The Secretary of State for Education (Justine Greening)
Today’s debate is about student finance—an issue on which, as we have just seen, the Opposition put rhetoric ahead of results, spin ahead of substance, and self-interest ahead of students. As we have just heard reconfirmed, Labour’s policy is to have no tuition fees, but no fees means fewer students at worse universities. Labour’s policy is an anti-social mobility policy writ large. It is a disgrace.
Let me talk about how far we have come in recent years. We have made extraordinary strides in higher education since the Government took office. More people are at university than ever before, including record numbers of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. That is not a hypothesis but a simple fact. In 2016, disadvantaged 18-year-olds were 43% more likely to go to university than in 2009.
Several hon. Members rose—
Justine Greening
I am happy to take an intervention from anyone on the Opposition Benches who thinks that is a bad thing and wants to justify not continuing with a policy that has led to more disadvantaged young people going to university.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Over the summer I received a heartbreaking email from a young lady who was a student at Keele University in Newcastle-under-Lyme:
“Starting in September both my brother and I will be hoping to go off to university…My parents are having great difficulty trying to work out how they are going to support both of us and have suggested that I drop out of university as they can only support one of us financially. Last year I got the minimum loan from student finance and will be getting the minimum loan again”.
I ask the Secretary of State to consider that this is not just about rising tuition fees or turning maintenance grants into loans, but costs and support for students, in particular for what some people like to call the squeezed middle. Is it not time that the Government looked at this seriously, in the round, for the sake of students from all families in the country?
Justine Greening
First of all, there has never been more funding available to enable students to go to university. Secondly, the facts simply do not bear out the hon. Gentleman’s point. If what he says is correct, we would see fewer and fewer students going to university, but the exact opposite has happened. [Interruption.] We can hear Labour Members’ faux anger about how much debt students have, but the bottom line is that they do not want to even engage with the fact that there have never been more young people getting the opportunity to go to university. I was the first person in my family to get the chance to go to university. If Labour ever has the chance to bring in its policy there will be fewer people from backgrounds like mine who will have the chance to go to university. That is a statistical fact.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Justine Greening
Let me just make some progress and I will give way to my right hon. Friend in a second.
What would a policy of no fees mean? It would mean an emergency cap on student numbers, going back to the days when we had to limit the number of young people who went to university. That is because if we are not willing to fund the system, there can be fewer people in it. It has to be paid for.
Sir Desmond Swayne
I recently returned to my alma mater in Scotland, some 30 years after leaving. I was surprised to discover that Scottish students were capped at 20% of the student body. It is a disadvantage for all students if there are no fees, because universities cannot afford to educate them.
Justine Greening
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are two groups of people who miss out in Scotland. We know what no fees would mean; we only have to look north of the border. In the interests of evidence-based policy, I encourage Labour Members and the Labour party to actually look at the impact of what they are proposing. Go to Scotland. See whether disadvantaged young people from the poorest families have more or less chance to go university in a country where there are no fees. They have less chance. In fact, young people overall have less chance of going to university in Scotland. I am not putting some kind of hypothesis before the House; this is a simple fact. It is a consequence of the Labour party policy of no fees.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Justine Greening
I will give way to the hon. Lady. Unlike Labour Members, I am quite happy to take interventions.
Emma Hardy
In the interests of providing evidence and discussing evidence-based education policy, which I am very keen to do, I have to ask the right hon. Lady whether she agrees that we have seen a reduction in the number of part-time students attending university and a reduction in the number of mature students. Part-time and mature students predominantly come from more economically deprived backgrounds, so they are missing out on their chance to attend university.
Justine Greening
I am pleased the hon. Lady accepts that there are more young people going to university. A number of different factors are involved when it comes to mature students. We will be providing more support for mature students, but part of the decline is due to the fact that more young people are going to university in the first place, so there is simply a smaller cohort of mature students.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend please never cease to remind people, as there is sometimes a risk that we are losing the PR war on this, that we are doing more for disadvantaged students, courtesy of the tuition fees—in particularly with the element of support above £6,000—than many previous Governments? That is why south of the border participation rates by poorer students, relative to students as a whole, are so much higher than they are in the north. We need to keep drilling that message home, because it is one of the best aspects of tuition fees.
