Higher Education and Research Bill

Jo Churchill Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We need to look at the level of tuition fees that has been introduced, the rate of applications from disadvantaged students, and the number of disadvantaged students who are going to university. Those young people are taking a decision to invest in themselves, and they believe that it will offer value for money. The Bill will enable us to strengthen that decision by underwriting the teaching in universities with a teaching excellence framework.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to her position, and I look forward to working with her. We have had much discussion of disadvantaged young people, but how will she encourage participation among mature disadvantaged groups, particularly women? There has been a large drop-off in the number of women part-time students. What progress can we make in that area, particularly in the teaching, nursing and caring professions, which women often go into after they have had their families?

[Justine Greening]

There are two areas in which the Bill can particularly help. First, it will provide transparency and give us a clearer sense of who is entering and going through our university system. One of the functions of the office for students will be to improve transparency, which will help us not only to improve access but to widen participation. Secondly, some of the financing changes will free up opportunities for people who find it harder to go to university because they cannot get the finance for a course. The Bill will allow us to take those two steps forward.

We are going further than Labour ever did to strengthen access agreements. Under the Bill, institutions wanting to charge tuition fees above the basic level will have to agree plans that look at participation as well as at access. We want to ensure they are doing everything they can to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds throughout their course to reduce the number of drop-outs and help all students into fulfilling careers.

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[Rebecca Pow]

I am very pleased to see the Minister for Universities and Science, my hon. Friend Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) back on the Front Bench, and I want to put on record that I welcome the Secretary of State to her position. I share her experience of being the first person in my family to go to university. Both my parents left school at 16 and came from a lowly farming background and I can honestly say it is, and was, a ticket to the world. In those days, very few women went to university, so I can assure the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) that things have definitely improved.

I rise to support this Higher Education and Research Bill with that as my background, and also with having two children who have already gone through university and one son who, in fairness, is deciding whether to go at all and is thinking about what it will provide. I realise how important it is to go to university, to consider which subject to study and what job might be available at the end of it. Those things are very important.

I have discussed this with many students in my constituency, both at the local sixth-form college, Richard Huish, which is exceedingly good and is in the top 10 in the country, and at Somerset college. I talk to young people about what is preventing them from going further, why they do not want to go—whether they would rather stay at home and so forth. I am very hopeful that lots of these things will be addressed in the Bill because higher education is undoubtedly good for the individual.

Graduates on average earn in excess of £100,000 more over their lifetime, having got that graduate premium. It is not just good for the individual, it is also good for the economy, and in this very rapidly changing world it is essential that here in the UK, especially in our post-Brexit era, we can move our workforce forward. That is why this Bill is going to be so important.

Around 20% of UK economic growth between 1982 and 2005 was a result of increased numbers of graduates, and the skills they brought to the table. I therefore welcome the Bill, and one of its key aims is to encourage and enable even more people to have such opportunities. The Government have been attacked by the Opposition, but the record is already much improved from the days of Labour, with the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who go into higher education up from around 13% in 2009 to almost 19% now. The situation is improving, and young people from the most disadvantaged areas of England are now 36% more likely to enter higher education than they were in 2009. That is a record of gradual improvement, but more needs to be done, and the Bill will address that.

The Bill will support the establishment of new universities and promote choice and competition, making it easier for high quality, new providers and challenger institutions to enter the sector and award degrees, giving students more choice and boosting competition to improve teaching quality. Why is that necessary? We have heard lots of points this afternoon, but basically we need to address and improve the skills gap, and ensure a flow of young people and mature students who go on to further education and into business. We must ensure the right courses for those people.

I have spoken to many businesses in my constituency and held roundtable meetings, and it is clear that the right young people are not coming through to work in those businesses. Taunton Fabrications makes bridges, stairwells and stairways for railways all over the country, but it cannot find the right people to work in its business and it is keen for us to get some better courses going. Fox Brothers, which has recently been taken over by Deborah Meaden, is a high-quality, high-end weaving company that provides Yves Saint Laurent and other top-end French companies with fabrics. It cannot find the right calibre of people with engineering experience, or the right textile experience to work in that company, and the Bill will help with that.

If we can address those gaps, we will help productivity in Taunton Deane and the wider south-west. For new universities, however, we are in a cold spot—not weatherwise today—because we do not have a university in the area. Much research has been done to prove that we could do with one, and planning is in progress. Nearby Bridgwater College has just joined with Somerset College, and that is where we hope to have a university. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) spoke about thinking outside the box and focusing new universities on the specialisms, strengths, and skills needed—particularly those already in the area—and that is exactly what we are doing in Taunton Deane.

The idea is to link up with health and nursing education—I know my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) is present, but Somerset’s main hospital is in Taunton Deane. It already runs courses with the local college, but we must build and focus on them more, and a university would help with that. We also have local specialisms in energy skills, and low-carbon energy and related engineering. That links into Hinkley Point, which we are all very confident we will pull off. That is spawning a plethora of other industries, but we need students and graduates to train in those areas, and to go out in the wider country to use their knowledge. We also have links with the Ministry of Defence which provides training, and with Rolls-Royce in Filton. There are lots of opportunities should we get that university off the ground. I am confident that we will, and that the Bill will help, just as it will in many other places. That would then benefit the wider economy. Productivity in the south-west is below the national level, which is a serious issue. One reason for that is that we do not have the right high-calibre skills and we do not retain our young people. They all go off to university somewhere else, so we need a university right where we are in order to fill the jobs there.

[Jo Churchill]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a tendency for young people to go away to university and then to stay close to where they have been studying? At the moment, that is preventing Taunton Deane from benefiting from its students’ skills.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for making such a good point. Indeed, I feared that, when my own children went up north to get the northern experience from their universities, they might stay there and not come home, lovely as they are. It was a great experience and opportunity for them—one went to Leeds and one went to York—but I wanted them to come home. Not that they have yet—they have gone to various other places.

All these things are tied together. This is not just about upping the education offer; we also need to have the right infrastructure. For example, we have to have my A358 road upgrade and we must have good railway stations. All those things need to build together, and I am really confident that the Government get that. That is what they are doing, and our new Prime Minister really does understand that if we are going to increase our productivity, all those things have to link together.

