Student Finance

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I thank the noble Baroness for her point. We are alert to a certain number of students who have accumulated debt but the changes today—raising the threshold to £25,000, and at the upper level from £41,000 to £45,000—should and will help students and will provide some relief. We firmly believe that the tuition fee system is working. It has certainly enabled more people from disadvantaged backgrounds to go to university, which I think everybody recognises, and that must be an extremely good thing.

The advanced learning points that the noble Baroness has raised may well be included in the comments that will come out towards the end of the year. I hasten to add that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about a major review—yes, the Prime Minister did say that. The issue is that there is a constant review going on, so there will be some views coming out towards the end of the year. There will be no formation of a committee coming out of that review, however, just specific review comments.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I find the Minister’s response to my noble friend Lord Hunt’s question about the independent review, and indeed what he has just said in response to the previous question, a little puzzling and confusing. Surely there is some urgency in setting up this independent review that the Prime Minister announced. The current system is not working as well as the Minister has just claimed: the level of debt is now enormous and the amount of repayment is far below what was originally anticipated, so the hole in the public finances in the future will be huge. Moreover there is a very important group—part-time and mature students—whose numbers have declined hugely as a result of the enormous rise in fees from £3,000 to £9,000. Can the Minister go back to his colleagues and to the Minister in the other place and express the views of this House—certainly it is my view and I think that of others who have spoken—on the importance of getting on with this review and that part-time and mature students should be considered? Students doing vocational and technical courses should also be considered, not only in higher education but in further education, as that group has been hugely neglected in the past.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I am well aware that the noble Baroness has taken quite a lead, particularly during the passage of the higher education Act, on part-time and mature students. The Minister in the other place will take this into account; I have no doubt that that will be the case in constantly reviewing this aspect, although I cannot confirm whether it will be at the top of the list. In terms of her concerns about urgency, we issued a Written Ministerial Statement on Monday and followed that up with the announcement today, and here I am at the Dispatch Box. These changes are as a result of our listening to students and to parliamentarians—we have taken some action. The resource and accounting figures are kept constantly under review but there will be a slight increase, of course, as a result of our changes; I made that point earlier. Tuition fees are, in effect, a subsidy to the nation to allow more people to go to university.