[Relevant documents: Oral evidence taken before the Petitions Committee on 16 May 2023, on a statutory duty of care for higher education students, HC 1343; and summary of public engagement by the Petitions Committee, on a statutory duty of care for higher education students, reported to the House on 26 May, HC 73.]
That this House has considered e-petition 622847, relating to a statutory duty of care for higher education students.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I thank the 128,292 petitioners and pay tribute to the lead petitioner, Lee Fryatt, who lost his son Daniel to suicide, all others who have given evidence or whom my office has spoken to—Ben West, Hilary Grime, James Murray, Maggie Abrahart, Mark Shanahan, Hema Patel and Alice Armstrong—and all those who have lost loved ones and been on a long journey not just to get to today’s debate but to take on the universities and the Government with one focus: preventing any more young people from taking their lives.
Through my work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on issues affecting men and boys, and in the many debates that I have led as a member of the Petitions Committee, I have spent much time listening to family members who have lost loved ones by suicide—heartbreaking stories, every single one of them. As Ged Flynn from PAPYRUS stated, the longer he works in this field the more he realises
“how complex suicide is. The contributory factors to suicide are so many and so varied…but there are commonalities in those stories that we must learn from.”
The question today is whether one of the lessons is to put in place a statutory duty of care for students in higher education.
I will run through some core statistics, which do not make for good reading. Between the 2017 and 2020 academic years, 202 male students died by suicide, as did 117 female students—319 lives that could have been saved. The Petitions Committee ran an online survey asking petitioners about their experience of poor mental health at university, the support provided by their university, and their views on introducing a statutory duty of care for higher education students. More than 1,500 people replied. The figures showed that an extremely large percentage of the current and former students had suffered, or were suffering, with their mental health. Around half felt that their university was very unsupportive and did not feel that they could discuss the issue with their tutor. For institutions that exist to work with young people, that is poor.
I, too, congratulate all the petitioners on securing today’s debate. My hon. Friend is outlining some stark statistics. Mental health in higher education has become a lot more complex and serious following the covid pandemic, which revealed quite a lot about the mental health of students. Does he agree that it is probably time to review the law in this area to ensure that we have everything in place to protect students, as more of their mental health problems become apparent?
I could not agree more, and Members will hear more of my thoughts on that.
Returning to the survey, parents and guardians were equally disappointed, with 79% stating that they disagreed or strongly disagreed that the current mental health support for university students is adequate. A large percentage also thought that if their child were showing signs of mental health issues, the university would be in contact. We will learn later that that is not always the case.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when a student at university attempts suicide their parents should be told? I find it inexplicable that that is currently not the case. Secondly, I understand that Universities UK has drawn up suicide prevention guidelines, which the vice-chancellor of Bristol was talking about this morning. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as an interim measure, those should be made compulsory for universities, rather than optional?
On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about not contacting parents, I believe that some universities cite GDPR as an issue. In my experience, safeguarding always overrides GDPR, so that is definitely something we need to look at. I will speak later about the guidance, but I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution.
Overall, the survey showed that support for students varies significantly across the 200-plus universities and higher education settings. Both students and parents expect better. I have heard terrible stories, including of students being told by email that they are being asked to leave their university; zero marks being given without explanation and with no one available to talk to immediately; emergency contact numbers not being called in times of crisis, as the right hon. Gentleman just mentioned; deaths being announced before family members can tell their wider family; universities deleting student records in advance of any coroner’s inquest; data protection laws being used wrongly so as not to tell parents; and a general lack of training. Given that students are paying £9,000 a year to universities, is that acceptable?
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. As many Members know, this subject is incredibly difficult for me to talk about, given my personal experiences, but I would like to highlight the case of one of my constituents. Mared Foulkes from Menai Bridge was in her second year of studying pharmacy at Cardiff University when she received an automated email from the university, hours before her death, saying that she had failed her exams and would not be moving on to her third year. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is completely unacceptable?
I know how important the subject is to my hon. Friend, and I agree that that kind of behaviour from universities is appalling. Their entire being is about young people. They really need to do better.
The petitioners call for a statutory duty of care, akin to employers’ duty of care for employees, to protect them from foreseeable harm caused by either direct or indirect actions. Parents said that a duty of care would improve communication with families—as we have seen, that definitely needs to happen—take into account extenuating circumstances and the need to offer further support; lead to better availability of support services and staff training; mean the recording and investigation of student suicides, including the publication of student suicide rates; and give consistency of service at all universities.