I now want to move on to the part of the Bill that deals with establishing the office for students. It will be the new regulator for higher education, and it will have a duty to promote competition. I welcome this cultural shift in making it a statutory duty to take account of students’ interests. It is amazing that we have not done that before, given that they are the ones who are affected by all this, and I am delighted to welcome this big shift. I have had discussions with the National Union of Students and I understand that, on the whole, this is a very popular move.

We have heard much about the teaching excellence framework, which I welcome. It will ensure that universities focus on graduate employability. That links exactly to what I have been saying about jobs and skills in Taunton Deane; it all links together. Also, a number of hon. Members and hon. Friends have mentioned the need for an emphasis on the quality of teaching rather than just the quantity. We have only to talk to our own children, and other students, about their experiences at university to discover that, given the amount of money involved, some of the courses are sadly lacking in input hours. It is also sometimes unclear what that input actually means—various people are laughing and trying not to laugh—and what it will deliver in terms of employability. I absolutely welcome that part of the Bill.

The Bill also mentions the student protection plan. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) talked about what would happen to students if their provider was unable to deliver their course, and the Bill will deal with that. I really am optimistic that, as a result of this new framework, students will be at the heart of the matter. I have already mentioned transparency, which will be key to enabling the social mobility that we all want to see. We all want everyone to have opportunities. We do not want an “us and them” situation; we want everybody to benefit. That is what this is all about. The ability to look at which colleges and universities are offering which courses, and at who is successful and getting a job, will put the onus on the establishments to be the best that they can. Otherwise, people will not want to go to them. I fully support that part of the Bill.

I really welcome the combining of research and innovation funding into a single strategic body—UK Research and Innovation. Research is an important part of this country’s economy and it is absolutely crucial to have a strategic approach to the way we handle it and the £6 billion currently invested in it. We should never underestimate the value of research in this country. We are world leaders in many areas, especially in environmental research, and we must build on that and offer greater opportunities.

The Bill strikes a truly healthy balance between protecting our universities’ global reputation for quality and encouraging more establishments, offering new and innovative opportunities for so many more people from every single background. The Bill is essential and will benefit not only individuals, but the entire economy.

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[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy).

I welcome the Minister to his continued role in seeing the Bill through. I agree with many of the points that Opposition Members have made about the huge challenge posed by our exit from Europe. Not one of the university vice-chancellors did not support staying in, and many of them have articulated their worries about funding and so on and about students, their safety and stability in choosing a course in this country, and their life beyond 2017. I agree with those points, but the present situation offers us opportunity as well as challenge. If we say that life must go on hold because of the decision taken two weeks ago, we will not get anywhere. Let us look at the opportunity and drive forward from there.

I welcome the Bill. We lead the world in higher education. Our papers are cited more widely than any other country’s in most leading areas of education. We may be a small country, yet in the quality and quantity of what our minds produce, we are one of the greatest countries. I had the pleasure last week of seeing another of my daughters graduate. The vice-chancellor said that he had dealings with 183 other countries and the institutions there. Bearing in mind that there are 195 countries across the world, it is clear that our collaboration extends beyond Europe. It is global, and we must seize that opportunity as we move forward.

We have heard the good things about the office for students and the teaching excellence framework, and I will not go over the statistics. We need to ensure quality of delivery and of reputation, because it is only by ensuring the continuing reputation of our universities that we will be able to export and bank what we have to offer in the higher education sector. We also need to ensure that their environment is kept stable, for which we need consistency. That is another reason I do not want to see things put on hold. Planning is vital in what are billion-pound industries, looking at the total combined unit of our universities, further education establishments, upper-tier schools, and businesses. I would like to hear how the Minister will help institutions that look to take the opportunity to export, much like Nottingham University having campuses in Malaysia. How can we work on this and challenge ourselves to think of new and innovative ideas? My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) spoke about the UK equivalent of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—he called it MKIT—with Cranfield University leading on delivering on different platforms. Such ideas need to be nurtured and propelled under this Bill.

Great teaching must ensure value for money—it should not be the negative that the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) said it is. The teaching excellence framework can ensure value for money for students. We talk too much of a homogenous education system. It is the fact that we have variety that gives us choice. That means that institutions can deliver expensive, science-driven degrees alongside some of the less expensive humanities degrees: the mix is important. Some degrees are more expensive than others to administer, and some need a lot of skills. If we give small institutions the right to deliver degrees, now that we have taken away the critical mass of 1,000, we must be careful about the quality of their delivery to ensure that what they are articulating they are delivering is truly what is on the piece of paper. I would like to see certainty in the metrics, as many others have said. It would be a good idea to pilot this in ’17, ’18 and so on, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) suggested.

Research is exceedingly important. Last week, the vice-chancellor of Lancaster University stated that it would be not only still a European university but an international university. He spoke about how it led on research across the world and was in the top 10 in this country. There is a science race. I have spoken about this in Westminster Hall and the Minister has responded. We do not spend quite enough in that area, and we need to look to punching better than we are. Near to my constituency, we have a huge catalyst of life sciences in Cambridge and at Cambridge University, which draws in £1.6 billion of income—the largest in the country. We need to work on such centres of excellence.

[Carol Monaghan]

Does the hon. Lady agree that some of the funding for the excellent research that is taking place is coming from the European Union, and we need to be pressing the Government to replace that funding so that that research can continue?

[Jo Churchill]

I agree that some of it is coming from the European Union. I am not sure whether the Government need to, or will be able to, dip into their pocket to assure that. They must look at possibly more exciting ways of loaning between business and universities, and stimulating particular areas and sectors in order that they contribute to driving the skills base forward. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) said, we have many high-powered industries in this country—nuclear, pharmaceuticals, and so on—that are more than adept at this. Indeed, I have spoken to the Minister about our telecoms industry, which is more than adept at putting some of its own money into ensuring that skills come through. While I would agree that there needs to be some certainty, I would not necessarily say that it should come purely from Government.

Innovations in life sciences, pharmaceuticals and the 100,000 Genomes Project show that a strong university sector is key to both the health and the wealth of our nation. Organisations have a large part to play. Businesses want skills, but in order to build them up they must communicate more with the higher and further education sectors. They are playing an increasingly important part in our university institutions.

