Oral evidence: FCDO’s approach to higher education and research partnerships, HC 205

Oral evidence, 13 October 2026.

Witnesses

Professor Liz Baggs, Professor Adrian Martin and Jonathan Leape.

Chair

We are starting our first session of the International Development Select Committee, where we are focusing on higher education and research partnerships that the UK Government are supporting. We are very interested to hear your views and opinions on this. When the Committee meets people from around the world, they always speak very highly about our research institutions. We are keen to make sure that those skills, experience and specialisms are protected as the FCDO changes its shape and priorities. I will start by asking each of you to introduce yourself and your personal work, or your organisation’s work, in this field—that would be great. I will run down the line; Adrian, could I ask you to introduce yourself?

Professor Martin

Thank you. I am Adrian Martin. I am professor of environment and development in the School of Global Development at the University of East Anglia. My work is primarily oriented at trying to understand how we can reconcile our responses to major environmental problems, climate and biodiversity with the needs and livelihoods of local people, to avoid conflicts and ensure those efforts are more effective. The UEA has a long history with international development. We had the first development studies degree course in 1973. In the last Government assessment exercise, we were ranked top for our research. Development research plays a big role in the university. It is a catalyst across some of our main pillars of research, which are health, climate and creativity. Increasingly—and this something I will mention a bit later perhaps—we are leveraging relationships with on-site, world-class bioscience institutions, of which we have a real concentration—the John Innes Centre, the Sainsbury Laboratory, the Quadram Institute, the Earlham Institute and so on—and that is quite fruitful. I will leave it there.

Chair

I am very interested in this. This Committee has received evidence from, and Members have been to, the John Innes Centre. Was it an academic who had a particular passion in 1973, or was it that the ecosystem was there, which the university then got involved in?

Professor Martin

The university was very young at that point, in a way. It was the passion of individuals or groups of people who were saying, “This is something we should be doing”. It started off more as consultancy before 1973, and as that built up the staff and expertise, we turned it into a degree course. John Innes and so on were not there on site at the time. That is a more recent thing.

Chair

Interesting. Liz?

Professor Baggs

I am Liz Baggs. I am vice-principal for research and innovation at the University of Edinburgh. I should also say, for the purposes of this Committee, that I am commissioner for the Commonwealth scholarship commission as well. The University of Edinburgh is an old university; we have been in existence for over 400 years. Our medical school is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year. Global impact is core to our mission. We have a range of international projects. Personally, I have had projects funded through the global challenges research fund so I can talk on all those levels.

Chair

Can you tell us a little bit about the Commonwealth scholarship commission?

Professor Baggs

Yes. We attract the very best talent to study with us in the UK. That is on masters courses but also PhD projects. A big distinction that the Commonwealth scholarship commission provides, as opposed to Chevening, is that we offer those research scholarships. We have over 31,000 alumni, and it has been running since 1960. I see those scholars as essential to soft power for the UK. My understanding is that for every £1 that the Government invests in those scholars, we see £1.60 come back to the UK economy.

Chair

Wow. It is not just the monetary terms; it is our international standing and our networks that we have seen wherever we travel.

Professor Baggs

Absolutely. It is about the influence that those scholars have. We take the best talent, but we take that best talent that we are sure will have an impact in their home countries when they return. That is an important criterion for selection. We follow up on that through our alumni engagement and through British embassies and high commissions in terms of what those scholars are doing. Some of them have ended up in extremely high positions, influencing in their home countries, so it is very successful.

Chair

Beat that, Jonathan.

Jonathan Leape

Yes, tough act! I am Jonathan Leape, executive director of the International Growth Centre, which is based at the London School of Economics, founded as an initiative of DFID in 2008, with the mission of promoting inclusive and sustainable growth in developing countries through path-breaking research partnerships. A key design feature of the IGC has been to be there. We have had resident teams in countries across Africa, south Asia and the middle east. The idea is to enable us to have quite a deep view of both cogeneration of research and localisation of research. It starts with the agenda setting, and that is done very much jointly with policy leaders. We engage typically at the Minister of Finance level, sometimes Head of State. We agree what the priorities should be in terms of where IGC can add value to the policymaking process around growth, and then we organise our research around four themes of what we see as key drivers of growth in developing countries. Very briefly, those are macro stability and state capability; trade firms and structural transformation—the whole transformation of the private sector—energy and infrastructure, including cities, which we see very much as engines of growth; and, finally, labour markets and women’s economic empowerment, meaning both labour markets generally but with a particular focus around issues of female labour force participation. Just to make things complicated, we then have four cross-cutting themes that do not fit in any one box. One of those is gender. Gender issues run across all these areas. Another is data and AI. That is increasingly transforming the policymaking environment. We are working with Governments to understand how they can make policy more effectively with data and AI. Partly it is just getting access to their own data. Governments worldwide sit on masses of administrative data but do not get access to it, so data and AI is the second one. Political economy and geoeconomics is the third, and climate is the fourth. Those are things that we think need to run all the way through the DNA of our organisation, but with those four core pillars of research. Very briefly, how we work is to combine both commissioning at the local country level and global commissioning. The global commissioning is driven by country priorities. We work with our country teams, which identify what the key priorities are in that country, and then we put those questions to a global audience of researchers. One of the things we do is create a level playing field across researchers in the global south and the global north. The idea is to try to get the best minds to think about these problems. Going forward, we will have 90% of our research projects involving researchers from the country itself. Right now, we are at 70%, but we want to push that further. Our ideal is to have projects that involve local researchers and international researchers, because we think there is huge cross-fertilisation in that process, and to have projects that make a major policy impact—we track that very carefully, and I can talk about it—and an academic impact. Of our published articles, 20% are in the top five journals of economics internationally.

Chair

Jonathan, you are now going into a sales pitch, which is very interesting, but we do not have time for it.

Jonathan Leape

Yes, sorry.

Chair

What the three of you have said highlights just how valuable your work is. I would like us now to get into some of the details around how you could add more value, whether your influence is being respected and, fundamentally, whether you are suffering from funding cuts as a consequence of the changes that are going on.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Before I begin, I must declare an interest. I was previously in receipt of a global challenges research fund grant as an associate researcher at the University of East Anglia, so Professor Martin is known to me. I also did my PhD there. The global challenges research fund ran from 2016 to 2021. Now its successor programme has been scrapped. Liz, what should the FCDO learn from the GCRF when designing a new successor programme?

Professor Baggs

The GCRF, when it was running, was highly successful. It enabled us to set up equitable partnerships and capacity building; it provided support for early career researchers; it enabled us to create important networks; it provided the opportunity for significant leverage, for example, from the small grants to additional investment; and it drove interdisciplinary innovation. Lots of positives there. The negatives that arose are that the cuts resulted in great instability, so I would plead that that does not happen again—that we honour the agreements when we have set something up. That was detrimental, particularly to the people who were employed within those projects and to the infrastructure. If we go forward, we need to find a way to get beyond the perception that this is led by the global north. The priorities need to be set, if not certainly well aligned, with LMIC priorities. We need to find a way for them to have more control over the administration of that money. Going forward, I would plead for more equitable partnerships, prioritising the LMIC capacity building, building genuine relationships, direct funding LMICs, if that is possible, and sustained multi-year commitment. What we probably need is a diverse range of funding, so small funds for setting up initial travel grants and networks, scaling right through to very large commitments that let us then implement it in practice, and a broad scope or broad remit just to make sure that there are not areas or countries that we are leaving behind.

Dr Sam Rushworth

What advantages of those networks could not have been done through conventional research funding?

Professor Baggs

It is that ability to scale, that ability to connect and that ability to connect between countries. In our written evidence we have provided some examples of that, where you set up networks between countries that enable you then to bring different sectors together. There are examples where we have brought medical practitioners, policymakers, even homeless people into the equation, which I think is very difficult to do with any other form of funding. There are examples of projects where we set up global action plans as well, so there is broader reach than you would have from another type of funding.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Adrian, I have three questions for you, so I will ask you to keep your responses relatively brief just so that I do not eat into my colleagues’ time. First, could you please give us a brief rundown of the ODA-supported projects that you have undertaken and how that has contributed towards UK development objectives?

