and the Arab League must also feel as important as the European Union.
The question now being asked is how we can strengthen the United Nations. That is a vital and significant topic of debate which needs strategies and answers to avoid future problems. The UN must not lose its integral authority, importance and respect as an international forum. People's confidence in the council is weakening, and we must focus on the meaning and significance of what it is to be a part of the United Nations. As British citizens as well as international neighbours, we must be proud and confident that we are helping those in need.
Thousands and thousands of individuals and organisations around the world are working hard to control and manage issues of international peace and security. Many organisations have been extremely effective in protecting human rights and exposing gross violations wherever they have occurred, even in the past few days. Reforms need to be instigated to ensure that UN resolutions are strictly followed through and that international peace and security is looked at thoroughly and dealt with in the best way.
It is important that the United Nations states clearly the difference between Chapters 6 and 7 resolutions—although, in my opinion, all United Nations resolutions, from whichever chapter, are important and should be implemented. We must also ensure that countries such as Israel cannot defy and ignore UN authority time after time. If it is good enough for Mohamed El Baradei of the IAEA to go into Iran and Libya, it must be right for him to go into Israel to investigate its nuclear capabilities and weapons of mass destruction.
I support the Government's proposal for the expansion of the Security Council membership from 15 to 24, including some additional permanent members. It makes sense to include Germany and Japan as well as countries from Africa, Latin America and Asia. However, we must not support membership of any countries that have outstanding UN resolutions with which they have not complied.
We must also consider making the Security Council more inclusive and relevant to modern challenges. Seventy per cent of the wars and disputes are related to the Muslim world, whether in Nagorno-Karabakh, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq or the Balkans. Therefore, it makes sense to include at least one permanent member from the OIC or the Arab League to ensure that there is representation from this section of the world community.
Another major challenge to us all has been international terrorism. We must fight it together whenever it threatens our national security and interests. We must be prepared to condemn state terrorism also. Many countries now abuse UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of 2001, which is binding on all member states to combat terrorism by all means—that is, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts. Resolutions 1377 and 1373 of 2001 have a
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far-reaching impact on international human rights and humanitarian law, particularly in cases where the pursuit of human rights may be confused with the animation of terrorism. I quote the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:
"An effective international strategy to counter terrorism should use human rights as its unifying framework. The suggestion that human rights violations are permissible in certain circumstances is wrong. The essence of human rights is that human life and dignity must not be compromised and that certain acts, whether carried out by the state or non-state actors, are never justified no matter what the ends. International human rights and humanitarian law define the boundaries of permissible political and military conduct. A reckless approach towards human life and liberty undermines counter terrorism".
We must ensure that a war on terrorism is not perceived as a war on Islam or Muslims. We must give special attention to people's rights of liberty and security, the right to be free from arbitrary arrest, the presumption of innocence, the right to a free trial, freedom of opinion, expression and assembly, and the right of self-determination.
7.53 p.m.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, this brief debate is extremely timely. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, for raising the need to strengthen the UN.
In my experience, support for the UN in this country is broad but also tends to be rather shallow. There is a tendency to expect too much of the UN and then, when it fails to deliver, to assume that it is a hopeless case, a noble aspiration but not one that will play an effective role in achieving global peace, security and development as its charter requires. There is an unwillingness to look beneath the surface of our failures and to analyse our own joint responsibility for those failures. The UN is, after all, an intergovernmental organisation; it is not some disembodied entity, sent to rule the world. When it fails, it often does so because its stakeholders, the member states, have failed to give it the resources and political backing that it needs to carry out the tasks it has been asked to undertake.
For the UN, 2003 was a bad year. Its Security Council was divided and paralysed in the run-up to the war in Iraq; its leading members lapsed into acrimonious public dispute; and then, in August, it lost some of its finest public servants in an outrage in Baghdad designed to ensure that it did not play the essential role that was needed if Iraq was to move towards peace, democracy and prosperity. So the Secretary-General was surely right to sound the alarm when he spoke to the General Assembly in September last year and to argue that we were at a fork in the road, where we could either lapse into unilateralism, with the risk of an increasingly insecure world, or summon up the collective will to make the UN more effective at facing up to the threats and challenges that we face. To give him advice on all that, he set up a panel, on which I have the honour to serve, and we are due to report to him in December.
What are the threats and challenges that we face? They are certainly not the same ones as we faced during the Cold War. The failure to think through the post-Cold War agenda in a systematic and purposeful

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way is one of the explanations for the UN's patchy performance over the past 15 years. During that time the UN has had its successes. It reversed an aggression by Iraq against Kuwait; it wound down a fair number of the proxy wars that had sprung up during the Cold War—in Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique and, eventually, in East Timor.
But it had some serious failures too—in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. Those failures and others that followed—in Kosovo and in Iraq last year—reveal basically two types of failure: one of execution and the other of concept. It became clear during the 1990s that the UN was not equipped to handle enforcement operations and that its member states were not prepared to equip it to do so. Nor were they prepared to step in and do it themselves with UN authority, except in the one case of Iraq's attack on Kuwait. The failure of concept arose over what to do when Security Council resolutions were defied, as they were in Kosovo and Iraq, and where fundamental disagreements over the use of force paralysed the Security Council.
Of the new threats that we now face, clearly international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and, worse still, the possibility of the combination of those two threats are real and present dangers. But they are not the only ones, and they are not the ones that seem most pressing in many parts of the world. The collapse of states, leading sometimes to genocide and often to regional mayhem, extremes of poverty, pandemic diseases such as AIDS, environmental degradation and unequal opportunities for trade all represent threats, even if indirect ones, to peace and security.
So we need a broad agenda, not a narrow one. We must not neglect old, festering problems such as those in Palestine and Kashmir, to which the noble Lord referred. They are, if anything, even more dangerous now than they have ever been before, and their neglect leads to legitimate accusations of double standards.
It is clear that the responses to those threats and challenges must be policy-driven. It makes no sense to believe that simply tweaking the institutions in New York will somehow bring of its own volition a substantially better outcome than we have already. But it is surely just as unwise to believe that you will have no need to adjust institutions to make them capable of handling effectively the policy prescriptions for the future.
The two aspects are really two sides of the same coin, and both will need to be addressed. We will need to look at ways of preventing states failing and learning to marshal the joint efforts of the international financial institutions and the Security Council to that end. We will need to consider how the UN can work in tandem with regional and sub-regional organisations. In some parts of the world—Africa for example—regional and sub-regional organisations are showing a welcome willingness to engage in conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacekeeping. But they lack resources. They need help in training, logistics, the civilian aspects of complex operations and, above all,
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money. The European Union is showing the way by earmarking 260 million euros of assistance for the African Union, but more will need to be done.
We will need to strengthen the organisations working against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In the case of biological weapons we will need to break the impasse over an intrusive inspection regime. We will need to intensify our co-operation against terrorism through shared intelligence and police work and the denial of safe havens for terrorists.
At the end of this year it will be up to the member states to decide what to do with the panel's report and the Secretary-General's recommendations on it. As always at the United Nations, implementation and follow-up are matters for governments, not for panels of experts, however expert they may be. I hope very much that the British Government, as both a permanent member of the Security Council and a leading member of the European Union, will play an important and proactive role in the handling of the report. In the first half of 2005, with a newly elected or re-elected US president in office, we will discover whether the attempt to build a new consensus around a more effective UN has any chance of success. I would argue that no country has a greater stake in the success of that venture than Britain, and I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us something of the Government's thinking.
8 p.m.
Lord Parekh: My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Ahmed for raising this important subject this evening.
In international affairs, the United Nations, unlike the League of Nations, which preceded it, enjoys considerable moral and political authority and has, over the years, become a major source of legitimacy. The actions of a state are generally accepted as right and carry a good deal of authority, if they are authorised by the United Nations. Why is that so? There are several reasons. When a state's actions are authorised by the United Nations, that state acts not in an individual capacity but on behalf of and in the name of the international community. Its actions are publicly debated and approved and therefore carry broad global consensus. They are also deemed to be lawful and just.
As the United Nations is so important as a newly emerging source of international legitimacy, everything should be done to respect and nurture its authority. If its authority were to be undermined, we would be in a state of anarchy in which might could become the sole criterion for right. Although that is generally accepted, as it ought to be, the United Nations can be only as good as its members, and their record, sadly, has not always been honourable.
Many United Nations resolutions have been selectively enforced, even when they fall within the same chapter. The latest incident—the war on Iraq—shows how much the authority of the United Nations has been undermined. The way in which the United States went about buying up small, non-permanent

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members of the Security Council is an example of that. Resolution 1441 was interpreted as if every state were free to consult its own lawyers and decide whether the war was lawful. The United Nations should have been consulted, and a body of international jurists should have been asked to decide whether Resolution 1441 authorised action without a further resolution. The work of the United Nations inspectors was cut short, without the approval of the United Nations. In other words, we went to war in the name of upholding the authority of the United Nations, but we did everything in our power to undermine that authority and to expose that organisation to public ridicule.
There is a grave danger that the United Nations might be reduced to a moral fig leaf for the dubious and aggressive designs of powerful states. The question is not just one of strengthening the United Nations. We could strengthen it, so that it could be used as a moral fig leaf only by certain powers. Thus, the authority of the United Nations would become a veil behind which the aggressive designs of a particular country might be pursued. It is a question of restructuring the United Nations in such a way that it enjoys the respect of world opinion and can exercise independent authority.
How should we restructure the United Nations? We should rely on three criteria. The first is, "How can we make it more representative?"; the second is, "How can we improve the quality of debate?"; and the third is, "How can we increase its independence and capacity for collective action?". Those are the three criteria by which I would judge any proposal made for the restructuring of the United Nations.
There is no shortage of proposals for restructuring the United Nations. I shall not take the House through the whole syllabus, but I shall suggest three or four that are of great importance. Everything possible should be done to increase the power of the General Assembly and to make the Security Council accountable to it. In so far as it resembles a parliament, the General Assembly has a certain representative legitimacy that the Security Council does not have. No war or act of humanitarian intervention should be undertaken without authorisation by the General Assembly. In short, we should increasingly think about making the General Assembly more like a world parliament.
Secondly, the Security Council needs to be more representative, and its powers must be carefully rethought. It is extraordinary that the five permanent members of the Security Council should include two European powers, one Western power and a half-European power—Russia—while the rest of mankind, by accident of history, is represented only by China. The current structure of the United Nations simply freezes the state of the world as it was in 1945. But the world has moved on: either we should get rid of the veto or it should be regionally distributed, so that every major continent has, in one form or another, a right to exercise the veto. Alternatively, the veto could be overridden, either by an ordinary majority on the Security Council or by the General Assembly.
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Thirdly, the Secretary-General should have the right, as the representative of the United Nations, to require troops or such other help as is needed from member states to carry out the resolutions of the United Nations.
Fourthly, the United Nations, as its name indicates, is really a trade union of nation states. It is a closed shop. Only the states can speak in the name of their citizens, and many important voices, such as the voices of ordinary citizens who are critical of the policies of their government or the voices of civil society and the NGOs, are simply not heard.
It is unacceptable that the state or government should be the only spokesman for all the citizens of a country. There are many ways in which that can be changed. It should, for example, be possible to devise bodies in which non-official bodies can be heard. Lots of proposals have been made. One is that there is no reason why the Secretary-General should not consult representatives of NGOs, civil society and other associations that are accredited to the United Nations and recognised by it. Nor is there any reason why unofficial organisations such as the World Social Forum or others may not be given the facility to meet from time to time and express their views, which, although not binding on the Secretary-General, would have powerful moral authority.
In other words, what should we do? We need to find ways of ensuring that the United Nations does not simply function as a trade union of the states and simply strengthen the power of the states vis-à-vis their own citizens or unofficial bodies.
I should like to think that this debate could not have taken place at a more appropriate time. The Iraq war and what has happened subsequently give us the opportunity and the incentive to restart the debate on how the United Nations should be transformed. The war was conceived in secret, based on deception and manipulation of world opinion, conducted in a legal void and created a culture of lawlessness, the consequences of which we are witnessing even now.
If one embarks on a war without clearly knowing why one is embarking on it, and on the basis of alleged practices that are themselves suspect, a climate is created in which people feel free to take the law into their own hands. What has happened in Iraqi prisons, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere are simply—I am almost tempted to say—moral entailments of the very climate in which the war was conducted and legitimised.
In this country and elsewhere, we have all been ashamed by what we saw in Iraqi prisons at the hands of our soldiers. I readily concede that it involved an extremely small number of soldiers. Nevertheless, that it should have happened or should have been allowed to happen for several months is a matter of disgrace to every sensitive citizen here and elsewhere.
Therefore, it is very important that we should rethink what the United Nations should and could do in such situations. I should have thought that as one small, tentative step to restoring authority, it might not be a bad idea to ask the United Nations to conduct an