Last year, one of my daughters graduated across the river, and this week another graduated in Lancaster, which I consider to be truly northern. Another of my daughters is in Newcastle, and another is waiting to go—[Interruption.] I could go on for ages. I have a vast amount of experience visiting university campuses across the UK, although not so much those in Scotland. I am constantly amazed by, for example, Heston Blumenthal’s interaction with the University of Reading and Tata’s interaction with the University of Warwick, which underpin the importance of the relationship between business and universities. Such relationships are already in place and the Bill builds on them, makes them more transparent and develops the connection between further and higher education and business. Our focus on teaching and research allows us to provide opportunities for businesses with specific needs. In his review, Sir Paul Nurse asked for coherence, and I want the Minister to drive that into the Bill.

We have a chance to export education and improve research collaborations. We need to ensure that marketisation is monitored and that there is no oversupply. Although competition is good, oversupply can lead to the problems that have been mentioned. If there is too much freedom in a market, deliverers will always pick the easy route, so there must be an assurance that the low-hanging fruit will not be taken. I have spoken to vice-chancellors this week and our home universities are already looking for students with lower grades to fill the spaces left by EU students who have fallen away. We need to be aware of that and ensure that oversupply does not lead to a downgrade in quality.

Turning to social mobility, any graduate—my daughters, for example—will be in the marketplace for 50 years. That is an awfully long time and not one person who comes to this place will have had the same job for 50 years. We need to take a more flexible approach. We have spoken too much about the young—important though they are and mother of loads as I am—but mature students and part-time students also have needs. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) mentioned the statistics for Oxford and Cambridge, but he failed to take account of the fact—this is the crux of the argument—that some of the young people to whom I speak in my constituency are looked-after children, family carers and mothers. They do not have the flexibility just to choose a university. That is why reputation, quality and availability are so important. This is not about being able to go to top-flight universities; it is about being enabled to rise.

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

The hon. Lady stimulates me to intervene. It is very dangerous to talk about top-flight universities. I represent Huddersfield, which has a wonderful university with some of the best departments in the country, including for design, innovation and engineering. It is very easy to say what is top flight and what is not. Many of our departments are better than those at Cambridge, and I am sitting next to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner).

[Jo Churchill]

Indeed you are. The words “top flight” came from the top of my head and I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman. My daughters have enjoyed red brick universities, but my friends’ children have been to all manner of providers, including good further education colleges and good apprenticeship schemes. There are fewer degree apprentices at the moment, because that system has not filtered through. More than anything, people need the appropriate qualifications.

I do not want to go on about the statistics around white young men and those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, because they speak for themselves. I would instead like to articulate the situation of career changers: mature members of our society who, in their 30s and 40s, when they have mortgages and children, want to change careers. That includes the nurses who want to become doctors, and the parliamentarians who want to become teachers.

[John Pugh]

Where are they?

[Jo Churchill]

Exactly. All manner of people who might want to take a different career path are precluded from doing so because they cannot get the appropriate qualifications, and we need to look at that. I was lucky when I did my MSc as a mature student, because I lived in Nottingham. The hon. Lady whom I followed; I am sorry, I cannot remember her constituency—[Hon. Members: “Walthamstow!”]. She spoke articulately about need, and made a good point about the 3% in the system being such a small number, and it is. However, when I was a mature student under the previous Labour Government, I could not access support to help me with nursery fees for my four small children or to help me with my MSc. Things have not got better, and the Bill will allow us to start to push things forward. So although I am open to criticism, I think that what the hon. Lady said was a little unfair.

Earlier in the debate, Members spoke about collaboration and the need to make collaboration mandatory for institutions, and I would like to use East Anglia as an exemplar of joined-up thinking. Next to us sits Cambridge University, which has the most money for research; the University of East Anglia is a leading university in Norfolk; and the new University Campus Suffolk, which has just been granted the ability to award degrees, is a community university. That blend offers people choice. That university in Suffolk, which has a campus in my constituency, has a member of the LEP and the local authority on the board. We need to encourage that sort of thing rather than making collaboration mandatory. They talked to further education providers, schools and businesses about how to fill the gaps in IT and engineering and to boost productivity, looking at nuclear power, farming, health and care. That is what I want the Bill to support.

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[Paul Blomfield]

I will continue to be nice, because I recognise the thought and effort that the Minister has put into developing the Bill. I commend him for the way in which he has listened to those across the sector and other stakeholders in shifting thinking, as discourse has moved forward. There is a lot more listening to do, because there are still a number of reservations.

The Bill raises some very important issues: on teaching quality, clearly; on widening participation; on reopening the debate on credit accumulation and transfer; and on several other areas. Sadly, however, as other hon. Members have highlighted, those are not necessarily the key challenges for the sector right now. The Secretary of State was right to say in her opening remarks that our university system punches above its weight. Our universities are hugely important in the transformational impact they have on those who study in them, in building the skills base of our country and in contributing over £11 billion to our export earnings, and this hugely successful sector of course contributes through research and innovation to the wider development of our economy. We have one of the world’s best university systems, but universities face real challenges, many of which, frankly, are not covered by the Bill.

Let me turn back to Brexit. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds said that we should look at the opportunities of Brexit. Whether we describe them as opportunities or as challenges, there are real issues to face. She highlighted the fact that we are in the top 10 for research. One reason for that is the enormous funding we have had through FP7—Horizon 2020, as it is now—from the European Union. The EU is spending about £70 billion through Horizon 2020, and until 23 June more was allocated to British-led partnerships than to any other member state. Without that, our research capacity will be deeply affected, with huge economic consequences.

The Minister will recall that I asked him, just days after the Brexit vote, what action he was taking to protect that funding. Reassuringly, he said that we should not worry about anything for the next couple of years because we would still be in the European Union and fully accessing Horizon 2020. That was not an unreasonable answer at that moment—I would have probably given the same one—but when I talked to the vice-chancellors of my two universities in Sheffield two days later, they both reported that locally led research teams had been asked to pull out of trans-European projects bidding for Horizon 2020, because a UK research teams would be a drag on securing funding, given all the associated uncertainty. Mike Galsworthy, who is the director of Scientists for EU, has been trying to monitor the impact on research. He reports that already—just a couple of weeks on—of the 378 responses he has received from research teams, over a quarter are reporting difficulties because everyone fears the risk of having a team from non-EU Britain as a partner.