Professor Martin

Personally, I guess a key one has been trying to understand how we can undertake conservation across the tropics, particularly in ways that bring it in line with the interests of local people, trying to make conservation more just and effective. That has had ODA-based funding right from the ESPA programme, ecosystem services and poverty alleviation, and less—but some—GCRF funding as well. One of the big experiences of that is that ODA funding acts as an effective catalyst. It funds some of the things that are difficult to fund with other sources because it invests in ways of working, such as using drama and so on to communicate and understand the knowledge of local people and to elicit their values and interests. It enables very early-stage investment in research. That enabled us to establish a good framework for just conservation. It enabled us to bring people who are working in protected area conservation—in national parks and wildlife areas and so on, from across Africa and elsewhere around the table—and spend days working together on what the research agenda is, what the problem is and how we are going to arrive at a solution to it. That investment in the genuine partnership, which Liz has talked about, is something that has been difficult to achieve. Subsequently, there is the uptake. How do we get that out through tools? We have partnered with the International Institute for Environment and Development, developing tools that are now operating in many parks. We worked with IUCN to get it into policy guidance documents, and with the German development sector to get it into the convention on biodiversity and so on. It is a big process, but that role as a catalyst for ODA money is something where I think we have a lot of impactful projects. It works in slightly different ways in each of them. Understanding how that role of catalyst works to leverage in lots of other money and lots of other partners is perhaps something we should be looking at going forward. Sorry, that was not such a short answer.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Lots of NGOs and multilateral institutions do partnership work in the global south and have partners on the ground. Is there anything specific about a research partnership and the knowledge that is co-produced that made what you are talking about more impactful?

Professor Martin

One key thing is that the UK has very successful universities with very strong expertise. That enables us to bring partners around the table—not to bring our expertise to bear on problems like that in a top-down way, but to convene and to get things going. An example of something I am peripherally involved with is the Norwich Institute for Sustainable Development—which has been in part a product of ODA funding, but is now funded through private sector foundation trusts—and its work on agricultural index insurance in Uganda. It is a big problem that small farmers around the world cannot get insurance, and that stops them being able to invest in their farms and to be more productive and so on. Research-based partnerships are essential at the start to understand the problem and to be able to invest in the research, which develops the tools and the methods for addressing that. After that, once you have proof of concept and so on, then other partners might pile on board. Now there are 900,000 farmers who are insured who were not before, and that has a big effect. We hold that capacity, which is trusted by a lot of key players overseas who therefore want to be involved.

Dr Sam Rushworth

In your experience, has the GCRF funding increased research capacity in partner countries in the global south?

Professor Martin

I would say it could have done better. It has done an awful lot to increase UK research capacity by making interdisciplinary connections across a university like UEA. It has brought health, climate, economics and so on. It has done that and connected us with these bioscience institutes in effective ways. We have done our best also to ensure that that builds capacities overseas—and it has, in tandem with scholarships and so on. It has had a big effect, but I would say that the GCRF helped us to learn how to do that. We are much better at doing it now and having locally led research. However, there were always limitations about the funding, and there are still limitations. I know it is DEFRA, but we had a round of Darwin challenge funding recently. We wanted local partners to lead these research bids, but there were financial due diligence requirements, which meant it was very hard for local NGOs and units with the skills to lead.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Just checking back on my understanding, what I am hearing from you is that the research partnerships produced better knowledge because there was a collaborative approach to the knowledge production. It was deeply beneficial to British universities but could have done much better at developing research capacity in the global south. Is that a fair summary?

Professor Martin

It did a great job of learning and bringing us from here to here, but there is a bigger step to go for sure, yes.

Dr Sam Rushworth

I have a final question, Adrian. How does the FCDO incorporate research partnerships into finding solutions for things like displacement, conflict prevention or other development challenges, in your experience?

Professor Martin

I am not going to pretend I am an expert in this particularly—

Dr Sam Rushworth

I am happy to bring in one of the others as well on that question afterwards.

Professor Martin

Again, one small example for us—others may have better ones—is that we have done work in Colombia, for example, which has worked a lot with indigenous people and local communities on peace building as a preventative process. That has succeeded in bringing new methods that are now being used by a national network of over 100 mediators, so it is having a real impact on how peace building takes place. Again, it is about the ability to invest in ways of working in this particular case. There was a lot of investment in use of the arts as well as the sciences, using drama, for example, as ways of communicating and getting people to communicate more widely with their communities about what we were doing.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Thank you very much. Jonathan, could you briefly outline the research partnerships that the LSE International Growth Centre has been involved with?

Jonathan Leape

Our core model is to base a team of economists with an experienced policy lead as country director. Then, they develop the partnership with Government. Our core model is to be developing a partnership with the economic policy cluster in the Governments where we engage. What we have learned over the years is that this has to be cradle-to-grave for it to have the impact—the cradle being building relationships over time where policymakers trust us, in part because of the neutrality and independence, in part because of our authority and access to high levels of expertise, in part because we have delivered in the past so they believe we will deliver in the future. With that trust, they are more candid with us about what their challenges are and that is the whole start of the process. They help us set the agenda that might make a difference for them. On that, someone once said that one of IGC’s great virtues is that it is ignorable. The point was that the World Bank is not ignorable because you need the lending, the IMF is not ignorable, and so on. Countries value expertise that comes independently to them. They can ignore it and we could be wrong, but they have it. That then means that we get access to decisions that others would not because we are not threatening. The idea is to start with the agenda and then—

Chair

Could you go back one step before you get to the cradle? How are those relationships determined? Do Governments come to you? Do you see a weakness in Governments and you go to them?

Jonathan Leape

It is a mix. It is always a country where FCDO—previously DFID—is active, so it can leverage the benefits of what we discovered through our research. In terms of our ability to engage, we need to have a Government who are committed to reform and to using evidence as part of the reform process. We pulled out of two countries seven years ago: Tanzania under President Magufuli, and Zambia because the President there was rotating Ministers in a way that made it impossible to engage. We then went back into Zambia when Hichilema was elected. A crucial thing is having a Government who want to reform and to engage with evidence as part of that. Of course, within that—as I am sure we will all say—identifying policy champions is crucial, because you need somebody who can navigate the political economy, the coalitions and all that stuff, which we can never do. The cradle is the agenda. Then we work with them, and this is very much a back-and-forth process on what specific research question we should focus on because we, as researchers, know what is known and what is not known. Sometimes it may just be surveying existing evidence, and sometimes new evidence is needed. Then we put that out to our global commissioning platform, or they might put it locally. We have those two possibilities. Crucially, we then keep policymakers engaged throughout the process. One of the things I think researchers often forget is it is not just your findings that are useful; your baseline—what you learned when you tried to describe what the situation was—can be useful. We try to have an ongoing interchange with policymakers that also builds ownership on their side, so that when we release the findings it is more likely to be brought into policy decisions.

Dr Sam Rushworth

What do you do to ensure that those research partnerships are equitable and responsive to local needs?

Jonathan Leape

That is a good question. We have done various things. Most recently we have established formal partnerships with local universities. We have a lead university in every country where we work and that is quite a broad relationship—it is about not just producing policy-focused research but developing research talent. We have mentorships, fellowships and other sorts of offers. We offer quite a bit of online instruction as well. We are trying to build those partners. We work with other non-university partners, think-tanks, where that is appropriate. As I said, we are currently at a position where 70% of the research we commission has local researchers as PIs. We are going to move that to 90%. It is tough because our niche in the market is at the upper end—very high-quality research—which is why we have developed the partnerships with universities to help with the research training and to help them to strengthen their research training programmes.

Dr Sam Rushworth

My experience in developing countries is that often universities do not even have access to the journals that we would have. Are you opening up access as well? Is there a transfer of tools?

Jonathan Leape

There is very much a transfer of tools. We do not have a lot of money, especially after the cuts, so we are not offering very much to universities in the way of money. We are trying to offer in-kind things that we think are of benefit. So 70% of our international researcher network is interested in mentoring, which can—we have piloted this over several years—create real value for the local researchers at low cost. Journals is not something that we are able to do. What we find most powerful is when local researchers—and we do a lot of work with early career researchers—join a PI team that has researchers from the UK or elsewhere, from research universities, because the transfers that happen there are particularly valuable. You can watch the best online course in the world and not absorb very much of it, whereas if you are working side by side with a leading PI, then you learn from her. You understand, “Okay, this is how she thinks about the problem; this is how she thinks about research design”, which is the key core challenge. We see there that we end up building repeat offenders—someone who comes in as a junior member of a PI group then later applies to us for funding in their own right or as part of another team and so forth.

Dr Sam Rushworth

This is my last question, Jonathan. This research is producing knowledge, but how successful is the FCDO at that point in taking the knowledge produced by these research partnerships and turning it into sustained, scalable programmes?

