Government of Wales Act 2006 (Devolved Welsh Authorities) (Amendment) Order 2024

Considered in Grand Committee

17:57:00

Moved by

That the Grand Committee do consider the Government of Wales Act 2006 (Devolved Welsh Authorities) (Amendment) Order 2024.

My Lords, before I move on to today’s business, I know that the thoughts of your Lordships’ House are with the family and friends of the man who lost his life in the train collision near Llanbrynmair, as well as the others involved. Our thanks go to the emergency services who have worked tirelessly at the scene. I also put on record our thanks to the train staff who have supported all the travellers affected. I have the heaviest of colds, and this is a very technical amendment, so I plan to be short and sweet. The Government of Wales Act 2006 defines devolved Welsh authorities for the purposes of that Act. Section 157A defines a “devolved Welsh authority” as a public authority whose functions “are exercisable only in relation to Wales, and … wholly or mainly … do not relate to reserved matters”. A public authority is also a devolved Welsh authority if it is included in the list in Schedule 9A to the Government of Wales Act 2006. This list provides a partly confirmatory role to increase transparency by naming the authorities that meet the conditions in Section 157A. Section 157A(5) includes a power to amend this schedule by order so as to add, remove or revise entries in the list where necessary to ensure that it remains up to date. The draft order before the Committee updates the list of devolved Welsh authorities in light of the Senedd’s Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022. This Act established the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research, a new Welsh Government-sponsored body responsible for strategy, funding and oversight of further and higher education, adult education, and apprenticeships and training in Wales. The commission became operational from August of this year and took on the functions of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, which has now been dissolved. The Commission for Tertiary Education and Research meets the conditions of Section 157A of the Government of Wales Act 2006 and is, therefore, a devolved Welsh authority. This draft order inserts a reference in Schedule 9A to the Government of Wales Act 2006 to the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research, and it removes the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. In line with requirements in Section 157A of the Government of Wales Act, I can confirm that the draft order was approved by the Senedd on 18 June. I beg to move.

18:00:00

My Lords, I echo the Minister’s reference to yesterday’s train crash in Llanbrynmair and add my condolences to the family concerned. This order removes the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales—HEFCW—from the list of devolved Welsh authorities in Schedule 9A to the Government of Wales Act 2006 and replaces it with the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research, or Comisiwn Addysg Drydyddol ac Ymchwil. However, this is much more than a change of name. The commission, which was set up by the Welsh Senedd in its Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022, operates at arm’s length from the Welsh Government but is answerable to them. Its board operates within a strategic planning and funding framework established by Welsh Ministers and is responsible for funding and regulating all areas of post-16 education in Wales, including further education, higher education, apprenticeships, school sixth forms, adult community learning, and government-funded research and innovation. It therefore takes over the responsibilities of HEFCW, but much more in addition, as that list shows. HEFCW, as it is almost affectionately called, has been so much a part of the Welsh education system and our educational vocabulary since 1992, when it was established, that it will be strange to think of the sector without the name in future. I am pleased that the commission has been given a more user-friendly name than its official title and will be known as Medr, the Welsh word for skill or ability, which seems absolutely appropriate. The official title appears below the Medr heading on its website and letterheads, so it will not be lost. The board, which provides the strategic leadership, consists of 17 members appointed by the Welsh Government and includes four non-voting associate members representing learners and the education workforce. They all have an important task ahead of them as they navigate the new tertiary landscape in Wales, and I wish them every success in the future. On behalf of the Lib Dem Benches, I support the aims of this statutory instrument.

