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Higher Education White Paper

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for his Statement and for the further thinking that the Government are clearly doing following the earlier Statements and papers on higher education. Perhaps I should begin my question analogically. In honour of the millennium, I was offered finance to pay for a stained glass window in the cathedral over which I then presided. Alarmed that I had already commissioned an artist, the donor asked me whether I had gone for three competitive quotes for the window as he had done in the previous year when he was repairing his garage roof—in other words, economics came before creativity. Value for money in higher education is obviously crucial, but can the Minister assure us that the pursuit of enterprise, competition and, indeed, a focus on business will not lead to utility triumphing over a liberal education, removing breadth of curriculum and marginalising not only the arts and humanities but other less obviously utilitarian disciplines?