The Government therefore need, and I hope that the Minister will address this when he winds up, to consider urgently—more urgently than many of the other issues covered by the Bill—what he intends to do to offset the impact we are already seeing. He should commit to underwriting all Horizon 2020 funding to give research teams the reassurance that they can go forward confidently without letting down their partners. He should also talk to those quite close to him—[Interruption] I was thinking of a different form of relationship, but that one will do—about making an early commitment to putting Horizon 2020 at the top of the agenda in our negotiations on what post-Brexit Britain will look like.

The second issue is about recruiting and retaining talent. Between our two universities in Sheffield, there are 406 EU nationals on a salary of less than £35,000. That figure is important because it means that they would not meet the criteria for successful tier 2 visa applications. These are early-career academics—the talent of the future—who will be driving the research and the teaching quality of the future in our universities. Unless we can give them the confidence that they and their successors from European countries can come to this country to work, teach and research in our universities, we will be severely weakening our talent base.

Such issues are not addressed in the Bill, but it threatens to do more damage in the third area of concern in universities, which is international students—an issue on which the Minister and I agree, and about which many Government Members have made the same point. As the right hon. Member for East Devon (Mr Swire) pointed out, the Home Office has done enormous damage to our ability to compete in the growing international marketplace to recruit international students. Brexit threatens greater damage in relation not just to the 185,000 EU students who are here, but to the 320,000 or so non-EU students. Hobsons, the major international student recruitment consultants, reported just a couple of weeks before the Brexit vote that about a third of non-EU nationals considering coming to the UK would find Britain a less attractive place to study if it exited the European Union, and one can understand why.

The Bill could make the situation worse by undermining the strength of the UK’s university brand through the teaching excellence framework. A one-level TEF might not have that consequence, because it would be a straightforward exercise that, subject to ticking certain boxes, most universities would glide through. However, the subsequent grading system creates a risk of brand damage, because we are developing it unilaterally. If we were measuring our universities equitably in parallel and in partnership with every country in the world, perhaps it would be different, but we are not. We are stepping outside what our competitors are doing and saying that we will spotlight our universities in a very different way. We will say that some are okay, some are outstanding and some are excellent. That will send out the message about those that do not reach the very top grade that international students ought to think twice about going there. I appreciate that that is not the Government’s intention, but it is a potential consequence that they need to consider closely. We already have a quality assurance system through the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education that is widely respected around the world.

If the Government are going down the TEF route, let us get it right. The thinking on this is significantly underdeveloped. I welcome the way in which, during the discussion about teaching quality, the Minister has moved away from an overdependence on quantitative metrics towards a more qualitative approach that involves institutions in the assessment process. However, there is still a focus on quantitative metrics that, as other Members have highlighted, are deeply flawed.

Employment destination is a key metric, but we all know that that is an unsatisfactory way of measuring teaching quality. Someone who comes from the right family, goes to the right school, goes to the right university and comes out with a passable degree will get a good job, because they have the contacts. [Interruption.] I did not catch the Minister’s observation, but I have no doubt he will make his point later. Employment destination might be a measure of the privilege someone was born into, but it is not a measure of teaching quality. We know that privately educated students are more likely to get a good degree than state educated students. We also know that graduate destination can be affected by the regional economy, so it is a very unsatisfactory metric.

In trying to widen participation, I admire the Government’s focus not simply on entry to university, but on success at university and beyond. However, using retention as a metric is potentially flawed, because the easiest way—I am not for a moment suggesting that any of our universities would do this—to get a good retention score is not to accept students who are likely to fail.

[Jo Churchill]

I agree with that point. A problem with the lack of flexibility in the system is that it does not allow those who have more disconnected lives to be iterative with a degree by going out and back in. That is a problem if Members across the House want to improve social mobility. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to be more flexible to allow those whose lives do not conform to the three-year pattern to have access?

Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Jo Churchill Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Order. I must remind the Committee that five Members have indicated that they wish to ask questions and we have 16 minutes left before I have to call order, so we need brief questions and answers.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Q Moving to a slightly different area, do you think the reforms in the Bill will help to drive social mobility and widen participation? I am particularly interested in capturing the more mature people in our workforce to ensure skills are kept up throughout a working life.

Professor Quintin McKellar: We would specifically hope that the Bill might include not only elements that drive competition but those that drive collaboration, because we think that collaborative activity can help us with our widening participation. To give one example, black and minority ethnic students have currently got an attainment disadvantage across the sector and we are working together collaboratively across the sector to try to address that. Without that sort of collaboration—if we were simply competing with each other—it is very difficult. Collaboration is hugely important, particularly in regard to social mobility.

Mary Curnock Cook: While the arrangements for making data from UCAS, for example, available to researchers will not change social mobility in itself, it does open up the opportunity to look specifically at different aspects of social mobility.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: One potential advantage that we must recognise of the move of some of the education and OFS to the Department for Education is that it may well begin to address the continuum of education and the attainment shortfalls that largely reside within the secondary schools. If that promotes greater interaction between the requirements for entry into higher education and a greater understanding of that within secondary education and more cohesion at that level, that could be a real help towards closing the attainment gap of BME students.

[Paul Blomfield]

Q May I pursue the issue of the regulatory framework a little further? Obviously, this is the first major discussion we have had on this for some time and it is important that we get it right. It is in the context of a Bill that is also seeking to encourage new providers. What thoughts do members of the panel have on how we should get it right and whether there are any ways in which the Bill could be improved in relation to the entry point of the new providers, the overall oversight of the system and the potential for market failure?

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: This is a difficult issue. I think the provision of diversity in the sector is something that has stood British higher education well. Different institutions have different goals and directions and cater for different needs for higher education within the sector, from mature students at one end, to vocational courses, to those operating in a very academic sphere.

