Education Maintenance Allowance

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Lady has just shown how hopelessly out of touch Government Members are. Is she telling me that nine out of 10 young people in her constituency who get EMA are saying they do not need it? If so, she has been speaking to some very different young people—although I am glad that she has at least been speaking to them, unlike those on her Front Bench. She needs to answer this question. The Government are proposing a scheme that is a tenth—

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Answer the question.

[Andy Burnham]

I am about to do that. The Government are proposing a scheme that is a tenth of the size of the previous one, so a fair assumption is that it will help one in 10 of the people who are getting help today. How is that compatible with the full participation in education of all 16 to 18-year-olds, to which the Government amendment refers?

I have never set my face against changes or savings to the EMA scheme. I proposed a change last year—that of giving young people between 16 and 18 the choice of unlimited free travel or EMA. Today I say this to the Secretary of State: I am prepared to discuss changes while keeping the principle of a national weekly payment scheme to support young people in education, but I am not prepared to see a successful scheme, which brings a huge range of social benefits, dismantled and replaced with a residual scheme a fraction of the size. He will have to work very hard to convince us that a scheme a tenth of the size will, in the words of his amendment, improve

“access to, enthusiasm for and participation in further and higher education.”

How can it possibly do that?

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[Andy Burnham]

As I said, 80% of people get the £30 higher level. I also said that I am not opposed to talking to the Secretary of State about changes. However, if he is to fulfil his goal of keeping young people in education, he will have to talk about a scheme on a much bigger scale than he is proposing, and he will have to do that today.

Let me set out, first, the educational case for EMA. EMA has had a positive impact on participation in post-16 education: that is accepted by all. The Government’s figures suggest that EMA makes all the difference for 78,000 young people. However, as we enter 2011, the financial outlook for many families is changing for the worse. Calculations about the affordability of staying on will have to be redone when the loss of EMA is set alongside changes to other benefits and wages. New research released yesterday by the University and College Lecturers Union suggested that seven in 10 EMA recipients will drop out of education if EMA is taken away.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I regret the removal of EMA and the necessity to remove it, which was caused by an orgy of overspending by the Administration of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a part. A diet of cold, hard decisions now has to be taken by Ministers, and I have some sympathy with them. Choices have to be made, such as between providing nursery education for two-year-olds in the poorest areas or retaining EMA. The right hon. Gentleman accepts that there can be changes to EMA. Is there any reason why a slimmed-down version, such as that proposed by the Government, with constructive input from all sides, cannot deliver for the most needy and minimise the negative impacts?

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Gentleman is having it both ways. He started by saying that he regrets the removal of EMA, before going on to make his attack. I will make two points to him. First, he said that EMA was essentially unaffordable. Why then does the Institute for Fiscal Studies say that the costs of EMA are “completely offset” by the wider benefits that it brings? He might want to reflect on that point.

Secondly, why did the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State promise young people that they would keep EMA? More than that, why did the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), stand at the Dispatch Box after the general election and say that EMA would be retained? Why did they do that if it is now such a bad idea? Will he answer that?

[Mr Stuart]

On that particular point, following our joint interview yesterday, I looked up the Prime Minister’s interview on Cameron Direct. He expressed some concerns and talked about the mixed messages that he had received from students on EMA. He said that the Conservative party had no plans to remove EMA. That is not a matter of pure semantics. There was no promise, and the right hon. Gentleman should not put out an untruth about the Prime Minister on this subject.

[Andy Burnham]

We will leave those kinds of points to Back Benchers; we do not expect them from the Chair of the Select Committee.

The fundamental point that the Government are missing is that participation is only part—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) does not have to put his hand up—he can just stand up. Participation is only part of the story; EMA helps students to succeed once they arrive at college. It stands to reason that young people do better if they can afford the books or equipment that support the course. As many young people have told me, EMA means that they do not have to take a part-time job, so they can focus all their energy and attention on their studies. College after college reports that EMA improves attendance, helps people to stay the course, reduces the drop-out rate and, in the end, brings a higher rate of achievement.

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[Andy Burnham]

I will do so, but I cannot answer for the Secretary of State. I have been to sixth-form colleges in London, and that brings me to my case about social mobility. If he visits a sixth-form college while he is in the job, may I suggest that he could do worse than visit the one that my hon. Friend mentions, or indeed Newham sixth-form college, which I visited yesterday? If he does, he might meet the young man who told me about the practical effect of losing EMA. He feels that he will have to lower his ambitions in the universities to which he applies, because he thinks his exam grades will undoubtedly suffer.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Why?

[Andy Burnham]

The Chairman of the Education Committee cements the impression that the Conservatives have not really thought about what it is like to be a young person in the circumstances that I have described. It is hard to put a value on the self-confidence and peace of mind that financial security gives a young person. It creates the conditions for their academic potential to be realised.