Justine Greening
My hon. Friend has made the point brilliantly, and of course it is not just about making sure that university is open to young people from disadvantaged families—although it is about that too; actually there is much greater diversity among the young people now able to get to university for the first time, particularly among black, Asian and minority ethnic groups across our country. That is something that we should welcome and be proud of. Moreover, through the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, we are doing more to ensure that once people get to university they stay and complete their courses.
I want to finish my point about Scotland. In that country, which has no fees, as Labour is proposing for England, there are fewer young people going to university. Research by the Sutton Trust found that last year in Scotland the gap between the number of people from the most and least advantaged areas going to university was the highest of any of the home nations of the UK. Disadvantaged young people are less likely to go to university in Scotland than they are here. Labour cannot want to see that happen here, yet under its policy the better-off would still go to university and the worse-off would lose out.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Is it not worse than that? Under Labour, upon leaving university and entering the world of work, people will have fewer job opportunities because when Labour wrecks the economy, much of the recent job growth will be obliterated.
Justine Greening
Of course my hon. Friend is absolutely right. The last Labour Government left youth unemployment 30% to 50% higher than when they came in. The ultimate opportunity destroyer in our country is a Labour Government running our economy.
I shall add a further reason why disadvantaged young people would lose out under Labour’s policy: who would pay for those people who did get to university to go to university? It would be some of those disadvantaged young people who had missed out, it would be their families, it would be pensioners—we would all be paying for the cohort of young people most likely to become higher-rate taxpayers to get a degree.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I think what most of us taking part in this debate want is the right balance. I was the Chair of the Education and Skills Select Committee when we introduced the £3,000 fees, and the balance then was between what the employers paid, what the individual who benefited paid, what the taxpayer paid and the good to the community. The problem is that the cost has been ratcheted up to £9,000 with an unacceptable level of interest. Is it not time we had some moderation and a balance that is fair to students?
Justine Greening
The hon. Gentleman should direct that question to his own Front-Bench team. It is they who are proposing a policy of zero balance by saying we should go from our current structure to no tuition fees at all. As I have said, the big losers would be the most disadvantaged young people in our country. Labour has proposed a policy for the moneyed, not the few. Whereas no cap on students means more students in England, no fees means fewer students. As we know from Scotland, no fees also harms quality, because it means a return to the past for our universities—a past that saw them starved of cash.
Justine Greening
I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again.
In the decades before tuition fees, per-student funding plummeted by 40%. When Labour first introduced fees, it was against a backdrop of an underfunded higher education system.There was a chorus of voices clamouring for change so that we could ensure that our world-class universities could have the funds that they needed.
We now have the highest GDP spending per student in the OECD. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that the 2010 reforms increased the resources being invested in our students by universities by 25% in real terms since 2012. That is why the OECD says that our system is sustainable, unlike the unsustainable, underfunded university systems that we see on the continent. I had a chance to discuss the issue with Andreas Schleicher yesterday, and he made that very point.
Several hon. Members rose—
Justine Greening
I give way to the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood).
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
We already know that 75% of students will not pay back their loans, or will not be able to do so. How can the Secretary of State say that the system is sustainable? And what about the young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who increasingly drop out of university because they cannot afford to stay? Is not the removal of maintenance grants part of what is disadvantaging those young people, and they cannot maintain their places at university even if they are fortunate enough to win one?
Justine Greening
The facts simply do not support the point that the hon. Lady has made. The facts are that more disadvantaged young people are making the decision to go to university, which I think is hugely welcomed and hugely important.
If Labour is able to pursue its catastrophic policy, our higher education system will be much more broadly at risk. It will not be just a case of students missing out. We have universities that are among the best in the world, but being the best in the world requires continued investment, and a no-fees policy would undo all that success. Funds for universities would dry up, and within a few years there would be a big funding crisis all over again.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State did not actually address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood). What is she going to do about the fact that drop-out rates among disadvantaged young students have gone up, what is she going to do about the fact that part-time and mature applications are in free fall, and what is she going to do about the fact that students are increasingly struggling with maintenance costs? Her statement reeks of complacency; perhaps she will address the challenges ahead.
Justine Greening
Complacency is pushing ahead with a policy that we know will mean fewer disadvantaged young people going to university. As for the hon. Gentleman’s question about drop-out rates, they are lower now than they were in 2009-10, so there has been progress. However, he is right to say that we should continue to work on that issue and make progress. He will welcome the fact that the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 amends the Office for Students so that, as I have said, it focuses increasingly not just on access to universities but, critically, on participation and ensuring that young people finish the degree courses on which they embark.
