My hon. Friend is absolutely right to bring us back to the nub of the issue, which is the family circumstances of the people affected.
In those blithe phrases from the equality assessment lurks the potential for hundreds of broken careers and dashed hopes of social mobility. As serious is the reputational damage that failed challenger institutions or scandals associated with them could do to universities as a UK international brand. The Government’s White Paper was already blasé about the potential knock-on effects for UK plc of their sweeping changes. HE providers across England and the devolved nations of Britain are internationally competitive because they are seen as part of a tried and trusted UK brand. There needs to be a UK-wide strategy in place to safeguard that. As we emerge into a post-Brexit world, it will be even more vital, if we want our UK brand to shine as brightly as possible, that we reassure Scotland and Northern Ireland, especially where there remain unresolved tensions over research between UKRI and the new England-only bodies.
The Government say that the office for students will cover access and participation, but what concrete action there will be to match the rhetoric remains unseen. There remain major concerns about how quality assurance will be affected by the merger of the functions of HEFCE and the QAA. The Government have consistently undermined their own rhetoric on widening participation with cuts to ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—adult skills and social mobility funding for universities, alongside their disastrous decision to scrap maintenance grants for loans, for which we held them to account in this Chamber in January.
Peter Lampl and the Sutton Trust, who have championed that access for more than a decade, repeated their fears in their briefing on the Bill, including, specifically—this has been alluded to but the Secretary of State was unable to give an answer—the fact that English students have the highest level of debt in the English-speaking world. The figures are: £44,000 on graduation and over £50,000 for those requiring maintenance loans.