Liz McInnes
Main Page: Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)Department Debates - View all Liz McInnes's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(8 years ago)
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Ben Gummer
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It brings me neatly on to my next point, which is that the great virtue of these reforms to student finance is that we will be able to increase student finance support—maintenance support—by 25%.
The hon. Member for Lewisham East made some clear and sensible points. She suggested that training as a student nurse was different from being a history undergraduate, because student nurses have less time to take on a second job. There is therefore even more reason to provide better maintenance support for them. However, she has not come to tell the House that she will provide 25% additional maintenance support for students who do not have time to do a second job. She has not made that commitment, yet she has criticised our efforts to increase maintenance support by 25% precisely to help those people who would not otherwise be able to take time out to take on a university course. She cannot have it both ways. She cannot criticise us for the reforms we are undertaking while at the same time saying that students need greater support. It is precisely through these reforms that we are producing the support that so many students require.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
The Minister talks about maintenance support, but can he clarify that that support will no longer be in the form of a grant, and will now be in the form of a loan? Does he acknowledge that that will land students in even more debt when they finally qualify?
Ben Gummer
By reforming the system so that this becomes a loan rather than a grant, we are able to produce 25% extra support for these students while they are training, much as with the rest of the student population.
The results relating to newly qualified nurses are not as the hon. Member for Lewisham East suggests. She should be very clear in the way she addresses this question, because all of us, whatever our views on this subject, have a duty to inform the public properly. It would be remiss of all of us, even those who disagree with the policy as she does, to mislead potential students into thinking that they will have to pay more than they would otherwise. She said that students would have to pay hundreds of pounds more in repayments once they had qualified. That is just not the case. We anticipate that a newly qualified nurse will pay roughly £90 a year more; that will be about the same as they are currently paying, because of the way in which student payment finance is gradated. The impact on newly qualified nurses will therefore not be anywhere near the impact that she has suggested. She should be very careful about how she addresses her points; otherwise, people could receive an impression about these loans that is not actually a fact.