The Government is to write to all universities telling them to sign up to a mental health charter by next year - but ministers have stopped short of accepting the need for stronger laws to ensure universities take responsibility for students’ mental health.
But university bosses have been warned that if they don’t voluntarily strengthen their support for the well-being of students and their suicide prevention measures, the Government will return to the issue and consider making it a statutory duty. The issue was debated in Parliament yesterday (Monday) after 128,292 people signed a petition.
It called on universities to be made responsible in law for the well being of their students, following the suicides of hundreds of students across the country in the past few years. Leading the campaign is the family of Natasha Abrahart, a Bristol student who took her own life in 2018.
Read next: Natasha Abrahart's parents say universities 'should have legal duty of care' over students
Natasha’s parents successfully took legal action against the University of Bristol over her death, and last year a court in the city ruled Bristol University had discriminated against her because it failed to make proper allowances for her mental health condition. Natasha died on the day she was due to make a presentation in front of other students in a huge lecture theatre - something which she told staff she wouldn’t be able to do.
Bristol University has appealed that case to the High Court and, during a MPs debate at Westminster Hall on Monday evening, many MPs were warned they could not talk in great detail about it, as the issues were sub judice.
During the debate, Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy said she had talked to both the University of Bristol and UWE about the issue and was confident they were addressing it voluntarily, but those MPs bringing the petition to parliament said there was a need for legislation to ensure that universities had a statutory duty to ensure the well-being of their students.
'We have to learn from Natasha's death'
Margaret Abrahart, Natasha's mother, said: "We have to make sure that we learn from Natasha's death, and the deaths of all the other students who took their own lives while at university. We must stop this from happening again. We are doing all we can through the courts to try to get adequate legal protections for students but now we need our politicians to step up.
“This isn't about expecting universities to treat students like children or asking staff to be stand-in parents. It's about introducing a common-sense legal duty which says that universities should take reasonable steps to avoid and not to cause harm to their students. I don’t see why that should be controversial," she added.
Helen Grant, the Conservative MP for Maidstone, said a new law was needed to remove the kind of ambiguity highlighted by the Natasha Abrahart case. “The decision of Judge Ralton in Abrahart v. University of Bristol is being appealed in the High Court,” she said. “That will allow the arguments surrounding the existence of a common-law duty of care to be looked at again, although judges are often reluctant to confirm the existence of a duty where none has existed before.
“The introduction of a statutory duty of care would, however, remove the current uncertainty and ambiguity. It would allow all stakeholders to contribute to the development of a set of legal norms that would strike the right balance between students and their teaching institutions. It would also bring our law into line with other common-law jurisdictions, such as the USA and Australia,” she added.
Minister's response
But Robert Halfon MP, the minister for higher education, said he wanted to see if universities could ‘meet this challenge’ voluntarily without the need for legislation to make it legal that they have to.
“I am confident that higher education can meet this challenge,” he said. “However, I have made it clear that if the response is not satisfactory, I will go further and ask the Office for Students to look at the merits of a new registration condition on mental health. To those who fear it would not have the right impact, I want to be clear that any breach of such a condition would be subject to the same sanctions as breaches of other registration conditions,” he added.
Mr Halfon also said a new ‘higher education mental health implementation taskforce’ would be reporting directly to him, and it would include bereaved parents, students, mental health experts, charities and sector representatives’.
“By the end of this year, the taskforce will be asked to put in place an interim plan for better early identification of students at risk and for delivering the university student commitment as well as a set of strong, clear targets for improvements by providers. By May 2024, it should follow with a final report outlining the next steps, including how the sector will publicly report on the progress measures over the coming years,” he added.
But Mr Halfon said while he understood why bereaved parents like Natasha Abrahart’s parents Robert and Margaret wanted a legal requirement that made it a statutory duty for universities to be responsible for the mental wellbeing of their students, he did not think it might be the answer.
“I absolutely get the arguments and hope I have demonstrated that I share the petitioners’ fundamental aims, which are to protect those who study at university and to prevent future tragedies.
“If creating a duty for higher education providers towards their students was the right way to achieve that, it would absolutely have the Government’s backing. There are reasons why we believe that it may not be the most effective intervention,” he added.
Mr Halfon also explained that the Government’s view was that a general duty of care already exists in law.
“That means higher education providers must deliver educational and pastoral services to the standard of an ordinarily competent institution. Recent judgments failed to find a duty of care in the circumstances of those particular cases. However, I am aware that the decision in Abrahart v. University of Bristol is being appealed in the High Court, so I have been advised that I am not able to comment further at this stage, although we will look at the issue carefully.
“I hope that I have been clear that we are not standing by and letting things continue as they are. I am determined that all universities will sign up to the mental health charter and that Professor Peck’s proposals will be implemented,” he added.
Nick Fletcher, the MP who brought the petition to parliament said parents would be disappointed. “If we do not see any improvement in the way that young people in our universities are treated, we can come back to the Minister and ask for the issue to be looked at again,” he said.
“I understand how important the issue is to everybody and that they will be disappointed that we are not moving as fast as they want, but the point of these debates is to open a subject up for debate. We have heard from other charities that do not believe that the statutory duty of care is the way forward, and they are the specialists in this subject,” he added.
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