argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Emma Elizabeth Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): We had that debate in the previous Parliament and in Parliaments before that. We are talking about the very, very poorest students. Their parents do not have a penny to give to them in support and they will graduate with a huge level of debt I say this again to the Government: since the election of the Tory majority Government and the previous coalition Government, the younger generation have been hit with the removal of the education maintenance allowance, the trebling of tuition fees and now, for the poorest students, the removal of grants. The Government need to think really carefully about intergenerational inequality and the social contract between young people and the state. If the state no longer supports the aspirations and opportunities of the poorest students, the social contract will break down and we will all be poorer for it.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): Much of what I want to say has already been covered by Labour Members, but taking an overview it strikes me that we are going back to the 1980s. This Government, like all Conservative Governments, have picked up where they left off. There is an agenda here. They are using the deficit as an excuse, not a reason, to take the country backwards Much has been made of the 3 million apprenticeships the Government talk about creating, but not much has been said about cuts to further education. Some further education colleges may close, so those 3 million apprenticeships will be under threat because students will not be able to get the facilities they want I want to pick the Minister up on the point about his manifesto. He said this was part of the manifesto. We will give him the benefit of the doubt, but it did not say there would be cuts to university grants and it did not say there would be cuts to bursaries. That was the point the Minister seemed to skate over in his speech.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Christopher Paul Farrelly (Labour, Centre-left): Casting our minds back to over 10 years ago, the Labour Government capped fees at £3,000 and reintroduced maintenance grants. The third element was bursaries from universities. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should look very carefully at this direction of travel and ask the Minister to make it clear that bursaries are not the next target?
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. On the subject of bursaries, we had a debate last week about nurses. We have a shortage of nurses in the NHS, yet we are not doing much to encourage young people to enter the nursing profession. We are in danger of creating what was called the Thatcher generation—the lost generation—of the ’80s, because young people always seem to be at the butt end of the Government’s policies The regulations will affect the west midlands economy, whether the Government accept it or not. They have talked about the west midlands powerhouse, but that relies on highly skilled labour. They have boasted about Jaguar Land Rover being one of their successes, but it was the Labour Government who encouraged Tata to invest in Jaguar Land Rover. The latter is now short of highly skilled labour. The impact of the Government’s measures will result in a lost generation and, in the longer term, affect the British economy. We are going back to the rationing of education, which we put right when we entered office in 1997 I have the privilege, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), to represent two of finest universities in this country, if not the world; they are world-renowned. That can have an impact locally and around the country in encouraging students to study different disciplines. However, the measure before us will have a major impact on higher education and affect Coventry’s economy, the west midland’s economy and the national economy.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I agree wholeheartedly. In their cowardice the Government are treating with disdain the House and the students we are all sent here to represent. In spite of what the Minister says, there is absolutely no mention in the manifesto of cutting student grants. In fact, we would find Lord Lucan before we found any reference to cutting student grants, so they cannot hide behind a democratic mandate. As a student union president and president of the National Union of Students, I used to have arguments with previous Labour Governments—
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): That included arguments with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). But even with landslide majorities there was always a full debate and a vote in the House, whether they were abolishing student grants or, more wisely, reintroducing grants following the introduction of top-up fees This afternoon, these proposals will impact on 500,000 students from the poorest backgrounds. In my local university, the University of East London, that equates to about £30 million of financial support for students—gone. At my alma mater, the University of Cambridge, the figure is more like £9 million. If there is one thing we know about the higher education sector, it is that not only opportunity but financial support is unevenly distributed. It is completely unfair that students from the poorest backgrounds will now face a postcode lottery when it comes to determining how much non-repayable support they receive The very existence of student grants was won as a result of hard-fought negotiations. Student leaders argued that, if we were going to ask people to make a greater contribution, it was only fair that the poorest students received a non-repayable contribution. How must Conservative Members and the few remaining Liberal Democrats feel about the fact that when, under the coalition Government, the then higher education Minister justified the trebling of fees, they were told, "Don’t worry. We’ve got the national scholarship programme, student grants and the £21,000 threshold going up by inflation." What has happened since? The national scholarship programme has been abandoned; the threshold frozen at £21,000; and now we see the abolition of student grants. We cannot trust a word that these people say, particularly when it comes to fair access to higher education and support for the most disadvantaged. It is an absolute disgrace I am proud of what the last Labour Government did to widen access and opportunity to people from working-class backgrounds. I was one of the beneficiaries, from the excellence in cities work that was done in schools right through to the opportunities provided through expanded places.