Higher Education (England) Regulations — House of Commons, 2017-09-13
Topic: Education
Conor Burns (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a genuine pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill). Many Members in this House will have incredibly fond memories of her predecessor, who was not only a lady of incredible principle, but a lady with an irrepressible and irreverent sense of fun. She will be greatly missed on both sides of the House. The hon. Lady said her predecessor was a great advocate of Labour values, but I have to say that she was also a great advocate for national independence and the role of this Chamber in our national life. For those reasons, she will be missed especially by many of us on the Government side of the House When the hon. Lady was speaking, I was thinking whether I could possibly find any linkage between my south coast constituency of Bournemouth West and her midlands constituency of Birmingham Edgbaston, but then she mentioned J. R. R. Tolkien and something in her constituency that inspired him to write. Of course, Tolkien did much of his best writing from the Miramar hotel in my constituency, and I hope that that has established some sort of link between us I also pay tribute to the hon. Lady for what she said on mental health, something that is profoundly important to many of us in the House, and particularly those of us who have had family members who have been severely affected by different mental health conditions over the decades. If the hon. Lady carries on in the vein in which she began this afternoon, she will find a warm hand to meet hers across the aisle in this Chamber. She made an excellent maiden speech, and she has shown early promise that she will be a worthy successor to Gisela Stuart I have two universities in my constituency, Bournemouth University and the Arts University Bournemouth. They add enormously to the area I serve. They provide economic growth and social enrichment, as well as personal development for those who attend them. They are at the heart of the constituency I serve. Only last night, I had the vice-chancellor of Bournemouth University and Professor Keith Brown from the National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work downstairs in the Churchill Room, doing an event to highlight the financial scamming of vulnerable people. In a week’s time, I will be going to the Bournemouth visual effects conference, to which people will come from around the world—people from Disney and others—to see the projects undertaken by young people in the competition there. Bournemouth University is absolutely at the core of my constituency, and I have been in touch over all the years I have been a Member of Parliament with all the different presidents of the students union—Toby Horner, Murray Simpson, Chloe Schendel-Wilson and Daniel Asaya, and on behalf of the students, they have told me—as have many of the students I have met— of their concerns about our policy on higher education and particularly on student finance However, this is an Opposition day, and this is an Opposition day motion, so it is appropriate that we scrutinise the Opposition. There has been a lot of talk about what was said during the election, so I have dug it out. The Leader of the Opposition, in his now famous interview, said: "Yes, there is a block of those that currently have a massive debt, and I’m looking at ways that we could reduce that, ameliorate that, lengthen the period of paying it off, or some other means of reducing that debt burden I don’t have the simple answer for it yet—I don’t think anybody would expect me to, because this election was called unexpectedly… And I don’t see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the £9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it." That was heard loud and clear by students in Bournemouth and elsewhere Then the shadow Secretary of State, in her outburst of candour on "The Andrew Marr Show", said: "It’s a huge amount; it’s £100 billion… It’s a huge amount of money. It’s a big abacus that I’m working on with that. But we’ve got to start dealing with this debt".