Disabled Students Allowance

Debate between Andrew Smith and Lord Willetts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Willetts]

That is a separate issue. The graduate repayment system is a fair, sustainable and viable way of financing our universities, and it would be a mistake to try to reverse that.

I turn to some of the specific issues that have been raised. Let me say clearly to right hon. and hon. Members that we will fund non-medical help that would not be a reasonable adjustment for higher education institutions to make. We will define the obligations of the institutions, and on top of that there will be support for non-medical help, which in certain situations will include support for students with specific learning difficulties, as well as other groups. Hon. Members mentioned IT, and we will make a contribution to the costs of higher-cost and higher-specification computers in certain circumstances if they are required purely because of the student’s disability. We will pay the extra costs that arise from those computers being required by students with a disability, rather than have a general payment for laptops when they are now widespread across society. We will also cover additional costs of specialist accommodation in exceptional circumstances.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

Have the Minister and the Government looked into the implications more widely, beyond higher education, of the Government making such a definition of what is a reasonable adjustment by universities? Is there not a real risk that others will cite that definition and say that anything that goes beyond it is not a reasonable adjustment for them, thereby denying disabled people in other areas too?

[Mr Willetts]

That will be the last intervention that I take, because time is tight.

We are consulting, and we will produce guidance that will help make the crucial distinction between what institutions can legitimately be expected to do and where individual funding is required.

We are talking about education, and I want to come back to that, because several Members raised the topic. It is a distinct responsibility. We are consulting, and we will continue to meet a whole range of groups representing disabled people. We have already discussed the policy changes with, for example, the National Union of Students, Universities UK and the Office for Fair Access, and there will be many further such meetings in the future.

Institutions will be expected to have reasonable adjustments in place by September 2015. We believe that the time scales provide sufficient time for us to work with institutions and stakeholders to ensure that changes are introduced effectively, but I understand that some institutions are concerned that they will be disproportionately affected due to their high numbers of disabled students. Several Members have made that point, which will be considered before guidance is issued to the sector in the autumn. The guidance will help institutions understand better the role that DSA will play, enabling them to consider the support they will need to provide. We will also provide regular updates for the HE sector over the coming months.

Student information and guidance, which will include information on DSA changes as well as on the wider student support package, will be available in September in the normal way. Once we conclude our consultation meetings, we will be in a position to issue draft guidance in early autumn on what DSA will cover. That guidance will benefit higher education institutions and assessment centres in particular. Stakeholders will have the chance to review it and ensure that it is sufficiently clear and understandable before it goes live. I undertake to lay the relevant regulations at that time, which will allow Members to see the regulations and the draft guidance in parallel. Before adopting either, the Government will continue to have due regard to the impact of the changes on the aims set out in the Equality Act 2010. We will publish our analysis on that at the same time.

A point was raised about existing students and DSA students beginning university in 2014-15. They will remain on the current arrangements in 2015-16. I have already announced that the maximum available DSA amounts will not be changing. We are not adopting a blunt approach to the provision of non-medical help. We realise that non-medical help will be the responsibility of higher education institutions, but we recognise that in certain areas, perhaps as a result of the impact or severity of a disability, DSA has an additional role to play once reasonable adjustment has been made. In the case of complex needs, we will assess the severity of the impact on the education of the student. It will not be a simple physical assessment of their disability; it will be an assessment of how the disability challenges they face affect their ability to benefit from higher education. That is the assessment that has to be made. We will focus on the educational impact and the severity of their educational needs. I would also like to—[Interruption.]

Higher and Further Education

Debate between Andrew Smith and Lord Willetts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I did not recognise what the hon. Lady said about fees of £7,500. I have explained to the House many times the basis of the calculations. We introduced the policy to bring more diversity into the system. There are local further education colleges across the country that, for the first time, will be able to offer higher education, financed out of our core and margin policy, which is to be welcomed.

We have therefore increased choice and flexibility. We have also transformed the amount of information that is available for prospective students, which we believe will drive up standards in universities as prospective students think about what contact hours they will have, what the class sizes will be, how universities score on the national students survey and, crucially, how universities score on employment outcomes for graduates.

Indeed, this morning, I joined Which? at a London comprehensive for the launch of its excellent new website, which offers far more information to prospective students than ever before. It was a great moment. It was also a pleasure to be joined by the president of the National Union of Students. The NUS is working with Which? to provide better consumer information for prospective students.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

If the information that the Minister is giving out is so good, why are withdrawals from the application process up by 16%? Does that not show that the more information people get about the costs that the Government have imposed, the more they are put off?

[Mr Willetts]

No. I think that we have succeeded in getting across to prospective students the important message that they do not have to pay up front to go to university. I hope that all Members from all parts of the House, regardless of their views on the fees, will agree that we should all communicate the message that no student pays up front and that they pay back only as graduates. I pay tribute to the enormous efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) in that regard.

Higher Education Policy

Debate between Andrew Smith and Lord Willetts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We look forward to the report that Ian Diamond is preparing on precisely how we can improve efficiency in our universities.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Willetts]

No, I am going to make some progress because Members in all parts of the House wish to speak and I have a lot more ground to cover.

We have not only taken on Lord Browne’s proposals in the report commissioned by the previous Government as their way of reforming the finances of our education system, but tried to improve on those proposals. The crucial way in which we have done that is by improving the repayment terms for graduates. A very important feature of the new system is that instead of the repayment threshold of £15,000 that was left to us by the previous Government, we propose a threshold of £21,000. The only way in which people pay for higher education is as graduates repaying their loans, so the level of threshold and the amount of the repayment that they make is crucial. Under our scheme, a care worker graduating in 2016 with a £20,000 starting salary would repay nothing. Under Labour’s £15,000 repayment threshold, that care worker would have been repaying £37.50 a month. Under our scheme, an accountant graduating in 2016 with a £25,000 starting salary would repay £30 a month. If the repayment threshold had remained at £15,000, that accountant would have been repaying £75 a month.

The crucial figure that matters for young people thinking about the cost of their higher education is how much they will have to repay. Under our scheme, their monthly repayments will be significantly lower. That is why the Secretary of State and I are confident that these reforms are the right way forward and are genuinely progressive. We are discharging our obligation to future generations in exactly the way the shadow Secretary of State set out at the beginning of his speech. That is the crucial challenge and we believe that our reforms rise to it.

That is not just my view or that of the Secretary of State, but the view of bodies that have scrutinised our financing proposals. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that

“the Government’s proposals are more progressive than the current system or that proposed by Lord Browne.”

The OECD endorsed the coalition’s policy:

“The increase in the tuition fee ceiling is reasonable and should pave the way for higher participation in tertiary education”.

Higher Education Funding

Debate between Andrew Smith and Lord Willetts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I do remember my visit to the university of Reading, which is a very impressive university. One of the chapters in Lord Browne’s report tackles the crucial question of how we can have greater freedom and flexibility in the regime on student numbers. Our proposals today do not directly touch on that, but it is one of the issues that we want to tackle as we put forward our long-term response to Lord Browne. Our belief is in greater freedom and flexibility for individual universities.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

Does the Minister understand that this is fundamentally about trust in politics and will he confirm that all his key proposals, including the huge cuts in teaching funding, will be subject to a vote in this House so that those on the Government Benches—including the Business Secretary—who are so shamefully breaking their promises can be held to account?

[Mr Willetts]

I thought that my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary, in his statement on 12 October, set out very powerfully the reasons why we offered this broad endorsement of Lord Browne’s proposals. We are of course bound by the coalition agreement and we believe that these proposals meet the criteria set out in the coalition agreement. Of course there will be an opportunity for the House of Commons to vote on them.