Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 General Committees

[Mr Marsden]

The hon. Lady needs to look more carefully at the differential impacts. The point that I, and I am sure my hon. Friends, would make about this is that debt aversion depends on where someone is coming from. It is perfectly possible to have a situation with those common factors. It is not, however, at all clear from any of the evidence that has been put forward that that would not be a significant disincentive.

I was talking about the things that were said previously: those words will do little to enhance the Government’s alleged commitment to increasing social mobility. The Government and their predecessors set great store by the principle of “nudge”—actions that persuade people to change their behaviour for the better. I remind the Minister that is possible to nudge people away from desirable outcomes such as getting higher education, rather than towards them. The question that the Minister and his colleagues must answer is what attention they have devoted in the regulations, which are highly specific, to preventing that.

A new BIS study included in the impact statement by the Government says that more than half the applicants said they felt put off by the cost of university. Also, for poorer applicants, tuition fee loans and the income-contingent repayment threshold were more important in persuading them to apply, despite the costs. However, the Government seriously underestimate the effect that the grant and the cost of universities have on student decisions. That is backed up by what the Sutton Trust has said:

“Shifting grants to loans may move them off the balance sheet, but it could also put off many low and middle income students and tip the balance against their going to university. Since grants were reintroduced, there have been significant improvements”—

and we welcome that—

“in participation from full time less advantaged students, and this will be put at risk by today’s Budget plans.

The reality is that the Government has miscalculated the levels of repayments it will get from its student loans under the new fees system. Rather than penalising poorer students, it should have a fundamental review of the repayments system. We need long term solutions not a short term fix.”

Research from the NUS that was published yesterday by Populus shows that parents are concerned that the Government’s plans to scrap the maintenance grant will discourage their children from applying to university. Two fifths of those with a combined income of £25,000 or less believe that their children would be discouraged from applying to university if grants were replaced by loans. More than half the parents believed that the plan to scrap grants undermined the Government’s objective of increasing access to university for poorer students.

I want to deal with some other surveys that have been conducted. The changes may well pile even more pressure on to students to alter their work-study balance while pursuing a degree. According to the 2015 Endsleigh survey, produced by a company that has specialised in the area for many years, already 77% of students must work to help fund their studies, using time that could be spent on academic work. That already high number looks set to increase further with the removal of maintenance grants.

The Government claim that they want to strengthen our skills base and that they have given more support for postgraduates. The initial steps that were announced on that are welcome; but there is a risk that they will be undercut because of the debt aversion of the group of students who will lose their grants. The NUS found that after a student finished their undergraduate degree, access to a maintenance grant could also influence their post-study choices.

I want to turn my attention to the specifics of the equality impact assessment that BIS produced for the regulations. It concedes, for example, that black and minority ethnic students, in particular, will be disproportionately worse off than others following the removal of maintenance grants:

“We believe that the proposed changes will disproportionately affect people from ethnic minority backgrounds. This is based on evidence of debt aversion in this group and the increased likelihood for these students to receive the full maintenance grant. We have assessed that there is a small risk to the participation of students”—

given participation rates—

“both from high and low socio-economic backgrounds”.

Additionally, there is risk to the outcomes of these students if they choose not to take out the additional loan available.”

However, a recent BIS study also stated that non-white applicants were likely to cite the importance of maintenance grants in overcoming their concerns about costs. Thus the removal of the maintenance grant will seriously discourage BME students from attending HE institutions.

There is potentially bad news for older learners as well. The equality analysis states:

“Mature students will be disproportionately impacted by the policy proposals to remove the full maintenance grant and replace with additional loan as well as the freezing of targeted grants. The proportion of students aged 21 and over that claim maintenance grant support is significantly higher than their representation in the population of all student support claimants. The available evidence points to the cost sensitivity and debt averseness of this group. The policy change presents a risk for the participation of older students in higher education.”

The assessment has worrying words for disabled students as well:

“As for all students from low income backgrounds we expect the risk to participation of low income disabled students…to continue to be mitigated by the high average returns to HE investment and the repayment protection for low earning graduates.”

That, of course, assumes that current ratios quoted in that respect will remain the same with the massive expansion of the cohort entering full-time work in the next 10 to 15 years. There is no evidence whatever on that.