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investigation into what has gone wrong in Iraqi prisons and at Guantanamo Bay. That would be one way in which we could recognise the authority of the United Nations and create a climate in which we can think more intelligently and sensitively about where we should be going in this increasingly chaotic world.
8.10 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, for giving us the opportunity to discuss the reform of the United Nations. As he said, its tasks are enormous. It is impossible to do more than scratch the surface of the subject in the few minutes that we have at our disposal.
I want to pick up the point that the noble Lord made about the credibility of the United Nations having been severely damaged by some of the failures, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has also referred, and, in particular, the failures that we suffered in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Your Lordships may remember that four years ago we had a debate on the lessons to be learnt from the reports that were commissioned by the United Nations on its operations in Srebrenica and Rwanda.
Recently, we have been commemorating the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. There was an event in Portcullis House at which the First Lady of Rwanda spoke, as did the Secretary of State for International Development. As people do on those occasions, they said that such an event must never be allowed to happen again. The problem is that people were saying that for years after the Holocaust, and it did happen again. The genocide in Rwanda is a reminder of the fact that we failed the purposes of the United Nations when it was first established, which was to prevent that kind of thing occurring.
A key recommendation of the report on Rwanda was that the Secretary-General would initiate a plan of action to prevent genocide, which would involve the whole UN system. There was to be an effective early-warning system involving NGOs and academics, as well as the secretariat itself. The UN, and in particular the Security Council, were to be prepared to act to prevent genocide or gross violations of human rights. But all that we have done so far is to create better systems for picking up the pieces after the event.
It is true that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations has no doubt been strengthened in the wake of the Brahimi report. I was pleased to see that the Security Council is to conduct a debate on 17 May on the recent surge in demand for peacekeeping operations and to evaluate the progress that has been made on the Brahimi recommendations. I am proud to say that the UK is involved in 14 peacekeeping operations and we have played a leading part in the reform process. We are also closely involved in the Secretary-General's examination of the way in which the UN deals with threats to international peace and security. I think that that is the biggest challenge of all. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on the way in which this is being approached by the panel of which he is a distinguished member.
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Under the charter, there are only two circumstances in which any state can intervene in another's territory with military force; that is, first, in self-defence, under Article 51, and, secondly, in pursuit of a resolution of the Security Council, under Article 42, which almost invariably is preceded by a declaration that a threat to peace exists under Article 39.
Now there is also said to be,
"a clear justification in international law to protect people where they are threatened by an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe".
That was said by the Secretary of State for Defence in evidence given to the Defence Select Committee, and was the argument for the intervention in Iraq in 1991 and, more recently, in Kosovo. The Foreign Affairs Committee wanted the principles governing humanitarian intervention to be established in the United Nations, and that problem still remains. If, in all the cases not explicitly covered by the charter, the judgment of risk is entirely a matter for the state concerned, there is no law. The essence of the rule of law is that the actors, whether they be individuals in the case of domestic law or states under international law, submit to the jurisdiction of their peers. I therefore respectfully suggest that the Secretary-General's commission should concentrate on formulating a set of rules to cover the circumstances that have arisen or may arise where, in the opinion of the member states, or a majority of them, intervention is justifiable.
I accept that it is not possible in practice to amend the charter. What might be considered by the Panyarachun commission, of which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is a distinguished member, is a set of guidelines to be applied voluntarily by states in considering whether to use force under the humanitarian rubric, which I have quoted, or in self-defence under Article 51, and particularly where action is to be taken against a threatened rather than an actual attack. If at some time in the future two-thirds of the UN member states had adopted these guidelines, they could then be approved as a form of secondary legislation to extend the charter.
I do hope that the mechanisms that are to be developed as a result of the Panyarachun commission will confirm the principle that intervention is justifiable against the wishes of the state concerned to prevent an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe. The examples mentioned by the noble and learned Lord the Attorney General in the debate held last month on UN action, and which have cropped up again this evening—Somalia, eastern DRC, East Timor, Sierra Leone and, most recently, Haiti—were all cases where the state concerned had agreed that the UN did have a role.
However, I want to mention the case of Darfur, where Sudan has not agreed to UN involvement. We are now 30 days into the 45-day humanitarian ceasefire. Although ethnic cleansing is still in full swing, there is not even the international monitoring mechanism which has been identified as necessary by everyone from the acting UN High Commissioner for human rights downwards. Outlining an action plan to prevent genocide last month, and specifically

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mentioning his deep foreboding over the reports from Darfur, the Secretary-General said that the one legacy he most wished to leave to his successors was an organisation better equipped to prevent genocide and to act decisively to stop it when prevention fails. That is our objective too. As Bill Rammell said in another place last November:
"Action should be taken only to prevent genocide or major loss of civilian life that could destabilise other states and threaten international peace arid security". [Official Report, Commons, 11/11/03; col. 207.]
That situation has now been reached in Darfur. US AID warns that perhaps 30 per cent of the affected population, some 360,000 people, could perish over the next nine months. Ten years after Rwanda, 60 years after the Holocaust, Britain must do everything possible to prevent this catastrophe and to see that the action plan to prevent genocide proposed by the Secretary-General is not just a piece of paper.
8.17 p.m.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords. like others, I am deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, for promoting this debate. He speaks with authority and feeling on this issue and we are all indebted to him. It is difficult to be optimistic about the immediate future of the United Nations, but I believe very strongly that it is necessary and possibly, as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, said, more necessary than ever in the past.
To begin where we are, everyone is now looking to the United Nations to step into Iraq and somehow stabilise the situation as it enters its most critical postwar stage. But the question hangs in the air: is the United Nations either capable of performing this role, or willing to do so? If there is hesitation at the UN headquarters in New York, that is entirely understandable. As has already been mentioned, the last chief official of the UN, the late and brilliant Sergio de Melo, was murdered by a bomb. Most of the non-governmental agencies such as Oxfam and the Red Cross are now leaving Iraq, not going in, and in the current frenzied atmosphere it seems that UN personnel are themselves regarded as agents of the coalition in some distorted way, and therefore just as much enemies of Iraqi extremists and terrorist groups as are the Americans. Indeed, the Secretary-General himself, Kofi Annan, has been named by some Shi'ite extremists as the target for assassination, along with Mr Paul Bremer and other leading members of the provisional administration. How can the UN send its officials and workers back into this sinister maelstrom, and who is going to volunteer to go? This questions have to be addressed. One cannot just assume that hope will solve them. It will not.
The Iraq drama has raised even bigger questions behind those. The main question is whether an organisation which includes every recognised state on Earth—all 191 of them— which was constructed more than half a century ago in totally different conditions, is capable of policing a turbulent world. Is it capable of meeting the sort of threats that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned in his very authoritative speech. such as global terrorism, when there are
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disputes even on how to define terrorism and on what is, or is not, a rogue state? Is this asking too much of the organisation?
The list of where it has totally failed to engage is, alas, a long one: Chechnya, Rwanda, Kosovo. the lethal Arab- Israeli dispute and, of course, Iraq itself. Its failures in Bosnia, notably the appalling massacre at Srebrenica, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, led to probably the lowest point in the inhuman treatment of humans in the 20th century. Certainly it was the lowest point in Europe since the Holocaust.
We all know the current structure of the UN is archaic, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, emphasised. It is perfectly obvious that major nations like Japan, Germany and India ought to have a similar status to the existing permanent five Security Council members, even if the overall status of those nations has to change. Furthermore, the UN's membership includes some of the world's worst dictatorships and, regrettably, these unsavoury regimes play an active role in the UN's activities. It still strikes me as very odd that Libya—where, I read this week, some nurses are currently being threatened with execution —chairs the Human Rights Commission, even if it has recently declared itself to be a more responsible nation. Sudan. which is currently conducting murderous attacks on tribal minorities—as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. constantly reminds us—is a member of that committee, along with Syria and Cuba. That cannot be right.
It gets worse. The entire UN organisation is now mired in a gigantic scandal, arising from the former Oil for Food scheme, which was meant to help Iraq's starving and dying children while Saddam Hussein still ruled in Baghdad. The cynicism and cruelty of that operation is breathtaking, and it seems that all those protestors who were raining down curses on Western governments for making the innocent Iraqi populace suffer were aiming at the wrong target. Suspicion now points not only at the former Iraqi dictator— who no-one trusted anyway—but at officials in Moscow, Paris and, alas, in New York, in the UN itself. Until this stain on the UN is removed, as I hope it can be, it obviously has to be asked how anyone can expect that organisation to fulfil the massive new governing tasks being asked of it, or to carry out, proudly and credibly, its supposed role as the source of all international legality and justice.
Yet, having said all that—and I know it is negative—what could conceivably replace the United Nations? For all its obvious faults, it is a great deal better than nothing. After all, many of its numerous agencies—although not all—do superb humanitarian work, as noble Lords have already said, and are staffed by amazingly dedicated and brave people. I have to say that some of the agencies raise questions somewhat when one looks at them. I am not sure that UNCTAD has fulfilled its role. I have never quite understand what UNIDO—the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation—is up to in Vienna. And I am not sure what the UN Economic Commission for Europe, which is a sort of left-over of the era of the

