"With due respect to the hon. Gentleman, I shall read back to him directly the words I spoke before I took those interventions: two graduates with the same degree from the same university starting the same job will start their working life with as much as a £9,000 difference in …..." John Denham - View Speech
"I am going to make a little more progress, because I am aware of Madam Deputy Speaker’s strictures about time and I need to draw to a close very quickly.
Let me complete the point I was making about the unfairness that is being introduced into the access system. Labour’s …..." John Denham - View Speech
"This is bizarre. The right hon. Gentleman is the Government’s access tsar, but he is asking, “Why do not we all agree that there should not be any fee waivers?” Because it is a requirement of the national scholarship programme that there should be fee waivers. That is the scheme …..." John Denham - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but does he accept that the Government have not told us how they intend to allocate student numbers—or indeed whether we will have a model in which the money follows the student or whether numbers will be centrally allocated, as they are at …..." John Denham - View Speech
"The answer is, of course, that the BIS team, including the hon. Gentleman, conceded this huge cut in higher education and offered it up to the Treasury. It is not a matter of choosing one cut or another. A BIS team of any credibility or influence would simply have said …..." John Denham - View Speech
That this House condemns the failure of the Government to deliver the commitment made to Parliament that £9,000 a year student fees would be ‘exceptional’; further notes that the Office of Fair Access (OFFA) has said that it has no powers to set university fees or …..." John Denham - View Speech
"We have made it quite clear in every debate since the Browne report was published that it would be unrealistic to say that higher education budgets would be untouched by the deficit reduction that we would have had to introduce. However, we have also pointed that if, for the sake …..." John Denham - View Speech
"That argument is worthy of further examination, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will be dealing with it in due course, at—I hope—not too much length. It gets worse...." John Denham - View Speech
"Ministers have consistently claimed that fees above £6,000 will be allowed only if tough access agreements are in place. Before I say more about that, however, I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)...." John Denham - View Speech
"We would not have destroyed regional development agencies in the chaotic and Maoist manner that the Secretary of State has described, but as a constructive Opposition, we have proposed that RDA assets be transferred to local economic partnerships to promote growth and jobs. Will he confirm that many RDAs, including …..." John Denham - View Speech