New providers have to be looked at in the context of what is the positive contribution they can make. Two important issues will be the demand from the sector for this new provision and, secondly, the standards under which those institutions are recognised. From my point of view there is a third which is very important: high standards have to be set for the sustainability of new providers in the sector. It is no good an operation starting with an income stream that is predicated on a business plan of recruitment without a sufficient resource to ensure that those entering in year one will be able to complete their studies and end up with a degree that is actually worth something when facing employers. Otherwise, this is something that becomes not helpful and potentially very detrimental to the achievement and attainment of those individual students. That is the one area on which I would like to see rather more stress paid; the sustainability of the provision by a new provider.

Professor Quintin McKellar: We would support the diversity and competition that new providers would bring to the sector. The concern we have is one that has been raised already: that they cherry-pick subjects. In terms of continuing to provide across the board STEM subjects of engineering, mathematics and so on, it is unlikely that the new providers will enter those areas, and that could be a risk for the rest of us.

Sir Alan Langlands: I think the Bill does try to strike the balance between rigour in relation to new entries and streamlining the system a bit. We have to be careful that we are not driven too much in the direction of streamlining without the rigour. The rigour has to be on quality and standards, access and participation, good governance. Linking to Professor Borysiewicz’s point, it is hugely important that financial sustainability is seen alongside academic sustainability. This has got to be a long-term effort, if you are developing a new universe.

Mary Curnock Cook: Briefly, I would like to echo the points about sustainability, because I think it is absolutely catastrophic for students if their provider is forced to exit the market. A lot of higher education is very local. A lot of students go to university within a few miles of where they live, and there are not necessarily other providers where they could continue their studies if their institution fails.

The only other point I would make is about university title. I do not want to start a debate about “What is a university?”, but I think that most people, their parents, advisers, teachers and everyone else involved has a clear idea about what they think a university is. It would be of concern if students were applying to something that they thought was a university in the general understanding of the issue and found that it was something quite different.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Third sitting)

Jo Churchill Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Carol Monaghan]

Q Professor Nelson, since you are talking about people looking for grants and getting funding from different organisations, potentially somebody looking for a grant here could be getting all of their money from the one institution—from UKRI—because they will be going to a research council, the funding council and Innovate UK. Is there a problem that everything could be coming from the one body?

Professor Philip Nelson: I do not see that. The roots will still be distinct. For example, when it comes to the dual support system, it is clearly being protected—in fact, enshrined in legislation for the first time. It is clear that the QR money as it is called—the quality-related money—that currently comes from the Higher Education Funding Council for England is still going to be delivered via Research England. That is a clearly separated and different funding stream from the research council funding stream. I do not think there are any intrinsic difficulties because the Bill deals with that clear separation.

Dr Ruth McKernan: With Innovate UK grant funding, it is all matched funding. Businesses or private investors have to put in an equal amount and there are regulations that surround how businesses get their funding—state aid rules. One reason we are keen to use more financial tools is to ensure that we use public money to the extent that it is useful but also encourage private investment. With our business-facing mind we need to ensure that we use private investment as much and do not expect people to rely wholly on UKRI for funding.

Professor Ottoline Leyser: I would say that basically it is all taxpayers’ money, apart from the stuff that comes in through business; if we think of it in those terms.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

Q Looking at that connection between business and research and charities, which is of particular interest to me, and building on the opportunities that we have got there, would you welcome the protection of the dual support in the Bill, helping to provide long-term confidence to both universities and charities in order to drive some of that innovative work forward?

Professor Philip Nelson: I would certainly welcome it, as I said in my opening remarks. Dual support was absolutely key to us in terms of sustaining the effective system that we have, mainly because the QR money—the HEFCE money—takes that sort of retrospective view of performance, whereas research councils are looking prospectively at what might be achieved. So I think it is critical that that balanced funding, as it is called in the Bill, is properly maintained and retained.

Professor Ottoline Leyser: Absolutely. Dual support is a key strength of the UK Research and Innovation system, and not just because of the charities. We are really excited that it is now going to be in law.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q As you know, the Nurse review proposed establishing a ministerial committee to enable joined-up, cross-Government discussion of strategic priorities for research and funding. The Government rejected that in favour of reforming the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. Do you think that council can be reformed to deliver what Sir Paul Nurse envisaged?

Professor Philip Nelson: I think it can be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

Okay. On the issue of alternative providers, the QAA’s most recent survey shows that shortcomings were uncovered in a third. Are the proposals for registering alternative providers adequate? That is obviously a point that Sorana might want to comment on. The other point is about the process on the creation of the OFS. The complicated architecture between QAA, HEFCE and all the rest of it will take up to two or three years. Are either of you alarmed that that will create problems for the UK brand abroad?

Douglas Blackstock: Starting with the current arrangements, I think that they have been proved. We have made significant steps through the introduction, in our activities, of financial sustainability checks, and HEFCE has been doing that as well. The creation of the register will strengthen it too. It is a sign of the system’s success that the providers that are doing well have come out well. We have now had the first alternative providers that have commended judgments and are doing well, but where there have been shortcomings, they have been exposed in public reporting.

In the five years we have come through since we took on the review of alternative providers, the market has reduced in terms of the number of providers, but the stronger ones have survived and are doing better in reviews. We recently published an analysis of our reviews of alternative providers, and those that have a partnership with a university do well. They come out well, because they have a mature relationship.

Sorana Vieru: I am alarmed by the fact that these are risky reforms that are being pursued at risky times, and I cannot see where student representation sits. With the split of knowledge exchange—with it coming out of HEFCE and going into UKRI—do postgraduate research students fall through the cracks? I would like to see more clarity about where those functions are. We are creating an office for students without having student representation designated on the board or the quality assessment committee, or any statutory duty placed on that office to work with and consult students to represent their interests.

[Jo Churchill]

Q Mr Blackstock, you have said that you welcome the single register, financial stability and so on, but you are the quality body for higher education, so do you believe that the necessary quality safeguards are in place to do that intelligent monitoring that you spoke about and to ensure that there is quality for all students of any age at any institution?

