Andrew Tettenborn

The fees English universities are allowed to charge home students in England are fixed by government fiat. At £9,250 per year, they are some of the most expensive in Europe. Shortly after the election Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson denied any plans to raise them. She appears to have changed her mind, saying the fee has been ‘eroded’ because it hasn’t gone up in a ‘very long time’. Officials are reportedly drawing up plans to raise the fee to to £10,500 over the next five years, thereby tracking inflation. They are right to do so. In the end, some future Education Secretary will have to swallow an unpalatable pill Put bluntly, the universities need the money.

There are not many women in prison, but those who are inside show worryingly high rates of mental illness, suicide and self-harm; their families suffer badly while they are inside, and when they are released, few of them come out rehabilitated in any real sense. Given this, you can see why the new Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, told the Labour conference that she wanted to reduce the number of female prisoners and announced the setting up of a Women’s Justice Board under prisons minister, Lord Timpson, to see how this could be done. For every woman locked up in this country, there are something like 25 men Sounds good? Possibly. I’d suggest a degree of caution. One point is that, looked at closely, what is being proposed is not so much action as rather more bureaucracy.

The fleet of border control cutters responsible for patrolling our waters (and at times for dealing with irregular migrants on them) is showing its age and needs renewing. Unfortunately we now know that the exercise will cost £300 million rather than the original estimate of roughly £50 million, and will be delayed until at least 2030. Why has this happened? The reason is a big post-Brexit legal snafu which cuts across the government’s wish to ensure that the vessels are built here. To keep it as simple as possible, an international treaty called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, prevents governments indulging in protectionism, but it has two exceptions. One is national security, allowing a government, for example, to insist on warships being home-built.

Our universities are in a mess. Too many degrees lack intellectual quality and utility, and leave those doing them with little but disappointment and debt. Nor is the debt limited to students. Foreign student numbers, on which many institutions rely, are drastically down, and it is an open secret that three big names (Cardiff, York, and Goldsmiths) and at least three less prestigious institutions (notably Lincoln, Kingston, and Middlesex) are making cuts or haemorrhaging money.

The decision to scrap one or two-word Ofsted inspection grades for England's schools is good news for teachers – but bad news for just about everyone else, not least parents and pupils. Many school staff have never liked the labelling of schools as 'Outstanding', 'Good', 'Requires Improvement' and 'Inadequate'. They say that it doesn't give the full story and heaps pressure on staff during inspections. In one case last year, a head teacher took her own life after her school received an unflattering report. What happened to Ruth Perry was a terrible tragedy. But while some reform was no doubt necessary, getting rid of straightforward Ofsted summaries is not the answer.

It’s a curious political world. Few who voted Labour last month actually wanted Labour policies, or for that matter had more than the haziest idea what they were. Now the Labour leadership is returning the compliment. It is increasingly obvious that it has neither much idea what electors want, nor any great desire to provide them with it. Withdrawing the winter fuel allowance, going hell-bent for net zero (whatever the consequences), clamping down on our rights online, the list goes on. The government’s proposed extension of the smoking ban, leaked yesterday, is a further case in point.

The Labour party is in a bind over cars. Its instincts – collectivist, green, managerialist – strongly favour anti-car measures like low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) with roads strategically blocked off, and 20 mph speed limits. Unfortunately motorists overwhelmingly disagree. In Wales, the new government under Eluned Morgan has learnt this to its cost. Faced with something like a 70 per cent disapproval rate of the national default 20 mph limit in urban areas, it has now been humiliatingly forced to roll it back. It’s working people who will bear the brunt of these anti-car measures In England, Transport Minister Louise Haigh has sought to play a more subtle game.

Authorities encountering the kind of civil disorder that has marked the last few days in Britain are best advised to keep a cool head and quietly deploy the powers of the ordinary law to face it down. Unfortunately there are worrying signs that this is not happening. The announcement from the Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson that the Crown Prosecution Service favours on occasion invoking terrorism laws against those co-ordinating the unrest, is a case in point. True, in doing this the CPS would be strictly within its rights. In law, any action designed to influence the government and involving violence or serious damage to property with intent to advance a political cause is regarded as terrorism.

Yesterday evening, the government instituted a little-known procedure called the Additional Courts Protocol. Set up following the 2011 London riots, this involves emergency ad hoc magistrates’ courts sitting 24 hours a day to deal swiftly with the troublemakers.  This was the right decision. But it still may come back to bite the people who made it. It’s not difficult to see the advantages. Quick justice, bypassing the usual bureaucracy and reducing the scope for suggestions that witnesses’ memory may have faded, may well give offenders a salutary shock: the prospect of it can concentrate minds in future.

Universities fought tooth and nail against plans to impose fines if they failed to uphold freedom of speech. That proposal – contained in last year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act – was one of the few things the Tory government could point to as a success. But under Labour the plan has been shelved. It's a good day for universities; a bad day for anyone who cares about free speech on campus. This bleak episode neatly sums up Labour’s attitude to higher education Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that the ministerial order, which was required to bring into force the relevant parts of the new law, would be delayed. She told the Commons, with obvious pleasure, she was ready to 'consider options, including repeal.' In short, the Act is dead.

The prison sentences passed on the Just Stop Oil protesters who immobilised the M25 – five years for Roger Hallam and four for the others – were certainly stiff. With prisons overflowing and some violent offenders receiving less harsh sentences, a small reduction in the jail terms might have been justified. But despite the backlash from environmentalists, justice has been served. Those who say that the protesters are merely conscientious practitioners of civil disobedience – and that the punishments imposed amount to a stamping on the right of peaceful protest – are wrong.  Roger Hallam’s casting of himself in the role of a civil disobedience advocate is both disingenuous and incorrect.