Select Committee
Parliament

Image source, HoC

Committee chair Robert Halfon begins by asking the panel about the role of universities in preparing students to get graduate-level jobs.

The panel is united in saying current data - collected from graduates six months after leaving - is not useful for measuring how well students do after university.

Liverpool University vice-chancellor Janet Beer says data collected "down the track" is more indicative of universties' ability to provide "graduate-level careers".

Oxford University vice-chancellor Louise Richardson says higher education is "not just about skills" and that they should aim to teach students to "think critically, reason, act ethically".

She adds that if they spent their time educating students for jobs that exist now, they'd be wasting their time because current skills are likely to become "obsolete" in ten or twenty years.

She adds that universities have to "educate students for jobs we can't even imagine today".

Select Committee
Parliament

Good morning and welcome to our coverage of events at Westminster.

This morning, the Education Committee is holding a session on value for money in universities with university vice chancellors.

Earlier this week Theresa May announced a review, external of higher education in England, which would include an assessment of how students can get better value for money.

However the government has ruled out scrapping tuition fees.

Appearing in front of the committee are:

• Professor Edward Peck, Vice- Chancellor, Nottingham Trent University
• Peter Horrocks, Vice- Chancellor, The Open University
• Professor Dame Janet Beer, Vice- Chancellor, University of Liverpool and President of Universities UK
• Professor Chris Husbands, Vice-Chancellor, Sheffield Hallam University and Chair of Teaching Excellence Framework panel
• Professor Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford

The International Development Committee held a three-hour session on sexual exploitation in the aid sector, taking evidence from Oxfam, Save the Children and officials from the Department for International Development.

The inquiry was launched following reports of sexual misconduct by Oxfam staff in Haiti in 2011. Oxfam’s handling of the matter has been called a “cover-up”.

You can read what happened here.

Later, International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt made a statement about the scandal in the Commons, calling it “a wake-up call for all of us”.

As it was the first day back for Parliament after the half-term break, there were a series of urgent questions and statements.

In an urgent question on the medical use of cannabis, a Conservative Crispin Blunt said the UK’s approach “flies in the face of the popular view”, saying there is evidence about the effectiveness of cannabis-based treatments.

The Home Office has refused a request to give a medical cannabis licence to six-year-old Alfie Dingle. He has a rare form of epilepsy that is improved after taking the drug.

That's where we leave our live coverage of Westminster for today.

The Commons meets tomorrow at 11:30am for questions to Cabinet Office ministers, before Theresa May faces Jeremy Corbyn at noon for Prime Minister's Questions.

The House of Lords meets at 3pm for questions, before beginning the first day of detailed committee stage debate on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge says the bill has cross-party support but lacks an important measure: requiring the UK's overseas territories to have public registers of beneficial ownership.

Dame Margaret, a former chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, has long campaigned for registers to enable anyone to see which individual or organisation owns businesses and property.

Without such a a measure, she argues, the UK will continue to be "complicit in facilitating the very corruption we claim we want to eradicate".

Dame Margaret says that over half the companies mentioned in the leaked Panama Papers were registered in the British Virgin Islands, while over half of those in the Paradise Papers were also located in UK overseas tax havens.

"We will never... build a global Britain on dirty money," she adds.

House of Commons
Parliament

SNP MP Alison Thewliss says it is important that a post-EU sanctions regime should not put at risk "our collective efforts" on sanctions or result in the UK being "marginalised in the world".

House of Commons
Parliament

Labour's Helen Goodman says that areas of London's Chelsea which used to have houses illuminated at night are now in darkness, because the owners do not live there.

She argues that this shows the extent to which wealthy people from overseas buy houses to hide their money.

She begins to describe the situation in outer London broughs as well, but when she suggests that Boris Johnson "never" visits the outer boroughs, the foreign secretary intervenes.

Mr Johnson insists he regularly went to the outer boroughs when he was Mayor of London and claims that his Labour predecessor, Ken Livingstone, "visited Havana more often than he visited Havering".

Mr Johnson's current Commons constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip is located in the outer London borough of Hillingdon.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Shadow foreign affairs minister Helen Goodman says so-called "Henry VIII clauses", external in the bill have already attracted criticism and opposition.

These powers would enable ministers to make laws in some cases "without any debate", she says.

She recalls that the government was defeated twice when the bill was debated in the House of Lords and warns ministers that Labour will oppose any attempt to reverse those defeats.

Crossbench peers Lord Judge, the former Lord Chief Justice, and Lord Pannick, a barrister, led the opposition in the Lords to reduce the amount of powers the bill would give to ministers.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is back at the despatch box to open the debate on the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill.