Jonathan Leape

I think they regard us as being responsible for doing that, not them. I will give you a couple of examples. In Sierra Leone, we have had an engagement since 2018, initially with the very capable mayor of Freetown, about introducing property tax. That had to address a whole range of problems, from how you value property in that context—and we had to have a simple, credible, transparent system—and how you get people to accept the idea that they are going to start paying a new tax, which involved visible increases in the level of public services, to how you manage billing and so on. Over a space of eight years, we built a property tax system with them that doubled their revenue base as a city and has the potential to increase revenues fivefold. That is now being taken to four other cities within Freetown and is being implemented in a way that will have a significant fiscal impact.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Liz, with your Commonwealth hat on, I am interested in the soft power of the relationships that get built through research networks. I wondered if you had any reflections on that. In particular, I was listening to Jonathan talk about these junior researchers and thinking about the impact of their relationship with a British institution.

Professor Baggs

Yes, the soft power is incredibly important, so you are right to ask about that. Remember that the scholars in particular will have spent time in our system, so they will understand UK values and policies, and then they take that back home. That helps to build stability for the UK, and it increases Britain’s influence around the Commonwealth. It also helps to build that cross-cultural trust and increases positive perceptions of the UK. There are also benefits going forward in terms of building networks for future collaborations and partnerships. The soft power cannot be overstated. It is essential to these scholarships.

David Mundell

Liz, I just want to ask you a question about the longevity of the in-country arrangements. I think sometimes there is a suggestion that people have benefited from such scholarships but then left their home country on the basis of those benefits. I had experience myself, for example, of being in Sierra Leone and finding that some people who had benefited from that support were going to South Africa because they felt the economic opportunities were better there. Is there any research into the extent to which people have stayed within community, having benefited from the support?

Professor Baggs

Yes. I do not have the data on that, but I might be able to provide you with some information on that.

David Mundell

That would be very useful

Professor Baggs

Yes. I will see what I can find, certainly for Commonwealth scholarship commission scholars. I know that for Chevening there is a return home audit, so they do need to then be in their home country for at least two years. For the Commonwealth scholarship scholars, we only take on those we feel have the strong potential to have an impact back home. They have to articulate what that impact will be and how they will put that into motion. My feeling for the Commonwealth scholars is that a lot of them passionately want to change things in their home country and so they do. In terms of the actual data, I do not have that, but I could certainly ask if we can provide it.

David Mundell

Thank you.

Tracy Gilbert

I will come to Jonathan first, but if others want to join in, I would be interested to hear your views. The Government are increasingly looking to private investment to fill gaps created by the ODA cuts. What are the risks in relying on private capital in development research, particularly where the commercial returns are uncertain but the development needs are very high?

Jonathan Leape

It is a very important question. There is no question that private capital will play a major role in development going forward. There is no question that that is essential. That is both domestic private capital, so mobilising savings domestically, and attracting foreign capital. There is no question that those will be needed to secure the growth that these countries need. The question is: are we doing enough to support the institutional capability that Governments need to create the right framework for that investment, domestic and international? Governments need to have strong regulatory frameworks that are enforced, that ensure that this private investment, when it occurs, is aligned with national priorities and with broader social benefit. There is enormous potential benefit from investment in the grid, from investment in new renewable sources, from investments in high-level services, which will be very important for structural transformation. There is enormous potential. However, left to their own devices, as we know in all sorts of different spheres, they will pursue private returns and maximise private returns. Often in weak enforcement regimes, that involves increasing private returns at the expense of the social return. In Zambia, for example, the Government have now been quite aggressive in trying to fight fraud in terms of mining companies exporting excessive uncontrolled quantities of ore for processing elsewhere. Governments need to have both a regulatory framework and the ability to enforce it. That is part of their growth strategy, that they need to be able to manage the private capital, both domestically and internationally, and encourage it there. Some years ago, we were working in Ethiopia. One of the striking things that we learned was that the biggest source of domestic investment from foreign investors was not new stuff coming in, it was the new investments of existing investors. It is not enough to have tax holidays or one-stop shops or that sort of thing. You have to address the issues on the ground. What makes a firm want to expand on the ground? If you do that, you are benefiting your domestic investors at the same time as your foreign investors. There is a lot to be done, but it is a challenge.

Professor Baggs

My concern with private investment is that there is a risk that it narrows the scope of development, and there is a risk that some areas, like mental health or non-communicable diseases, for example, are wiped off that funding map. There is a risk of investment into a narrower range of countries as well. It has its place, but I don’t think it can replace ODA funding.

Professor Martin

Building on exactly that, it clearly has a role in my area of environment. It has a role in paying for carbon forestry, for trees to be planted, for the value of the carbon, and in lots of other areas. However, it is not going to replace the role of public funds and public agencies, which are often funding the bits we cannot do. The values of forests that cannot be monetised and provide returns is important. There is the equity element—ensuring that the more marginalised and vulnerable groups are the ones who benefit from that investment—and lots of other things like regulation. Gene editing is a big part of what we are doing now. The UK is emerging as a key driver of regulation in that field, as well as others, and that requires oversight and long-term vision beyond the annual returns and so on. Yes, things that it just cannot do very well.

James Naish

Can I just push on that? Generally, there is a challenge on ODA, and a subset of society would like to see the amount spent on ODA reduced, yet what you are describing there is potentially ODA being spent on the things that people do not want to do because you cannot monetise them and it is harder to display the value. How do we reconcile those two things? Surely if we spend money on the stuff that no one else wants to fund, people are increasingly going to ask why ODA is being spent on this, and that pushes us towards the end of aid altogether.

Professor Martin

I do not want to push back too much. I am not sure that some of the things that private funding will not always invest in or cannot invest in early are things that people do not necessarily care about. We have to see the humanitarian mission as a key driver of ODA, and I think the British people do have those values and they can be promoted. Equally, to take it to a more tangible thing, with forests—I know it is a bit of a niche example—you can monetise the carbon. You might even be able to monetise the biodiversity credits associated. What you will not get is to monetise all the ways in which a local indigenous people or whatever value it. It does not mean it does not matter or it is not important. You need that collaboration between universities, NGOs and the private sector to ensure you can work out ways to attend to all those values.

James Naish

I guess the real question is how we make the argument for aid if we are saying that one of the great benefits of aid is that it can de-risk and be spent on things that are not quite as good at demonstrating value for money, or they are areas where others would not want to invest.

Chair

We are in government now. We do not have to make that argument.

James Naish

Well, quite.

Jonathan Leape

I was just going to make a related point. I think it is much more highly leveraged to be providing expertise and research that helps them to design better systems for mental health and so on than to be providing services. Even if we focus on certain things as priorities, thinking about how we can invest them in the most leveraged way possible and exploiting the UK’s strengths is very important. That is why there is quite a broad case for research partnerships as being an important part of that.

Chair

Jonathan, the whole time you have been speaking I have been wondering if you have a relationship with BII, the UK’s development finance institution, because one would assume all the areas you have been touching on would be in synergy with its programming or helping it to develop, particularly when you are talking about the gender-focused lens that you bring to things. Could you speak a little about that relationship?

Jonathan Leape

Yes. We have a lot of interaction with BII, but we have no formal relationship. One of our important connections is that a member of our steering group, Chris Woodruff, is a non-exec director of BII. He was brought into BII by DFID, now FCDO, to bring more of a research angle into its things. I think historically, CDC was very deal focused and that is the culture—deals. Leslie Maasdorp, the new CEO, has been creating a new vision and building on his predecessors. I think there are strategic considerations that are becoming very important and driving what it does. It still has quite a different culture from what we do in terms of research partnerships. That said, we overlap with it in a number of situations. We overlap with it in Sierra Leone, which is a priority country for it, and we have had some discussions there. We are having some discussions, mainly through Chris, about doing work that is complementary around renewables and the grid. It is doing some quite exciting things around grid works and so forth. We are looking for opportunities because we think that there is the potential to be collaborating more, but we also need to be a little bit careful in that we have slightly separate areas of focus, so we want to preserve that.

David Mundell

Liz, to come back to another element of the issue that I raised before, in providing opportunities through the Commonwealth scholarships and other such arrangements, what do you see as the balance between the benefit that the individual gets compared with delivering what might be the UK’s international development objectives?

Professor Baggs

The benefit for the individuals is that they tap into that scientific excellence that we have on offer in the UK and all the associated environment with that, so that culture around research, the infrastructure around research, the values and so on. They join programmes that have components of them with a particular lens on LMIC challenges or they undertake specific PhD projects that are very much aligned to their future ambitions for going back home. They take all that back to their home countries. During the scholarships, they have the opportunity to network. A network is a group of scholars, but also individual. If they are masters students on programmes, there are often networking opportunities within those programmes. There are obviously then networking opportunities when they undertake PhD study. They take those connections back home with them and they can then leverage those. Quite often these scholars end up in very influential positions back home, in business or in government or in other leadership positions. They are able to then implement change for good in their country.