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Marshall plan and the Cold War, gets up to nowadays. But no one questions the superb work of the UNHCR, nor of the UNDP; nor, of course, of UNICEF, which is a marvellous organisation.
Currently, the UN has 13 authorised armed forces wearing the famous blue helmets operating in peacekeeping situations around the world. People compare it with the old League of Nations, but it is quite different; unlike the League of Nations, every single nation state on earth is a member. So for all its glaring faults—and we must be realistic about those—it is probably the best kind of global assembly that can be brought together in today's novel, difficult and sometimes terrifying conditions.
In my view the real enemies of a stronger UN are not those who express scepticism or concern about its potential, but those who would overload it with almost divine powers and promote it as some kind of world government which it can never be. Many coalitions and policing operations are bound to continue outside the UN purview. Many ugly perversions of human dignity and rights are bound to continue unchecked by such a diverse and rambling construction.
I believe that the best way to see the UN is as a mirror of the world as it is, a reflection of both our high hopes and of course our disagreements. That amazing man Dag Hammarskjold had a marvellous phrase when he said that it was created not to take mankind to paradise but merely to save it from hell. I thought that a very good summary, made many years ago, of course, before his untimely death. That is probably about right. What does it mean? It means continuing to work patiently to reform the UN, but not to demand or expect too much from it, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, warned us. Dozens of plans for streamlining and modernising the structure, and particularly the Security Council, have been tabled in recent years, including proposals from our Government—indeed from successive governments—in their White Paper and on other occasions. Dozens more will have to be put forward to ensure that there is real improvement.
As for the Iraq situation, with which I began, it is going to be resolved only by the Iraqis themselves, notably by the moderate Shia majority. The sooner they are handed proper sovereignty, and the sooner they state quite clearly what kind of coalition and which security forces they want to stay at their request in their country, the sooner that the poisonous extremist factions will be driven out. The task appears to be too complex for the Americans alone; I have always thought that. But it is also far too tough a task for a UN administration magically to solve, whether the UN is reformed or unreformed and whether it has the capability and the will or not. Other countries, including very much our own, I am afraid, will now have to take not only the strong lead we have taken but a still stronger lead.
Realism, not idealism, is the best friend of the United Nations. That is the approach that will enable it to work as well as possible in a highly imperfect and very dangerous world.
8.28 p.m.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the whole House is grateful to my noble friend Lord Ahmed for securing this debate. I congratulate him on his powerful advocacy of the role of the United Nations. He was somewhat more optimistic about the future of the United Nations than perhaps was the noble Lord, Lord Howell. However, the whole debate has balanced the need for reform, based on optimism and what the United Nations can do to improve the situation in the world by means of resolution conflict and in so many other ways, with realism about past failures and weaknesses which need to be addressed.
I assure the House that the United Nations is at the heart of the Government's foreign policy and that strengthening it to face the future is a government priority. This debate is particularly timely as the Secretary-General's High Level Panel on the UN response to threats to peace and security is now fully under way. I shall say a little more about the panel later. I am very grateful that we had a contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who serves on that panel. He has given the House some very judicious insights about the challenges that we face and some constructive indications about how the work may proceed.
When discussing the strengthening of the United Nations, we should not lose sight of the fact that there is much that the United Nations already does well. In introducing the debate, my noble friend suggested that the Security Council has been increasingly ignored. That is not entirely true. The Security Council has never been more active than recently; for example, in the past two years we have seen the deployment of an effective peacekeeping operation in Liberia, and UN support for the formation of a transitional government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, offering hope and the chance of peace to millions of people. Sierra Leone, East Timor and, despite recent problems, Kosovo are UN success stories.
I understand that those accomplishments may appear minor compared with some of the very major threats that we all recognise exist in the world at present. I would be the last to ignore the importance of the points that have been raised on all sides of the House in this very well informed debate, but it is also right that we should keep in mind some balance in regard to the achievements of the UN.
In recent years the UN has played a leading role in the fight for justice to be meted out to the perpetrators of the worst international crimes: genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Tribunal, set up by the Security Council to deal with the atrocities in Rwanda and the Balkans, has convicted dozens of perpetrators of such crimes.
I turn to the point emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that we need to act in time to stop such horrors, rather than deal with justice after they have occurred. I shall seek to answer many of the constructive points that he made. Nevertheless, we should also recognise that those who perpetrate such crimes against humanity have clear signals sent out to

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them that the United Nations and the international community will play their part in bringing to justice those guilty of such horrors.
In 2002 the World Food Programme provided assistance to 72 million of the world's poorest people, while the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees provides support to the world's estimated 45 million refugees. Such matters are not trumpeted widely; those are not the headline-grabbing issues that we see in the newspapers—the great conflicts play that role—but they are solid achievements of the United Nations and they should not be underestimated.
As noble Lords including the noble Lord, Lord Howell, have pointed, despite those successes, there are many areas where the United Nations is not succeeding as well as we would want. Estimates suggest that over 60 per cent of African nations emerging from conflict return to that state within five years. Despite the many excellent examples of peacekeeping operations, it would clearly be better if the international community, through the UN, could prevent conflict, rather than take action after conflict has broken out.
In the past few years we have seen the emergence of new threats to our security. My noble friend Lord Ahmed emphasised the issues of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Issues as diverse as the spread of HIV/AIDS and environmental degradation are beginning to have a potentially devastating impact on the lives of millions of people, particularly those in Africa. Those issues were simply not envisaged as global threats to security when the UN charter was written. If we consider the threats to the quality of life, even to the continuance of life for so many people in the world, we have to recognise how significant the issues are.
The UN has, however, started to take effective action to counter the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Security Council sent out a clear message immediately after 11 September that terrorism is a threat to peace and security and that those supporting or harbouring terrorists could therefore expect Security Council action. The Counter Terrorism Committee, set up by the Security Council to monitor action taken by countries to suppress and prevent terrorism, has been strengthened and revitalised. A new executive directorate will make it more effective to act against those states that fail to meet their obligations. On the bright side, I should also mention that it is encouraging that Libya, although not under the auspices of the United Nations, has changed its perspective in relation to such issues. We should derive some satisfaction from that.
Similarly, we have recently seen a breakthrough with the adoption of a resolution by the Security Council on Counter-proliferation. All states will be obliged to act to prevent weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of non-state actors. The Security Council will set up a mechanism to monitor states' actions in this area, which the Government welcome.
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Strengthening the United Nations is possible without changes to institutions. However, some areas will clearly benefit from institutional reform. The UK has long been a firm supporter of enlarging the Security Council. My noble friend Lord Ahmed made it an important part of his contribution, and I believe that it probably was the main theme of my noble friend Lord Parekh, that an institution that was set up against the power relationships of 1945 needs to change in the light of new relationships in a modern and very different world.
We believe that there should be new permanent members. We have supported the candidatures of Japan and Germany for many years. We also support the creation of permanent seats for Africa, Asia and Latin America, and we believe that India and Brazil are pre-eminent candidates from the latter two regions. We also believe that there should be new non-permanent members. That model would significantly increase the representation of the developing world, but the council would not be so large as to be inefficient. The point was forcefully expressed that it is not representative of the modern world while developing countries are unrepresented on the inner councils of the United Nations.
It is important to stress that the strengthening of the UN is about more than expanding the Security Council. The General Assembly has a vital role to play in allowing all member states to debate and vote on a wide range of important international issues. I heard my noble friend Lord Parekh emphasise the significance of the General Assembly's role. The UK supports the efforts of the current president of the General Assembly to improve the workings of that body.
Reform of the UN secretariat is also important. The UK is a strong supporter of the UN Secretary-General's reform programme, which he set out in September 2002. Despite those proposals for reform, the Government feel that a more comprehensive approach is required to strengthen the UN's capacity to deal with new challenges. That is why we greatly welcome the Secretary-General's initiative in establishing the High Level Panel to which the noble Lord, Lord Hanhay, is making a most distinguished contribution. How fortunate it is that this House is able to debate such a significant developing institution and have one of its representatives present to make his contribution to our deliberations.
The panel was established in November 2003. It is tasked with identifying threats to global peace and security and with making recommendations to improve the international community's responses. Peace and security are broadly interpreted to include both traditional threats and those posed by underdevelopment, economic instability, poverty, environmental degradation and social inequality. We consider that an essential task for the panel is to agree on the full range of threats. If UN reform is to be successful, all member states must feel that their security fears are being addressed.
A common theme throughout the debate, possibly expressed most cogently by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was that we need an improvement in the UN's capacity for

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threat analysis and early warning so that threats to international and human security can be dealt with at an early stage when it is likely to be most effective. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, emphasised that point in respect of Rwanda.
To reply to one other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, we are making a positive response to the Darfur crisis. He will know that we are very concerned about this. Ministers will raise it directly with the Sudanese Foreign Minister tomorrow, seeking immediate and concrete improvements. It is particularly important in relation to the threat of genocide that action is taken early. That is what we hope to see arising from the reformed structure of the United Nations.
This has been an all-too-brief debate on such an extensive and significant topic. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated. They have done what I think the noble Lord, Lord Howell, enjoined us to do—to balance an element of optimism in an area in which we could be constructive with the realism that there are crucial difficult areas which need to be tackled and where early results will not be produced. It is the Government's role to play their part in ensuring that we pursue as constructive a strategy as possible for the reform of the United Nations, which is all we have in terms of representing all the nations of the earth in reconciling each to the other.
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do adjourn during pleasure until 8.46 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 8.41 to 8.46 p.m. ]

Higher Education Bill
House again in Committee.
Clause 12 [Qualifying complaints]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 5, line 19, at end insert ", or
() as a member of staff or former member of staff of that institution"
The noble Baroness said: The purpose of Amendment No. 16 is to extend the remit of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator to cover staff complaints as well as student complaints. This amendment is supported by both the AUT and the NATHFE, but not by Universities UK.
The key issue that is acknowledged on all sides is that the visitor system that pertains is archaic and needs to be brought up to date. The office of the independent adjudicator is to provide a modern framework for students which meets the requirements of Article 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998, which grants the right to "fair and public hearing" of disputes.
Staff disputes have also been subject to the visitor system, yet as far as they are concerned nothing has changed. Why should it be expedient to remove the visitor system from the students and yet not from the staff?
Let me make clear at the outset that we do not seek to broaden the adjudicator system. Those working at universities—both academic and non-academic staff—are covered by employment law and have rights of appeal under the employment tribunal system for issues that relate to employment. They are also protected in making complaints by the Public Interest Disclosure Act.
We do not seek to overturn those rights, but there are issues—such as those relating to academic freedom—that are covered by the current visitor system but are outside the employment area where the right of appeal to some independent arbitrator is necessary.
This was acknowledged in discussion in Committee in another place when the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State stated,
"there is a problem with the role of visitors and whether that prevents people's ability ultimately to go to court … In a small number of cases, there is some ambiguity. The Government do not believe that the status quo is acceptable, or that the independent route that we are establishing for students is necessarily an appropriate route for staff complaints".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee H, 12/2/04; col. 93.]
I shall quote from an intervention in the same debate by the Member of Parliament for Leeds East, Mr George Mudie. He recalled how, when he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the then Department for Education and Employment in 1998, the issue of how best to deal with student complaints had arisen and the universities were given 12 months to sort it out. He said:
"We let the timetable of 12 months' notice extend to five years, and only now we are legislating. I suspect that we are legislating only because of human rights issues. If we let the matter go, it would be challenged in Europe. Indeed, the explanatory notes suggest that strongly."
Mr Mudie went on to urge the Secretary of State to act now on staff complaints. He said:
"The solution cannot be left to the universities, and we will not get another chance to introduce fresh legislation for a long time. We should grasp the opportunity now. The universities have had their chance and demonstrated that they do not have the will to act".— [Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee H, 12/4/04; cols. 95–96.]
Let me conclude by saying that it cannot be right that the current visitor system contravenes the Human Rights Act for students and not for staff. Mr Phil Willis, my honourable friend in the other place, withdrew his Motion in the hope that the Government would do as Mr Mudie suggested, and take the opportunity to come forward with some positive ideas. As far as I know, no further proposals have been forthcoming from either the Government or Universities UK or other parts of the university sector since that debate.
I raise the issue again because I believe Mr Mudie to be right: it is high time that reforms were on the table. Universities have been dragging their feet for too long.
It will be a long time before we have another opportunity to legislate on these issues. If the Office of the Independent Adjudicator is not the appropriate vehicle, let us have some other positive suggestions that we may get on to the statute book. I beg to move.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, which would bring staff within the operation of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, would very much broaden the scope of that office, as I believe she has recognised. I cannot support that, as I do not believe that it would be helpful to extend the OIA's remit so radically, and certainly not at this stage.
The Office of the Independent Adjudicator was created in response to a need identified by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and subsequently by the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, demanding an independent element in student complaints procedures. That is what the proposal delivers. I am of course aware of the concerns raised by the Association of University Teachers that in some areas, outside employment-related issues, university visitors will retain exclusive jurisdiction for staff complaints—for example, in matters when it is alleged that an institution has failed to follow up on its own internal rules.
It has been argued that the exclusivity of the visitors' jurisdiction is contrary to Article 6 of the Human Rights Act, which specifies that a hearing should be conducted by someone who is independent. The problem here is the exclusivity, and it may be helpful to discuss that issue further, but to react to it by making all staff complaints subject to the jurisdiction of the adjudicator seems to take rather a large sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Most forms of university staff complaint were removed from the jurisdiction of the visitor by the Education Reform Act 1988, which also established the university commissioner's model statute. That provides for an appeal to an independent third party when internal complaints procedures have been exhausted—although that is of course restricted to academic and academic-related staff.
Notwithstanding the areas in which the visitor retains exclusive jurisdiction in pre-1992 universities, we should not lose sight of the fact that staff and students are in essence and in law very different categories. The relationship between higher education institutions and their students is distinct from the relationship between those institutions and their staff. All staff have the same legal rights and protections available to any other employee under existing employment law. If there is any dissatisfaction with the outcome of internal complaints procedures, these can be deployed so that staff have recourse to the Employment Tribunal Service to get independent, binding and, indeed, financial redress. For these reasons, I cannot agree that all staff complaints should be brought within the jurisdiction of the adjudicator, or indeed that the adjudicator is the appropriate forum
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for those complaints. Therefore, while I welcome the opportunity to debate this issue, I oppose the amendment.
I wonder if, while I am on my feet, I could briefly touch upon Amendments Nos. 17 and 18, both of which deal with the issue of—
Lord Lucas: I would really prefer it if the noble Baroness would wait until I have moved those amendments.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I long for the moment when Universities UK has a disagreement with the Government on any issue. I am bound to say that I found these remarks quite inexplicable. There was a long debate in the House of Commons Standing Committee about this. The Minister admitted that there was confusion and a former Education Minister indicated that he had thought that this would be sorted out in 12 months, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has pointed out.
As I understand it, it is not uncommon for people to be both staff and students in the university sector. Reading the proceedings in the Commons, it was not clear into which category they would fall. If someone was a member of staff and also a student he would presumably have access, although it was not clear to me what the position was. Perhaps in her response the Minister will say what the position is for the admittedly small number of people in this hybrid category.
What I understood to be the genesis of this was the Government's decision to incorporate the European convention in the 1998 Act and the need to act in respect of students. For the life of me, I do not see why that should not apply to staff. This seems to me to be an eminently sensible amendment and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has indicated, a very considerable period of time has elapsed in which people could have thought about some of the difficulties. I find it quite extraordinary that we are told that the university visitor system is anachronistic and does not stand the tests required by the European convention so that it is necessary to make a change in respect of student complaints, but that it is not necessary in respect of staff complaints. I hope that in her response the Minister will give us some indication that at a later stage in the Bill the Government will get their act together and come forward with proposals.
Things may have changed in government since my day, but we would not have been allowed to present a Bill to the House of Commons by L Committee without these matters having been resolved. We used to sit in the Star Chamber and cross-examine on the details of a Bill. Quite honestly, I think that it is quite unacceptable for the Bill to have got to this stage, despite the proceedings in the Committee stage of the House of Commons, and for the matter to be unresolved. It is very disappointing that Universities UK is taking such a laid back view of an absurd anomaly, particularly in the light of the representations that are being made by other bodies that represent the interests of staff in the universities.