However, the Government have conceded in the assessment that disabled people will also be disproportionately affected by the decision not to protect the real value of disabled students’ allowances. The assessment says:

“Students from low income backgrounds will be able to access DSA at same level in cash terms but may be disproportionately affected by the freezing (real terms reduction)”—

a term the Government were reluctant to use at the beginning of the equality impact assessment—

“of DSAs and dependants grants.”

For all of the groups that I have cited so far, I and the rest of the Committee want to know what the Government propose to do to mitigate those disproportionate impacts, which their own equality impact assessment so candidly concedes will be the case.

In addition, there is the separate worrying implication that a significant number of would-be students may be discriminated against under these regulations because of their religious beliefs. The impact assessment states:

“There is evidence to suggest that there are groups of Muslim students whose religion prohibits them from taking out an interest bearing loan. This means that this group of students will no longer have access to funding for living costs as non-repayable finance is no longer available. This could lead to a decline in the participation of some Muslim students.”

The complacency about the failure to have available a sharia-compliant alternative to grants that will be withdrawn borders on discrimination. Does the Minister agree that the regulations as they stand will restrict Muslim students from accessing valuable finance, while the removal of grants threatens to weaken further their ability and capacity to carry through their higher education studies?

The Government claim that they are making an alternative to traditional loans available that is sharia-compliant, but it is not there yet, is it, Minister? Yet the Government have known about the issue since April 2014. Will the Minister guarantee that the change will not be implemented until there are firm regulations in law for an alternative finance proposal that will be acceptable to people of the Muslim faith?

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I want to share my own example, because these matters are often seen as hypothetical. I started my undergraduate degree in 1990, the first year that voluntary loans were introduced. I did not take one of those because Muslim students are very risk-averse and debt-averse and do not want to carry interest-bearing loans. Does my hon. Friend agree that these are real people, not just hypothetical examples?

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[Alison Thewliss]

We cannot tell exactly what will happen as a result of these further changes and what impact they will have. I speak from my own experience: I graduated from university in 2004, and only since taking this job have I been able to make any impact on paying back the loan that I took out then. That loan was relatively small compared with the loans that we are discussing. How long will people be saddled with debt, and what impact will it have on their life chances and their ability to make progress in their lives? It is an absolutely appalling circumstance, and it is creating an even more indebted generation than the one before it. It is ridiculous. The impact in Scotland will be greater, because we have four-year degrees rather than three-year degrees as in England.

I will quote from the figures sent to me by the NUS in Scotland, which notes that in the academic year 2013-14, a total of £1.59 billion was awarded to applicants in all cohorts. In 2014-15, for post-2012 students, a provisional total of £1.5 billion was awarded. Assuming that that averages out over the three years, it implies an annual reduction of £500 million, contributing to a £50 million reduction in the cash DEL—departmental expenditure limit—available to Scotland per year. For comparison, Student Awards Agency for Scotland figures for 2014 show that the social grant and bursary awards made to Scotland for Scottish-domiciled students totalled £63.6 million. That is a significant impact.

On the impact on Scotland since the introduction of tuition fees in England, when direct cash DEL teaching grants provided by the Higher Education Funding Council in England to English universities were cut by more than £3 billion, assuming a straight consequential, the result is a £300 million reduction in cash DEL available to Scotland. The spending review proposes a further £120 million reduction in the teaching grant by 2019-20, which will result in a consequential to Scotland on top of the impact of these measures, including for nursing students.

The impact on us in Scotland is unfair. Decisions here by a Government we did not vote for and who have one MP in Scotland are resulting in decisions that John Swinney will have to make in our budget, which is decreasing. We have no impact on those decisions, and our Government cannot change them. The decisions taken by this Conservative Government and the previous coalition Government have had the effect of skewing the Scottish budget in further education. The departmental expenditure limit, which includes the teaching and research budget and the grant and bursary budget, has been reduced, and the annually managed expenditure budget, which goes on loans, has increased. We do not want an increase in loans; we want the DEL, but we cannot have that, because decisions here have reduced it. Those decisions affect the Scottish budget, and we must find the money that we want to spend on grants and bursaries from somewhere else within it. That is unfair. We want to support our students. Our students in Scotland deserve support, particularly where, due to demographic differences, they have not yet had the chance to go to university because they are put off by loans.

The point made by a Labour Member about minorities is true as well. It will particularly affect constituencies such as mine in Glasgow, Central, which is probably one of the most ethnically diverse constituencies in Scotland and contains Strathclyde University and Glasgow Caledonian University, as well as bounding on Glasgow University. All those universities could be affected by that decision.