David Mundell

I think in response to my previous question you said you would provide us with some data on the people who stayed and the people who left. Is there any way of measuring impact? I think we have probably all met your scholars when we have visited countries in receipt of ODA who are playing a significant role in their country, but is there any way of gauging the overall impact?

Professor Baggs

Yes. I think at both Chevening and the Commonwealth scholarship commission we capture that information. We monitor via British embassies and the high commission networks. Certainly, for the Commonwealth scholarship commission, we run an evaluation and monitoring programme and produce reports associated with that. There was a report in July around the skills of the alumni and their enduring networks, for example. I can share those reports if that would help. In March there was an economic review that talked about the multiplier effect. Then we produce analytical briefs as well around that soft power influence that they have had. There was one this year particularly around unlocking graduate potential—I think that was produced in April—and around entrepreneurship. There are also activities that we undertake to help to have that influence. One thing I want to flag is the Commonwealth entrepreneurial start-up fellowships that we have. That is equipping early-stage founders to scale their ambition and to increase regional job growth. What that means is these fellows apply, they join boot camps and coaching sessions. Central to this is a London Capstone Week event. This is all hosted by the Imperial College London Enterprise Lab. In that Capstone event, these entrepreneur fellows pitch to global investors. That is an example of where we are helping to enable that impact in-country. I can certainly get you those reports, if that would help.

David Mundell

Following up from what James was saying, I think it is important because an evidence-based response is really the order of the day now. In that environment, Jonathan, if the case could be made to increase ODA for funding scholarships, how could your organisation benefit from that?

Jonathan Leape

We are very keen to see support for research talent in developing countries because we know that good policy benefits from having a strong research policy ecosystem in the country. That in turn requires a flow of talented new researchers. Research talent is probably pretty equally distributed around the world; it is just that some people have a chance to develop it and some people do not. If the resources and support were there to help more people in LMICs to develop their research talent, that would lead to stronger ecosystems and better policy.

David Mundell

Liz, are scholarship programmes sufficiently targeted towards women and towards countries and communities where gender inequality is greatest?

Professor Baggs

That gender balance is one of our KPIs for the Commonwealth scholarship commission. For most programmes it is looking okay once we get to the selection phase. I think there is probably more that we can do reaching into countries where the women do not have that voice or that access to education.

David Mundell

Do you find that there would be institutional obstacles, for example? If you wanted to award a scholarship to a woman from Afghanistan—and we have heard in this Committee how difficult things are currently for women in education—do you think that that could be delivered?

Professor Baggs

There is a visa issue at the moment for Afghanistan, so that would need to be sorted. Yes, I think there probably are. There is probably a challenge in accessing those women. We would need to think that through in terms of how we make sure that those with the greatest capability then have that opportunity. Yes, it is accessing them and how we actually access them.

Chair

Liz, I have a hard-nosed question for you. How is the Commonwealth scheme funded? Is it pooled reserves from the different Commonwealth countries? Is it just UK money?

Professor Baggs

My understanding—maybe you know better than me—is that it is FCDO money.

Chair

Do you think it is at risk?

Professor Baggs

Well, it is at risk because it has been cut already in this last year.

Chair

It has already been cut?

Professor Baggs

It has already been cut a bit, yes. There are components that we used to be able to deliver that we are now seriously considering not being able to deliver.

Dr Sam Rushworth

What is your perception on the ground of how partner countries perceive the UK when programmes like that get cut?

Professor Baggs

Not good.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Compared with other countries, I am thinking.

Professor Baggs

Yes. I think it gives the perception that we cannot be trusted in this international space and in addressing global challenges. It is a huge concern around the perception of the UK. Personally, I find it incredibly disappointing when you see the calibre of these scholars and you see the calibre of the applications that we have. Even before the cut in budget, there were so many excellent scholars we cannot accept, but to then not be able to provide a certain route or component is quite heartbreaking.

Dr Sam Rushworth

Do we miss out on them as much as they miss out on us? Obviously, they will end up going somewhere else.

Professor Baggs

Yes. My gut feeling is that they probably do not go somewhere else; they just try to apply again. If there are certain aspects that we are not delivering—for example, online masters might be something that we would struggle to deliver going forward—then they would be looking for online provision from elsewhere, I guess.

Chair

So cutting the programme is effectively cutting our nose because these people would be contributing to our research institutions?

Professor Baggs

Yes, absolutely. It is not just the economic benefit that I talked about at the beginning of £1.6 versus £1 in. Our universities in the UK are international universities. They are multicultural and we benefit from having these students associated with us. The learning is not just one way.

Brian Mathew

I am going to take over, as I have to disappear shortly, so apologies for that. Adrian, can research partnerships replace larger programmes lost due to cuts to ODA?

Professor Martin

Oh, that is a good question. I have to refer back a bit to some of the things I was saying earlier. I think there has been something a bit particular about ODA funding. It is particularly based on a humanitarian mission that enables new models of research, working with local partners in a different way, building the capacity and so on. I think those aspects of it are going to be hard to replace. You are talking about research partnerships, which do not include an ODA funding component particularly. Those can do quite a lot, but there is the missing catalyst in that, which is going to lead to work with less impact in particular. The ODA piece has not always been the biggest piece in that particular problem solving, but it has often been a very important piece. It is the piece that creates the partnerships, as others have said. It is the piece that enables us to do the things that maybe a private sector investor is not willing to fund because it has not yet reached proof of concept and so on. So, yes, to some extent, but I think the ODA element brings greater effectiveness and greater leverage.

Brian Mathew

Jonathan, what is lost when the UK moves away from long-term grant-funded research partnerships towards shorter-term or predominantly multilateral activity?

Jonathan Leape

I think a lot is lost, partly because the centre of gravity in decision-making is shifting back to London in terms of what they are going to fund short term instead of research partnerships that put the locus of decisions in the national Government or local stakeholders, so you are much more likely to be fitting their priorities with the latter. There is a set of benefits of long-term research partnerships that just do not happen with projects. First, it is the better matching of priorities. Secondly, it is the building of trust that enables more of this research. It enables more effective uptake. Thirdly, it is the fact that when Governments have long-term relationships, they have an incentive to invest in that and build institutional capabilities, making use of that input. We see much more change in institutional setups. I have talked about the property tax, but our research led to the foundation of the Ghana Commodity Exchange, which meant that, for the first time smallholder farmers could get a market price and see what it is so that they know whether their farm gate price is fair or not. In Ethiopia, the Government in the mid-teens were thinking the major challenge they had was that they needed more skills. We did a series of research projects and said, “No, more important is information”. Workers are unable to signal their skills credibly to the employer, and the employer is not able to signal her demand to the worker. They have now set up a labour management information system, which shares information credibly. Those things take time. The property tax example was over eight years; the Ethiopian tax example was over seven years; the commodity thing was over seven years. It never would have happened with a single rifle shot. The single rifle shot said, “Oh, commodity exchange, that is a good idea” and then nothing would have happened, whereas we could then take it all the way through to the most recent phase, which was the establishment of nano exchanges. We realised smallholder farmers cannot reach all the way to the big commodity exchange, so we had to have an intermediate structure that enabled them to do it. I think research partnerships have this scalability and leverage that you do not get from other things. You certainly do not get it from individual research projects, but you also do not get it if you are buying bed nets. It is better to help systems to become stronger and to help service delivery to become more effective, which is something research partnerships can do.

James Naish

This is not actually the question, but as you were describing that, I was just thinking that the FCDO is moving towards communities of expertise. How do you see that working from a research perspective? What would you like the future world to look like when it comes to higher education? How might that concept work in practice?

Jonathan Leape

I think there is a lot of sense in it, in that you invest in an idea once and it can give benefits over and over. Expertise should be an important part of our development strategy. I am worried about a couple of things. One is how you manage short-term demands from Governments versus longer-term things. There will be a pressure in the communities of expertise towards short-term consultancy responses. There is a role for that, but it risks squeezing out the benefits of research because consultancy uses existing templates for the most part, “I know that problem. I have solved it elsewhere. I will bring my spreadsheet or whatever and I will offer a solution there”. That can be valuable, but so often research does two things. It gives the providers and often policymakers a different way of thinking about the problem. We are offering that, not caring whether they buy our services again, whereas a consulting firm wants to have its contract renewed. We can say, “We think you are completely wrong”—as we did on labour supply and that market. We can say, “Your policy is headed in the wrong direction. You need to be doing this” whereas I think too often consultancy is incremental, “You are doing this. You could do it a bit more efficiently by doing this”. What I am worried about, and we have this in the community of expertise that we are linked to, is that we are separately funded to give us a longer term of funding, even though it is not nearly as long term as it used to be. But I think we are going to have to be careful that the community of expertise does not become too short term and consultancy driven, and that we do not lose the UK value. The UK has excellent consulting firms, of course, but it has real value in research. I think that there is a risk that that gets lost in the community of expertise, so we just have to be careful.