The bill will give the UK "full power" over sanctions once it leaves the EU, he says, or "in a memorable phrase, to take back control".

Current sanctions apply to countries including North Korea, Syria and Russia, he tells the House, and are derived from the European Communities Act 1972, which is soon to be repealed as part of the Brexit process.

After that repeal, Mr Johnson adds, "if we do nothing, we will lose the ability to impose sanctions or remove current ones".

The UK has played "a leading role in devising EU sanctions", he says.

House of Commons
Parliament

Labour's Gareth Snell opposes the legislation, which is unusual for ten minute rule bills as they are usually waved through their first phase.

He says the case that there is widespread electoral fraud is "overstated" and has been used as a pretext by the Conservatives to justify piloting "restrictive voter ID rules", rules which he says will disadvantage the elderly and the poor.

However when the deputy speaker calls a vote, no-one opposes it. The bill now moves on to the lengthy list of private member's bills that may be considered on Fridays.

House of Commons
Parliament

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Conservative Damien Moore is introducing his ten minute rule bill on postal voting. He says problems with postal voting are "mercifully rare" but "democracy cannot be taken for granted".

He wants to eliminate the practice of "ballot harvesting", where political activists collect sometimes hundreds of completed postal votes and then hand them in at a polling station on election day.

He says this eliminates the time that authorities have to make sure the postal votes are legitimate.

He wants to limit the number of postal votes that can be handed in at a polling station by a single person at two.

House of Commons
Parliament

The former Education Secretary Justine Greening says that "one of the worse things you could do" is introduce "a regressive tuition fee policy proposed by Labour".

She warns that it would benefit the "better off" by introducing a cap on student numbers.

House of Commons
Parliament

In response to Angela Rayner Damian Hinds says proposals for differential fees would be about "making sure that there is diversity and choice in the marketplace", and suggests that this may include shorter courses, part-time courses and courses delivered in different ways.

He adds that there is "no such thing as free in higher education, somebody must pay" and that either we can ask the people who have benefited from it to pay, or the people who haven't.

He says "free" university would be "regressive...a policy for the few, not the many".

House of Commons
Parliament

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Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner says that in Theresa May's speech announcing the review she said the current system of university financing "isn't working".

She criticises the review for a lack of independence, telling MPs it will be "run" by ministers.

The year-long review, she adds, will be an "unnecessary waste of time and energy when action is needed now".

Instead she recommends Labour's policy of abolishing tuition fees and bringing back maintenance grants.

House of Commons
Parliament

Education Secretary Damian Hinds begins his statement by saying he's "not announcing new policy today" but will provide more details of the government's proposed review.

He says the government's review is intended to "look further at how our post-18 education system is joined up and works well for students and taxpayers".

He says the government wants to "maintain and protect key elements of our current system [and] not place a cap on the numbers who can enjoy post-18 education".

He goes on to criticise Scotland's system, where there is a cap on the numbers who can go to university.

The education secretary says that "the UK is truly a world leading destination for study and research" but "we recognise concerns and must look at how we can go further to provide choice and open up access".

House of Commons
Parliament

Education Secretary Damian Hinds is making a statement on the government's review into post-18 education.

Theresa May launched the review yesterday, to be chaired by Philip Augar, a writer and former banker. The review is intended to focus on choice, value for money, access and skills provision.

In a speech in Derby yesterday the Prime Minister said that England had "one of the most expensive systems of university tuition in the world" and "the level of fees charged do not relate to the cost or quality of the course".

House of Lords
Parliament

Labour former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Reid of Cardowan calls on the government to distance itself unequivocally from DUP MPs' comments about the Good Friday Agreement.

Northern Ireland Minister Lord Duncan says he wants to make it clear the government does not support any suggestion the Good Friday Agreement is dispensable.

House of Lords
Parliament

Image source, HoL

Checking in with the House of Lords where peers have just heard a repeat of the statement made by Karen Bradley in the Commons on the stalling of talks aimed at restoring the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Shadow Lords leader Baroness Smith of Basildon says she has "a sense of deja vu" about the statement and things have not moved on sufficiently.

She observes that direct rule is easier to impose than to remove - she was meant to serve as a direct rule minister for three months but ended up doing it for two-and-a-half years.

Northern Ireland Minister Lord Duncan of Springbank says direct rule "cannot be taken off the table but should not be a priority".

House of Commons
Parliament

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Labour MP Stephen Doughty, a former head of Oxfam Cymru, says he and other employees of the organisation feel "let down".

House of Commons
Parliament

Stephen Twigg, the Labour MP who chairs the International Development Committee, confirms that it will hold a full inquiry into the sexual expoitation scandal.

He adds that "international action is crucial" to prevent a future crisis.