Disabled Students Allowance

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huppert]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As it happens, my mother is registered blind and relies on assistive software. It takes a huge amount of support for her to be able to use it, and I often have to provide that support. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the point about the need for that.

I will make further progress, because I understand that many hon. Members want to speak. The NUS has highlighted a number of specific concerns about how the system will work, and I would be interested in the Minister’s specific response. There is a risk that the reforms could deter institutions from actively recruiting disabled students, because if the institutions are responsible for paying the extra costs, there will be an incentive not to take people who will be a bit more expensive. Although universities have a duty to provide reasonable adjustments for their students, there is no clear definition of what “reasonable adjustments” mean and no funding available to provide them.

The NUS makes another point, which is about the routes of redress for disabled students when there is a problem. There is only a finite amount of time available to fix that. Who would provide advocacy—would it be the disability support office? It could cause huge internal tensions if one part of the university is having to fight another.

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

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is rattling through a lot of important points very quickly.

It is important to recognise that universities are of course under an equality duty. The House has voted under successive Governments to introduce that duty, and at no point has there been the suggestion that extra funding has to be given to a public or private body to enable it to discharge its equality duty. Fortunately, the resources available to universities for teaching are increasing from £7.9 billion at the beginning of this Parliament to £9.9 billion at the end of this Parliament. That is a result of the changes that the hon. Gentleman “steadfastly opposed”, to use his words. They are among the few major national institutions that are seeing increases in cash, and they have a clear equality duty. Along with the retention of DSA, does he not accept that we should expect them to discharge that duty?

[Dr Huppert]

The Minister makes a valid point about the total cash being spent on teaching. As he knows, my problem is with the method of payment rather than the existence of the extra money for teaching. We should be keeping DSA—he is right about that, and we will talk further—and universities should apply the equality duty, but there will still be pressures on them and there will still be changes. I look forward to his detailed answers to the concerns.

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[Dr Huppert]

I will try to finish.

We have many problems, and the Open university is concerned. It has about 20,000 disabled students. Where will it get the funding to support them? The university of Cambridge has short, intense terms, which changes the nature of the help that is needed. DSA is tailored at the moment. I am sure that some universities will provide good support, but I fear that others will not.

[Mr Willetts]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Huppert]

I will always allow the Minister to intervene.

[Mr Willetts]

There is no picking or choosing. Universities have an equality duty. They have more funding for teaching, and they also have more funding in relation to access agreements—more than £700 million. Under the hon. Gentleman’s approach, that funding might not exist. Does he accept that, in my letter to the Office for Fair Access on how universities discharge their access obligations, I specifically identified disabled students as one group to whom they had to reach out in access agreements, for which extra funding is available?

[Dr Huppert]

I do not have the Minister’s letter to hand, but I do not doubt the facts of what he says. However, there is a concern among higher education institutions, among students and among Members of this House—about 100 of them—that the system will not work and will result in a less even playing field and less of the support that people need. I therefore urge the Minister to rethink it some parts of it.

I have asked many questions—I realise that I have rushed through a number of them—that the Minister will have heard before in letters from me and from other right hon. and hon. Members and seen in comments from the National Union of Students and all sorts of other organisations. I hope that he will consider them and rethink the cuts, the way they are being made and the pace of them. I hope that he will then return with alternative proposals that achieve what we surely all want to see, which is that support is available and we do not leave people out as we are trying to develop them through the university system.

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[Mr Blunkett]

Absolutely, and that would entail employing someone, not simply diverting a bit of resource. My support systems, back in ’69 to ’72, were funded by the local authority; at the time, the local authority had a duty to support students under the grant system. Even though the local authority was helpful, however, I had to organise reading circles of volunteer students to assist me. That was a mutual arrangement and it was obviously socially responsible, but it should not have been necessary. Under the proposals, we will find ourselves going back to a bygone era where people have to plead for help rather than receiving it directly.

[Mr Willetts]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Blunkett]

I just want to make this point, because I think others want to speak. I emphasise what the hon. Member for Cambridge has already said. When it comes to taking a student in, the access provisions of universities and other higher education intuitions will always contain a subliminal question: can this student manage? That question was asked of me all those years ago. If the answer is, “Yes, if I have the support systems necessary: the equipment, the extra readers and other provision that other people will not need”; if the university thinks, “Is it worth it?”; and if the department thinks, “What imposition will this cause? Will resources be diverted from somewhere else? Will this responsibility be devolved to this department?”, there is a chance that that student will not be offered a place. If that were to be the case, I say to the Minister: be it on your conscience. Go back to the Treasury and say that the money in its existing budget should be retained. The rights and opportunities of individual students should be retained, and the Government should be ashamed of themselves if that does not happen.

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

It is a pleasure to respond to this important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing it.

