Higher Education (Basic Amount) (England) Regulations 2010

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

I wanted to complete my point about the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown. It is simply this. There is no question in my mind, and it is not a Dickensian point, that people who are in the lowest-income families do not set off to attract massive debt. There is a huge dissuasion in that. Anyone who has come up through one of those families or one of those areas will know it.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I completely share the noble Lord’s view about families with the poorest incomes, but why is it that his party—and, indeed, many of the demonstrators—consistently override the fact that the offer being made by the coalition would help those in the least well-off families by increasing the level at which they repay, by lengthening the period over which they repay and by recognising that they, including part-timers, should pay nothing up front? It is time that we had candour on both sides of this argument, not just on one.

[Lord Triesman]

I can only say to the noble Baroness, for whom I have genuinely huge respect, that the reality in those families is that they have to have confidence to believe that university is for them, despite the fact that there has often never been a history in those families of going to university. They have to believe that it will work for them and that they will not, through the rest of their lives, regret having made that change.