[Dr Huq]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the difference between what is happening now and what happened for my generation is that I had a full grant and my fees paid completely? I pity this generation. It was doable not to have a voluntary top-up loan in 1990, but what is happening now is disastrous.

[Alison Thewliss]

I will finish by absolutely agreeing with that. When the hon. Lady and I went to university, we came out with some debt, but not a crippling debt of up to £53,000, which is an astronomical amount of money for anybody from any background to consider if they want to go to university. I urge the Government to reconsider and to speak directly to the Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney and to the Scottish Government to assess the impact of these decisions on the Scottish budget. I doubt very much that the Minister has consulted the Scottish Government.

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[Joseph Johnson]

Yes, indeed it does, and is motivating our decision to increase the amount of support that will be available to students going into higher education in this country. We want everybody who can benefit from higher education to be able to go to university.

We are delighted to see more people applying to university, more people getting in and more people getting on to their first-choice courses than ever before. Critically, we are delighted that more people from disadvantaged backgrounds are applying and going to university than ever before, and we want those trends to carry on.

[Dr Huq]

Has the Minister seen the research on these new arrangements for the Institute for Fiscal Studies? The poorest 40% will graduate with debts of up to £53,000 a year, as opposed to £40,000 at the moment. How does that square with his party’s claim to be the party encouraging fiscal responsibility and social mobility?

[Joseph Johnson]

Accessing university is a transformational experience for many students, especially for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. We want more people from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to university and receive the benefits that can bring. I will now explain exactly why—

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

I am going to press on and conclude my remarks, because the shadow Minister needs to make his closing remarks, too.

Those who disagree with the provisions contained in the regulations should submit their proposals to generate equivalent grant savings from elsewhere. I note that the Labour party has in the past year proposed competing higher education funding policies, although they share one common feature—their significant cost to the taxpayer. Labour’s leader said in July that fees should be removed completely, with grants retained. That was costed by the Labour party itself at £10 billion. Ahead of the election, it was briefly proposed that fees be reduced to £6,000, which would have cost £3 billion. Those policies move us backwards. They are unsustainable.

I was therefore particularly interested to read Ed Balls’ comments in this week’s Times Higher Education, where he spoke about the “blot on Labour’s copybook”:

“We clearly didn’t find a sustainable way forward for the financing of higher education.”

He said that if the electorate

“think you’ve got the answers for the future, they’ll support you.”

We have set out a clear plan for the future to ensure that higher education finances are sustainable and that more people can benefit from higher education. Has the Labour party decided on its approach?

When the tuition fee reforms were made in the last Parliament, there were those who predicted a sharp fall in participation in higher education, particularly by those from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, that did not come to pass, and the latest application figures from UCAS, although provisional, show that, in spite of our proposed changes to maintenance, application figures are similar to last year’s figures.

The hon. Member for Blackpool South referred to the grant-to-loan switch in FE. Loans were introduced in the further education sector in 2013-14 to remove the barrier of meeting the upfront cost of tuition fees; we are debating loans for living costs in HE, and I do not believe that is a valid comparison.

[Dr Huq]

Will the Minister give way?

[Joseph Johnson]

I have only one or two minutes, so I will not give way. We should remember that switching support for living costs from grants to loans allows us to increase the upfront support provided to students from the lowest income backgrounds. In taking the decision to proceed with this policy, the Secretary of State and I considered an equality impact assessment, which we have published. That impact assessment sets out the risk to protected groups. It also explains that those risks will be mitigated by a number of factors, including the 10.3% increase to the maximum loan for living costs for the lowest income students, the repayment protection for low-income, low-earning graduates and the high average returns to higher education.

We will, of course, monitor the outcome of the policy through the data available from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and the Student Loans Company and the work of the Office for Fair Access. We will also continue to listen to stakeholders and colleagues in the House and the other place. In the meantime, I am grateful for the points that have been made by hon. Members today. However, the evidence from the coalition’s fee reforms has been that participation is fairly insensitive to greater debt. The equality analysis made the point that such changes have a

“limited impact on students decision making”.

Students understand that graduate debt is not the same as commercial debt. Graduate debt is paid back through a repayment system that takes account of ability to pay and, crucially, it allows individuals to make one of the best investments—in undertaking higher education.

The instrument allows us, in a time of fiscal restraint, to ensure that universities remain well funded so that they can continue to act as engines of our economy and of social mobility in a time of increased student numbers. For those reasons, I commend the regulations to the House.