The Government say that universities have a general duty of care. There is a case in which that was found not to be the case, but because there is an appeal in respect of the case, it is not possible to discuss the details any further. Universities UK has said that they have a moral and ethical duty, while also suggesting that there could be some kind of mandatory excellence framework, as it believes in continuous development.
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. I want to speak out on behalf of my constituent Esther Brennan, who is here with us today. Esther lost her son Theo. Theo went through all the processes that the university put in place, and the university failed him at every level. At the inquest, the university claimed that it did not have a duty of care, and the inquest found in favour of that position. That cannot be acceptable. We cannot have this uncertainty. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need clarity on this issue?
I thank my right hon. Friend for her contribution. I send my sincere condolences to her constituent’s family. It is a terrible issue and a terrible blow to the family. I will come to her point later.
AMOSSHE, the student services organisation, recently stated that it did not believe that an additional statutory duty of care
“is the right approach for embedding the wider improvements”
that it is committed to
“and that have been identified by bereaved families and the LEARN Network.”
PAPYRUS agrees that there should not be a statutory duty of care and that a more societal approach should be taken instead.
Further questions that have arisen from my research include the following. Why are all universities not implementing the trusted contact system and then using it? Why have all universities not signed up to the “Suicide-safer universities” guidance and the university mental health charter? Why are universities still carrying out bad practice such as telling students they must leave by email, without any thought of the inevitable emotional and mental impact? Why are universities not coming together to go through the coroners’ reports of the 319 tragedies that I mentioned to find common themes and spread best practice to avoid future deaths?
The hon. Member is making an impassioned speech. My constituent Anu Abraham was on placement as part of a three-year course with Leeds Trinity University, training to be a police officer. Not only was he failed by the police, but he was failed by his university. Sadly, he took his own life in March this year due to the bullying that he was subjected to at his first placement, at Halifax police station. Far too often, calls of this nature are put to one side. As the hon. Member has said, a duty of care is needed, but does he agree with me and Anu’s family that we must ultimately learn from these cases? If we do not have a duty of care, we certainly need a much more holistic view to ensure that parents are fully understanding. Ultimately, parents put their trust in these institutions to look after their children, and that trust needs to be repaid with responsibility.
Again, I send my condolences to the family of the hon. Member’s constituent. In this debate, we need to discuss that exact issue. The petitioners want a statutory duty of care, but there are many voices to be heard. I hope that we will have a good debate and that the Government will learn from it.
I hope this debate, with the facts that I have listed and the questions I have raised, will help all stakeholders come to the right decision for our young people. Before I finish, I want to state how I see the issue. Too many young people are taking their lives, but why? I believe we need to build more resilience in our young people. Life is tough, but it has always been tough—it is just tough in different ways. Work needs to be done to see how we can better prepare all our young people in the years before they go to university.
I say to universities: these young people are not just customers; they are students, and the sole reason for you working in the environment that you do. I know time and money are pressing, and I know many students are off and on campus and can live elsewhere, but surely to goodness you have to try harder. We legislate in this place when things go wrong out there, so please sort out what you are doing and get your heads together. If signing up to the guidance and the charter is a good step, which I believe it is, then please get on with it—no exceptions. You are meant to be the brains of this country. We should not have to debate this issue here. You are doing some good work, but you could be doing so much better.
I say to our Government: a statutory duty of care would ensure that all parties knew where they stood, but until we have one, please use the levers you have to make the universities do better at helping our young people. If they do not, do what the petitioners ask and legislate so that they must.
I say to parents: your child might think they are grown up—mine certainly do, and many in this place keep telling me that they are; the Opposition want to give them the vote at 16—but you know and I know that even at 23 they still have a lot of growing up to do. We all need our parents at some point. So, parents, please make that call, send that text or go and see them, even when they say no. Tell them that you love them. They need it more than you know. We all need support, however old we are. I know those that I have spoken to have tried, but everybody needs to. Everyone who has lost someone wishes they could still make that call, so do it now—and every week and every day if you think it is necessary.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Robert Syms (in the Chair)
Order. I remind Members that the petition being debated relates indirectly to a claim against a higher education institution. The legal case is ongoing and therefore sub judice. Mr Speaker has agreed to my exercising the discretion given to the Chair in respect of resolutions on matters sub judice to allow limited reference to the findings of the county court in that case. However, I ask that Members do not refer to details of the case or the conduct of the case, including by attributing particular arguments to the parties involved therein. I remind Members who wish to speak to bob, as there are quite of a lot of you.