James Naish

Thanks. Liz, the Fleming fund, which has historically built surveillance, laboratory and workforce capacity across multiple countries, is closed or is closing. What is the impact on global and UK health security, from your perspective?

Professor Baggs

Yes, my understanding is there is not to be a phase 3. I can talk very much around our network of over 70 fellows in Malawi, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia working to try to reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotics in humans, animals and the impact on the environment. This is central to control the rise of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR. AMR is a global challenge so that is very important. When we are talking about losing the connectivity that we had between the universities in the UK, practitioners in countries, local government, healthcare providers and higher education institutions in countries, when you break that network and that connectivity, we have a problem that we know is threatening us as well as LMIC countries. We are seeing the threat to dissolving the support for that key surveillance infrastructure around that data. It is going to disrupt the flow of expertise between universities, practitioners and Governments, particularly on that AMR project in east and southern Africa, and we are not then going to be connecting clinicians, communities and policymakers. It is going to reduce opportunities for industry partners and stakeholders and there is going to be reputational damage as well. As I said earlier, the UK will probably be seen as an unreliable partner for large challenges, so there is a risk there. We cannot replicate this through individual projects, so we need that kind of funding for that network. I can only reiterate that AMR is a pandemic and that it is going to affect us.

Chair

We had two Ministers in front of us on this, one from Health and one from FCDO. Their basic argument was, “It was a time-limited project, it had the research that it needed, so we can close it. We do not know how we are meant to move on from it, but it is not really our problem anymore”. Is that an accurate assessment?

Professor Baggs

I do not think the challenge has gone away, has it? AMR has become even more of a problem. My understanding is that it is more around having an action plan, enacting that action plan now and ensuring that that network can function and provide the data that we need for surveillance. No, the problem has not gone away. We might have that greater research knowledge, but the implementation still needs to happen and to continue to happen.

Chair

Were you surprised when they cut it?

Professor Baggs

I think “disappointed” is probably a better way of putting it.

Monica Harding

I want to follow up on that. If the funding were continuing, what would you be doing with it? What would be the positive benefit now if funding were to continue?

Professor Baggs

It is not my own project, but I can get you some more information, if that would help. My understanding is that it is around ensuring that connectivity and community is still there and ensuring that the network continues. It would be network-building activities and so on that need to be funded, but also support for the data surveillance. My understanding is that the funding was providing that support and can no longer do so, so we are going to lose out on that on that data.

Monica Harding

Following on from Sarah’s question, as a group of researchers and educationalists, what is your perspective on the fact that, as a country, and so soon after the pandemic, we have gone down this route of stopping the funding of things like that?

Professor Baggs

I think it is short-sighted. We face global challenges; the clue is in the title. They are global and that impacts us, so I think it is very short-sighted to cut or cut off this funding. We are at risk of almost backing ourselves into a corner, as a country.

Chair

We are doing an inquiry into global health. I am not sure if your colleagues have submitted written evidence yet, but if they could, we would be very grateful.

James Naish

To summarise, let us assume two things are true—and maybe some colleagues would question whether the Government are committed to these two things. First, we want to see the UK to have a strong impact on global research and be a research leader. Secondly, we also want to deliver developmental impact across the world. If those two things are true, what changes do you think the Government need to make specifically to ODA-funded research to make that achievable over the coming years? What changes would you like to see?

Jonathan Leape

What was the first of the two?

James Naish

If we assume that the UK wants to be a global research leader, but we also want to deliver developmental benefit through that, what changes to ODA would you like to see the Government actively considering over the coming months? That question is for all three of you, but I will start with you, Adrian.

Professor Martin

I can kick off a little bit. One of the things we can do better is identifying the big problems, like the one we have just been discussing, and also bringing about what the International Science Council calls mission science, which is about flipping things, in a way. Rather than science saying, “Here is the problem we identify, here is how we are going to go about the solution and here is the solution”, it is bringing together those groups of people, including UK missions overseas, to collaboratively identify the particular problem that we have to face or the context specifics of this problem. If we are breeding new varieties of wheat, it is not to start from what people in the lab think would be a good variety, but to understand the trait preferences of local people, understand the seed systems that it is going to have to run through and understand the extension services within a particular country. That is what our work in Ethiopia and Egypt does now. It is more demand-led bioscience, for example, creating a new model of research that also is quite nimble in how it uses what is going to be limited ODA funding for some particular problems that might be needed for that sort of pure research at the start. Maybe that is the advantage with an orphan crop such as grass peas that we work on in Ethiopia. We are not going to get private funding for that, so maybe the public funding is needed for that bit. For other big problems, it might be that that sort of ODA catalyst role can occur later in the translation, ensuring that UK expertise is represented in expert panels at a high level in the health sector, the climate sector and so on.

Professor Baggs

I will come back to what I said about how we are facing global challenges—and we all face those global challenges. Some are going to be more vulnerable to those challenges than others. However, as we move forward, to me it is almost about shifting that narrative to the perception that, “This is not about us helping you. This is about us working in partnership”. Going forward, that is the lens we need to adopt. What that means is building trust, having trusted relationships, co-creation and very much working together. To do that, we need to have a diverse mix of funding, particularly sustained, multi-year commitments that spread into long-term engagement with a broadened scope. Then we need to ensure that our international partners can operate with us with equity, so it is not just about us administering the money and setting those priorities, but priorities are set by the challenges and we work in partnership.

Jonathan Leape

Picking up on what the others said, I would add that there needs to be a stronger focus on impact to ensure that the research is well targeted on where it could make a difference. That starts right at the very beginning of the whole process.

James Naish

The ODA would say it is very good at that anyway.

Jonathan Leape

I think it is patchy. It does very much keep it in mind. In terms of metrics, I think more could be done there and that could be run within programmes, as well across programmes. Anyway, I just think a stronger focus on impact would be helpful, and we can think of different ways to do that. Local ownership and localisation in the sense of setting the agenda is very important for this to be effective. I agree about multi-year funding. All the examples I gave were multi-year examples. Very little that is genuinely useful can be done within short horizons, especially that which is going to introduce institutional change. The final thing is that we need to strike a balance between local knowledge production and the benefits of world-class research from the UK and elsewhere. When we think about localisation, let’s not think just about where the researchers are based, but about who owns the process, who is directing and who is setting the agenda—that is important for localisation. Let’s also welcome collaborations in a way that can bring the benefits of world-class research in the UK to these research collaborations, and the kind of co-creation, co-production process that Liz talked about.

Chair

Thank you. It has been absolutely fascinating. The contributions you are bringing to the UK and internationally, particularly to developing areas for low and middle-income countries, are exceptional. The question that I am left with is: do you have a route into UK Government to share your findings and influence policy, and do you think you are being heard? Could I have a one line from each of you?

Professor Martin

Today helps, but no, not as well as we would like to.

Professor Baggs

If I think about the Commonwealth scholarship commission, then yes, there was a route in via the FCDO. As a university, I would like a much stronger link, please.

Jonathan Leape

We would welcome stronger links. Given our focus, we do work with the chief economist and especially with people within the growth part of the RAD—the new research analysis division. We do feel like we have the possibilities of conversations there, but it may be that all the reshuffling they have had to do over the past year has impeded conversations a bit.

Chair

Was it good before then?

Jonathan Leape

It was best when DFID was standalone, because we had a cadre of people who were very focused on all of these issues.

Chair

That was five or six years ago.

Jonathan Leape

Yes. It has been rebuilt very successfully in many respects, but the recent restructuring meant that some things were put on hold pending the new structure.

Chair

My concern, and the reason I asked the question, is that when the Committee travels, overseas Governments we speak to recognise the contributions, and have direct lines with your university academics and vice chancellors, but when we come back to our country there does not seem to be a door for you to walk through. That is probably something that we will be raising. Thank you all very much for your time. We will suspend the session while we get the next panel in and have a changeover of Committee members. Examination of witnesses

Witnesses

Professor Anuradha Joshi and Harry Anderson.

Chair

We are now restarting the International Development Select Committee session on higher education, with our second panel. Anu, I wonder if you could introduce yourself and the organisation that you work with.