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More to the point, several people on the other side of the House in the other place, with experience as Ministers in the department, also felt uneasy about it.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: Perhaps I should thank the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for his intervention here. Although I framed my amendment in terms of adding staff to the office of the independent adjudicator, I expressly said that this situation is not satisfactory. Four months ago in Committee in the other place it was agreed that the situation was not satisfactory and that new ideas needed to be put forward. I do not think that either Universities UK or the Government have moved an inch on this one since that time.
9 p.m.
Lord Triesman: Let me start by trying to set out where I think most of the routes to redress lie and then see whether we have a pattern that would be acceptable in the legislation as it is described.
First, it is worth recalling—this point came up on Second Reading—that legal protections in relation to academic freedom have been expressed in legislation introduced by the previous government and by the present Government. The present Government are a signatory to the UNESCO normative instrument on academic freedom and the rights of academic staff—indeed, the rights of academic staff form part of the title of the relevant UNESCO convention. I do not think it can be said that there is neither a right that is operable nor a means of dealing with that right. Having represented people who had issues of academic freedom that they wished to present to their universities, I always believed that the trick was to try to do so in a way which also protected the independence and the autonomy of the universities under their charter or act of government. Broadly speaking, one of the great protections of academic freedom is that the institutions themselves are protected from governments of whatever kind, and from interventions of governments to direct them to do things which might be politically expedient when they might wish to take a course of action which was unpopular, not politically expedient or whatever.
The visitor system, which no doubt has its defects and is based in antiquity, was none the less a rather interesting historic compromise which produced that balance. I can say from first-hand experience that many of the cases where issues of academic freedom were to be tested were tested in that rather odd environment of the visitor, and tested extremely vigorously. For the most part, I believe that that resulted in the protection of academic freedom. Another scheme is not necessary for that purpose.
I do not believe—although I believe that one or two trade unions do believe it—that protection is needed in the sense that this amendment suggests in relation to whistleblowing. There is perfectly competent legislation on whistleblowing. The way of judging that is to see whether people blow the whistle from time to time in universities, and get a hearing, and get the issues that they
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have raised resolved. I would be interested to hear of examples where someone has been a whistleblower but has failed to get the issue resolved. Many of the other kinds of complaints are routinely brought to the trade unions of members of staff. Those unions represent them on those questions, particularly on procedural matters.
But having said all of that, I entirely understand the arguments that there may be procedural matters, or defects in procedural matters, which are not fully covered by any of the mechanisms that I have described, or, in employment law, by the right of going to the employment tribunals, or, indeed, to the courts. I want to try to look at the matter with that as a background sketch of the processes that exist because I want to start from the point that we are not living in a world quite so defective as perhaps has been suggested.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and I would agree that the current position regarding some complaints is not wholly satisfactory and that there are other issues which need to be resolved in that area. If there are to be other forms of resolution, should they override all the existing arrangements and, indeed, the arrangement for the adjudicator in relation to student complaints? In the previous discussion we considered whether further education students should have the same right of access to certain provision. I imagine that not everyone was agreed about the outcomes of that discussion but none the less we had a very non-partisan discussion. We weighed the merits of doing one thing or another.
I made the point, which not all noble Lords agreed with, that changing the parameters in which the adjudicator worked to include vastly more people in the many different types of institutions would not be a satisfactory way of launching the adjudicator's role. I suspect that trying now to introduce the adjudicator's role into this narrow area, in which I can understand that staff may feel that they do not have adequate redress, would hardly improve the position. I put that point to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who has supported the amendment, in what I hope he will accept are objective terms. I am simply asking whether this is the right way to achieve that objective.
Universities UK and the standing committee of principals consulted widely on the establishment of an independent reviewer to deal with unresolved complaints of all kinds. Across the higher education sector there has not been, as yet, a clear agreement about what should and should not be done about an unusual and narrow set of examples that may have fallen through the lattice work that I have described.
I shall not continue at much greater length about the matter, because a number of the points about the other areas in which people may seek redress have already been made. However, I wish to answer a specific question on the issue of where the jurisdiction lies when a student is also teaching or conducting research as an academic. The situation is perhaps clearer than noble Lords have suggested. When someone brings a complaint about the handling of their position as a student, there is no doubt that the independent adjudicator is the appropriate person to address. Where someone brings a complaint as a member of

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staff, I hope that I have suggested that there is a set of well established places to which that objection can be taken. I have been trying hard to think of any cases that I knew about, or know about, which might not have fitted that description. that might have given rise to ambiguity. Although my imagination can be fanciful on occasions, I really cannot recall any.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and I am sorry that he cannot think of an example. Perhaps I am being slow, but could he explain why he thinks that it is acceptable that someone who is both a student and a member of staff has to sit down and work out, "Am I making this complaint as a student or as a member or staff?". If he decides, "I am making the complaint as a member of staff", he then goes to a visitor—and the visitor system is one which the Government consider to be anachronistic and not effective, which is why the change is being made. Can the Minister not see that it seems a rather odd position for the Government to take? I agree that there may not be consensus, but the had news about being in government is that one has to take a decision and work out what is best. Are the Government not guilty of taking the easy way out and leaving something of a muddle?
Lord Triesman: That is a strange characterisation of events and I shall try to say why, because I have, plainly, not been able to describe adequately thus far the different propositions that are involved in this matter. For the most part, those students who are also teaching or involved in research tend to be people who are at least postgraduates and, in many cases, are taking their PhDs or taking a course of study which is, at least, at that level. I have yet to encounter such a student who was unable to work out objectively the circumstances about which they were complaining. They tend to be quite bright. The distinction which I believe that they will find easy to make is that if one is giving a lecture and one feels that there is something about the conditions of one's employment that is fundamentally wrong, it is clear that that is not a problem that arises because one is a student.
If one has process issues that are wrong, or other significant issues that have arisen in the course of one's postgraduate study or one's doctoral research, then it is clear that they are wrong as a result of being a student. It would be very hard to mistake the two sets of conditions.
I apologise if I have not already said that there are known remedies in almost all the classes of cases that one might face as a member of staff. In the case of employment issues there is a remedy through employment law and the tribunals. There are remedies relating to academic freedom, which, for good historic reason, have involved visitors and continue to do so. As I indicated, there is a class of cases that may not fall into either category and that may give rise to the difficulties that, I accepted, could occur, particularly with regard to human rights legislation.
In that light we certainly will be prepared to look at that area, where there may be a lack of definition that is precise enough to meet the objections made.
Lord Baker of Dorking: I was rather encouraged by the Minister's observation that he could think of no examples that did not betray a degree of ambiguity in this area. Two such cases occurred to me. One arose during my watch as Secretary of State. At one university there was a don who had no students. His courses were advertised—I think it might have been philosophy, but I would not want to put a slur on the subject.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: That is unlikely; it is a rather well subscribed subject.
Lord Baker of Dorking: I do not want to insult any subject, particularly those of the humanities. Let us forget the subject. The don had no students. He was always photographed lounging against pillars as if he was waiting for his students to arrive. There was no redress. That is one reason that led me to try to do something to limit academic tenure. The university could not dismiss him, yet he was using resources that other academics felt should be spent on their courses of philosophy—or whatever it may be. I do not know whether such an issue would ever arise today. No employment tribunal would be involved in such a situation, because the don would have certain rights.
The other example is a little older. It occurred at my own college, Magdalen, at the turn of the last century. The clerical dean at college, Dean Thompson, who was immensely popular with the other college dons, wrote a pamphlet questioning the existence of miracles. The other dons liked him so much that they overlooked it. When he wrote another pamphlet questioning the virgin birth, the dons liked him so much that they kept him still in post. Then he turned to the resurrection. It was only after he had published a pamphlet questioning the resurrection that the visitor appeared—the Bishop of Winchester. He suggested in the mildest terms that it was a little irregular for a clerical dean of Magdalen College not to believe in miracles, the virgin birth or the resurrection, whereupon the dons of the college liked him so much that they kept him on as a history don. He became the most famous historian of the French Revolution. During my time at Oxford the key book was The French Revolution by Thompson.
I do not know whether the adjudicator would deal with such a case; all I know is that the visitor dealt with it marvellously.
Lord Triesman: I never had the opportunity to represent anybody before the Bishop of Winchester, but having heard the noble Lord's account, I greatly regret it. I would probably have won more cases.
I shall say a few words on the two sorts of cases. In the case of the lecturer who had no students, I shall deal with the absence of the students rather than the question of whether anyone took exception to his lounging wherever he lounged. I imagine that after a period he would have been thought to be redundant had it been any other line of work. However, this is not so much a staff complaint as an absence of work. The noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, will recall that it was his government who introduced redundancy as a reason for which academics