I want to make it absolutely clear that we are not abolishing DSA. Some Members who intervened have assumed it would disappear. It is a substantial item of spending now running at about £125 million, but we envisage that there will continue to be significant DSA in future. Several Members, particularly the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), did not like my statement that we were modernising it, but let me explain briefly what modernisation means and why we are engaging with it.

The system of DSA has not changed significantly since it was introduced in 1974. Since then, there have been widespread technological changes, some of which have improved disabled people’s ability to access education through advances in IT, but some things that were previously available by special arrangement are now widespread. For example, many people have laptops or other forms of access to IT. So there have been advances in technology, which have spread across the country.

Let me tackle head-on another significant change that has happened: the spread of equality duties under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Equality Act 2010. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) was emphatic on that point. I have enormous respect for him and his work, but it is reasonable for us to say what is the right balance of responsibility between institutions’ legal obligations under the Acts and individual payments to students via the DSA. There may well be types of provision that are better and more efficiently delivered on an institutional basis via the universities’ obligation than via individual student support.

Perhaps as a lay person I can give a simple practical example. If a university has a library where people with disabilities find it hard to access material, it is a legitimate question to ask whether the DSA should provide for their costs to access the library or whether the library should be organised in such a way that every time someone comes in—

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[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I remind right hon. and hon. Members that 15 minutes extra—the time taken for the Division—will be added to this debate. The debate that was supposed to start at 4 pm will start 15 minutes later.

[Mr Willetts]

I am not sure that this extra time will be as good as that in the Belgium versus United States match, but I will do my best. I welcome hon. Members who have come for the next debate and apologise to them.

I was starting to wind up the debate, explaining why it is legitimate to carry out the review and why the term “modernisation” is legitimate. One argument in that regard was about technical change. I was also saying that there is a genuine issue about obligations under the Equality Act, whereby universities have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for students who are disabled. We have to get the balance right between the institutional obligation on the university and personal financial support for the individual student. I was giving an example of how a library should function, saying that the obligation could be discharged by a library properly training its staff to help people with a range of disabilities. That may be a more effective way of delivering support for disabled people than individual disabled students turning up at the library with a personal assistant to help them. It is legitimate to try to get the individual versus institution balance reviewed in the light of the equalities duties.

The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough did not like the fact that I referred to the funding available for universities, but several hon. Members, beginning with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge but not only him, specifically asked, “How will universities pay, given that you are expecting them to discharge these institutional obligations?” There are two genuine points to be made in response, although more could be made.

First, with regard to the equalities duties that the House has introduced under successive Governments, by and large we do not say, “We therefore need an extra stream of funding for the NHS”, any more than we say that there should be extra public support for Marks & Spencer. Hon. Members should remember that, legally, universities are independent institutions outside the public sector. The general view across the House, when we have imposed equality duties, has been that that is just part of the proper functioning of an institution.

Secondly, it is fortunate that our universities are in a healthy financial position. I will not stray from the point, as happened in the argument a few minutes ago between the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, but the sums going to universities for teaching—the combination of the grant income and the fee income that they receive—is rising substantially as a result of the controversial changes that we introduced, going from £7.9 billion total income in 2011-12 to £9.9 billion in 2015-16.

To be frank with hon. Members who voted against the £9,000 fee—I suspect that the majority of those in this Chamber did so—it is inconceivable that universities would have enjoyed a £2 billion increase in teaching income in the life of this Parliament under any other model of financing universities, especially one that depended on public expenditure through grant. There is a genuine increase in their financial resource. Several hon. Members expressed concern that our proposal comes at a bad time, when universities have not got any money, but in fact they have had an increase in their cash resource.

[Mr Byrne]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way with characteristic generosity. Can he help hon. Members? He has made an eloquent argument for the need to rebalance responsibilities between central Government and independent universities, saying that we need to do so because it is a long time since we have considered the matter. By how much is he seeking to reduce the DSA budget over the next financial year and the one after? He must know, because he has a list of specific measures.

[Mr Willetts]

I was going to get to that point in a moment. We are still consulting—it is a genuine consultation—so I cannot give the House a specific figure, because that will depend on a host of things, including exactly how the proposals are implemented and wider effects. However, it is a budget that has grown rapidly. Incidentally, the right hon. Gentleman said that that growth had stopped. There is always a difference between the provisional figures and the final outcome figures. My personal expectation is that the final outcome figures for the latest year should be higher than those for the previous year. It is not fair to compare final outcome figures with provisional figures. We will see. The budget has increased from about £88 million when we came to office to about £125 million now, so it is legitimate to look at it. However, we do not have a specific allocated figure.