My Lords, I associate myself with the sentiments of the Minister regarding the dreadful accident in mid Wales. I also pay tribute to her in her new role and wish her well in it. It is quite an extensive role. It covers not just Wales but Northern Ireland, Scotland and lots of other things as well, but those are the three things that matter most. I shall speak briefly about this order, which I support. It is a technical order in many ways, but it gives the Committee the opportunity to touch upon the points, as the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, just did. The commission is a brand-new body that takes into account further education and technical education. Before I entered the House of Commons in 1987, I spent 17 years teaching in Welsh further education in Ebbw Vale. I always thought that the distinction and differences between technical, further and higher education were very artificial. Eventually, as the years went on, that became quite obvious, so this is a natural progression in how the Welsh Government and the Senedd deal with post-16 education in Wales. I welcome that as well. This order gives us an opportunity to mention briefly the issue that the Minister has been raising for some time: the importance of co-operation between the Government in Cardiff and the Government here in London. That is particularly significant on this issue because roughly 50% of students in Welsh universities come from outside Wales and roughly 50% of Welsh students go outside Wales to study, so there is a constant interchange between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom. and beyond, for example, in America, where it is important for good co-operation. I hope that our Secretary of State, Bridget Phillipson, and the Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle—she is my Member of the Senedd—will be in constant communication, talking to each other about the importance of higher education and further education in both countries. I also hope that the Minister will take that message back. The other point that I want to touch on concerns something that I was involved in about 14 years ago. At that time, the Welsh Government asked me to look at opportunities for Welsh students to go to Oxford and Cambridge, Russell group universities and, beyond that, Harvard or Yale, as some have done from Welsh schools. Incidentally, some of those students were from very deprived Welsh schools. That project became known as Seren in Wales. It is a system by which students in Wales can get access to opportunities to learn about different universities. In my view, it has been a considerable success, but it is also a good example of how the English education system could learn from what we do in Wales with regard to ensuring that people whose backgrounds mean that they would not normally expect to go to our top universities in England, Wales and elsewhere can do so. There is an opportunity for co-operation there as well. I wish the new body and the new Government here in Whitehall good luck. I also wish good luck to the co-operation between the Welsh Government and the United Kingdom.

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, who commented on this order. I will speak very briefly indeed. On the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, about going outside Wales for higher education, I attended Manchester University. There were some 300 students from Wales at Manchester University, about 20 or 30 of them from Neath Grammar School alone. It was incredible. It was a gain for all of us who went to Manchester but, in some ways, it was a loss for Wales and its communities. So many who could have contributed did not, in fact, have an opportunity to come back. Therefore, there is a question about how within the expanded higher education responsibilities we organise some facility to help people get back if they so desire. This must fall jointly on the Senedd in Cardiff and government bodies here in Westminster. The Minister opened her comments today with the Llanbrynmair rail tragedy. I add my condolences. I have, in fact—perhaps I can give notice to Government Ministers through saying this—approached the Lord Speaker to get a Private Notice Question tomorrow on it. I have a lot of interest in it because my father was born in Llanbrynmair and my wife’s father and mother were born in that council area. I have a couple of questions about this order. I do so not least because no Plaid MP was selected to be on the House of Commons committee dealing with this specifically Welsh order; I trust that that can be sorted out in another place at another time. As has been said, this order allows the new body, Medr, to replace the former body, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. Can the Minister confirm that Medr’s powers do in fact go beyond those of the funding council? I believe they do. Can she also confirm that, notwithstanding that, they are within the ambit of the Act 2006 on which the devolution model was predicated? Secondly, the question of funding was raised by Nia Griffiths on 8 October. In column 5 of the Hansard report, she slammed the previous Conservative Government for considerably reducing the funds available for higher education. The question that I will naturally put to the Minister is can she confirm that the Welsh Government will now get more money in order to meet that shortcoming that has been highlighted? Thirdly, I do not know whether the Minister has looked at whether Medr has any role in further education beyond the boundaries of Wales—particularly with regard to the types of students to which the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, referred—but, if there is that responsibility, I wonder whether the model defining the powers that Medr and the Senedd have can adequately cover that relationship. I would add that, if any students from Wales get the opportunity to go to Oxford or Cambridge, they should always take it, then come back enhanced by the education they got there; that is certainly the approach I would take. Fourthly, in the context of Welsh students going outside Wales, particularly to England, I ask the Minister, please, to ensure—through other government departments, I suspect—that, when we come to the next census in 2031, we have questions asked of those people living in England who have a background in the Welsh language and Wales. That sort of information could be massively important in helping to develop the opportunities that they need to come back to Wales and those that others have when they are thinking of going outside Wales for their further education. It would help them to know that there is some landline with which they can maintain their connections with Wales. Those census figures could be very useful indeed. Having said that, I of course support this order.

My Lords, I had not planned to say anything but, following on from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, let me just say this. A couple of days ago, I was talking to a friend of mine whose son went to Oxford as a result of the Seren project initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. He is about to complete and is coming back to Wales to further his career. For our generation, education has always been a pathway out of poverty. We should never put barriers in the way of young people creating and getting opportunities for a complete, fulfilling life. We should do nothing to deny them that opportunity. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I are totally as one on this. It is a great project. It shows that the co-operation between Wales and England, and England and Wales, has a huge benefit for all of us.