Professor Joshi

I am Anu Joshi. I am the director of the Institute for Development Studies, which is a UK research body on the campus of the University of Sussex, which sits between a think-tank and a university. We are mainly a research institute, but we also have eight masters programmes, so we do a lot of teaching. We sit straddled between these two worlds. We were set up in 1966—we are celebrating 60 years—and we have been ranked No. 1 in development studies by the QS world university rankings for the 10th year running.

Chair

Is that in the UK or internationally?

Professor Joshi

It is international for development studies, together with the University of Sussex, for the 10th year running, so we have a long-standing reputation in development work. We are a bunch of about 200 staff, of which more than half are researchers, and we work in interdisciplinary teams. We are not disciplinary based. We work very much on applied problems in the real world, so we are not doing research for pure research’s sake. We are very much engaged in real-world problems across the global south—and increasingly now in the global north.

Chair

Yes, absolutely. Can I take this moment to say that we are here every Tuesday and would welcome it if students or academics wanted to come and join the Committee session? We will send them an invitation. People do not tend to take the opportunity and we find that curious. Harry, who are you?

Harry Anderson

Thank you very much; it is good to be with colleagues. I am Harry Anderson. I am deputy director at an organisation called Universities UK International. We are a membership body, a representative body, and have 142 UK universities with us, including Sussex and all the universities that you have just been hearing from. They are large research-intensive and small specialist universities, and everything in between. The team that I am very fortunate to lead covers our policy and global engagement work. That is international-focused. The reason that team exists is because UK higher education is highly international, both in its composition and its outlook. Our universities are recognised right around the world for their quality. They produce graduates whose skills and qualifications are recognised by employers both in the UK and internationally by Governments and by professional bodies. As we have just been hearing, our universities lead on research to solve global challenges, so we are highly international. That leads me to probably one of the key things I would want to land during this session, which is—

Chair

Briefly, or maybe it will come out in the questions.

Harry Anderson

Well, three points, very briefly. One is that I think universities ought to be viewed as key critical development infrastructure around the world. Secondly, I think that investing in development supports countries around the world, but there is also enlightened self-interest in the soft power that benefits the UK. Also, given what we have just been hearing about scarcity and cuts, we need a bit more of a clearer strategy that focuses on longer-term development and how we can focus the work that universities do with the funding that is available. I will leave it there.

Chair

Thank you. Anu, you touched on this in your opening—and Harry has expanded on it—but I wonder if you could give some thoughts and reflections on how the Government can balance the objective of growing UK education exports with supporting and developing higher education in low and middle-income countries.

Professor Joshi

You are talking about transnational education, I assume. Increasingly it is evident that there is a huge demand for this kind of education, and universities in the UK obviously are attractive places to get this education, but in many places—such as my own country, India—there are not enough opportunities to do that. Having this export out there in their own locations, with the expertise that we bring, would be very important. There is a huge opportunity there in many places, many places are already doing this kind of thing and more could be done in that field. We ourselves are not doing it at the moment. IDS do not do transnational education. Maybe you have more of an understanding of that, but it seems to me that there is a huge opportunity there that could be taken up. That also feeds very well into the international development agenda, because this would be strengthening capacities and strengthening partnerships of people who are based there. You do not have the kind of problem we were talking about with people not staying in their own countries because they are already there. They are not going to move abroad.

Chair

I am not sure if you heard what my colleague David Mundell said in the first session about people getting the skills and opportunities, using them to further their own careers and leaving their countries. We see that particularly when it comes to nursing and healthcare around the world. Is that a risk?

Professor Joshi

It is always a risk. You cannot curtail people or corral them in particular countries, but the more opportunities you create in the countries through our development partnerships, the better you can feed these people with the education into those spaces, so that the opportunities are attractive. At the moment, as you know—and again, speaking from the Indian experience—there is huge unemployment. You have been watching the news. There is a huge unemployment crisis, and youth are out on the streets demanding all kinds of things. Unless those opportunities are created there, and education through exporting some of our skills, robustness and credibility of the quality systems that we have, we will not be able to solve that kind of problem. I think there is an opportunity there. It has to be done very carefully, because UK universities are a good and attractive option, but they are not for everybody.

Chair

Harry, do you have any examples from the organisations that you work with of where investment has led to sustained growth in the country?

Harry Anderson

Yes. The Government funded a scheme a number of years ago—I think it closed in 2022—known as the strategic partnerships for higher education, innovation and reform programme. That programme was reviewed, and I think was seen to have met a number of objectives in supporting development around the world. There are probably a couple of examples that could helpfully be drawn from that. First, UK universities in Somaliland, working with local partners, helped to reform the healthcare curriculum. I think about five universities ended up reviewing their curriculum, making changes and looking to support skills development locally. A number of the universities that were not even involved in that partnership ended up following that model because they recognised that it worked and was successful. You could then remove the UK support, and that is a kind of long-term sustainable support in-country. There were a couple of examples from a project in Sierra Leone. One was where an institution was able to get university status by looking at reviewing modules and accreditation and making sure that it was at a sufficient level and standard required for university status in that country, working with the regulator. That creates local infrastructure that can provide support. The final example, again within Sierra Leone, was around working with local regulators and professional accreditation bodies to essentially redesign some of the quality assurance mechanisms so again the rest of the sector within country can meet certain standards. When we are talking about TNE, often one of the big drivers from other Governments as to why they want to see UK support and to partner with the UK—when it could be support from Australia, for example, or other countries that do TNE—is the reputation and quality of our academics and our institutions, which can help increase capacity locally. There has been huge focus on India recently. My understanding is that when our previous Prime Minister led the trade mission to India, it was the Indian Government that was pushing for UK universities to be involved in that mission. I think we sent about 14 vice-chancellors. That was driven from the Indian side rather than the UK side or by UK universities. There is a huge opportunity there. You could look at many other countries. The Premier of Indonesia recently came to the UK looking to see UK universities to help set up local support. There is huge potential there through using TNE.

David Mundell

Harry and then Anu, can I ask you about successor programmes to SPHEIR and the Global Research Fund and what you think the form of successor programmes should be in order to increase their strategic effectiveness?

Harry Anderson

First, we would welcome a successor programme. My understanding was that there was a move towards a possible successor programme, focusing more specifically on female participation in education We had a number of conversations with FCDO about that scheme. There is huge appetite and demand from our universities to be involved in a successor scheme, but at present I do not think we know that that scheme is going to be taken forward.

Chair

Do you know what the budget of the first iteration was?

Harry Anderson

Not off the top of my head, but we could definitely get that information for you. I think colleagues heard it from the first panel, but what would make it successful is that it needs a long-term funding envelope. It needs clear prioritisation and focus for what it is doing. That allows our members, the UK universities, to work with local partners to rebuild the trust that I think has been undermined by the recent cuts we have seen in some of those programmes.

Chair

I have discovered that it ran from 2016 to 2022 and cost £45 million.

Professor Joshi

We did not have experience with the SPHEIR programme, but we thought that the Global Challenges Fund was very important. Several of our researchers have been involved in some of those. As Harry said, any successor would be most welcome. What I wanted also to submit is that there are other ways of doing these things in relation to supporting research partnerships and particularly combining them with higher education. We have experience of an FCDO then DFID-funded programme called the multi-methods research course that was delivered jointly by IDS and the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research. It was set up as a way of improving capacity for research in Africa because it was considered not as strong as we would like it to be. It was designed primarily for mid-career researchers. Since then, the first few iterations ran for about five years and IDS staff were very heavily involved—along with other staff, faculty from the UK—but in a few years the first cohort that had gained capacity just took over. It has trained over 3,000 researchers, who are now doing their own education in the countries with the quality assurance that was given in the programme. That is another example of how this can be made to go forward.

David Mundell

Can I just ask you, Harry, whether among UK universities there has been any contraction of international partnerships? For example, when we were in Nigeria, we heard about a partnership with the University of Dundee. Now, very unfortunately, the University of Dundee has run into very serious financial issues, and I think we are all aware of other universities running into financial issues. Has that led to withdrawal from some of these international activities that it would previously have pursued?

Harry Anderson

The short answer is yes. As you alluded to, we are a sector facing quite an acute financial crisis, particularly when Government funding is withdrawn. These are partnerships that cannot be sustained through higher education funding alone. Increasingly, you are seeing that on the domestic side too, with a much closer focus on R&I-related activity, which needs to be aligned much more with frontier technologies and Government priorities because the funding is so tight within the sector at the moment.

Monica Harding

We heard earlier about scholarships. Turning to the visa brake, how will students in higher education institutions be affected by the Government’s visa brake on certain countries?