I was talking about just how catastrophic Labour’s policy would be for continued funding for universities, which would simply dry up. Our world-class universities would wither on the vine. No fees—which is what Labour wants—would mean fewer students, in worse-funded universities. I think it is now time for Labour to admit that it will have to cap student numbers as well.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Let me take the Secretary of State back to her earlier point about the sustainability of funding. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), we know that 75% of students will not pay back their loans, and that all the Government are doing is saddling a future Government with having to pay off the huge debt that will remain unpaid, which will place a burden on the young people who have that debt now. The funding is not sustainable in any way. When will the Secretary of State address that?
Justine Greening
Our approach means that students make a time-limited contribution, and that the students who are earning the most pay the most. That is how the system works. The bottom line is that if the Labour party is saying that we should have no fees and that this system does not work, and people getting degrees should not have to pay for them, the only way to avoid this outcome is, presumably, although I would welcome any clarification from the Opposition, to place a huge burden on everyone else—on the majority of people who never went to university.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has referred to the policy of no fees quite a few times now. Can she confirm that in 2005 she stood on a manifesto commitment—and campaigned and won her seat—on precisely that policy of no fees?
Justine Greening
The hon. Lady just needs to travel down the M4 to Wales to see her own party having two policies simultaneously on the same issue. I will take absolutely no lectures from the Labour party.
Several hon. Members rose—
Justine Greening
I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) and then make some progress.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the estimated cost of cancelling tuition fees and writing off debt will be £100 billion, a price to be paid by all taxpayers, many of whom will not have gone to university, and many of whom will not be earning as much as the graduates who benefit from that? Does she think that that is fair?
Justine Greening
Actually, we do not, but the Labour party clearly does. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is very unseemly gesticulation and what I can only describe as noisy chuntering from a sedentary position on both sides of the Chamber; chuntering from one side and what I will call eccentric gesticulation on the other. I do not wish to be the umpire as to which is the less desirable of these two undesirable behaviours.
Justine Greening
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I did not see the gesticulating, but am pleased that you are on top of keeping the House in order.
What we are having here now is a real debate, because I am prepared to take interventions from Labour Members and to engage in a debate. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) took just one, or perhaps two, interventions from Conservative Members.
Several hon. Members rose—
Justine Greening
I will give way. Come on! The more the merrier, frankly. We know what our policy is. Labour’s policy is utterly flawed.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for taking interventions. She is making a very spirited—albeit, in my opinion, flawed—argument that somehow because tuition fees went up at the same as time student numbers went up, one is linked to the other. How does she square that interpretation of the facts with the situation in my constituency, which has a nursing school where the conversion from bursary to tuition fees has seen a reduction in numbers of 33%, and nationally it has fallen by a quarter? If the Secretary of State is correct, surely the increase in tuition fees for nurses should have led to the number of applications skyrocketing?
Justine Greening
The hon. Gentleman is trying to make a case that is fundamentally flawed. He is desperately scrabbling around, trying to find some alternative facts to cover up, with a little fact fig leaf, the reality that more disadvantaged young people are going to university, and more young people are going to university.
Several hon. Members rose—
Justine Greening
I am now going to make some progress, as I have allowed Opposition Members to make enough interventions, but none of them has any alternative facts of any real worth.
I want to conclude by saying that the only other way to maintain the £12 billion a year investment is for taxpayers to foot the bill under Labour’s policy. They would ask us taxpayers to pay £12 billion now and even more in the future. Indeed, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that even those sums were not right: it said there was a £2 billion black hole in Labour’s spending plans. Of course, that would mean immediate cuts—the equivalent of 40,000 lecturers losing their jobs and 160,000 students without a university place because of this black hole. Indeed, the cap on numbers would mean universities taking fewer students and closing courses. Some institutions would even become unviable. It would be the equivalent of closing several Russell Group universities.
I have to ask whether Labour Members really mean to have this policy. Have they understood the impact it would have? It has been confused and unclear at every turn, and most of all we have seen confusion over what they plan to do about the existing stock of student debt, which amounts to more than £100 billion, or 5% of GDP.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
Earlier, the Secretary of State tantalisingly referred to the situation in Wales. Might it help Opposition Members if she were to explain exactly what is going on in Wales with regard to tuition fees?