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[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Willetts]

I will give way briefly to the hon. Member for Huddersfield, but I have a lot of specific points to make, so after doing so I shall make progress.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister knows what I am going to say. He is looking through rose-tinted glasses at the future of finance in higher education, but it is not all as rosy as that. A vice-chancellor recently said to me, “The real worry that I have is that the whole HE system is based on a mountain of student debt.” That is our worry. It is not as rosy a picture as the Minister has painted.

[Mr Willetts]

That is a separate issue. The graduate repayment system is a fair, sustainable and viable way of financing our universities, and it would be a mistake to try to reverse that.

I turn to some of the specific issues that have been raised. Let me say clearly to right hon. and hon. Members that we will fund non-medical help that would not be a reasonable adjustment for higher education institutions to make. We will define the obligations of the institutions, and on top of that there will be support for non-medical help, which in certain situations will include support for students with specific learning difficulties, as well as other groups. Hon. Members mentioned IT, and we will make a contribution to the costs of higher-cost and higher-specification computers in certain circumstances if they are required purely because of the student’s disability. We will pay the extra costs that arise from those computers being required by students with a disability, rather than have a general payment for laptops when they are now widespread across society. We will also cover additional costs of specialist accommodation in exceptional circumstances.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

Have the Minister and the Government looked into the implications more widely, beyond higher education, of the Government making such a definition of what is a reasonable adjustment by universities? Is there not a real risk that others will cite that definition and say that anything that goes beyond it is not a reasonable adjustment for them, thereby denying disabled people in other areas too?

[Mr Willetts]

That will be the last intervention that I take, because time is tight.

We are consulting, and we will produce guidance that will help make the crucial distinction between what institutions can legitimately be expected to do and where individual funding is required.

We are talking about education, and I want to come back to that, because several Members raised the topic. It is a distinct responsibility. We are consulting, and we will continue to meet a whole range of groups representing disabled people. We have already discussed the policy changes with, for example, the National Union of Students, Universities UK and the Office for Fair Access, and there will be many further such meetings in the future.

Institutions will be expected to have reasonable adjustments in place by September 2015. We believe that the time scales provide sufficient time for us to work with institutions and stakeholders to ensure that changes are introduced effectively, but I understand that some institutions are concerned that they will be disproportionately affected due to their high numbers of disabled students. Several Members have made that point, which will be considered before guidance is issued to the sector in the autumn. The guidance will help institutions understand better the role that DSA will play, enabling them to consider the support they will need to provide. We will also provide regular updates for the HE sector over the coming months.

Student information and guidance, which will include information on DSA changes as well as on the wider student support package, will be available in September in the normal way. Once we conclude our consultation meetings, we will be in a position to issue draft guidance in early autumn on what DSA will cover. That guidance will benefit higher education institutions and assessment centres in particular. Stakeholders will have the chance to review it and ensure that it is sufficiently clear and understandable before it goes live. I undertake to lay the relevant regulations at that time, which will allow Members to see the regulations and the draft guidance in parallel. Before adopting either, the Government will continue to have due regard to the impact of the changes on the aims set out in the Equality Act 2010. We will publish our analysis on that at the same time.

A point was raised about existing students and DSA students beginning university in 2014-15. They will remain on the current arrangements in 2015-16. I have already announced that the maximum available DSA amounts will not be changing. We are not adopting a blunt approach to the provision of non-medical help. We realise that non-medical help will be the responsibility of higher education institutions, but we recognise that in certain areas, perhaps as a result of the impact or severity of a disability, DSA has an additional role to play once reasonable adjustment has been made. In the case of complex needs, we will assess the severity of the impact on the education of the student. It will not be a simple physical assessment of their disability; it will be an assessment of how the disability challenges they face affect their ability to benefit from higher education. That is the assessment that has to be made. We will focus on the educational impact and the severity of their educational needs. I would also like to—[Interruption.]

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. When the Chairman can hear conversations at the back of the room, someone is out of order. I urge Members to pay attention to the Minister’s contribution.

[Mr Willetts]

Thank you, Mr Hood. I was trying to go almost too fast, because there is so much material to cover. I was trying to clarify the issue of specific learning difficulties and dyslexia, which has arisen in the debate. My announcement used the term “complex needs”, and I wish to make it clear that DSA will support those for whom the impact on their higher education needs is most severe. That is the approach we propose to take.

We are in consultation on technology with groups such as the British Assistive Technology Association. I assure Members that the Government are committed to supporting disabled students in accessing higher education. Students are right to expect support from their higher education institution, and DSA has been available to complement that support for nearly 25 years. That is not changing. What is changing is the balance between the two types of support, and that balance should be struck in the light of the Equality Act 2010. I conclude by assuring Members that over the summer, the Government and officials will continue to develop thinking, engage on policy issues and consolidate our work. We will, of course, continue to consult and keep the House informed as our proposals develop.