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Master's Degrees (Minimum Standards) Bill

That is the role of the QAA. I will be frank with the hon. Gentleman. This is where I have to reveal myself to the House as a Conservative. [Hon. Members: ““Hear, hear.””] I welcome the support from my hon. Friends. If Oxford and Cambridge came to us today and said, ““We've got a smart idea. We wish to invent MAs for Oxford and Cambridge that can be secured with no further academic study and will be different from the established conventions for creating an MA,”” the QAA would be wary of that approach. However, those MAs have been around for hundreds of years, and they are a well-established pattern. They are well understood, and they are an established part of the history of these institutions. Autonomy comes partly from historical experience. The autonomy of those institutions is not simply a result of the rational assessment of what they do today but, in the case of Oxford and Cambridge, it has partly been secured by their history and traditions. Part of respecting their autonomy is about respecting their history and traditions. The MAs at Oxford and Cambridge go back to the mediaeval universities where, after a time securing a BA, people then secured an MA. Perhaps the Opposition's rootless rationalism means that they have no taste or love for those conventions and traditions that have developed over centuries, but we rather like ancient traditions. The hon. Gentleman has not established that they actively do any damage, because his argument about confusion is not supported by the evidence, so I see no reason for interfering with the autonomy of those institutions simply to remove an historical feature that they have enjoyed for centuries. I rather like the fact that we have centuries-old traditions.