Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

There will be opportunities through V-levels for those interested in vocational routes into the creative industries. There will be opportunities through some of the sector skills packages—not least, for example, in the area of digital—to support the creative industries. There is, of course, a sector skills plan as part of the creative industries element of the Government’s industrial strategy.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I particularly welcome the increase in fees for students, as that sets the resources available for the education of students without affecting the monthly repayments that graduates subsequently make. However, the international student levy will take away quite a bit of that resource, so does the Minister agree that the real resource available for educating students overall will continue to fall? Does she accept that that cannot carry on indefinitely?

I also welcome the recognition in the White Paper that there is no viable alternative to the fees and loans system that we have now had for over 20 years. But is the Minister concerned that there are still misunderstandings and misplaced anxieties that it is somehow a fixed amount of debt like a credit card debt or stops you getting a mortgage? If anything, those concerns appear to be increasing. Will the DfE energetically commit to explaining to young people the realities of how the system works?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

On the noble Lord’s first point, no, I do not accept that an index-linked increase in tuition fees—a certainty of funding that no other public or private sector organisations, or very few, could have committed to them—will leave universities worse off. That is notwithstanding this Government’s decision that in order to reinstate the maintenance grants removed by the last Government we will use a levy on international students to reintroduce targeted maintenance grants for students. Of course, asking students to invest in their education is right, alongside government investment, but we need to make sure that that world-leading higher education system is open to all who can benefit from it and that we close the gap in access, which has persisted for too long.