Tuition Fees

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

I shall give way in just a moment, but I want to make a little more progress.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Mr Denham]

I shall give way to my hon. Friend—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] He is an extremely distinguished education expert and he deserves to be heard.

[Mr Sheerman]

Has my right hon. Friend seen last week’s article by Sir Peter Lampl in The Times? He is a man who has done more for higher education than almost anyone in this country and who is totally unbiased in his politics, and he describes this double hammer blow to higher education as a disaster in a sector where we were world leaders.

[Mr Denham]

I did see Sir Peter Lampl’s article in The Times. It was a devastating critique of what is being proposed and it is all the more significant coming from somebody who supported the Labour Government’s introduction of top-up fees a few years ago. He is not a blind opponent of graduate contributions but somebody who has assessed the evidence of what enables students from poorer backgrounds to get to higher education and believes that this change will be damaging. Let me be quite clear: universities need to plan for 2012-13. Decisions will have to be taken by universities in the early months of next year, but only the Secretary of State’s indolence stands in the way of a full White Paper and draft legislation in January that would allow the House to consider the changes as a whole.

Let me take the issues in turn. How will graduates repay their debt? The Secretary of State said in his letter that

“we have put our costings and calculations in the public domain”,

but I had to submit a Freedom of Information Act request for the models before the Government published a so-called ready reckoner. The Library has now discovered that BIS uses a more complex model that has not been published. The Library told me:

“The ready reckoner version which has been published is a simplified version”.

So much for openness.

For all the talk of fairness, it is clear that middle-income graduates will pay the most. Library analysis shows that graduates repaying fees of £7,000 a year and a maintenance loan who work in middle-income graduate jobs will have to pay back 84% of a whole year’s gross earnings whereas those in the top 10% of earners will pay back less than half a year’s gross earnings. Million Plus reports today that the changes will leave between 60% and 65% of graduates worse off with middle-income earners being hit the hardest.

The coalition says that the threshold for repayment will be set at £21,000, but that is in 2016 prices. In real terms, that is the same as the £15,000 threshold that started in 2006 and is due for review next year. That is not generous: it is sleight of hand. Lord Browne said the threshold should be uprated every five years in line with earnings. The ready reckoner published by the Department assumes that it will be uprated every five years in line with earnings, but the Minister for Universities and Science, the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), says only that there will be periodic uprating. I asked the Secretary of State whether that uprating would be laid down in law, but his letter is silent on that point. Even the dubious claims made about fairness depend on regular uprating in line with earnings, but if it is not in law it means nothing. The House must see draft clauses, not vague promises, before it is asked to vote on the fee cap.