Higher Education Fees

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. We hear a lot about the respect agenda for the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but as far as I am aware there have been no such discussions. Members have argued that there needs to be far more discussion of the details of the scheme and its impact on other Administrations across the UK. That would have been another argument for supporting amendment (b), which was not selected, and it is therefore an argument for voting against the motion. I have one more point to make, which has not been made so far. Raising fees to the suggested level of £9,000 will make it easy for universities simply to take the easy way out. Rather than examine whether they deliver an efficient service and spend every pound well, they can simply pass the cost on to the consumer—in other words, the student. That will be unfair to students, but it will also go totally against what the Government say they want to do, which is to make public spending more efficient. For those reasons, we will oppose the motions. We believe that they could have been introduced in a much more consensual way, but that was not done. The Government will be poorer for that, and the whole system of higher education will suffer as a result.