The parents of a Nottinghamshire woman who took her own life at university say current rules on protecting the mental health of students are "illogical" following a debate by MPs on the issue. A group of bereaved families who lost relatives whilst studying at university are calling for higher education institutions to be made legally accountable for how students are treated.
A petition which has received over 100,000 signatures calls for universities to have a statutory duty of care over their students. The Department for Education says universities already owe a duty of care to their students, but campaigners argue this needs to be put on a legal footing.
After this petition was handed to Downing Street in April, the issue was debated by a cross-party group of MPs on Monday (June 5). Among those watching the debate in Westminster were Robert and Margaret Abrahart, of West Bridgford, who lost their daughter Natasha in 2018.
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Natasha died the same day she was due to give a presentation in a 329-seat lecture theatre at the University of Bristol. The university was later ordered to pay £50,000 in compensation after a court found it did not make reasonable adjustments for Natasha's social anxiety disorder.
The High Court has since granted the University of Bristol permission to appeal against the judgement that it caused Natasha's death by breaching the Equality Act. But in a statement before Tuesday's debate, Mr Abrahart said: "MPs and peers now have a huge opportunity to improve the safety of university students in this country.
"We hope this debate will be a springboard for introducing a bill into Parliament that ensures universities owe similar legal duties to their students as they owe to their employees. The current arrangement, where the courts are very unlikely to find a university liable for allowing a student to suffer foreseeable harm, unless the student is disabled, is illogical and unsustainable."
But the minister representing the Government during the debate suggested that the call for universities to have a legal duty of care over students "may not achieve the best results." The debate was opened by the Conservative MP for Don Valley, Nick Fletcher, who said: "These young people are not just customers, they are students and are the sole reason for you working in the environment that you do. "
In a message to his Government, Mr Fletcher said: "A statutory duty of care would ensure all parties know where they stand, but until then please use the levers you have to make the universities do better at helping our young people. If they do not... then legislate so that they must."
But Robert Halfon, Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, said at the end of the debate: "We don't believe that the most effective way to improve student mental health is to introduce new legislative requirements when the sector is making improvements on a voluntary basis. While absolutely the sector could and should do more, providers are still innovating and improving and there is not yet a consensus on which interventions are most effective.
"That's not an excuse for not doing anything or inaction, but it does mean that a one-size-fits-all approach may not achieve the best results and support for students suffering from mental health difficulties that all of us want to see." Mr Halfon instead said that all universities should sign up to a mental health charter, which 61 of them have already done.
The minister said if the response to this was not adequate, he would ask the universities regulator, the Office for Students, to introduce a new registration condition on mental health. If universities were to breach this condition, Mr Halfon said they would face sanctions.
Margaret Abrahart, Natasha's mother, added: "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."
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