Professor Joshi

We are already experiencing some of the effects of this visa brake because, as an international development institute, we get a lot of students from developing countries, many of whom are funded through Chevening and other scholarships. In the past, many of them have come from the countries that have been experiencing visa brakes—Myanmar and Afghanistan, for example. This affects the kind of development goals that we have. For example, if you stop women from Afghanistan—that came up in the earlier conversation—they just do not have access to education. It is something that their country’s Government are not providing and it is very central to one of our development goals to provide some of those things. We currently have a PhD student who started off as a scholar from Afghanistan and now is doing a PhD. It is unlikely that she will go home because of the constraints that she currently faces. In that sense, yes, the drop has been quite significant. In 2025-26, we had 24 funded scholars at IDS. This year we have seven. The drop has been considerable. From what I understand, there are lots of Chevening scholars who came up and were almost ready to be given scholarships and then the visa brake came in and they have been denied. I understand—I can check the figures—that about 30 were from Afghanistan, which is quite substantial. In a sense, it is undermining our other development goals.

Harry Anderson

I completely endorse what has just been said. In the light of what we have been discussing, I think the impact was on the perception of the UK as a trusted partner when it comes to global development efforts, because we are essentially just shutting the door. We are acutely aware that the Government have legitimate concerns when it comes to immigration overall. I think successive Governments have been elected on promises to reduce net migration, and there are concerns around asylum-seeking and related issues. Our challenge is where immigration policy often cuts across wider Government objectives. The visa ban is quite acute for global development objectives. The Home Office will probably always think that it only has a blunt mechanism and so it had to be a visa brake. I do not see why the Home Office could not have exempted certain students, such as Chevening scholarship students or others. That is where that policy has been the most harmful and most impactful. If there had been an earlier conversation about recognising and flagging that, this could be an easy exemption. I think that would have been most welcome and done a lot to help preserve some of the UK’s reputation. My only other comment is that the visa brake impacts students looking to come to the UK. One thing that I have been pleased to see is that UK universities are looking to try to step up and support those students who have been impacted by the ban. A charity called Mosaic is looking to set up part-funded scholarships with UK universities to enable those students who are not able to physically travel to study via online or distance learning or in another campus—a branch campus of the UK’s around the world—so that they are not denied the opportunity still to benefit from a UK education, even if they cannot come to the UK.

Chair

Is Mosaic a charity?

Harry Anderson

I believe they are a charity, yes.

Chair

Could you find some more information?

Harry Anderson

Yes, absolutely, we can share some further information there. This is new. I cannot remember, but I think they call what they have set up the global development platform. This is a very recent thing, I think, since the ban.

Chair

If you could connect us, we would be grateful.

Harry Anderson

Yes, absolutely.

Monica Harding

I read an article from the New Humanitarian about Sudan students who cannot come to the UK, the US or Australia anymore. The quote used is, “The only place left is the moon.” My question is more serious than that. Are there other countries those students will therefore go to rather than those western countries?

Professor Joshi

As everyone knows, the US is not an attractive destination either for students from some of the countries affected by the UK visa ban. I think Australia is getting stricter, as far as I can tell. Although Europe is still offering scholarships and they could go, there are often language issues there that prevent people from going. The UK is an attractive destination, and we should be attracting these students, particularly the Chevening scholars. They have been vetted; they have proven themselves through multiple interview processes. If they were given an exemption, that would have been fantastic. It is not just them who benefit. People who are already here, other students, benefit from their experiences. It creates what we were talking about earlier: the soft power—a network of individuals across the globe, particularly from these very conflict-driven countries where soft power becomes even more important later on, when these people become powerful and take up positions of power, and you want to negotiate or network around other issues that are critical or solve global challenges that require collective action. This is the power that is going to be useful and we are just sort of—

Monica Harding

David and I have just come back from Bangladesh, where the Prime Minister studied in England and is, as a result, very keen on our country. To both of you, what could be the tangible benefits of an increase in ODA-funded scholarships for your organisations?

Harry Anderson

We are a membership body, so there would not be a tangible benefit for us as an organisation, but our members would benefit massively if additional ODA scholarships were available. Also, I think a number of universities will often match-fund or provide support through other means if funding was made available. I think it would increase the number of students who would be able to come to the UK as a result, so we would be very supportive of an increase.

Professor Joshi

I would echo what Harry said. As an institution that does mainly global development, most of our students are from the global south. If student scholarships were increased, that would mean that our numbers would go up and we would be able to offer more support. What we are unique in is that we bring our research directly into the classroom because we are such a research-intensive institution. Incorporating our students right from the classroom into research projects and then having them take this education back to their countries would be a huge benefit.

Chair

Why?

Professor Joshi

Because we think that we inculcate UK values and approaches to development that are important in the current climate, looking at global challenges, looking at public good being important, not taking on just a very privatised agenda, things like that—although growth is important of course and we are not denying that—and finding innovative ways to do that. I think it would be very important. Another thing is benefit to the UK. For example, we know from our research and working with our students that examples of community healthcare from Brazil have been brought into the UK as a potential approach to helping solve some of NHS problems. There are other examples as well. It is not just us providing all the expertise and knowledge, it is also them bringing innovations and examples from their situations to the UK.

Tracy Gilbert

This is a similar question to what I asked the first panel. Higher education institutions are increasingly looking to the private sector for investment to fill the gaps created by the reduction in ODA. What do you think are the risks in relying on private capital for developing research, particularly where the commercial returns are uncertain, but the need is high?

Professor Joshi

If I might start, I think the earlier panel did respond in very strong terms that there are possibilities and good opportunities in certain areas. In particular, I think private capital is essential because Government capital will not be able to fund everything that is needed. However, in other places there are areas where private capital is not going to step up. Regulation is one important element, as was pointed out earlier. Funding dependencies on private capital should be also looked at a bit carefully—there is a risk there, as well as in unequal investment in certain areas versus others. We have seen this in the health sector, for example. We need to be careful that we secure public funding for public goods that are not likely to be invested in by the private sector.

Harry Anderson

I would probably agree with what we have just heard, as well as with what the previous panel said. There is clearly a role there. The worry would be if private finance and capital was seen as an easy replacement for what public and Government funding could do. Where we have seen it be successful is in the catalytic impact it can have in crowding in and unlocking other funding. The British Council runs a very successful global partnerships scheme called Going Global, which looks to put up some funding that allows institutions in the UK to partner with others around the world to test models on a small scale and then work out if they are scalable and could be developed. That is where private finance could be incredibly helpful, but I think it needs to be done within a quite close regulatory framework to ensure that it is focusing on the longer-term goals that we all have.

Chair

Harry, on the international education strategy, we have heard criticism that there was a very limited focus on development objectives within it. Would you agree with that criticism and what would you—or rather, your members—like to have seen included?

Harry Anderson

We are very supportive of the international education strategy. It has been refreshed a number of times, but most recently at the start of this year, which is the first time since the change of Government. We would say that the international education strategy has responded to a lot of the concerns that our members would have, in that it is broader in focus. There was a previous concern, if you were to look at the previous iteration of the strategy, that it was overly focused on export earnings and that that was quite problematic when you were going to meet other Governments, other universities in other countries, because it quite frankly could look exploitative. What we have seen therefore is a welcome move away from just focusing on an export target to the broader contribution that international education can make. I think that reflects the breadth of contributions that universities can make. It is not just about international student recruitment anymore, it is about international research partnerships and it is about TNE, as we have just been hearing. The opportunity that we have is that the FCDO has joined as a co-owner of that strategy. Previously it would just have been the Department for Education and DBT, as was. FCDO’s role in being a co-owner of that strategy gives a huge opportunity to make sure that there is a greater focus on global development. That is where we would always encourage the Government to think of universities as pieces of critical infrastructure of global development. Wherever the UK is looking to talk to other Governments around the world, our members will more than likely have a partnership or expertise or support that they could utilise in that sense, so I think there is a real opportunity there. The challenge we face is that we have seen reductions in the headcount for what was previously the Department for Business and Trade in its colleagues based in-country. We still have a fantastic embassy network. The British Council provides fantastic in-country support to help with UK universities looking to partner with others overseas. However, I think that reduction is problematic and could undermine some of those wider development objectives.

James Naish

Harry, coming to the reach of UK universities, about 650,000 students are located overseas, and UK universities are working and supporting them. How do you think that that infrastructure could be used more strategically as part of our development offer?

