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Master's Degrees (Minimum Standards) Bill

The hon. Gentleman has cited that evidence in the past, but the evidence from 2000 predates the work that I have described. It was because of that point that the QAA engaged with the subject. It has made explicit in its publications what the Oxford and Cambridge MAs are, and Oxford and Cambridge prospectuses and websites are now very explicit on that point. He needs new evidence; he cannot simply rest on evidence from 2000, given that so much more is now done to be explicit about the unusual characteristics of these MAs. The challenge set by that research in 2000 has been addressed by Oxford and Cambridge, and it is hard to imagine that anyone who had done a minimal level of research could be in any doubt about the nature of the MA from Oxford and Cambridge. It is not an academic qualification; it replaces the BA as the holder of the BA develops a longer relationship with those universities. The hon. Gentleman has to provide further information than he has so far been able on the argument that there is confusion for employers. A related argument is that somehow the system undermines the value and standing of MAs awarded by other universities. Is it therefore the case that the victims are not employers, but people who have MAs from other universities? I freely accept that those MAs are genuine academic qualifications for which further work is required after a BA has been secured. Again, I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that we do not have any evidence. I have letters on a wide range of issues in higher education, but in my 18 months as Minister responsible for these issues I have not had a single letter that I can recall saying, ““I got my MA from some other British university and I find that it is not respected, because people think that I got it only because I was trying to elect the chancellor of the university, or the professor of poetry.”” The hon. Gentleman has a theoretical argument that is not borne out by the practical evidence on confusion for employers or for people who receive their MAs from elsewhere. I commend to him the formulations now explicitly used by the QAA and set out in statements from the universities in question: the MAs that we are talking about are ““not academic qualifications.”” For us to act, we would not only have to be persuaded of the problem of confusion, but would have to take a significant step towards intervening in the internal arrangements of the universities in question. That is where the position of the shadow Minister rather surprises me, because my view is that intervening in such a way in the autonomous decisions of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge would go contrary to what I thought was the shared view of both Front-Bench teams—the view that the autonomy of our universities was one of the reasons for their success. The shadow Minister may have thought that it would be easy to turn up and attack this apparently anomalous situation, but if he wishes the matter to go further he has to explain why he would be so willing to interfere with the autonomy of the institutions that we are talking about, including autonomy over their academic awards, which was most recently protected and laid out explicitly in legislation that his party passed when in government in 2005. That protects universities' powers to award their own qualifications. In many of my exchanges with the shadow Minister's predecessors, they have gone out of their way to say that they value the autonomy of our institutions. Government Members believe that trying to intervene in well-established practices at Oxford and Cambridge would be an interference with their independence that would undermine the Government's wider approach to their autonomy, and would be inconsistent with the principle of institutional autonomy enshrined not just in the legislation that his Government passed, but in section 63(3) of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.