Scotland Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Stephen, made an important point in his speech which I do not think is appreciated. We have been using the term fees but there are two issues here: one is fees and the other is the teaching grant. The fees have been of the order of £1,800 per head; the teaching grant has been £5,800. I understand the noble Lord's problem in that he feels that his colleagues may have played a part, but when the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, and his Labour colleagues decided on this, the issue was the fees of £1,800. The £5,800 per place taken by rest of UK students has been paid every year up until now. It is only next year that that money is being taken away. That is the £28 million that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is discussing. The Scottish Government have changed the position and the numbers are very much larger. They have used opportunistically the position where students are going to have to pay high fees in England to turn the rest of the UK students into a cash cow for the universities. That is where the change has occurred and why my noble friend Lord Steel says it has got much worse.