My Lords, one of the Second Reading speeches that most impressed me was from the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, whom I see in his place. He reminded us that Conservatives are in favour of limited government and limited intervention, and of autonomous institutions in civil society, and that universities are autonomous institutions and so the state needs to be very careful before it puts extra burdens on them.
At present, and in recent years, the state has added a number of extra burdens on universities, even while reducing its financial support. The National Security and Investment Act requires universities to report on a number of things. The National Security Bill, which had its Second Reading yesterday, has very substantial additional implications for universities, and we will discuss later this evening the overlap between its reporting requirements on overseas funding and the reporting requirements of this Bill on such funding.
As autonomous institutions, universities are led by responsible vice-chancellors and others, some of whom make mistakes. My first year as a university teacher was 1968. The vice-chancellor of my university, the University of Manchester, made some disastrous mistakes in dealing with the student revolts. The then director of the London School of Economics was just as bad. Most vice-chancellors learned from that.
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We have seen that again in this recent cycle. I am old enough to know vice-chancellors who were my students or with whom I worked when they were young academics. One of the vice-chancellors involved said to me, “William, we did not see this coming, and you don’t manage a problem very well the first time it hits you.” They have had to learn from their mistakes, as do all CEOs in new and unexpected circumstances. That does not necessarily mean that heavier state regulation is the answer. This Conservative Government are committed to reducing regulation as far as they can, in principle, but apparently not with universities.
The introduction of a tort to duplicate what the OIA or the OfS already does would be a major additional burden for universities and the courts, although a great financial advantage to lawyers. The point made enthusiastically by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is that this would hit universities in their pockets and
make them suffer. This is unnecessary. A combination of the regulation we already have and instructive, capable and braver leadership by our vice-chancellors and universities is what we need. I therefore strongly support the amendment to remove Clause 4.