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): I remember the debate here in 2003, and I think it was to the credit of the Government of the day that the introduction of higher fees did not come in until after a general election, when at least the voters could make their judgment on whether they wanted to re-elect a Labour Government, which they duly did So much has been said about participation numbers this afternoon. I am certainly not going to make prophecies of doom about participation, but we should bear in mind a few facts. First, there is the issue of equity. How can it possibly be justified that students from the poorest backgrounds graduate with the largest amount of debt? How can it possibly be fair that under these repayment mechanisms, the wealthiest graduates who go on to the most successful jobs will end up paying less over the course of their working career than people from middle and lower incomes? That cannot possibly be justified as fair. We should take seriously the evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies published in 2014 showing that a £1,000 increase in the maintenance grant led to a 3.95% increase in participation. Removing the grant does not necessarily mean that participation will plummet, but I think there is a risk that it could suffer There is a huge amount of complacency from this Government about the impact of higher tuition fees on applications to part-time routes and for mature students. It does not have to be that way; other choices are possible. We should look at what the Labour Government in Wales have done. They have not chosen to abolish student grants; they have kept those grants in place If the Tories want to talk about hard choices, how are they going to look the poorest students from the poorest backgrounds in the eye and explain why this Government continue to alleviate the tax burden on the wealthiest, while making the poorest pay the cost of their higher education? A 75% contribution to the cost of higher education is, by anyone’s estimation, too much, and there is not a single item in the Conservative manifesto that Government Members can point to in order to justify this outrageous attack on the poorest students.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Elizabeth Anne McInnes (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, because I have been urged to do so by many students in my constituency. This is a matter of great interest to the general public, and the Government’s behaviour has been noticed by them, even if the Government themselves are still in denial The fact remains that the Chancellor’s replacement of maintenance grants with loans may dissuade many students from modest backgrounds from going to university, while none the less resulting in large sums never being paid back to the Treasury because graduates will go into what the Prime Minister described last week as "menial labour jobs". That point has not been addressed, although a number of Members have raised it Even with maintenance grants, which support students from the poorest backgrounds through university, the system remains stacked against working-class students. According to the education charity The Sutton Trust, students from wealthy backgrounds are 10 times more likely to secure a place at university than those from poorer backgrounds The Government have consulted about freezing the current student loan repayment threshold at £21,000 for five years. Martin Lewis, of moneysavingexpert.com, has pointed out that only 5% of the responses to the consultation were in favour of the proposal, while 84% were against it. He has written to the Prime Minister to ask why the Government have pressed ahead regardless with increasing the amount that our students must pay for their current student loans. In 2011, Martin Lewis was appointed head of the Independent Taskforce on Student Finance Information. Ministers told him unambiguously that, from April 2017, the £21,000 repayment threshold would start to rise annually with average earnings. The decision to backtrack on that is hugely damaging. It means that many lower and middle-earning graduates will repay thousands more over the life of their loans Martin Lewis says that this issue is just as much moral as legal. The retrospective change destroys trust in the student finance system, and perhaps even more widely in the political system as a whole. The Government seem remarkably relaxed about the fact that our poorest students will graduate with £53,000 worth of debt before they have even started work. What guarantee will the Government give that they will not move the goalposts for repayment of this loan as well There is a huge body of evidence to support student maintenance grants. I do not have time to go into all of them, but they are opposed by the University and College Union, which says: "Maintenance grants are crucial for engaging students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are already daunted by cripplingly high tuition fee debt. Increasing the debt burden…will act as a disincentive to participation".