Justine Greening
The Labour party is increasing them. It is doing the very thing that Labour Members are expressing faux anger at in the Chamber today. I will come on to that in a second, because I have not quite finished—
Justine Greening
No thank you. I have taken lots of interventions.
During the election, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said that he would “deal with” student debt. I think he meant that taxpayers would deal with it. Then he ditched that promise after the election. It was snake oil populism at its worst. I have to say, however, that this debate represents a new low in Labour’s integrity-free politics. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne stands here today and opposes a fee increase in line with inflation, yet this is a core part of the fee regime that Labour put in place in 2004. Frankly, it is laughable that they are trying to be taken seriously on this. It is also an insult to everyone’s intelligence.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
The Leader of the Opposition reneged on his clear pledge to deal with historic debt. Does the Secretary of State agree that that policy would have meant graduates repaying not only their own debt but the future debts of others?
Justine Greening
Indeed. The Labour party has a confused, muddled, counterproductive and anti-social mobility policy on student fees and student debt that would put at risk much of our higher education sector. It would be absolutely disastrous.
The bottom line is that, even now, across the border in Wales, the Labour colleagues of the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne are implementing the very increases, in line with inflation, that she is opposing here today. That shows a level of hypocrisy that is becoming a hallmark of the current Labour Front Bench. The bottom line is that they are in—[Interruption.] I am taking no lectures from the hon. Lady about taking interventions when she was scared to take more than two. The bottom line is that Labour’s student finance policy is a cold, calculating con trick on young people. It is shameless politics.
I have three serious questions for the Opposition on the policy of no fees, and they are questions that they need to answer. How many of the poorest children in this country are they going to prevent from going to university under that policy? How many world-class universities will shut down because they run out of money? If highly paid graduates do not have to pay to go to university to get their degrees, who is going to pay the bill? Those questions have never been answered. The Opposition have no answers, because having a sensible approach that has the best interests of students, universities and taxpayers at its heart is not their objective, is it? Driving social mobility is not Labour’s objective. Enabling more disadvantaged young people to go to university is not their objective. Properly funded universities are not their objective. It is just a cynical con trick. That is Labour’s objective. Far from Labour being the friend of students and universities, its policy would destroy opportunity and destroy our world-class universities. This House should see straight through it. Frankly, the motion is not even worth the paper it is written on.
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Joseph Johnson)
We have heard many excellent speeches this afternoon, particularly a splendid maiden speech by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill). That she is the first Sikh woman MP, and that she represents the constituency in which her father once drove the number 11 bus, is a powerful demonstration of the social mobility that all Members of this House want actively to promote. That theme of social mobility goes to the heart of this debate.
The Government aim to achieve an outstanding system of higher education that is open to all who have ability to learn and to benefit from it, and one that is fair to those taxpayers who do not directly benefit from higher education yet who are asked to contribute to its costs.
Going to university, as we have heard from many Members this afternoon, is a truly transformational step for young people, which is why this Government are truly proud of our record on increasing participation in higher education. We are ensuring that more people from disadvantaged backgrounds can share in those life-changing benefits than ever before. The entry rates of young people, including the disadvantaged, have reached record levels. Those are the foundations for improving social mobility, and the Government are committed to continuing that positive trend.
The regulations that the Labour party seeks to oppose are essential to the financial sustainability of our universities. They will help our universities deal with the erosion of their fee income brought about by inflation. Fees have been frozen in cash terms since 2012 and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) said, £9,000 in 2012 will be worth just £8,000 in 2020. Clearly fees cannot be frozen forever. We cannot come back here in 10 or 15 years’ time with fees still frozen at the current rate, not if we want a sustainable university sector that delivers on social mobility and other economic outcomes.
Indeed, the principle of preserving the real-terms value of university fees was central to the fee regime that the Labour party introduced in 2004, which allowed for regular increases to keep pace with inflation. This Government remain committed to a funding system that provides a fair deal to students while ensuring that universities are sustainably and properly financed, which is why, under these regulations, we are allowing providers to maintain their fees in line with inflation only if they can demonstrate that they are providing high-quality teaching and student outcomes. We are therefore imposing a higher standard and a greater degree of conditionality on universities than the Labour party put in place more than a decade ago.