Douglas Blackstock: We are in the process of reform anyway, and there has been a detailed consultation and a move towards this risk-based system, which involves an annual provider review. There is much more regular checking up on how institutions are performing, and then a series of triggers to investigate where there are problems. That is all strong and good, and I welcome it. My one residual concern was put rather nicely to me recently by a vice-chancellor of a prestigious university: “If we never look at the best, how will we know what good looks like?” That is my one concern—that we need to work with the system on an enhancement approach that would help improve quality, perhaps learning the lessons from the quality enhancement framework that we operate in partnership with others in Scotland.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q On that point, do you think the teaching excellence framework will raise teaching standards, or will it simply lead to a very complicated fee system in which we will get different levels of fees across courses and institutions over time and they will change constantly?

Douglas Blackstock: I think the teaching excellence framework has real potential to raise teaching standards in UK HE.

Sorana Vieru: I do not think it is a secret that we do not think the metrics in the teaching excellence framework are robust enough. We welcome a focus on teaching quality and a way to improve that, but given the way the teaching excellence framework has been proposed, it is not likely to achieve that, due to the metrics not actually matching teaching excellence.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Fourth sitting)

Jo Churchill Excerpts

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Marsden]

In the Minister’s concluding remarks on the previous group, he referred to the important role of the director for fair access and participation. In the amendments we are proposing now—I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North has tabled other amendments in this regard, too—we want to explore the independence and flexibility of the director with the Minister. He rightly described that in his comments as part and parcel of what the Government want to embody in the Bill.

I am not being particularly critical, but, as always, we did not have a great deal of time to tease out some of the implications for the director—whoever holds that office—when the current director of fair access appeared in the evidence session. We could take enough from what he said to know that the ability of the director for fair access and participation to negotiate with institutions—whether soft-baked, hard-baked or anyway-you-want-baked—would be seriously compromised if the director did not have the ultimate authority to approve or refuse access and participation plans. My hon. Friends who have tabled amendments and I believe that that is not sufficiently clear in the Bill, so we want to pursue the matter further with the Minister.

To ensure that the targets set by universities and colleges are sufficiently challenging will always involve tough negotiations. For the director to have had that independence to engage in negotiation free from conflicts of interest has been crucial in securing high levels of commitment by institutions to date—the key factor in OFFA’s success, which vindicates the decision of the Minister’s predecessor, David Willetts, to appoint Les Ebdon to the post in the first place. Negotiations can secure significant additional investment in access and a marked increase in the ambition of many universities and colleges. For example, in the 2016-17 access agreements the director’s negotiations led to improved targets at 94 institutions, and 28 increased their level of predicted spend, which secured an additional £11.4 million for fair access and participation.

Those are the statistics, and statistics are important. After all, we often talk about evidence-driven policy, and it is gratifying when there is evidence to drive the policy. It also, incidentally, strengthens the Minister’s hand in the financial discussions that he has to have from time to time with the Treasury. Behind the figures, however, lies the success story, or aspirational stories, of hundreds and thousands of not only young people, but—I speak with feeling as a former Open University tutor—older people who traditionally thought that higher education was not for them. In any system, some people will always be able to bustle their way through, even when they have not had opportunities on a previous occasion, but the whole point of a director for fair access and participation is to spread best practice, not only from the best universities and the most determined students, but generally.

I am labouring this point, because it is so important to continued success. When an important new framework is to be established with the office for students, it is crucial that the director’s ability to do his or her job is not impeded, whether by omission or by unexpected and unplanned consequences. If the director for fair access and participation can be bypassed and overruled by the chief executive or board of the office for students, we believe, as do others, that that would significantly undermine his or her ability to negotiate directly with vice-chancellors and to offer a robust challenge. That would probably lead to a significant scaling down of ambition by some institutions. That, I am sure—indeed, I do not need to be sure, because the Minister has waxed eloquent on it in several speeches and lectures at a number of institutions over the past year—is not the Minister’s intention. The amendments are, therefore, genuinely intended to be helpful in getting clarification.

It is vital to have a high-profile director for fair access and participation with the authority and credibility to offer robust challenges to institutions. A director who has first-hand experience of how tension at a higher education provider plays out in practice—in relation to finance, marketing, recruitment, student voice, learning and teaching, and Government policies and initiatives—will be well positioned to make nuanced judgments across access agreement negotiations about what is reasonable and achievable. That would obviously require the director to be a credible champion and a high-profile person in this field.

If the director does not have responsibility over access agreements and that is not clear in primary legislation—putting to one side the helpful advice that Ministers may be able to give subsequently—that will send out the wrong message for the institutions that we would expect to engage in the new settlement resulting from the Bill, and will make much more difficult both the Government’s avowed intent to widen participation and access and the specific responsibility of the director to pursue that.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I am getting a little lost. Is not the hon. Gentleman being a little managerial now by saying that only the director for fair access and participation is responsible? Based on the arguments he made in favour of previous amendments—that we should be looking at the broader ability of the board to make decisions—should it not be the responsibility of the whole board to feed into such a position in order to ensure that the important area of access and participation really does what it says on the tin?

[Mr Marsden]

I have considerable respect for the hon. Lady, not least on the basis of the speech she made on Second Reading, and she has made a valuable point. It is not my intention, or that of my colleagues, to say that the director for fair access and participation should sit in a great bubble somewhere thinking great thoughts and that the OFS should simply rubber-stamp them at the end of the day. It is about who takes the initiative and carries things through on a day-to-day basis. With the best will in the world, we do not believe that that should be left to the board.

I have served on boards, committees, trusts and all the rest—as have, I am sure, many Committee members from both sides of the House—and everyone knows that one of the most difficult things to get right is the balance between overall strategic policy and the day-to-day administration of that policy. In my view—I have not heard many people dissent from this position—the director of fair access has been a successful innovation. It is important that those elements of the role that have worked so well so far are not restricted, unintentionally—I am not saying there is a dastardly plot to undermine them—by a defective or unclear identification and delegation of the director’s powers in the Bill.

This is a question not of managerialism but of realpolitik. We all know that in the real world and in the political world, if people’s powers are not well defined, there will always be someone who at some point will try to chip away at them. That is the point I am trying to get at. I understand entirely the point that the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds was making. I do not wish to micromanage the affairs of the office of the director for fair access and participation any more than I think the Minister does, but I do not want to see set in legislation a train of views that takes us down the path I have described.

