Tim Roca
Main Page: Tim Roca (Labour - Macclesfield)Department Debates - View all Tim Roca's debates with the Department for Education
(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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Georgia Gould
We saw a 40% reduction in young people’s apprenticeships over a decade. That was the legacy of the Conservative party.
While the foundational principles of our higher education funding and student finance system might be solid, they are straining after more than a decade of neglect and mismanagement, on top of the structural flaws baked into the system by the Conservatives. First, a legacy of seven years of frozen tuition fees has contributed in no small part to a significant and growing number of English higher education providers facing financial challenges. Analysis published last autumn by the Office for Students indicates that without mitigating action, some 124 providers—45% of those included in the OfS financial sustainability report—could face a deficit in 2025-26.
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
The Minister is making an important point. The economics of higher education are actually quite complicated; there is a great deal of cross-subsidy, with the humanities and the arts effectively supporting science, medicine and engineering courses and so on. Does the Minister agree that we should be worried that the Opposition parties’ proposals would put jobs and the viability of universities at risk?
Georgia Gould
My hon. Friend makes an important contribution to this debate.
The Government have taken the tough, immediate action that is required, including by making the difficult decision to increase tuition fees by forecast inflation, balancing the need to give the sector stability with fairness to students and taxpayers. We are also asking more of the sector: we expect higher education providers to demonstrate that they deliver the very best outcomes, both for those students and for the country, in return for the increased investment we are asking students to make. To achieve this, this Government will link future fees increases to university quality, as I have said. This will protect taxpayers’ investment in higher education and incentivise high-quality provision for students without taking away opportunities.