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Rupa Asha Huq (Labour, Centre-left): Until my election in May, I had spent all my adult life in universities, from being the recipient of a full grant, with my fees entirely paid, in 1990 at Cambridge University to teaching at Kingston University until my election. I have also taught at a red-brick university. I contend that at all these categories of university—all seats of learning in this country—the student bodies will be poorer as a result of the abolition of grants, both socio-culturally and financially. The kind of students we are talking about in respect of this measure are not the "Brideshead Revisited" ones, they are not Neil from "The Young Ones" and they are not even Student Grant from Viz; they are people such as my constituents at the University of West London. They are people such as Josh Goddard, its student union president, who has been here since 1 o’clock today and who has told me that he is the first person in his family to go to university and he would not have done it without a maintenance grant. He said that he represents the students of the present but he also wants the students of the future all to have the chance to go to university. As well as the NUS, the Sutton Trust has condemned these changes, as they narrow the talent pool of who will be able to participate in higher education in the future I think of the students I taught at Kingston University—this was before the changes—who seemed often to be coming in between the burger-flipping shifts. The Conservative party puts great store by being the party of fiscal responsibility, but how does it reconcile that with saddling young people with £53,000 of debt? We have heard about the words of Martin Lewis, who was tasked with leading the taskforce in 2011. He is normally a financial man, and he is not a politician. He says: "The regulator would not allow any commercial lender to make a change to its terms this way." It is surely bad governance. We are dealing with a case of double standards here. These people signed up to one experience and even after they have signed their loan agreements they are seeing the goalposts moved The Minister has a lot of explaining to do. Where was this on page 35 of the Conservative manifesto? None of us has seen it in the small print. What will the transitional arrangements be? What happened to the review promised in 2014 for Muslim students who want sharia-compliant student finance, given that this measure is coming in now? As we know, this has been done with no proper debate. It is only because Labour Members have forced this debate today that we are discussing it at all. The Government want to shunt it through using their new favourite toy, the statutory instrument. If their sums are wrong, the books should not be balanced on the backs of students. We have seen that the NHS bursary for nurses has gone and the education maintenance allowance has been removed. If the Government have a shortfall, it should not be students who are taking on that burden.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): We have had a lively and extremely interesting debate, with contributions from 17 Back-Bench speakers, by my calculation. I will not mention them, because time is short as a result of the interest in the debate I have some sympathy for the Minister for Universities and Science, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), because we all know that the decision to scrap maintenance grants for the less well-off students in favour of loans was really made by the Chancellor and not by him. I know that he and the Chancellor are old friends—this goes back to the days when they were penniless students together, having to scrape by on their student grants and meagre Bullingdon club dinners—but I find it hard to believe that he went to his old friend the Chancellor and said, "Having been appointed as Universities Minister, I have suddenly decided that we were wrong to have maintenance grants for the less well-off students and it would be a great idea for the worse-off students to have the most debt after they have been to university." I might be wrong about the Minister, but he does not strike me—he has not until today—as the kind of person who would think it right to change the system so that, as the British Medical Association points out in its briefing for this debate, medical students from the poorest backgrounds could graduate with £100,000 of debt. Nor does he strike me as the kind of person who thinks that it is all right to go back on promises made by Tory Ministers when the new system was introduced. It was David Willetts after all who said that the tuition fees increase was progressive precisely because of the higher education maintenance grant. That was the argument made. The Minister does not strike me as the kind of politician who would cynically pursue policies that penalise younger people who are less likely to vote Tory, or even to vote at all, than others Despite what was said today about page 35 of the Tory party manifesto, I do not think that the Minister for Universities and Science would think it was really okay to carry out this kind of major change of policy direction without explicitly putting it into the party’s manifesto, so that the public, including young people, could see what they were voting for or against. Is he really the kind of politician who, having done all this, would then slink away from debating such a major change openly and properly on the Floor of the House in Government time? I may be wrong, but I never thought that he was that kind of politician, or that he was that cynical.