Wes Streeting
If everything is so bright and rosy, why have we had an entire summer of parents and students complaining about fees going up when they have not had a better service? They are concerned that, although the Minister argues that inflation has kept funding down, vice-chancellors’ pay has rocketed. How can we shake him out of that complacency?
Joseph Johnson
We are determined to secure good value for money for students and taxpayers who are investing in the system. That has been at the heart of our reforms. As the hon. Gentleman knows from being a dedicated member of Committees that have scrutinised our reforms in various ways, we are securing the value for money that will ensure that students and taxpayers feel the system is delivering for them and for their needs.
The sector has made it clear that an inflation-linked fee cap is essential for our universities to maintain and improve on their current high standards and to prosper in the long term. Gordon McKenzie, the chief executive of GuildHE, made that clear recently when he said that
“fees had to rise by inflation at some point and it was fairer for students if those rises were linked to an assessment of quality.”
The Government’s policy is that fee caps should be linked to the quality of teaching, as we are doing in these regulations, and it is counter to Government policy for fee caps to rise in any other circumstances.
Wendy Morton
As the Minister will be aware, the OECD has said that the UK is
“one of the very few countries that has figured out a sustainable approach to higher education financing”.
Does he agree that Labour’s approach risks undermining that sustainability?
Joseph Johnson
Yes, I certainly do. To see that, we only need see what the OECD said yesterday in its latest report on global education systems. Andreas Schleicher, its eminent director, once again gave a ringing endorsement of the sustainability of our higher education system and pointed out that the way we have been successful in sharing the costs of funding the system between individual students and the general taxpayer has enabled us to meet rising demand for higher education and to lift the student number controls, which have been holding back young people from disadvantaged backgrounds for so long.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way—he has more courtesy than the Secretary of State. I am not arguing with what he is saying, but I wish briefly to talk about the Welsh system. What the Government are ignoring is the grant system the Welsh Government are introducing. It is a shame the Secretary of State could not have taken my intervention—I think this was something to do with being cowardly and ignoring the statement of what the Welsh Government are doing.
Joseph Johnson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue of the Welsh model. Interestingly, it is a Labour Government in Wales who now have the highest tuition fees of any part of the United Kingdom; the Welsh Government will be having fees in the next academic year of almost £9,300, as compared with the £9,250 we are proposing. He mentioned grants, so let us turn to that issue. The cost of mapping over the Welsh system to England would be more than £5 billion, so I challenge Labour Members to say exactly where they are going to find that extra £5 billion, on top of the £12 billion they are already going to be spending to abolish tuition fees and the £100 billion they are going to need to find to wipe off the student debt. So let us perhaps not hear any more about the Welsh model.
Let us turn to widening participation, which has been one of the signal achievements of our reforms. Alongside incentivising improvements in teaching, the Government’s policies on student fees have allowed us to lift the student number cap, which is allowing more people than ever to benefit from a university education. The Leader of the Opposition, who has just joined us, stated in July:
“Fewer working-class young people are applying to university.”
I invite him to intervene if he wants to stick by that statement. Apparently, he does not. It was outrageous and false, and it is a disgrace that he has not corrected himself. In 2016, disadvantaged 18-year-olds were 43% more likely to go to university than they were in 2009 and they were 52% more likely to go to a high-tariff university. So his suggestion that young people are being held back if they are from disadvantaged backgrounds is patently untrue. The latest provisional data for 2017 show that the entry rate for disadvantaged 18-year-olds has increased again, to 20%, a new record high—
Joseph Johnson
The Leader of the Opposition asks about drop-out rates, so he will be interested to know that across all categories—young, mature, disadvantaged, and black and minority ethnic—those are lower now than they were in 2009 and 2010. He should look at the statistics before he challenges the Government’s record on widening the participation and attainment of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Labour’s proposal to remove fees—
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question put accordingly.
Question agreed to.
Wes Streeting
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier this week, I raised a point of order, because I believed that in Education questions the shadow Minister of State, Department for Education, the right hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who is present in the Chamber, made an inaccurate statement—
Wes Streeting
Excuse me; it was wishful thinking. In response to my question in Education questions, the Minister of State made what I believe to be a factually inaccurate, possibly inadvertently misleading statement, when she said that Learndirect would no longer be providing apprenticeships. The following day, I rather forensically set out that that was not the case. As she is present, perhaps she might take this opportunity to correct the record and give us some reassurance that Ministers have an idea about what they are doing.