It is a pleasure to be called first and to contribute under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I congratulate the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on his contribution in opening the debate. Like him, I thank everyone who signed the petition, which ensured that we had this discussion today. I particularly thank the bereaved parents who have driven the campaign. I cannot imagine anything worse than their loss—sending a child off to university, full of expectations and hope, as Lee Fryatt described at the pre-debate evidence session, and then finding that that journey and excitement ends in the tragedy of suicide.
I chair the all-party parliamentary group for students, which was set up to provide a voice in this place for those studying in further and higher education, and I have followed the issue very carefully. I was pleased to join the recent LEARN Network event in Parliament and listen to all the powerful personal testimonies, particularly those from parents. I was also pleased to be invited to join the Petitions Committee’s pre-debate evidence session, and I have read the transcript of the part of the session that I missed. All that I have learned convinces me that today’s debate is necessary.
The number of suicides in this country is mercifully low, and it is much lower among students—across all age groups—than among the population as a whole, but even one suicide is clearly one too many. As Ged Flynn from PAPYRUS emphasised at the pre-debate session, suicide is very much a preventable death. That should focus us acutely. Everything must be done to save lives, and the action that we take makes the crucial difference. We should be asking what more our universities can do, and indeed what more the Government can do, recognising that we face a mental health crisis, particularly among young people.
At this stage, we need to recognise that not all of the 2.8 million students in this country fit the conventional model of young people going away from home to university. A quarter of them are commuter students travelling from home. Half a million are over 30, and half a million are part time. Many are postgraduates, international students and so on. However, the focus of much of this discussion has been on that younger cohort, and we need to recognise that last year, 25% of 17 to 19-year-olds in England were experiencing poor mental health. That figure is growing as a result of many factors, and it is up significantly from 10% six years ago.
I do not believe that this subject requires a long speech, because for me the situation and the decision by the Government seem to be relatively clear. It became distressingly clear to me when my constituents Valerie and Andrew Hayter came to see me in my constituency surgery in Andover one Friday morning to talk about the loss of their son Alex, who, just a couple of years before, had taken his own life following unexpected disengagement from his university course and exams over the course of one summer. Their view was that but for a simple phone call, a gentle nudge or a small human connection by somebody at the university, the life of their son may well have been saved, yet it became clear from their account of the events that unfolded that that was not an approach that would get much purchase in universities.
Whatever we may think of the current state of universities —many of them do a fantastic job—they have become much more transactional places. There was a time, certainly when I was at university, when they referred to themselves as communities—when they were there for not just academic growth, but spiritual and emotional growth. They recognised that they were taking on young people who were adults legally, but perhaps not fully formed adults emotionally, and who, at the tail end of adolescence, would be going through particular difficulties and a developmental stage in their mental acuity that required a particular kind of attention and pastoral care.
We see that change in universities in their retreat into defence when these horrible, tragic events happen. The defence is that students are adults—a legal defence. Or there is a bureaucratic defence, as my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) mentioned, about GDPR. There is never a mention of basic kindness or human connection, or—an overused phrase sometimes— a common sense, or even a sense of morality about what somebody might do when they notice behaviour that might give a family cause for concern.
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As a result of having led these debates, I constantly ask my own children whether they are okay. They call me daft; they laugh at me for asking. I do not care—I ask, and tell them I love them, because I do. I say this to every young person out there: nothing is that bad. Trust me; I have heard it all in this place. No matter how bad things are, there is always someone to help, but you must ask. You are all precious and you are all priceless. There is only one of you. So ask. Make that call. Confess that issue. Tell someone that you are struggling. It does not matter what it is; it only matters that you ask.
Finally, I am sure that I speak for everyone here when I say that each suicide is a tragedy that will haunt family and friends for the rest of their lives. Although it is a great thing that, as the Office for National Statistics tells us, the suicide rate per head of population has declined by 28% since 1981, that is no comfort to those who have lost a loved one. Let us all play our part and do what we can in this place and in the world outside as we go about our daily business. I look forward to hearing colleagues’ thoughts and the Minister’s response.
One thing that shocked me on becoming an MP 13 years ago, was that when I went into schools, as I do every year, to talk to young people about what they think my priorities should be as their Member of Parliament, I was told that access to mental health support was their top issue. That has been repeated almost every year. Those young people emphasise the inadequacy of the support available to them. There is too little in schools, and where schools are acting to provide support, money is diverted from teaching budgets. It takes too long to get a first appointment with child and adolescent mental health services after referral, and even when they get into CAMHS, there is too little treatment because of the way the sessions are capped. It is therefore probably no surprise that so many students are entering university with mental health problems. UCAS estimates that over 70,000 students enter higher education every year with a mental health condition, but around half of them told UCAS in a survey that they had not shared that information prior to entry.
