Pam Cox

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate. I declare an interest as a member of the University and College Union and the all-party parliamentary university group. Everybody in this debate wants to see young people and lifelong learners succeed in their chosen path in life. Most would agree that the Government have done a great deal to invest in education and skills since 2024, and I want to pay tribute to that. We have seen that uplift in schools, special educational needs and disabilities provision, youth hubs, colleges and apprenticeships. This debate, however, is focused on the situation in higher education. My discussions with those who work in and represent that sector give me cause for concern, as I know is the case for other hon. Members present. Other south Essex MPs and I have spoken in this Chamber and elsewhere about the very significant challenges that my former colleagues at the University of Essex have faced over the past year. The university closed its Southend campus and made large numbers of staff redundant there and at its main Colchester campus. The University of Essex is not alone, as we have heard, in facing these painful challenges: many universities are closing departments and issuing redundancies. At least two other universities are considering campus withdrawals or closures. The University of Buckingham has withdrawn from its Crewe campus, to be replaced as the main operator by Apollo Education. The University of Brighton is closing its Eastbourne campus and is considering closing its Falmer campus. Other institutions are merging: the University of Kent with the University of Greenwich; City, University of London with St George’s; and King’s College London with Cranfield University. These new arrangements are the start of a new era in higher education. They raise the very thorny issue of how universities that were brought into being by the Privy Council via royal charters merge with those that were brought into being as companies limited by a guarantee. I suspect that this is a policy rug nobody really wants to lift. Other universities are being bought out or privatised. Lincoln Bishop University, for example, is now operated by Global University Systems, a global body with millions of students around the world. This new era of campus closures, redundancies, mergers and buy-outs comes at a time when many in the sector face huge financial challenges. The Education Committee has already been referenced. It recently reported: “The higher education sector in England is facing a financial crisis that now poses a real risk of institutional insolvency.” This situation requires our close attention. We need our universities to thrive in our rich research and teaching ecosystem—they are part of an ecosystem. Our industrial strategy depends on that, as does our ability to create sovereign innovations in every sector. Universities are very ready to adapt, and have adapted over the years, but they need us in this place to have more open conversations about how they can best do that. I ask the Minister to continue to champion our universities, but to support them by enabling more open conversations like this one about the scale of the challenges that they face.