Lord Willetts
Main Page: Lord Willetts (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Willetts's debates with the Cabinet Office
(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr David Willetts (Havant) (Con)
May I welcome the Minister to his post and congratulate him on those excellent figures for participation in university? Will he confirm, however, that many of the best access initiatives, such as bursaries and summer schools, are financed from the income from fees above £6,000 and that if fees were reduced to £6,000, those excellent initiatives, which have improved participation, would have to be closed?
Greg Clark
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to him for the work he has done in this field, which is respected on both sides of the House and across all the institutions of higher education. One of the great pleasures of taking this office was to check my desk drawer and discover that there was no note from my predecessor with some unwelcome news. It is a very happy inheritance.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the system we have in place for student finance, which he took through the House, is proving remarkably successful. We have seen record student numbers, and only this week the OECD said that the
“UK is…one of the few”
countries
“that has figured out a sustainable approach to higher education finance”
and that
“that investment…pays off for individuals and tax payers.”
He grasped the nettle and made the reforms, and those reforms are now working.
Mr David Willetts (Havant) (Con)
I was hoping to ask the Minister about Glasgow and to confirm that in a nationwide competition, Glasgow city won the funding to get £25 million of investment in smart city technologies. Do we not think that the best way for Glasgow to remain a smart city is for it to remain part of the United Kingdom?
Greg Clark
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not only did Glasgow win that investment, but I was delighted to sign a city deal with it during the summer that involved the establishment of a new centre for stratified medical imaging in that great city. It is one of the advantages of being part of the United Kingdom that the excellence of Scottish institutions allows them to punch above their weight in terms of population and GDP. The question that is being asked in the Scottish research community is why spoil such a huge success story.