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could be dismissed, even if they had tenure. That was contested hotly for some years but was resolved in the direction that the then government wanted. With great respect, I feel that, with the noble Lord's example, we are looking through the opposite end of the telescope.
As for the miracle of getting away with not believing in miracles, the virgin birth or the resurrection, I do not feel that I could properly comment. It is really not for me. However, people enjoy the right to academic freedom in the United Kingdom because we have sought to protect people in the academic world who have unpopular or unfashionable views. We have tended to think that, on occasion, they will turn out to be an exceptional history don, make a breakthrough in science or whatever else that academic freedom could lead to. That is why we protected it in law, and that is why the system for protecting it was bound to be rather strange. It is such a strange entity, but it is none the less of real importance to the university world. I would be surprised if, in general, people outside in some other form of review were able to deal with the situation as easily as somebody who was content to understand the core of the issue and defend the right of individuals to hold unpopular, unfashionable or anticlerical views.
9.15 p.m.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I am not sure whether the dean whom the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, mentioned was the same historian who persisted throughout the 1930s, as women's colleges expanded, in starting every lecture with "Gentlemen, … ". During the war, he was confronted by a lecture theatre composed almost entirely of women. He spied one gentleman at the back and began, "Gentleman, … ".
I do not suggest that such problems are likely to arise in many cases. As I suggested, a small number of ambiguities could arise where employment law is not appropriate. As I said, we are worried that, although the visitor system is seen as archaic with regard to students, it is not seen as archaic with regard to staff.
As the Minister recognises, I was trying to prod the Government and Universities UK to do something about the matter. In the other place, the Minister said clearly:
"The Government do not believe that the status quo is acceptable … There needs to be more work, reflection and thinking within the sector about appropriate vehicles with which to address staff complaints".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee H, 12/2/04; col. 93.]
I moved the amendment to kick the Government into taking action on the issue. I hope that they will take the message. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Cox): If Amendment No. 17 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 18 because of pre-emption.
Lord Lucas Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 17:
Page 5, line 21, leave out "matters of academic judgment" and insert "judgments reasonably made as to the academic performance of a student"
The noble Lord said: The amendment explores the meaning of the words "academic judgment" in subsection (2). I like my reinterpretation, but, as ever, the amendment is probing, and I do not want to be hung for the exact words that I have chosen. I hope that it is what is meant by academic judgment, although I failed to find the meaning set out anywhere.
Perhaps, for the convenience of the Committee and because it will apply to all the amendments relating to this part of the Bill to which I speak, I should give the Committee a little background. I come fresh from what I found to be the extremely bruising experience of taking a student whom I helped to mentor through an appeal against dismissal from an undergraduate course. Looking back, I feel that I failed, that the student was failed and that the university concerned behaved abominably. Everybody has ended up bruised and unhappy.
That affair is in the past. I am not trying to revive it and I shall not mention the institution or the course concerned. However, I want to do my best to ensure that the faults that occurred in this procedure or which I see in this procedure would be unlikely in the new system that we are putting in place.
The particular problem that relates to these words is that, on the part of the course concerned, marks had been given. The university appeal procedure clearly said that you were not allowed to question the marks. You were allowed to question only the procedure that had been used to arrive at the marks. But absolutely no information was available to anyone—not to the student or to me—despite repeatedly asking what the procedure was and despite going to lawyers. So it was extremely difficult—I repeat, extremely difficult—to challenge.
In the end, it was necessary to employ a blunderbuss and to hope that one of the bits would hit a vulnerable target. At the very end of the process, we began to get some sort of an answer. Ultimately, it was unchallengeable. The basis on which the marks were given was so obscure that there was no way to establish on what basis they had been given. Under ordinary circumstances, because of those rules, one would just have to admit defeat.
However, the particular circumstances of the student were that she was disabled in a way that made various bits of the course impossible for her to do in the form in which the university required her to do it. Rather than being given something else to do or some way in which she could half complete what she was being asked to do, she was required to sit out in those particular sessions. She was marked zero, but that zero mark counted towards her failure. No deduction was made from the score that she was supposed to have to meet.
Under those circumstances, to say that the mark is "academic judgment" is not right. There are other aspects of that judgment that do not properly count as

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"academic judgment". To say that a student has scored "x" in a particular paper must in the bare words "academic judgment" bear that meaning. It does not seem to me that that is what it should mean in this Bill. To my mind, in this Bill it should mean what I have put in the amendment. What should be protected is the,
"judgments reasonably made as to the academic performance of a student".
To my mind, other aspects of that judgment were deeply unjust and should not be protected against review by the creature that we are creating in this Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Shutt of Greetland: In speaking to Amendment No. 17, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 18. I believe that the words "academic freedom" are liberating, but I am fearful that the words "academic judgment" are a hiding place. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has carefully crafted his amendment in order to get the right turn of phrase by referring to,
"judgments reasonably made as to the academic performance of a student".
As regards this Bill and the whole issue of fees and loans, we will be in the business of value for money. More and more people will be saying, "Am I getting value for money for this course? Is it working out?" I, too, can recall circumstances where a goodly number of people embarked on a course at a certain university.
Three years later, a handful remained on the course and did not get very good degrees. Perhaps something was wrong with the course and the teaching. That would be something appropriate to complain about. The complaint would not necessarily concern one individual with a specific degree at the end, but something is wrong if one sees an abundance of students at one end of the course, but only a handful at the other. Given that, I worry about making the point about one particular student rather than about matters of academic judgment which, as I have said, is some form of hiding place.
In speaking to Amendment No. 18, I repeat my concern about academic judgment acting as a hiding place. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has mentioned, there are disabled students for whom the reason to make the complaint is not made in terms of the academic result; it is not about the work that they may or may not have produced, but about the circumstances in which they are able to perform not being correct. We believe that Amendment No. 18 would flush that out. There would be no hiding place behind academic judgment.
It has been suggested to us that there may be ways in which the Minister can indicate how, perhaps in terms of a code of conduct, the adjudicator will be able to perform when considering disabled students. If that is the case, it would be helpful to have it.
Lord Dearing: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for raising the issue of interpretation in his probing amendment. Several noble Lords may have had experience of students in distress over decisions reached by an institution. I am concerned that the term
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could be used by a university as a refuge when it did not want to investigate a matter. It would be helpful if the Government could guide the adjudicator into an interpretation which would admit rather than shut out the consideration of a complaint.
I shall give one or two borderline cases. Two concern a course where academics had defined the work. On the basis of that definition of the academic content of the course, two students came at very considerable expense from foreign lands to take the programme. I recall that, at the end of the first term, one found it so distant from what he thought it would be that he went home to South Africa. That cost him a great deal of money. Another student, having travelled from Australia, abandoned a different course.
There was also a case of a student who complained that the lecturer had taken it into his head to say that, given the kind of work on the course, he did not need to turn up. That was put to the student as a matter of the lecturer's academic judgment. In another case, it was alleged that the lecturer told the students the questions that they would face in their final examination. One student did not think that was quite right, but his complaint was not sustained.
It is rather important for the adjudicator, in his interpretation, to be able to take a broad rather than a narrow view of what the term means.
Baroness Perry of Southwark: I too should like to record my support for both of these amendments. Perhaps I should declare an interest, having just completed a six-year term serving on the appeals committee at the University of Cambridge. The committee, the Septemviri, is rather misnamed as it includes at least two women rather than seven men.
There is a very real danger that the phrase "academic judgment" could become a secret garden embracing so many areas that it would be impossible for a student to query a judgment. The phrase suggested by my noble friend Lord Lucas is a much better provision that covers what a student may need to complain against; that is, the judgment that is made—it has to be a reasonable judgment—about the performance of the student rather than an overarching academic judgment.
In subjects such as English it is all too easy for a lecturer to retreat into safe territory by saying, "It is simply my judgment that the answer was not satisfactory. I cannot give the criteria or reasons for my decision. I made an academic judgment". If the original lecturer simply stands on this magic academic judgment, it makes it extremely difficult for a student to prove his case, even though he may have got three or four other perfectly competent English specialists to say that his paper was worth a very different mark. Of course, the same is true for the provisions to alter the assessment process for students who have particular handicaps. I hope the Minister will consider carefully my noble friend's suggestion of much more precise wording of what will, and will not, be safe territory for the person against whom the complaint is lodged.
9.30 p.m.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: We must all have some sympathy with the purposes behind this amendment, but it is fatally flawed. It suggests we replace matters of academic judgment with,
"judgments reasonably made as to the academic performance of a student".
Anybody may make a "reasonable judgment of performance", and it is very important in any complaint or appeal procedure that the independence of those who judge the case be secured—but not at the expense of their being informed about what they are judging. You can see the difficulty that can arise, when you consider that a student may feel extremely disappointed that he or she does not get the class of degree to which they aspired.
The process of judging whether the examinations were competently done and executed is one that requires a certain expertise, as well as independence. I do not dispute that we need the independence, but I think it will be fatal if we remove the expertise. I have served as external examiner in a number of universities—the University of Ulster, the University of London, the University of Bristol—and in each case it was a very long process of judging quality. That is, after all, why there is an external eye there, all the way from the initial stage of discussion of examination questions in the light of opportunity afforded, to the final judgment of degree class. If we open this to the thought that it is a reasonable judgment of academic matters, I believe that in the attempt to get an independent eye on it, we lose the question of getting the appropriate level of information and expertise where it is required.
Many of the examples we have heard come from a bygone age. I live in a world in which the amount of information available to students about their courses—how and by whom they will be assessed—is not deficient, but arguably quite excessive, and extremely burdensome to the students concerned. We have to beware adding yet more appeals procedures to the appeals procedures of one sort or another that are already all round the shop. There may be a deft way to do it, but I do not believe that substituting the notion of reasonable judgment for academic judgment will play fair by the people in the business of maintaining quality control in our universities.
We only have one true system of maintaining quality control: the external examiner system. It has been eroded and underfunded for a long time. We have substituted other systems for it, like the late and unlamented TQA, which did not secure quality of teaching. We need to think much more carefully before we move in the direction that this amendment suggests.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I indicated that I would like to comment on Amendments Nos. 17 and 18. The debate so far has demonstrated how thorny this issue of academic judgment is. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, proposes to replace matters of academic judgment with,
"judgments reasonably made as to the academic performance of a student".
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Ironically, it seemed to me that the very case to which the noble Lord referred might not be affected by this change. There are many cases where it would be legitimate to take into account extenuating circumstances and their effect on performance. For example, it may be necessary to make the very kind of judgment that he was hoping to achieve about a student's probable performance in parts of an assessment where the student was, for example, prevented from competing by either illness or accident. Another example might be where an exam is disrupted by fire or flood or some other event and it would be unreasonable to ask the student to resit. Those are actual examples. I think that to restrict this to actual performance would be potentially to burden adjudicators with matters on which they could not reasonably expect to be able to adjudicate.
I also find myself in disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, whose amendment seems to me to fail to distinguish between the assistance a student might need to take an assessment and the need to undertake the assessment or complete a task which is necessary if that student is to gain an award. For example, a student who is not physically able to undertake a chemistry practical assessment might be aided by an amanuensis, but would have to be able to instruct the assistant precisely in the setting up of the experiment and its conduct. A dyslexic student might be asked to prepare an essay but allowed some aid such as a keyboard or spell-checker or might be given extra time.
In short, I think we have raised several problems that I do not think are addressed by either of the two amendments. There clearly are, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said, examples that are slipping through the net. But I do not think that either of the two propositions are going to help us in those cases.
Lord Baker of Dorking: This is a very interesting debate. My noble friend Lord Lucas has raised an issue that, if the amendment succeeded, would considerably extend the role of the adjudicator of complaints. At the moment, under Clause 12, the adjudicator deals with,
"an act or omission of a qualifying institution".
This issue takes us into the area of academic judgment, and that, as the noble Baroness said, is a Pandora's box.
I am by no means clear about what is the best solution. However, I remember a case that I had as an MP, more than 20 years ago, which has remained with me. A young woman came to see me who had been studying as a post-graduate for a DPhil. Her subject was the novels of Fanny Burney, an 18th century writer. She did not get a DPhil; she got a BLitt. She was very hurt by that. She claimed that she knew more than the examiner did about the novels of Fanny Burney and asked whether I could help her. I went to the university and put the complaint. It may well be that complaints procedures are better now than they were 20 or 25 years ago. I got absolutely nowhere. The ranks of the profession absolutely closed. I even read a few of the novels of Fanny Burney to see whether I could understand my constituent's case better. I got