To meet the Government’s goal of doubling the rate of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds entering higher education by 2020 will require an acceleration of the process and a director who can continue to offer those robust challenges. If the director does not retain the authority to approve or reject an access and participation plan, if it is not clear that he or she retains that authority, or if that power can be delegated to others and decisions overturned, there is a real risk that the director’s position will be seen as weakened. Believe me, having sat on the Education Committee, I do not think that lawyers and judicial reviews or internal rows in Departments, detracting from the work of that Department, are something to be recommended.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Seventh sitting)

Jo Churchill Excerpts

Committee Debate: 7th Sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 15th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend, indefatigable as ever, makes an excellent point. I will not dwell on the issue to which she refers. It was part of the substance of the Prime Minister’s speech, and a lot of it was in the statement made by the Secretary of State for Education the other day, so I will not go into any detail on it other than to observe that my hon. Friend is absolutely right: if universities are to take on a significant, major role—there can be lots of discussions about how that is done, the value of it and all the rest—inevitably that is another element that will call upon their resources.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I would like to try to understand where the Labour party is on this matter. If we are not allowed to build in for inflation, what do we do? For example, I believe fees have now dropped back to £8,500 in real terms. We are merely building in inflation proofing, so that universities can think about how they invest in relation to the teaching excellence framework and invest for students by delivering courses of quality. What do we hear from the Opposition? At the general election, the then Leader of the Opposition was talking about taking fees down to £6,000, and I think that the latest policy is for university education to be free. We have to pay for excellence and quality.

[Gordon Marsden]

I thank the hon. Lady for her extremely eloquent intervention. Perhaps it will set a trend for Government Members to speak on some of these very important clauses. I am sure that their constituents would like to know that the hours that they spend in the Committee Room, which inevitably are taken from other things, are rewarded by their saying something about the Bill. So far, we have not heard much from them.

The hon. Lady’s intervention enables me to make two points. First, I remind her gently that she is a Member of the Government party, and it is the Government who are advancing these proposals. It is not a question of what the Labour party may or may not have promised.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Jo Churchill Excerpts

Committee Debate: 13th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I listened to what the hon. Member for Sheffield Central said, and I contend that it is purely by having a flexible, open system that the things he asks for are actually possible. The problems within the system that he articulated are often due to the inadequacies of the departments involved. I know that because I have been closely affected by it. Allowing institutions to work with these overarching bodies but driving quality from the institutions themselves is what is wanted. Furthermore, an individual benefits from being asked to teach. It is not always detrimental for a researcher to expand their skills in that way.

[Joseph Johnson]

In answer to the question from the hon. Member for Sheffield Central on the teaching excellence framework and postgrad research, in the first instance, no, it will not deal with the postgrad experience; it focuses on undergrad and part-time. The Bill sets out clear responsibilities for UKRI and the OFS, with the OFS being the regulator for all students, including at postgraduate level.

There are a number of areas that will require close co-operation between UKRI and the OFS, including on postgraduates, and it is vital that they are empowered to work together. The Bill does that through clause 103, which enables and ensures joint working, co-operation and the sharing of information. An emphasis on working together will run through the leadership and management of both organisations, supported by a legal framework that will be sufficiently flexible to deal effectively with areas of shared interest.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Jo Churchill Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

A university is an establishment where higher-level study, education and research are done. It is not somewhere where one would necessarily avail oneself of volunteering experiences, for example, or of the other things that the hon. Lady has listed. I contend that as we move into longer lifespans within which we may take degrees at different times, we may be looking merely to access a degree to enhance our careers rather than making it part of our lifestyle.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Lady was on the Committee, and I am sure that she will recall that the things in the amendment are in addition to what we might call the core business of a university, which is to enable people to study for a higher-level qualification. The amendment is designed to ensure that we do not get a whole series of institutions that can use the title of university but that offer only a single course of study and a single qualification, because we think that that will dumb down the sector not only for UK students but, in particular, for international students. The hon. Lady will know that the sector is a highly competitive one internationally, and we want to ensure that our universities compete with the best in the world.

We have huge concerns about allowing an institution to say that it is a university when it does not have to provide any access to sports, recreation, cultural activities, volunteering opportunities, work-based learning experience or any of the other things that our universities do right across the piece. I hope that the hon. Lady is as proud as I am that our universities do so.

[Jo Churchill]

I concur, up to a point. I am hugely proud of universities, and I am hugely proud of what they deliver into our economies. But I would also argue that we have other great institutions; BT in Suffolk, for example, hopes to have a specific degree around research, learning and so on, and such things should be enabled for a future workforce that is fit for purpose. They should not just be wiped away because an institution does not offer the chance to play five-a-side football.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I, too, think that BT has a number of strengths as a company, but it is yet to be determined whether it is very good at running a university. We will only know that in due course. If BT runs a university, I want to ensure that it is a university as we would commonly understand it, not simply a company that offers a degree course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to colleagues for raising so many points that came up in Committee which particularly exercised me with regard to part 1 of the Bill. Because of the shortness of time, I will restrict my remarks to two issues concerning students and staff in higher education.

I welcome Government amendment 21 on student representation on the board of the Office for Students and the fact that the Minister has listened to the huge number of representations he has received from members of the Bill Committee, from student unions and from higher education sector leaders, who really value the contribution students make and want to see students on the board. It would have been perverse to have a regulator whose purpose was to protect the interests of students and that had the word “students” on its door and headed paper but did not have students around the table on its board. I am glad the Minister has moved on that particular point.

As the Bill progresses to the other place, I hope the Minister might consider moving further on the issue of student representation. In Committee we raised the issue of having student representation on the board of the designated quality provider and in drawing up the quality code, and also ensuring that students have representation in what, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) pointed out, could be a wide range of private providers. Whether an institution is a traditional university, a modern university or one of the new private providers, it is absolutely crucial that students’ rights are protected and their voice is represented at the top of the institution.

