Education Maintenance Allowance

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before calling the next speaker, I must inform Members that—would Members please resume their seats?—52 of them still wish to speak. To be fair, and to try to call them all, I will reduce the time limit to six minutes. I hope that they will bear it in mind when speaking that many Members wish to contribute.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This happens again and again. We are given a restricted time limit, and in the course of the debate it is reduced. One reason why is that the two Front Benchers’ speeches took 50 minutes and 46 minutes. If Front Benchers, taking interventions again and again, are going to reduce the opportunities of Back Benchers to make speeches of reasonable length, we ought to look at the whole system, because it is unacceptable to reduce the length of speeches in the course of a debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Sir Gerald, I understand your frustration and anger at the reduction in the time limit. As you will know, it is beyond the power of the Chair to curtail the opening speeches or to prevent Members making interventions in the first place when they have their name down to speak in that very debate, but I am sure that other Members will want to take up your point with the Procedure Committee. It is not a matter for me, however. I am trying, with this debate, to be as fair as I possibly can, and even with six minutes not every Member who has asked to speak will be called before the winding-up speeches. I am afraid that I can do nothing more at this stage, but I will certainly draw the issue to the Speaker’s attention.

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[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Today we are discussing the important subject of EMA, an extremely well-intentioned product of the previous Government that, at its most effective, helped young people to continue their education. At its worst, though, it is just another in a series of policies adopted by the previous Government with a lot of dead-weight. I am sorry if that offends the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), but we have to acknowledge that, in the case of many policies of the previous Government, a lot of money was spent and very little achieved, after a certain point. EMA is one of those cases. It is one of the factors that led the previous Government to rack up such a large deficit for the country—a deficit that the coalition Government now have to sort out.

I do not want to dwell on the debt argument, but it currently costs this country £564 million a year to provide EMA for our young people. As I say, the scheme is well-intentioned, but when a policy lacks targeting and loses its focus, as EMA seems to have done in certain ways, all we are doing is building up a credit card of debt for our young people. We are actually encumbering the generation that we are giving EMA with a massive debt—and we are encumbering their children with huge debts, which they will be paying off, through higher taxes, for years to come. They will suffer reductions in service as a result of the debt interest that this country is paying.

Any sensible Government would want a targeted scheme to allow young people to access further education. That is what I hope the current Government are trying to achieve. Rather than concentrate on the inputs, and tailoring the programme of support for young people on the basis of how much money we put in, we should first set a target for what we want to achieve and what outcomes we want, and then look at what money we need to support that programme. To that end, we need to look at the impediments to some of our younger people gaining access to further education. Gaining that access is a problem, in some ways, for many young people; 12% have clearly said that if they did not have some sort of financial support, they would not be able to continue their studies, which we need certainly to address and overcome.

I have two fantastic post-16 colleges in my constituency, King Edward VI college and North Warwickshire and Hinckley college. I have met a number of students at North Warwickshire and Hinckley college, and had a detailed discussion with them. Their biggest concern, and the biggest impediment that they saw to young people continuing their studies, was the issue of travel to and from college. We have to address that, and not just for people from rural areas; it is a problem for people from urban areas as well.

We also have to address the fact that, as has been mentioned from the Opposition Benches, during the current academic year many students have been used to receiving EMA and benefiting from it, especially for their travel. The Government must make sure that young people who have gone to college on that basis this year do not drop out next year. We need to clear up quickly what the system will be next year, to make sure that our young people make informed choices about their studies once they finish school this year.

Many local authorities have reduced or stopped the discretionary travel supplement that used to be provided. One or two schemes are still available, but across the country many have disappeared. We need to look into that and see how, as a Government, we can help young people with their travel.

Earlier, the shadow Secretary of State was rather derogatory to our young people, saying that it was not appropriate for them to do part-time work. That is not a concept that we have covered in the Chamber today. Part-time work is extremely important not just to earn money to provide things over and above those that young people need for their education, but to help young people develop soft skills to bridge the gap between education and employment. I speak to many people in commerce who say that younger people need the best soft skills they can get to integrate into the workplace. It is extremely important that that is encouraged in our further education system.

To conclude, as I do not have much time, I wholeheartedly support the Government amendment, especially as it relates to travel, but I have concerns about how the new scheme will look and the amount of money to be put into it. I hope that tonight the Minister will dispel a few of those hares that have been running—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Time is up.

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[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) and thank the Opposition for this debate on EMA. Historically, they have been vexed about how to pay for the scheme.

If we are to have a credible debate today—[Interruption.] I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. My tie to support the campaign against bowel cancer was making that noise—it is a musical tie that the campaign was giving out.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Perhaps next time the hon. Gentleman will be more selective in the ties that he wears in the Chamber, and then we will not need to have the musical accompaniment.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Your words of wisdom are taken on board, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I apologise to you.

If we are to have a credible debate, we must look at this issue in the round, and that means that we must look at the economic legacy we inherited from the previous Government. Our structural deficit is one of the largest in the world, and it is simply unsustainable. We are having to borrow £500 million a day. Every time we go to sleep and wake up in the morning, we rack up another £500 million. The debt interest—the money that we have to pay in interest to foreign banks and foreign countries to build their own hospitals and schools with—is £120 million a day, every single day.

I come from a rural constituency with some areas that have no post-16 provision, so I am all too aware of the additional costs that students will have to bear. Shipston high school in my constituency has lobbied me very hard on this subject, as has Martin Penny, the head of Stratford-upon-Avon college—a fantastic institution in my constituency with 5,000 students and 450 staff. I addressed the students during the week of the tuition fees debate, and after we had cut through the misinformation they understood why we were having to make these decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. A huge number of Members still wish to participate in this debate, and the Front Benchers have given an indication of relatively short wind-ups of 10 minutes each at the end. I am therefore reducing the time limit again—to five minutes from the next speaker I call—in the hope that I will get more speakers in. I hope that all hon. Members will take note of that.