Harry Anderson

This year I believe we crossed over a quite important tipping point and threshold. I do not think this will be reflected in our submission because the data only came out very recently, but we have now reached a point where there are almost 700,000 TNE students—UK students—studying for a UK degree overseas. Given policy in the UK, we are seeing a decline in the number of international students coming to the UK, so those two figures have now crossed over. The short answer is that we are seeing a huge renewed interest from UK universities in establishing TNE partnerships. Probably a number of vice-chancellors and senior leaders within universities are looking at TNE in a far more strategic way, and I think the international education strategy helps with that. What we are looking to see, and what is often happening is that the breadth of TNE provision is huge. It is not just campuses. Overseas campuses are often what attract the attention, but I think they are, off the top of my head, less than 1% of all TNE provision. There is validated provision, franchise provision and other types of provision, so there is a huge opportunity there for universities to be working with partners overseas to meet the local skills needs and local development needs of those institutions in-country to make sure that the offer is responding to what is needed locally. That is the opportunity we have. That is what I was talking about before, why overseas Governments often come to the UK and want our UK universities to help with setting up campuses and joint provision with their local universities.

James Naish

I will come to you as well, Anu. What explicit role could TNE have in our aspirations around soft power and international development?

Professor Joshi

There are lots of opportunities, as I said, and things are moving. One of the things that we could be more strategic about is to link the TNE export role with the development aspirations of the countries in place. For example, if we are doing TNE and we have simultaneous research partnerships with those places and locations, we can co-create research—as was being talked about in the earlier panel—in-country, in situ, in a much stronger, creative and innovative manner that responds to local realities in a way that perhaps sitting here with international partnerships might not do as well. There are ways of thinking strategically about linking these two things much more closely that we could be doing.

Harry Anderson

Another point to add, which I should have mentioned, is that TNE partnerships are incredibly helpful in essentially helping to export UK soft power, because often we will end up as the UK Government, as UK universities, working with overseas Governments and overseas regulators to essentially set the parameters and the framework for what that TNE provision looks like in-country. We will often be one of the first countries working with say country X to set this provision up. A recent example is Nigeria. I think the UK helped to develop the TNE guidelines in Nigeria, and that essentially helps to spread our reputation, but is also what underpins and makes the UK’s HE system successful: rigorous quality assurance mechanisms, research-informed teaching, academic freedom, freedom of speech—helping to promote those kinds of fundamental principles to underpin other HE systems around the world.

James Naish

What are the risks for the FCDO and for universities as they are thinking about increasing their TNE offer?

Harry Anderson

The key thing we need to stay focused on is that the UK is in a very privileged position when it comes to our reputation when we are talking about other countries and other Governments looking to work with the UK. We need to keep a laser focus on quality. There is a huge amount of interest, as we alluded to, in India at the moment. Lots of UK universities are setting up provision in India. We need to make sure that the first few cohorts of those students are happy and successful and go on to very fulfilling careers and that we keep laser focused on the quality of our provision because that is the advantage we have over other countries when they are looking to set up TNE provision.

James Naish

Anything to add, Anu?

Professor Joshi

No, I think I would say the same.

James Naish

While we have you here, Harry, I will push you on something that is not related to international development but is very much university-related, which is what came up on 30 September, around the MI5 warning universities about China using a public company to front some of its intelligence operations. What is your perspective on that, and what is the link and the risk for universities of working overseas or working closely with foreign powers? What is the risk back here in the UK?

Harry Anderson

First, universities take incredibly seriously their responsibilities when it comes to national security. This topic has increased in salience and has established itself very much as a board-level issue within UK universities. Looking at what has happened over recent years, institutions have strengthened their due diligence, risk assessment processes and research security processes. My organisation, UUK, has been instrumental in helping to set up the research collaboration advice team—RCAP—now within Government, and which is there to support universities when they are looking to set up new partnerships. We are always going to be a target for this, first because of the quality of our institutions, the sort of research that we are producing and the collaborations that we have, but also because of what I said at the start, which is that we are an inherently open and internationally facing sector and we are therefore always going to face these challenges. The question therefore is about how we mitigate those challenges. I think we have had a very constructive and good relationship when it comes to working with the Government on this. RCAP is one example. We had the director general of MI5 come to our annual conference to address our vice-chancellors and highlight that this is a major concern that institutions need to be aware of. We also work very closely with NPSA and other parts of the security services to make sure that that guidance is being shared among academics and universities, so it is not just at the board level but is cascaded down through and across institutions. We have made huge progress on this, but I think there is always more to be done. At the start of this year, we had another meeting with MI5, the director general and Security Minister Dan Jarvis, and we have now set up the academic interference reporting route, so there is a confidential mechanism through which senior university leaders can report concerns. There is always more to be done, but this is an issue that universities take very seriously.

James Naish

I have a couple thousand Hongkongers in my Rushcliffe constituency in Nottinghamshire, and since I was elected, they have been raising concerns around the Confucius institutes. As Universities UK, do you have confidence in universities needing and benefiting from Confucius institutes, or do you think there are some aspects of policy that universities need to review?

Harry Anderson

I think universities will always keep international partnerships under review, whether they be Confucius institutes or other partnerships. My understanding is that we do not believe that there is any kind of immediate need to revisit that at this point. There is not much more I could say on that. We recognise the risk, given how international we are, but I do not think we are looking to take any immediate action on Confucius institutes.

Chair

We would be very grateful if you wrote to the Committee about that, either in private or public. I think you have painted a very good contemporary position. Thirty years ago, there was a mad rush of UK universities chasing the Chinese renminbi, and I think it is well documented that that has exposed us. At the time China was a middle-income country, so we were absolutely delighted to help it with its development needs. If I can just give you some context, my closest university is Sheffield Hallam, and the way academics there were psychologically terrorised was quite acute. The reason probably that you had the meeting at the beginning of the year with MI5 and the Security Minister was because we realised that we did have a big gap in security because we had such an open profile to Chinese universities. That is kind of done, and I think it is good that there is now an embryonic reporting mechanism for academics who feel uncomfortable. However, are you looking for the next risk? Because 30 years ago, it was absolutely right that we were helping and supporting all our institutions in helping and supporting China with its development. Are you, as an organisation—or are our universities—looking at where that next potential risk could be and making sure that our partnerships are equitable, but also secure for both parties?

Harry Anderson

Yes, absolutely. The framework around the governance, research security and what you could call responsible international partnerships has come a long way in 30 years, but even in five years.

Chair

I would agree.

Harry Anderson

Just look at the expansion of ATAS—the Academic Technology Approval Scheme. That was previously just for academics but has now been expanded to students. I think there is a much greater recognition of the risks here, and of going into these things with eyes wide open. We will always look to support our members with this. One observation I would make about China is that we have built a higher education model that is reliant on the income of overseas students, so as a Government and as a country we need to ask ourselves whether it is wise to fund what we think is a critical piece of national infrastructure in the UK, but also of global development, such as we have been talking about, through the income streams from international students. I think the top point that our chief executive, Vivienne Stern, would always be making is about the need to develop a long-term, sustainable funding model for our universities. I think she has been on record at a parliamentary Committee saying that, in the past, international students were the cherry on the top of a cake, but now they are the flour that underpins the whole operating model. I think we need to recognise our over-reliance and the dependencies that that creates, particularly where institutions do have single-market dependencies or two or three-market dependencies and support those institutions where possible.

Chair

Anu, a final question from me. You raised the case of the Afghan woman student who you have now taken on as a PhD student, and said how it is unlikely that she will be able to return home. Do you put—“protections” is probably too heavy a word—support systems in place when you have overseas students who you know, for example, may be doing research into LGBT rights, for example, which you know would be controversial at home? Are you minded of that and would you put protections in place, or would you just not encourage research in that area?

Professor Joshi

We do put protections in place—we do research on LGBTQ rights; we do research on all kinds of gender-related issues—so that would be very much part of it, in the classroom as well as outside. We are also very mindful that some of our students are first-generation learners. In fact, we are just talking with a couple of countries, including Timor-Leste, about sending us cohorts of students who are first-generation learners on Government scholarships, and that they come as a cohort so that they can be supported. Although we rely on international students, as Harry was saying, and they contribute enormously to the classroom, it is a very difficult experience for them, or it can be a very difficult experience for them, so it is important that we do this in a careful-minded way. Another thing to say is that although you might count international students in the immigration figures, these are people who are contributing. They are not dependent. It is very important to keep that in mind as well—these are people who have come here to get the best education. They may not, as in the case of this Afghan woman, be able to go home because of the situation there, but they are contributing here and we should respect that.

Chair

I have written down your phrase, Harry—“critical infrastructure”. I think that our universities and research facilities absolutely are that. As a state, I think we have not done enough to protect and nurture them. You are in a situation where we, for the wrong reasons, recognise how critical you are to us. Thank you both so much for sharing your skills and expertise. We do appreciate it.