Oral Answers to Questions

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

16. If he will consider changing the MPharm qualification from level 6 to level 7.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

The Government do not determine the academic levels of higher education qualifications. The Higher Education Funding Council funds the MPharm as an undergraduate master's degree, to the benefit of 10,000 students a year who are entitled to teaching grants and student support.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the Minister for that answer. My constituent Louis Leir has done an undergraduate degree and wants to do a MPharm, but unfortunately it is classified as an undergraduate-level degree. He is therefore caught by the equivalent or lower qualifications —ELQ—policy and is unable to get help with tuition fees. Will Ministers give further considerations to the issues relating to master's level qualifications? The MPharm truly is one of those, as most of the House probably recognises.

[Mr Willetts]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his ingenuity in pursuing that constituency case, about which we have corresponded. Just as he was with the Pfizer case at Sandwich, he is a persistent hon. Member and I congratulate him on that. However, we believe that if we were to take the ingenious approach he proposes, it might mean that the 10,000 undergraduates currently benefiting from financial support lose it.