The Secretary of State talks frequently about social mobility under the Labour Government, citing the number of young people on free school meals gaining a place at Oxford or Cambridge. Time and again, he has used that figure selectively to paint a misleading picture of Labour’s record, and I wish to set the matter straight.

First, I politely point out to the Secretary of State that Oxbridge is not the be-all and end-all. If he examines the university system as a whole, which my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) has taken the trouble to do, he will see that between 2005 and 2007 the number of young people on free school meals gaining a place at university increased by 18%, double the rate of increase for all young people. Does the Secretary of State recognise those figures and, if so, does he accept that EMA has played an important role in securing that social progress? Does he further accept that the proportion of children on free school meals who stayed on in full-time education at 16 increased from 60% in 2005 to 70% in 2009? That is why more are applying to, and getting into, universities.

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[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate about scrapping the education maintenance allowance. I share the frustration of many Opposition Members about the potential impact of abolishing it. However, although they may deny the relevance of the deficit, my anger is directed at the Labour party and the state in which the previous Government left the public finances.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

You should remember you’re the Chair of the Committee.

[Mr Stuart]

I am entirely happy to chair a Committee and to bear witness to the reality of education funding. I am involved in education and serve on the Committee because I care passionately about improving the quality of education and opportunity in this country. We may hear from others later, but the shadow Secretary of State did at least have the goodness to recognise that there was room for reducing the deficit. However, he would not tell us where, what, when or how. When I consider the attempt to make more effective interventions in the early years and I look at the nursery education opportunities for two-year-olds, I ask myself whether I would prefer to cut that or keep the EMA.

A Labour Member suggested that there might be differences between Members. In my constituency, some students travel for an hour and 40 minutes each way to attend Bishop Burton further education college. That is a real issue for a rural area such as mine. However, I know that half of all 17 and 18-year-old full-time students are eligible for EMA, and I am aware of the chronic crisis and pressure on education budgets—the desperate desire to deliver the outcomes that we have struggled to provide from our system. I have said it before, and I will risk repeating it: I know that the Labour Government were utterly committed to trying to close the gap. They had will and they had resource—a resource which has sadly gone—yet too often the gap widened rather than narrowed. I do not blame the Opposition for using this issue today, but I hope that we will collectively, not in a party political way, take the limited funds that are available—the deficit is not an irrelevant fact but the fundamental elephant in the room—and look to do what is best. We had a lot of spending previously, and we have a diet of hard decisions now. They must be faced.

The shadow Secretary of State suggested that the best approach was to cut everything by the same amount. Is that really the strategically sensible way to ensure that we improve outcomes for people in our society, not least those with least? I do not think that it is. So I am interested to know how the discretionary learner fund—the replacement for EMA—will work, because of the realities faced by my constituents, who travel over three hours a day to get to an FE college, and who then achieve at the end of that. If those people manage to do that in the face of great difficulty and personal inconvenience, I want to be sure that colleges such as Bishop Burton, which run private enterprises to make profits so that they can have a fleet of vehicles, are not disadvantaged. Despite those vehicles, the college is worried that the students, who often live in small hamlets, need to travel from their home to the pick-up point for the college bus. We need to ensure that we have a system—whether financed by local authorities or the replacement for EMA—that covers that.

It is hard to believe that EMA as it stands is the most sensible use of scarce resource. I am not trying to make a party political point, and I am mindful of my position as Chair of the Select Committee, but I want us to devise the system that works most effectively and yet does not deny the reality.

When I was first elected as a councillor—in Cambridge—many years ago, I went to a budget survey meeting with the public in a local shopping centre, which the then Labour council had arranged. I was handed a form which gave a list of spending areas for the budget debate. It said, “Please tick all those areas where you would like to see more spending.” I am a small-state Conservative in some ways, and I found many items on which I wanted to spend more. I was terribly aware of what went on in my ward—the lack of provision for young people, the need to do more in many areas—and I wanted to tick many boxes. However, the Labour council had sensibly included a proviso, which said, “All we ask is that for every box you tick to give more money, you identify another item on which you want to spend less.”

That is the challenge that faces the Select Committee, which will look under the bonnet of the new fund. It will examine engagement and participation by 16 to 19-year-olds. We want to ensure that the dire warnings by the shadow Secretary of State are not fulfilled and that young people are not put off education, but we must realise that we are in a highly constrained position because of this Government’s financial inheritance. Like that wise Labour council many years ago, every time we say, “Let’s save EMA”—Opposition Members have not made it clear so far whether they want to save all or half of EMA—we should ask, “What will we cut?” Just as, in that shopping centre, members of the public, like me, were told, “It’s not enough to say you want better youth services; you’ve got to tell us where to save the money too,” if hon. Members are to do justice to the young people, whom we all want to see given decent and proper opportunity, we must ensure that we do so in a financially responsible manner.