I also ask the Minister to address how he sees the issue of student representation playing out on the board of the Office for Students. The wording in Government amendment 21 is not quite what I proposed in Committee —that was slightly more prescriptive, specifying that the representative should be either a student, a sabbatical officer of a students union or an officer of the National Union of Students. I am slightly cautious about the amendment the Secretary of State has tabled, because we could define someone with “experience of representing … students” quite loosely. For example, a number of Members of this House, myself included, have experience of representing students, but I am sure that we would not expect to find ourselves, years later, on the board of the OFS. Perhaps the Minister will sketch out what that representation might look like.

[Jo Churchill]

Will the hon. Gentleman define what he considers a typical student to be, so that I can gauge his idea of someone who could represent, for example, me—I went to college as a mature student—or a lifelong learner, or whatever? We must not be too tight with the definition. The wording in the amendment gives us scope to have a looser definition and might be more appropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden]

I rise to speak to Labour’s new clause 5, which would revoke the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015, which moved support for students from a system of maintenance grants to loans. I also rise to speak to Labour’s new clause 6, which follows on from the excellent speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) on new clauses 2 and 3.

At a time when the Government’s own Social Mobility Commission reported only last week that our nation is facing a crisis in social mobility, it is a travesty that I have to stand here today to talk about the problems caused by scrapping maintenance grants and replacing them with a further loan, disproportionately affecting students who come from a low-income background. As this House knows, students in the UK already face the highest levels of student debt in any European country. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that the average student in the UK will leave university saddled with £44,000-worth of debt, and the Sutton Trust has suggested that the figure could go even higher. This figure is only the average; for students from low-income backgrounds, it will be much higher, and these changes will make it higher still.

Labour Members have pledged to bring back the maintenance grant. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), in the Bill Committee and recently at the Labour party’s north-west conference, gave powerful testimony as to why that is. It is not just because we cannot afford to lose these people from our economic process, or just because it will help to aid social mobility generally; it is because by doing so we will empower hundreds of thousands of people who will otherwise lose their life chances, or be in danger of that, under this process. There were half a million students in the last year before the Government scrapped the grant, many of whom were in higher education in further education colleges. If a significant number of those students do not take out loans because, for a variety of reasons, they do not wish to do so or are unable to do so, we will increase still further the progressive weakening that this Government have put on to the higher education and FE sector, which is currently servicing some 34,000 students who got the grant in the last year before the Government scrapped it, including a significant number of people in my own constituency pursuing higher education at the excellent Blackpool and The Fylde College.

The Government—I give credit to them for it—have put into the Bill the ability for FE colleges to have their own degree-awarding powers, and Blackpool and The Fylde College is one of those, but it is rather perverse then to introduce something that will weaken the support for such colleges. The Government seem not to think in holistic terms about further education. Taking people in higher education in further education colleges out of the equation will weaken the economic and social base of those colleges. The Government do not give anywhere near enough attention to that.

[Jo Churchill]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

Briefly.

[Jo Churchill]

Will the hon. Gentleman allude to how Labour intends to pay for all these benefits, because I think I am right in saying that it was to be via corporation tax?

[Gordon Marsden]

The hon. Lady must be a mind reader because I am just coming to on that issue.

Bringing back the maintenance grant would help to enable over half a million students from low and middle-income backgrounds to go on to higher education. Rumour has it that in the autumn statement this coming Wednesday, the Chancellor is set to announce a further cut in corporation tax, helping only those at the top. We are asking the Government to reconsider this position. Our policy, which has been costed, of bringing back grants would be the equivalent of a rise of less than 1% in corporation tax. Do the Government not believe that this rise would be more beneficial to our nation as a whole—

[Jo Churchill]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

No, I will not—the hon. Lady has had one go. Let me proceed because we do not have a lot of time.

Do the Government not believe that that rise would be more beneficial to our nation as a whole than pushing ahead with a policy that benefits only a relatively small number of large corporations, and not even a big range? If the Government are serious about supporting social mobility, they need to do something about it. The Minister, in a rather Panglossian way, went on about all the terrible things that were predicted when loans were introduced not having come to pass, but that is actually not true, or certainly not true across the board. We have seen what a disaster the introduction of advanced learning loans for level 3 was for over-24-year-olds. Only 50% of the £300 million that was allocated for them was taken up, and that money has been sent straight back to the Treasury. Now, unabashed, the Government want to serve up the same recipe to 19 to 24-year-olds.

“Nudge” has been a fashionable word in the Conservative party in recent years—indeed, Lord Willetts wrote quite a lot about it—but it is possible to nudge people away from things as well as towards them. As the Minister well knows, the quality impact assessment on grants and loans let the cat out of the bag on the difficulties that would be faced by all the groups who desperately need access to higher education, such as women, disabled people, people from the black and minority ethnic communities, and care leavers. No wonder Ministers were so keen to bury this issue in a Delegated Legislation Committee. It took our efforts in bringing it to an Opposition day debate at the beginning of the year to have a decent debate on it.

The Government need to think again on this. I give notice that we will press our new clause 5 to a vote.

[Jo Churchill]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way for two seconds?

[Gordon Marsden]

For two seconds, yes.

[Jo Churchill]

How does the hon. Gentleman explain the fact that covering the figure of £12 billion would mean a rise in corporation tax of between 4% and 5% rather than the 1% that he stated? Surely we need business and industry to be making money in order to create the jobs and opportunities for students once they leave education.

[Gordon Marsden]

That was a hell of a lot more than two seconds, but I forgive the hon. Lady. We need to look at this issue in the context of our proposal, to which I have already alluded.

New clause 6 deals with yet another regressive policy that has been highlighted during the passage of this Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North spoke about some of the significant issues in this regard. The students affected will end up having to pay more than they were loaned as a greater proportion of their income. To those who have, more will be given, because they can pay their loans back more speedily; from those who have not, more will be taken. The Government seem to have been disregarding in their education policy the fact that there is a regional and demographic dimension to this as well. Constituents of mine taking up a graduate job in the past 12 months will have had a more reasonable ability to hit a threshold that was supposed to be uprated on a regular basis. Students in parts of the country where starting incomes for graduates are much lower than in London and the south-east will be particularly badly hit by this proposal.