Higher Education Fees

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) on an excellent speech, in contrast to what we have just heard from the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett). May I bring the House back to the reasons why we changed the funding system for higher education in 1997-98? As my right hon. Friend said, there had been a 36% drop in funding per student over the previous eight years. There had also been an eight-year cap on the expansion of higher education, denying literally millions of young people the opportunity of higher education over that decade. We introduced a new system that almost immediately raised £1 billion—that was not instead of the resources that were already going in, but in addition to those—so that tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of young people with the qualifications to be able to enter higher education were able to do so. We introduced a contingent repayment system for the flat-rate loan for maintenance. We introduced a system of bursaries for maintenance called ““opportunity bursaries”” and a system in relation to the new fees that were being charged. It resulted not in 18,000 young people being exempt from the fee for one year or a maximum of two years, but in more than 40% of all young undergraduates being exempt from the fee and a further 30% having the fee in partial remittance. In other words, this was contingent on the income of the family, it took into account the ability to pay and it introduced a much fairer repayment system. All of it was designed to expand opportunity, to develop courses within the universities and, as my right hon. Friend said, to provide the opportunity to make our country the second destination in the world for students across the globe. I wish briefly to deal with social mobility. I know more about social mobility than most, because my whole life has been an example of it, from when I was on day release and attending evening classes to when I took the opportunity to get to university as a mature student. I am telling this House and, in particular, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg)— if he were here—that he knows nothing about social mobility. The Government are removing the education maintenance allowance from constituencies such as mine, which ranks third lowest in Britain on past access to higher education; removing the child trust fund, which would have given young people a nest egg at the age of 18 and provided them with the incentive to go on and the funds to be able to repay loans; removing the Aimhigher scheme; and rolling in the so-called pupil premium by cutting 2.25% from the schools budget and then giving it back in something that is a sop to the Liberal Democrats, but which will actually be perverse in its impact across the country. Introducing a £9,000 a year fee on top of cuts in youth and careers services across the country is a deliberate, consistent and unfair attack on young people in our country and their future. That is why it should be rejected. It is not fair to young people and their families, it is not fair to universities, and it is not fair to our country and the future of Britain in a knowledge economy. But this proposal is not necessary either because, as my right hon. Friend mentioned and as is clearly spelt out by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the borrowing that will be required to fund the loans in the first place will actually outstrip any gain that might have been made. Borrowing of £4.1 billion this year will increase to £10.7 billion in 2015-16, so far from helping us to tackle the deficit this adds to it. In other words, we are making the deficit worse in the period when we are supposed to be reducing it. If the Government are right and the economy recovers—God willing, it will—we will be able to sustain the £3 billion that is being removed from teaching, rather than remove it.