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman told us in his speech how hard he has worked. Given that he is from Cardiff and that he has such an accent, I can absolutely acknowledge that he is a very hard-working individual. He will know that a general election was fought following that decision being taken and before they were introduced We all know that the Chancellor prefers governing from the shadows, and this shameless betrayal of previous promises and the shabby manner in which this has been handled in Parliament bear all the hallmarks of the current Chancellor of the Exchequer. Being young in Britain should be a time of opportunity—a time when opportunity knocks. Instead, we have the Chancellor introducing an opportunity tax. His proposals are an assault on aspiration, on opportunity and on those who want to get on in life. That is why we oppose them and also why the Welsh Government, under Labour First Minister, Carwyn Jones, is keeping maintenance grants. By the way, those who say that these proposals affect only England should think again—I say this to Welsh Conservative MPs as well: of the 30,000 students studying at Cardiff University, nearly 9,000 are from England.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): I would have been happy for the hon. Gentleman to intervene. Actually, I was asked about student loans, not tuition fees Students in constituencies such as Cardiff North are registered to vote in Wales, but, subject to the decisions that will be taken after this debate, local Welsh MPs can have their votes nullified under the constitutional monstrosity that is the English votes for English laws procedure, which the Government have foisted on this House Who will be affected by these measures today? This is what the IFS says: "The poorest 40% of students going to university in England will now graduate with debts of up to £53,000 from a three-year course, rather than up to £40,500. This will result from the replacement of maintenance grants" Of course, as I just pointed out, it is about not just students going to university in England but students who are attending university and who are registered to vote in Wales, a thought that will not be lost on students in Cardiff North during next May’s Assembly elections.
Student Maintenance Grants — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Education
Kevin Denis Brennan (Labour, Centre-left): I am happy to acknowledge that It is not as if this policy will save that much for the public finances in the long run, despite the claims made by the Government. The IFS says that the replacement of maintenance grants by loans from 2016-17 will raise debt for the poorer students but do little to improve the Government’s finances in the long run. The truth is that the Chancellor is fixing the figures, not the roof I am pretty sure that I would never have gone to university had no maintenance grant been available, let alone have been the first from my family and from my comprehensive school to go to university and to go to Oxford. There are many others in this place for whom something similar is also true. The Government must accept that that is still the case for many thousands of young people. Indeed, that is why, as David Willetts said, maintenance grants were part of the structure when fees were tripled to £9,000 per annum under the previous Tory-led Government The decision is mean in spirit and underhand in execution. It will be tragic in its consequences for many young people, and I urge the House to reject it by supporting our motion.
Cost of Public Transport — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Transportation
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House believes that the rising cost of public transport is adding to the financial pressures facing many households; notes that over 2,400 local authority-supported bus routes have been cut or downgraded since 2010; regrets that bus fares have risen by 26 per cent on average and regulated rail fares have risen by up to 38 per cent since 2010; further regrets delays to rail infrastructure projects including the electrification of the Great Western Main Line, the North TransPennine route and the Midland Main Line; notes with regret the decision by the Scottish Government to award the ScotRail franchise to a private operator, rather than exploring alternative options; calls on the Government to bring forward a buses bill as announced in the Queen’s Speech to enable the regulation of local bus networks; and further calls on the Government to rule out the privatisation of Network Rail and instead extend to franchised services the model of rail public ownership that delivered record passenger satisfaction scores on the East Coast Main Line I start by wishing the Secretary of State a happy new year, although that will not have been the sentiment that came to most commuters’ minds when they returned to work a fortnight ago. I am afraid it will have been cold comfort to be told by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), on the day that fares rose again, that the Government’s plan for passengers was to improve journeys for everyone. The chief executive of Transport Focus gave a more accurate assessment: "In some parts of the country, given rail performance has been so dire, passengers will be amazed there are any fare rises at all." Hon. Members who attended the Southern Railway summit in this place yesterday, and most travellers, would not be able to reconcile the Minister’s statement with their own experience of increasingly overcrowded and unreliable carriages.
Cost of Public Transport — House of Commons, 2016-01-19
Topic: Transportation
Chuka Harrison Umunna (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that Members on both sides of the House are fed up with excuse after excuse and broken promise after broken promise from Southern rail, and that what we now want to see is action taken against this operator?