My Lords, I, too, begin by adding my condolences to the family of the person who tragically died last night in the terrible accident at Llanbrynmair. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, to her place as the Minister dealing with devolved issues. I am sure that we will have some interesting engagement in future. I speak on behalf of the Opposition on this matter. I am grateful to the Government for bringing these regulations forward. They are simple and give effect to the Welsh Government’s decision to replace the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales with the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research. I am bound to say from the Conservative Benches that, as a Conservative Government, we have had a strong record on education in England. Successive Governments have made significant improvements in this area. England now has the best readers in the western world, and the numbers of students going to university across the UK are at near-record levels. We on these Benches want to see students continuing to achieve good outcomes. We will be holding the Government to account on their record. In particular, we are concerned that the Government do not choose to go down the path of the Labour Government in Wales, who have failed so comprehensively on education. The OECD’s head of education said that the education system under Labour in Wales has seen its performance decline and has “lost its soul”. Indeed, we have seen the attainment gap between students from poorer and wealthier backgrounds increase under Labour in Wales. The PISA results for Labour in Wales show that scores have decreased since 2018 in mathematics, reading and science, by 21, 17 and 15 points respectively. I have two questions for the Minister. First, while I recognise that education is devolved in Wales, can she explain to noble Lords what practical steps the Government are taking to support the Labour-run Welsh Government to drive up educational attainment in Wales? Secondly, can she confirm whether Education Ministers have met their Welsh counterparts to discuss their plan to deliver better standards of education to students in Wales? As I said, I am grateful to the Government for bringing this order forward. I look forward to the response to my questions.

18:15:00

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate, which have been wide-ranging. I want to put on record the fact that I am the first person in my family to have gone to university. I am very clear—from having a single mum who lived on a council estate—that the pathway out of poverty is education. I will be forever grateful for the opportunities that were given to me by having an extraordinary mother who got me there. I therefore look forward to working with all noble Lords to ensure that, in any of the nations I apparently now represent, educational outcomes and attainment are fulfilled. I thank everyone for their support, but before I move on I very much thank my noble friend Lord Murphy, who is mentoring me across several of my new responsibilities. I am beyond grateful for his support. I look forward to hearing more about the Seren project from him and my noble friend Lord Touhig. In answer to the questions raised by my noble friend Lord Murphy, the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, many of the issues now are about co-operation between Cardiff and London. I think that was a theme of today. One thing I want to be clear on is that the benefit of having a Labour Government in Westminster and a Labour Government in Cardiff is that co-operation is more easily given. We are definitely working more closely with our colleagues in Cardiff than the previous Administration did. There are regular meetings and engagement, but I will write to provide more detail on that to the noble Lord. As has been pointed out, this is a devolved matter and I therefore cannot comment in detail on the Senedd’s decisions. It is for Members of the Senedd and Welsh Ministers to decide how they will operate it and what they want to do, but we will do everything we can to provide support to all Ministers in the Senedd, which they may or may not want, and to seek their advice on occasion on how they can help us as we move forward. On the specific questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, yes, Medr has taken on functions in many post-16 areas from the Welsh Government. I ask the noble Lord to bear with me because I am working my way through his list. On funding, I think he will be aware that we have a significant fiscal event happening in only eight days’ time. As much as I would love to be able to tell him what will be in the Budget, I think he, like me, will have to wait until the Chancellor of the Exchequer stands up next Wednesday. On Medr beyond the boundaries of Wales, the Welsh Government’s budget for the commission’s responsibility is approximately £900 million. The commission receives a proportion in line with—this is what happens when you have to read someone else’s handwriting and it is a challenge. Sorry—I will write to the noble Lord. On the questions about the census, the commission can regulate the activities of Welsh institutions in England. There is a consultation on questions that can be added in the run-up to each census. I will make sure that the noble Lord has the details and that we work collectively for the consultation on any new and additional questions. If the noble Lord is successful with his PNQ, then I look forward to talking about it with him tomorrow. Investigations are currently under way by Transport for Wales, which is working with all the relevant authorities to understand how the incident happened. It would therefore not be appropriate for me to comment further while investigations are ongoing, so any conversation tomorrow would be limited because we cannot really discuss it. As I outlined, this order will make changes to the list of devolved Welsh authorities in Schedule 9A to the Government of Wales Act to take account of the establishment of the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research and the dissolution of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. I close—so I can have a Lemsip—by again offering my thanks for the productive manner in which the Welsh and UK Governments have worked together in preparing this draft order, and for the Committee’s support today.

Motion agreed.

Committee adjourned at 6.20 pm.