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absolutely nowhere with the vice-chancellor. I was not allowed to meet the examiner or to question the matter at all. That has always rankled with me as I have always felt that I had let down my constituent. I was never satisfied that she had justice, but I could never prove it one way or the other.
All I can say is that, in the future, as the years roll on, once one sets up an adjudication of this sort, that sort of problem will become more and more of an issue for the adjudicator. I think that students will say, "We have an adjudicator. Why cannot we extend it further?", in the way that certain Peers have suggested today. As I said, I have no answer to that, but I think that the Government should think about it quite carefully.
It would be interesting if the Government could collate some statistics on it. In how many cases do university students claim they do not have the right level of degree? I do not know whether such statistics exist. Will this be a huge extra burden? Will more people be excited to do it? It comes down to academic judgment, which is a very fine matter. The claims might be meretricious in most cases, but in some cases they will not be. It is a very difficult and interesting issue and I hope that the Government will reflect on it.
Lord Skelmersdale: It seems to me that this group of two amendments is rather like Gaul. Noble Lords will remember,
"Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres".
The three parts into which this group is divided is the operator under Clause 13 behaving reasonably, academic judgment and disabled rights. They have all been lumped together in the discussion that we have just had.
Therefore, my first question is on reasonableness—what a horrible word, but it will do for this time of night. The department and the Secretary of State are subject, if they behave unreasonably, to judicial review and therefore the Wednesbury test applies. Will the operator, when he or she is created, be subject to the same regime? Also on reasonableness, I am unsure, even after the discussion, what criteria will be used to consider the matter and by whom it will be considered? Will it be the operator again or someone else? Perhaps my noble friend has given this some thought or even the noble Lord, Lord Shutt.
I also have a problem with academic judgment and the complaints thereon. For example, recently I have done a certain amount of work with student nurse placements, which involve the integral teaching and practical development tools of what will become, loosely speaking, their trade. Should complaints on the issue, should they have them, be taken to the new designated operator, as provided for in the Bill, or to the NHS establishment where the placement is completed?
On a similar note, my son undertook a four-year course at university, one year of which was a year in industry. If he had problems, or if another student in the future has problems, where should they raise their complaints in relation to the placement or to treatment
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while on placement? The Government and myself are keen on the Erasmus scheme which is even worse because that takes us into the far reaches, certainly these days, of eastern Europe. That is a problem.
I am no expert on disability rights, but I believe that the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 covers disabled students in higher education institutions to a greater or lesser extent. I understand that their ultimate recourse is to the courts. One of my noble friends who is not in his place at the moment has a research assistant who came out of a four-year course at university totally unsupported by parents, grandparents or anyone else and ended up with a debt of £30,000. That is under the current system. We shall come to what may happen under the system envisaged in the Bill possibly on Thursday and possibly later on in the month. However, I cannot imagine a student who is already in debt finding the finance to take an institution of higher education, further education or whatever to court.
I accept that many of these matters are likely to be matters of process rather than academic judgment, but even so, surely the Minister of State's comment that they are likely to be qualifying complaints is germane. Of course, ultimately, the reviewer would have to judge the merits of the case. None the less, I believe that SKILL and the RNIB—lobby groups as they are—have a very good point as regards Amendment No. 18. I would accept with them, and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, that a student should not be able to complain when he or she has received a low mark for a poor piece of work. But they posit the case that a visually impaired student might have failed an exam because of the university's failure to provide papers in, say, Braille or some other suitable format. I believe that that should be a qualifying complaint.
That leaves me with support for the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, and, as I said at the beginning, with questions about the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas.
9.45 p.m.
Lord Triesman: I thank all noble Lords who have so far spoken in this debate for their contributions. I am deeply impressed by the way in which people have brought to the debate their very real experience or knowledge of what has happened to particular students. It is difficult not to be moved by many of the accounts that have been given, and I share that feeling. I therefore welcome the discussion and hope that I shall be able to do justice to it.
As we are all aware, the issue concerns what constitutes academic judgment and how it is to be dealt with. I begin first with Amendment No. 17, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I shall then develop some of the issues that have been raised to discover whether we can see through to the heart of the matter.
After Second Reading, my noble friend Lady Ashton wrote to Lord Lucas about his particular concerns relating to cases of discrimination. I am glad to be able to place on record for Members of the Committee our views of complaints that fall within the remit of the scheme. I believe that that is the best starting point. However, I add

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an immediate observation of my own. It seems to me that any attempt by any institution to say that its procedures were secret and could not in any circumstances be questioned must inevitably fall within the remit of the scheme. Were that to be the case, it would be impossible for anyone to proceed in any kind of process, which would have to be sufficiently transparent for people to become involved in it.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has two effects. First, it seeks to narrow the exclusion of academic judgment complaints to those relating to, "the academic performance of a student". Secondly, it introduces the notion of judgments having to be made reasonably. I shall deal with the issue of academic judgment head on. Taking first the concept of academic judgment, compared with academic performance, the noble Lord will be aware that traditionally the visitors and the courts have not intervened in matters of academic judgment. This legislation would continue that practice. As matters stand, it would not change the practice. Academic judgment is genuinely difficult to define. I understand why the noble Lord seeks to define the exclusion more narrowly. However, I believe that it risks drawing into the remit of the reviewer matters that are unsuitable.
Before any noble Lord draws the conclusion that I, too, simply for these purposes would choose to hide behind words that are difficult to define, I should say that I strongly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, about the fundamentals of the way in which the system currently works. I know of no institutions that are immune from multiple scrutiny of the marks that are awarded for completed coursework in achieving a degree. If in any particular case, whether or not with a disabled student, there was no mechanism to provide a rigorous check of that matter, I would be deeply alarmed about what had happened in that institution.
I wholly accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, that the external examiner system is probably not as strong or as well staffed as it once was. However, it was and should remain fundamental to the best practice. On examiners' boards, double or multiple marking were the norm in my working experience. As the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, quite rightly says, external examiners have an expertise which is vital—even if one goes away and reads the novels oneself later—born of many years of study, reflection, writing and being criticised by one's peers and having to argue one's case. Those are the ways in which we try to ensure that the notion of academic judgment is more sustainable than it would be if a single individual were simply expressing an opinion upon a matter. Indeed, in many cases where the external examiner system was the fundamental basis, there were also moderator systems, in which the external examiners routinely met to make sure that their view across a range of universities in which they were external examiners bore comparison with one another. All those factors are fundamental.
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Although judgments about a student's academic performance is what is usually meant by academic judgment, there are occasions on which academic judgments are made which are not directly related to the student's academic performance. For example, a student and a lecturer might quite genuinely have a difference of opinion over an academic issue such as a scientific hypothesis, and the student seeks to complain about the lecturer's academic opinions. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would bring such issues within the remit of the scheme. I do not think that that is what he intends, and I think he would accept that it would not be desirable.
I would add one final point, which arose from the very telling account given by the noble Lord about the experience he had and that a student had. I am sure that he would accept that that is the student's account, not the institution's. It would be extremely important in such circumstances to know whether the course content as described in the prospectus would have led someone to conceive of any circumstances in which they might be excluded from a module which was being marked, and awarded a zero mark because they had some difficulty which made it impossible for them to take that module. If they were put in a position where they had a reasonable expectation that they could do the course and they were denied that opportunity, that would plainly be grounds for a complaint. It could not be covered up in any way.
With regard to a lecturer's non-attendance, when students had been led to expect that they would be taught and would have access to teaching—which is, in my view, the norm—I believe that that must be covered by issues of the provision of the service. An institution which was negligent on that matter would be found to be negligent and would have to be found to be negligent.
The judgments must, however, be reasonably made. That is why I can confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, that they would be subject to judicial review.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked whether unreasonable judgments, made unfairly, on a discriminatory basis, would be open to challenge. They certainly would be under the scheme in the Bill. Were that to fail, they could potentially go through to judicial review.
I can reassure noble Lords that students who believe that procedural errors have resulted in unfair decisions would and must have access to the scheme. When students are unhappy with the way in which decisions have been made in relation to their academic performance, institutions should have their own internal procedures for appeals to be made. It is the job of the institution's academic or examination appeals panel to ensure that decisions are made reasonably and in accordance with the institution's procedures. Robust systems within an institution, far more than anything that exists outside, will always be the cornerstone when it comes to ensuring quality in the first instance.

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The independent reviewer will be able to review complaints where such procedures were faulty or the outcome of the appeal was clearly unreasonable. Where students' complaints are about the academic or examination appeals panel, examples of the type of complaint that will be admitted to the reviewer include where the panel is improperly constituted; where it fails to take account of relevant information provided by the student; where, as my noble friend Lady Warwick has said, some calamity has occurred in the course of the examination which has meant it is very hard for a student to do as well as she or he could; or where it fails to give the student the opportunity to make appropriate representations on his or her behalf. These are complaints that the independent reviewer can consider.
In addition. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was concerned at Second Reading—
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: Can the Minister tell us in whose judgment it would be whether it is a question of academic judgment?
Lord Triesman: I will come to that point in a few sentences and I hope that that will lend some coherence to what I have said.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was concerned at Second Reading that some institutions may not have adequate procedures for dealing with student complaints and appeals. I can reassure your Lordships that such issues are also capable of being referred to the reviewer.
I turn now to the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. Dame Ruth Deech, who as we all know has been appointed as the independent adjudicator is an academic of enormous experience and an administrator of superb experience. We could have hardly dared hope to have somebody better in the position and more able to make the judgments about how things fall in and out within the guidance that is provided. Along with Michael Reddy, who has been appointed as the deputy adjudicator, she will be in a position to do exactly that.
I will deal briefly with the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale. The operator of the students complaint system which we believe will be the office of the independent adjudicator will consider unresolved complaints against HE sector institutions. Any complaint should relate to the responsibilities of the institution, so for HE students on placements the respective responsibilities of the institution and the placement provider—which might be an NHS trust for a nursing student, an example that was given earlier—should be set out as clearly as possible in the standard part of the placement arrangements.
These responsibilities will determine the route taken in pursuing the complaint. If it relates to something which the provider is responsible for, then they should complain to the provider. If their complaint is against the HE institution, then that is where they should lodge their complaint if it is not resolved. The student will have recourse to the student complaint scheme,
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the OIA. The intention is that the guidance documents and the forms that would be available and the publicity that we touched on in an earlier part of our discussion should make those routes very clear and help to guide people through them, as I believe they must.
Turning now to Amendment No. 18, I welcome the opportunity to respond to the important issue of the arrangements that institutions make to meet the needs of disabled students and whether complaints about these arrangements will fall within the scheme.
By way of background, I should first mention that the Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, the right honourable Alan Johnson, wrote to the Royal National Institute of the Blind confirming that complaints relating to examination procedures—such as whether an institution has complied with its policy on exam arrangements for disabled students—would be matters of process rather than academic judgment and therefore will fall within the scheme. I hope this gives a degree of reassurance to those who have raised similar points.
In debate on a similar amendment in another place, the Government also committed to look further at this issue. Officials from the Department for Education and Skills subsequently met with RNIB and Skill and confirmed that the Government would be happy to put on the record, through an exchange of correspondence, any particular services, arrangements and adjustments for disabled students that they wanted confirmed as being within the scheme's coverage. I am happy to repeat that commitment to noble Lords today and to commit to write to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, on these issues.
Institutions should have clear procedures setting out the adjustments disabled students can expect to meet their needs. If a student has an unresolved complaint about their institution's compliance with the procedure, it will fall within the remit of the reviewer. That is a reassurance which should give some comfort. No doubt everybody will study the text to make sure if it does or does not.
In that spirit I ask noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.
10 p.m.
Lord Shutt of Greetland: I thank the Minister for responding as he did. We shall have to consider his statement. It is quite interesting that the clause that we are amending is 22 words in length. I dare say that the Minister has taken up a fair amount of Hansard in his remarks, and I wonder whether there is sufficient in the Bill or whether we should fold Hansard into the Bill. We shall think on these matters and may or may not return to them later.
Lord Lucas: I am grateful to all who have spoken and particularly to the Minister for that explanation. The noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, was right in saying that the drafting of my amendment strays too far—and the Minister confirmed that.
I am comforted by some of the things that the Minister said would be included. In the case that I had to deal with, the only written evidence of the student's

