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Office for Fair Access

Let me make it clear that, in the questions that I want to ask, I in no way want to express any disrespect for Professor Ebdon, who is an academic of great distinction. However, there are questions to be answered. I think the Secretary of State has rather tiptoed around the question of the Select Committee's approach, because my understanding is that the Committee did not express confidence in Professor Ebdon and suggested that the advertising process—indeed, the whole process—be reopened with a view to appointing a different candidate as the director of OFFA. Is the Secretary of State aware that this is only the second time that a Select Committee has been overruled in this way? The first such occasion did not set a particularly happy precedent. What effect does he think his decision will have on the authority and standing of Select Committees of this House, and on the confirmation processes that they carry out? Although he may technically have the power to overrule the Select Committee, is it not deeply unsatisfactory for him to have done so with this appointment? What confidence can students, universities and parents have in this appointee if the Select Committee does not have confidence in him? What confidence can the public have in the appointment, when the Select Committee says in its conclusion that"““we were not convinced by Professor Ebdon's descriptions of the root causes of the obstacles to accessing universities””—" something that is rather more fundamental than the presentational skills to which the Secretary of State referred? Would not the implementation of the views expressed by Professor Ebdon, to the Select Committee and elsewhere, have serious consequences for the achievement of high standards in our universities? How can the Secretary of State say that he believes in the principles of university autonomy and admissions on merit when his appointee says that he is prepared to threaten universities with what he chose to describe as the ““nuclear option”” of fines and deprivation if they do not meet his centrally decreed targets? Finally, may I gently remind the Secretary of State, and his Liberal Democrat colleagues who are here today, what he and they promised in their 2010 manifesto, when they said that they would"““Strengthen the House of Commons to increase accountability,””" and"““increase Parliamentary scrutiny…of government appointments””?" How does he square what he has done in this case with that promise? Or is it the case that his hands were tied by the coalition and he has been forced to carry out this process?