Universities have responded. I think they have been learning, but not consistently and perhaps not quickly enough. In 2017, the mentally healthy universities framework was launched. That formed the basis of the university mental health charter created by Student Minds, with whom the all-party parliamentary group has worked. The charter framework rightly provides an approach of improving the support available to students and addressing the determinants of student wellbeing, including aspects of the academic process that might have an impact on wellbeing, such as assessment, fitness to study and dismissal. The problem is that not every university has signed up, and clearly more should be done to ensure that they do.
The responsibility does not just fall on universities. In the pre-debate evidence session, National Union of Students vice-president Chloe Field said that
“universities have become almost the only port of call for students if they are suffering from mental health, because of the failures of the NHS and the long waiting lists that the NHS has. Students struggle to get through to that NHS service. There is a huge number of students who try to access that support.”
She also pointed out the many factors that were exacerbating poor mental health, including academic and financial pressures. Because of the financial pressures, people face difficulties in juggling so many jobs just to see themselves through university, as well as meeting their academic commitments.
I highlight all of that not to diminish the responsibility of universities, but to illustrate—as we were told several times in the pre-debate session—that there is no silver bullet. What more could universities do? Mark Shanahan made a really useful contribution. His son took his life in Sheffield, in one of the two universities that I am pleased to represent. He drew a comparison between the teaching excellence framework and the research excellence framework, which provide a disciplined approach of expectations on universities, and he asked why we do not have a student support excellence framework. Professor Steve West, who gave evidence on behalf of Universities UK, took up that point, acknowledging that there was not sufficient and consistent best practice, but we should not talk about this as best practice; we should be talking about it as basic practice across universities.
I am not convinced that a duty of care will do the job that those advocating it want, and it may indeed have unintended consequences, but there need to be clear expectations—not encouragement, not a willingness to do well, but clear expectations—on universities to up their game consistently across the sector. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will set out how he thinks that might be delivered; I am conscious that he has already done that to a significant degree in the letter he circulated to us today. Clearly, it should not be a one-size-fits-all solution, but there should be consistent expectations.
I also hope that in winding up, the Minister will recognise—even if it is not his responsibility—the other factors contributing to the mental health crisis. Will he share with us what he will do with colleagues across Government, particularly Health Ministers and, in this context, probably the Chancellor, to make available the sort of support working alongside universities that is really necessary to tackle this crisis? As I said, I do not think that there is a one-size-fits-all solution, given the diversity of our student population, but there must be a real commitment from Government, from the sector and from all of us in this place to reducing student suicide.
The university sector also retreats into the notion that, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) said, suicides in universities are lower than the average. Well, so they should be. This is a supervised or semi-supervised environment where there is supposed to be a latticework of support and care, and where young people are given the space to grow emotionally as much as intellectually. The fact that the rate is lower is not a matter for congratulation or celebration; it is actually a notion that they are not doing quite as well as they should be. The case for a general duty of care is a strong one, particularly where we have a sector that is retreating into, as I say, these bureaucratic and process-driven arguments and that we all think has a responsibility to our young people beyond just teaching them.
The Government have said that they believe a duty of care already exists in common law. That will be decided by the courts, but more than one coroner believes that that is not the case and, most importantly, far too many parents believe that that is not the case. Far too many families have seen and felt in their own lives that that is not the case, and they often feel that they are dealt with in a casual or offhand way. They feel that their kids are not disposable and should not be forgotten, and that there should be some change to prevent anybody else from going through what they have gone through.
There has been much talk about mental health support in the debate and more widely. To be fair, universities have done a lot, and the Government have spent a lot and have given money to universities specifically for mental health support and care. The NUS has done some work, as have others. I hope the Minister will agree that the best and most basic mental health support that people can get is a loving family. The idea that families should be excluded from the process, particularly when their child is exhibiting distressing, alarming or even unusual behaviour in a university seems inhumane and immoral. I ask the Minister in his summing up, because he is a thoughtful and independently minded man, to depart from the Government line hitherto and think again about this notion. We have imposed an awful lot on universities, given their new freedoms and the fact that they have often become big businesses. We have an Office for Students to guarantee the quality of courses, and we have just imposed legislation on them to guarantee free speech. Why would we not impose something on them to try to guarantee the safety and lives of our children?