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performance was the marks. There were no backing documents, there was nothing on which to base a judgment and no willingness to discuss the matter. I imagine, under those circumstances, that the independent adjudicator would be happy to have a conversation about the process, and we would not be blocked by a statement that the academic judgment of the institution or the people concerned was that it was unnecessary to provide the student with any information as to how she had done on any particular occasion or the basis on which the marks had been awarded. That is my understanding.
I heard the Minister in his remarks mention the words "judicial review". To my mind, a debt of £30,000 is quite enough for a student, without taking on the same again to run a judicial review. I shall look very carefully at Hansard at the place where the Minister mentions that, because I do not believe that that is a satisfactory road down which to push a student. Let the independent adjudicator be the one who decides whether or not a matter comes under his rubric. That would be helpful.
I shall need to read carefully what has been said, rather than take up more time tonight speculating on what I might decide to do once I have read it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Clause 13 [Designation of operator of student complaints scheme]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 5, line 23, leave out "body corporate" and insert "person"
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 19, I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 20 to 27 and Amendments Nos. 29 and 30. Of the batch of amendments, the key one is Amendment No. 29, which would insert in Schedule 1,
"is appointed Higher Education Ombudsman".
The purpose of the group of amendments is to discover why the Government have chosen to introduce an independent adjudicator rather than a fully fledged ombudsman for the higher education sector. We are supported in the amendment by NATFHE and the AUT, and I understand that the NUS have also given its support for the amendment.
We have already touched on the issues under the amendments that I tabled to Clause 12, which suggested the reasons why we favour an ombudsman with a wider remit than the more limited remit of the independent adjudicator. The model being established was proposed as a self-regulating one, to be financed by the university sector itself. It was proposed by the UUK, the employers' voice in the universities, after considerable prodding from the Government, and the question is why the Government have simply backed them in their choice rather than exploring other models.
The advantages of introducing an ombudsman system are straightforward. First, it would be provided outside the university system and financed by the Government, not the universities and, secondly, it would be in line with other ombudsman services in local government, health, financial services and Parliament. Thirdly, the tertiary education sector is already large and is expanding fast, and the FE sector is already using the Parliamentary ombudsman as an arbiter of last resort. Here we are setting up legislation to set up an arbitration system of last resort for universities, but it deals only with student complaints and does not cover the whole sector, because a number of large and influential universities have not signed up to it. That leaves some students still subject to the archaic procedures of the visitor system, and it leaves, as we have seen, the whole problem of staff complaints which are not appropriately handled by employment legislation. Discussion on this issue in Committee in the other place was cut short by time. In his response, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State explained his confidence in the procedures that had been established and paid tribute, as I do, to the board's choice of adjudicator, Ruth Deech. But he did not explain why it was that the Government opted for this limited self-regulating service, rather than for the broader-based ombudsman service. The proposal for an ombudsman model had the widespread support of the general public, students and academic staff. We have a right to know, if I may say so, why the Government prefer this more limited model. I beg to move.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: This seems to be a very sensible set of amendments. I have nothing to add to what the noble Baroness has said, except that the only explanation that I can see for not moving towards an ombudsman is that perhaps somebody in the Treasury thought it was a very clever way to avoid paying half a million pounds. If that was the case, then I urge the Minister to stand up to the Treasury.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has rightly said that the National Union of Students, as well as NATFHE and the Association of University Teachers, support a proposal for an ombudsman. Perhaps I should also point out that the NUS worked very closely with Universities UK in creating the office of the independent adjudicator and establishing it on a voluntary basis.
Perhaps I can remind the Committee that the proposal for an independent forum for reviewing those student complaints that have exhausted an institution's internal complaints procedures emerged from the recommendations of the Nolan report and were supported by the 1997 report by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. Universities UK and the Standing Conference of Principals consulted extremely widely on these proposals so I warmly welcome the Government's decision to legislate to build on the self-regulatory framework that the sector had already established and which is operating with great success.

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The Office of the Independent Adjudicator has won the wide support of the sector. It seems preferable that the Government should choose to build on something that has established a successful track record rather than to bring forward an entirely different scheme that would need to seek wide support. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator will be a real benefit to students and to institutions.
Perhaps I can correct a point that was made by both noble Lords. It was in fact Universities UK that pressed the Government to put a statutory framework onto the voluntary scheme in order to address the very real problems that have been identified in this House in relation to the role of the visitor and to establish a more consistent approach, which several noble Lords have urged. Universities UK very much pressed the Government and I am delighted that they moved swiftly to incorporate in the Bill the means of introducing this scheme. The statutory framework requiring all higher education institutions in England and Wales to participate will ensure a much greater degree of equality for all students. Although the OIA is not a regulator, it can make recommendations about how HEIs might handle complaints internally. I think that this is the right approach and that it is the right tool for the job. I commend the amendment.
Lord Triesman: The amendments suggest that the Secretary of State should appoint a person, which could be either an individual or a company, rather than a body corporate as the operator. As we have said, and as my noble friend Lady Warwick has just said, the operator that we intend to designate is the Office of the Independent Adjudicator. The OIA has been set up as a private not-for-profit company limited by guarantee and it is a corporate body. Its board consists of representatives from the higher education sector and the National Union of Students as well as a number of independent members.
During debate in another place, and as proposed by Amendment No. 29, there were calls for an alternative approach: an individual higher education ombudsman who would be appointed by the Secretary of State. There are two reasons why we favour our approach to that of an individual ombudsman. First, the Secretary of State is not involved in the appointment of members of the OIA board. Before the operator is designated, we will require that its board of directors should have a majority of independent members. In Schedule 1 we have said in the conditions to be met by the operator of the scheme that the body corporate is a suitable person to be designated the operator. This would include the majority of independent members. This ensures both independence from the Secretary of State and that sector interests do not dominate. Secondly, the Secretary of State will have no say in the independent reviewer who looks at cases. We believe that these arrangements will give greater confidence to institutions and students regarding the independence of the scheme than a Secretary of State appointed ombudsman.
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However, that is not to say that the OIA and the reviewers will not operate in a manner similar to other ombudsman schemes. No doubt there will be much common practice. Indeed, organisations such as the National Union of Students have previously used the term "ombudsman" as a general characterisation of the arrangements that we are proposing—of which they are also fully supportive—and which this legislation is designed to underpin. They have supported it in the sense that they took part in establishing it. I congratulated them on that earlier.
I hope Members of the Committee will accept that we share a commitment to ensure the independence of the student complaints scheme and will feel able to withdraw the amendments. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said, it is a case of building on something that works and to which we should give a real chance.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I thank the Minister for his reply. I accept that the office is newly established so we have yet to see how well it works, but we have every expectation that it will work very well. I repeat my tribute to Dame Ruth Deech, who has been appointed as the independent adjudicator. I certainly have much faith in her acting in that position.
I shall withdraw the amendment, but in doing so I suspect that in the course of time we may well find that we need to have a broader ombudsman working in this sector. I come back to the points that I made earlier; namely, that the borderline between what is further education and higher education will become increasingly blurred. We shall have to find some sort of system to cover staff complaints as well as student complaints. It may be appropriate, as in the health service and local government, that we have a broad office of ombudsman to deal with these matters. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 20 to 26 not moved. ]
Clause 13 agreed to.
Schedule 1 [Conditions to be met by operator of student complaints scheme]:
[Amendment No. 27 not moved. ]
Lord Lucas Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 28:
Page 24, line 9, at end insert ", and shall not in any way be connected with an institution subject to the student complaint scheme"
The noble Lord said: This amendment is extremely badly drafted so I hope that I can briefly say what I mean by it, which is that the independent adjudicator, or rather the body corporate, should not be a creature of the universities that it sets out to sit in judgment over.
The Minister said that the board should have a majority of non-university people. That is not enough. Control, in terms of control of a public company, is generally reckoned to be 30 per cent of the shares. In the ordinary dynamic of the hoard, I reckon that control is about the same. If you have a board of nine

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people, four of whom are university appointees, you will very rarely find the five going against the four. This needs to be a board that can stand up screaming to the universities when the adjudicator has dealt them a painful blow or two. If we have a board which is in hock to the universities, my fear is that that will not happen. A simple majority is just not enough. It needs to be a board which is properly independent of universities. I beg to move
10.15 p.m.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: It is necessary that the board is wholly independent of any institution in which it is investigating a complaint. That goes without saying, but it would be a somewhat different matter to say that it should be wholly independent of the entire sector. Even if we move away from the contentious area where academic judgment may be involved, much more routine and more common matters that require no academic judgment—for example, complaints that student residences were not adequately heated or that security on campus was not up to what it might have been—may, nevertheless, reasonably need people who have some experience of what campus life is like nowadays, what is normally provided in student residences and the like. So, I am slightly puzzled at the suggestion that the board should be wholly independent of the HE sector, as opposed to the institution against which a complaint is brought—with which I fully agree.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I have put my name to the amendment and I endorse the arguments made by the noble Lord. It is important that the adjudicator's office should be independent of the institution. The noble Lord has admitted that the exact phraseology that he has used may not necessarily be exactly correct, but the amendment states that the adjudicators,
"shall not in any way be connected with an institution subject to the student complaint scheme".
That degree of independence is necessary.
Baroness Seccombe: We support the principle of the amendment which is important for two reasons—that we have both knowledge and lack of bias. What criteria would be used in the selection of adjudicators under this provision and would they receive any specific training?
Lord Triesman: I was intrigued by the idea that if there was a board of nine, of which four were from the universities, those four would be likely to agree with each other. That falls wholly outside my experience.
Thus far, we have covered the first steps that have been taken in setting up the current arrangements. However the OIA is now up and running and we believe that it has to be independent and that its board of directors is vital to the credibility of the scheme. The Secretary of State will have the power to designate a body corporate as the operator, which must be "a suitable person". In order to be judged suitable, I can assure noble Lords that the Secretary of State will
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require that the operator can demonstrate full independence. We would expect the operator seeking designation to have a majority of independent members on its board. It is probably true that as long as there is a genuine majority—and it is often unlikely that everyone else will stick together in one position—the body is unlikely to be towed around as an individual group by the universities.
I can understand the concern that the OIA's current board does not meet that requirement and that one might wonder why it has been designated as the operator. However, I can reassure the Committee that the OIA board has agreed that it will move to the new position before it seeks designation from the Secretary of State. The change will have been made. The board is currently in the process of increasing the number of independent members and is considering reducing the number of representative members so that an independent majority is fully achieved. I hope that that will encourage the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
I do not agree with the argument that no members of the body corporate should have connections with qualifying institutions. It is important that the sector has a degree of representation on the board, which implies connections to higher education institutions. What is crucial is that they do not dominate; I fully understand the feeling behind that view. The process for appointment will be independent; it will meet the criteria that we would now expect of independent appointment processes, of which there are a good many that are routinely discussed in the Chamber, to which the Nolan principles have been applied.
I have probably already made all the points that I should about Dame Ruth Deech and her immediate colleague Mike Reddy. Those are good initial independent appointments. They show the tenor in which everyone intends to proceed. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas: What the Government intend is certainly in the direction for which I was hoping and I am happy to bow to their greater judgment as to the exact structure. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 29 and 30 not moved. ]
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Conditions to be met by student complaints scheme]:
Lord Lucas Lord Lucas moved Amendment No. 31:
Page 25, line 21, at end insert—
Guidance
Condition B(1) is that the scheme shall include guidance for the conduct of internal procedures for the review of complaints, and for the terms of such procedures, and shall prohibit the placing by such procedures of any limitations on access to the scheme."
The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 32. Amendment No. 31 arises from the requirement that students should have been through the procedures laid down for the individual institution before they can have access to the independent adjudicator. Under those circumstances, there should be some degree of connection between the two sets of procedures. To start with the back end of the amendment, there should be nothing about an institution's internal procedures that make it difficult to reach the independent adjudicator.
So far as the first part of the amendment is concerned, I hope that we will have an independent adjudicator who feels able to spread good practice among universities.
One problem I had with the case to which I referred was that the university concerned, immediately on telling the student concerned that it intended to dismiss her from her course, banned all her tutors from talking to her and said that they could not help her in any way to understand what had gone wrong or to make a reasonable judgment of what she should therefore do next by way of her career or otherwise, unless and until she abandoned all appeal procedures. In fact, having now reached the point where she has abandoned all appeal procedures, it still will not let her talk to any of her tutors.
As I said, that ended extremely unhappily. One reason for that is that the course that she was on is one where her tutors are likely to have an effect on her future career. She should have been studying something sensible, such as history, where all the students go off to be merchant bankers. Unfortunately, the academics on the course that she chose are in close contact with the people who are likely to employ her afterwards. Being a talented individual, she wishes to pursue that course.
So I am very concerned that we should have some mechanism to deal with such bad practice. It seems to me that the best way is to have someone who understands good practice able to pass that good practice down to the institutions—especially, of course, when a complaint comes through and it is clear that something has been wrong with the institutional practices below.
I have expressed that in the language of guidance; it should probably not be that formal. I want to ensure that the independent adjudicator feels that he has the power and position to make suggestions and do whatever is necessary in the context of university structures to spread good practice and indicate that unless individual institutions' complaints procedures comply with a reasonable set of criteria, the complaints that reach the adjudicator are more likely than not to fail because the student has been badly dealt with beforehand. As I said, that goes back to the difficult experiences through which I have been.
Amendment No. 32 is simply a suggestion. It is based on the ordinary experience: if you go to court and lose, you pay more than if you win. I do not see why institutions that neither lose cases nor produce
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students who have been badly done by should pay as much as those that produce a stream of students with complaints that are upheld. I certainly would not dream of pressing the amendment if it did not appeal to the Minister. I beg to move.
Lord Dearing: Perhaps I may take the opportunity to raise a matter on Amendment No. 31. so that peradventure I could return to it on Report. I am particularly concerned not to limit severely access to the adjudicator by a complainant at an institution where there is no access to a visitor, or where it is very limited, and where internal procedures having been exhausted the only resort is to the courts. A student simply cannot afford to take a case to the courts.
In dealing with such a case, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, said to a Member of the other place in a letter of 5 February this year that the Government agree that it is inequitable that there should be access from some institutions but not for others. That is particularly so when the institution has no provision, not only for a visitor, but for any external person whatever, and all cases are handled in-house.
I hope that as a matter of practice rather than through legislation the adjudicator will be encouraged to take a lenient attitude to considering cases where it seems that perhaps the procedures have not been entirely fair, and where a case, although it is out of time, has been rumbling on—the one that I have in mind has done so for several years and has still not gone away from my e-mail. Perhaps the adjudicator would be prepared, provided that a case was supported by one, or perhaps two, Members of Parliament or the National Assembly for Wales, exceptionally to consider the matter.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: I have enormous sympathy with the aims of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in that all universities should have student complaints procedures. However, I would like to know whether the intention of the amendment is that all the procedures that universities have been required to construct over a number of years must now be revisited.
I had taken it that in this construction we aimed to create the apex of a system whose infrastructure was already in place. Who is to say that every bit of that infrastructure is as good as it should be? However, in my experience, student complaints procedures are now ubiquitous and elaborate, possibly over-elaborate. If the Office of the Independent Adjudicator is there, any procedure constructed under existing guidance and requirements will be found out if inadequate. I do not believe that we need to rebuild the whole infrastructure.
The same goes for the handling of student disability, where, in my experience, for 25 years universities have used the sorts of procedures that have been discussed. They are now very much in the hands of disability advisers. Negotiations are conducted with students who declare a disability before they come on campus, so that one knows what adjustments are needed, and so that they can be provided. There is a problem about undeclared disability. I do not think that institutions

