Higher Education (England) Regulations — House of Commons, 2017-09-13
Topic: Education
Gordon Marsden (Labour, Centre-left): We have had a very good debate with some excellent contributions from both sides of the House. Obviously, I want to single out one or two of the contributions—my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) said we had to look at student support in the round; and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), spoke about the way in which Government were saddling people with debt I had to agree with the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), who made the important point that there was no sense of public space or public good in anything the Secretary of State said in her speech. There was no sense of the contribution made to the local economies that people work in or the ideas and productivity they develop The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Education Committee, in a characteristically thoughtful speech echoed the concerns that we have had about graduate outcomes and some of the issues around vice-chancellors’ fees My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), in a superb speech, emphasised not just her pride in her Sikh heritage but the multi-ethnic pride in both place and context of her constituency in Birmingham. She spoke movingly about the concerns of the NHS and specifically addressed the issues of student debt and graduates’ sense of public duty My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) was right to focus on the evidence base, especially the academic evidence in respect of the lower numbers of part-time students in the Russell Group. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) reminded us that debt was incurred from day one. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who did superb work on the Higher Education and Research Bill with me and my other colleagues, said that when we had our Opposition Day debate in 2016 we were right to focus on maintenance grants.‘ My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) spoke about the statistics failing to convey—indeed, freezing out—the human stories of the results of the pressure of debt. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid), who stoically stayed all the way through both of today’s debates, reminded us that it was the Conservatives who had systematically stripped away many of the benefits that were given from 2012 I want to make brief comments—they will be brief because, unfortunately, I see the Secretary of State is not in her place. She equivocated on an emergency cap on student numbers—another policy that exists only in the minds of the Government. In fact, she said, "if we are not willing to fund the system, there can be fewer people in it." But the Secretary of State ignores the fact that we would be replacing, pound for pound, the actual outlay of the Student Loans Company. Also, when talking about so-called record numbers of students in our universities, she ignored the fact that UCAS figures showed applications actually down 4%. The context of the debate and all the Government’s procedural shenanigans were eloquently explained by my colleague the shadow Secretary of State, in a superb speech. She also made the point that the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who spoke in the Standing Order 24 debate in July, did not take account of what his namesake, Alan Johnson—there the comparisons end—the Minister in 2004, said about what we should be doing.The effect of annulling the fee increase would do something immediately. For reasons that I will go into, we know that the Government have already performed twists and turns over where they think they might be going, but the fact is that the cumulative effect of Tory Ministers’ actions since the tripling of tuition fees in 2012 has been socially and economically destructive.