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can prepare themselves to deal with a disability if it is not disclosed either upon application or, quite often, until a late stage. So far as I am aware, where a student is disabled and discloses it at the admissions process, every institution is required to build that in. That includes time allowances on assessment. Similarly, complaints procedures are now there.
10.30 p.m.
Lord Triesman: I start with the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. It can be dealt with relatively rapidly. It will up to the scheme to decide when it wants to lift the time limit. There will be exceptional cases in which it may wish to do so, but, by definition, exceptions are exceptional, and it is hard to build the legislation to reflect that. The OIA can do that. Anything or everything can be put to the OIA, and it is for the OIA to decide whether to exclude it, even if it is clouded in history and e-mails
The amendments would add another three conditions to the minimum conditions that would apply. I shall deal with guidance first. I agree that getting the internal complaints procedures of universities and other institutions up to standard in the first place would alleviate many of the problems that we are trying to deal with and reduce the need for appeals. In some circumstances, we could probably avoid the problems altogether. So, I understand the noble Lord's desire for a scheme that includes guidance about the conduct of internal complaints procedures. However, it is for individual institutions to determine their own procedures for handling student complaints. We have recognised in other contexts and emphasised that they are independent, autonomous institutions. In devising their own procedures, they need to take account—most of them already do—of guidance issued by sectoral representative bodies and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, may wish to note that the QAA has issued a code of practice on student complaints and academic appeals. I would be happy to send it to him, so that he can see whether it deals with the issues that he has raised. The code sets out clear guidance to institutions on handling student complaints and, although there may be a case for the experience of the OIA informing future development of that guidance, it does not seem sensible to duplicate the QAA guidance.
When dealing with a student's complaint, the independent reviewer can also make specific recommendations to the higher education institution about the effectiveness of its internal procedures. Where appropriate, we would expect the reviewer to set out aspects of the procedures that were flawed and say how they might be improved. That would be useful guidance. The reviewer may also make general observations about the institutions' complaints procedures in the annual report, and that will be useful guidance to the sector as a whole because it will be available to the sector as a whole.
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The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, also suggests that the scheme should ensure that institutions do not prohibit students from accessing the operator's scheme for reviewing student complaints. I assure the noble Lord that it will do so. Clause 15(1) requires the institution to comply with any obligation imposed upon it by the scheme. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 3 requires that the operator must provide a scheme for the review of qualifying complaints that meets all of the conditions in Schedule 2. In order to comply with that requirement, the operator of the scheme will have to ensure that all qualifying complaints are capable of being referred to it. That is also in Schedule 2. The operator will need to place an obligation on the institutions to that effect, and we anticipate that that would be in the rules of the scheme. In the unlikely event that higher education institutions made it a contractual term that students were not to refer complaints to the OIA, they would be in breach of their duty. They cannot do that.
The noble Lord should also be reassured that, under the voluntary arrangements currently operated by the OIA, participating institutions are required to issue a completion letter to students when the institution's procedures have been exhausted. The letter must provide information on how to get access to the OIA, if the student remains dissatisfied with the handling of the complaint. The student will know when the process has come to an end and what steps can be taken beyond it. That ensures that students are clear about the routes of redress.
Amendment No. 32 would mean that the operator should charge fees in relation to the outcome of the case. I can understand the amendment. The Bill does not prescribe how fees payable by institutions will be apportioned. That gives flexibility to the operators to decide on a fair and reasonable fee structure while preventing the operator charging excessive fees above the costs that are incurred. It is not a profit-making organisation. That kind of flexibility is already there.
We understand that the OIA is also considering a fee structure that might be introduced at a later point, which includes a mixture of a fee based on the size of institutions plus a fee per complaint referred from the institution. That is another flexibility in the charging system. So those kinds of options are open. I suspect that, in due course, the scheme will be able to codify them in a way that should be helpful.
Lord Lucas: I am grateful for that explanation, which, again, I shall read carefully. As usual, the noble Baroness, Lady O'Neill, is right. Most institutions—certainly all my academic colleagues to whom I talked in this place when I was having difficulties—said that the schemes that they operate would not run into those difficulties. None the less, it is extremely difficult to know what to do when you run into something where the documentation is all there, but what is happening in practice is a travesty. There does not seem to be any way in which this can be made to work better at the moment.

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The Minister has made it clear that there will be enough feedback from the independent adjudicator. Should such problems occur in the future, there is some hope that they will get picked up and cleared up. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 32 not moved.]
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clause 14 agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Duties of designated operator of student complaints scheme]:
Baroness Sharp of Guildford Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 33:
Page 27, line 32, at end insert —
"() In relation to the requirements set out in sub-paragraph (2), the identities of the individual parties involved must be anonymised."
The noble Baroness said: At this hour I shall not detain Members of the Committee for long. I apologise for the wording of Amendment No. 33. I had asked for the wording to be changed from "rather must be anonymised"—I am not sure that anonymised is a word that appears in any English dictionary—to "should not be revealed". Somehow, the gremlins got in and I am afraid that the amendment appeared as it was originally sent to me.
I am moving this amendment on behalf of the Association of University Teachers. Its main purpose is to amend Schedule 3, which relates to the duties of the adjudicator in relation to requirements of the annual report. The amendment would ensure that in the annual report the names of all individuals involved in any arbitration procedure should not be revealed.
University staff and the AUT have very strong concerns at the apparent lack of thought in the Bill about the impact on and implications for those staff who are directly affected by or implicated in cases that are referred to the adjudicator. Whether we like it or no, in any such adjudication the full facts of the complaint will inevitably be aired. We assume that the adjudication will therefore involve hearings, written evidence and other details of the original complaint, including the names of those involved.
That will mean that the annual report, which has to include information about the complaint itself and the decisions and recommendations made, will also potentially include details of named individuals. That provides considerable scope for someone's reputation to be damaged and for potentially groundless complaints to be repeated in an important public document.
We are asking therefore that the names of the individual staff involved should not be revealed in the annual report so as to protect their reputations, professional credibility and employment rights. Parliament will still be able to hold the adjudicator to account, but without damaging the staff involved. I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: Over recent weeks, we have had quite a lot of exchanges on this subject in regard to the medical profession, which I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, will recall. I cannot see any good reason why an annual report—or, indeed, any report—of this particular organisation should name and shame, so to speak. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, is absolutely right. It could get into the press and could do great damage, not only to staff, as she mentioned, but also to students.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: I strongly support this amendment. Indeed, it may not go quite far enough. I think that I am more aware of the possible damage caused to students than to staff. If names of either party were revealed, it would lead to immediate attention of the sort that will spread an account of the case that may not cover all the nuances. However, one has to recognise that where a case is thought to be lurid or interesting, because they imagine that they have an unqualifiedly good case, there will be a temptation on the part of one or both parties to reveal the name of the other party. In addition to anonymity in the report, it may be as well to consider whether those who bring complaints should not have to agree not to reveal the name of the other party or the details of the case.
Lord Triesman: The amendment proposes that individual parties should not be named in the designated operator's annual report. Of course the parties concerned are students and the governing bodies are the institutions. I can assure noble Lords that we agree that the operator should not name individual students in its annual report. However, we do believe that the reviewer should be able to comment on the extent to which the governing body of an institution has followed the reviewer's recommendation. This would involve naming an institution. The amendment would prevent the reviewer from, for example, highlighting in its annual report an institution which has not complied with its rulings. We do not want to limit the reviewer in that way.
I am sure that noble Lords will agree that a degree of public accountability for their response to decisions is important to the success of a non-binding scheme of this kind. I can also assure noble Lords that such practice is common in other ombudsman-type schemes. For example, the Local Government Ombudsman names individual local authorities and councils, but does not name individuals. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education has made it clear in its guidance that it will only ever publish cases in an anonymised form—I believe that the word does exist, and I am now the second person to use it. All correspondence between the OIA and the parties to a complaint will be treated in confidence and only shared between the parties involved.
I hope that that explanation gives a reassurance about the way the reviewer will treat individuals involved in complaints, and makes clear the importance of the reviewer being able to report on

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institutions not complying with the scheme. In that light, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: I thank all noble Lords who have supported me on this amendment and I also thank the Minister for his response. It was a cheering response and made it clear that in these particular instances, the names of individuals will not be revealed. Obviously we agree that it is absolutely right that institutions should be named. Given those assurances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Clauses 15 and 16 agreed to.
Schedule 4 agreed to.
Clauses 17 to 19 agreed to.
Lord Grocott: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at fifteen minutes before eleven o'clock.