Higher Education: Funding

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

I thank my noble friend Lord Phillips for that question about consultation taking as long as it should take and making sure that all universities and student unions are included in all the conversations. That will be the case. We will consult with all the facts before us. This has been a slow start for us as a Government, and I know that people are getting short-tempered with the lack of progress. We feel it. We would like to move ahead further than we have been able to do so far. The comprehensive spending review will allow us, at last, to see what the news is and to move forward from that. I am part of a coalition Government, and I can tell the House that over the past six months we have learnt to do consultation. We are doing better for it. I may not be able to produce the important answers to some of the very important questions that have been asked today, but I hope that the consultation process will bring about the thing that we all want: good education and good universities for our children, to give them the best.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

Perhaps the noble Baroness will return to one of the questions raised by my noble friend Lord Triesman. He asked her whether the noble Lord, Lord Browne, had been given any indication of the Government’s evolving thinking on the CSR while drawing up his report. That is an important question. Was the noble Lord, Lord Browne, kept informed about government thinking on that point?

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said that she and others in her party would have liked to have seen no raising of the cap. But it went a little further than that, did it not? Before the election, 57 Liberal Democrat MPs not only felt the same as the noble Baroness, but signed a specific pledge saying that they would oppose the raising of the cap. The Minister speaks for the coalition. Will she tell us her feelings about that and does she regret what those 57 Liberal Democrat MPs did?

[Baroness Wilcox]

On the first question, the noble Baroness will have to ask the noble Lord, Lord Browne. He is here today and it is lovely that he is. On the second question, all three parties here assembled have had to rethink this problem over time. Certainly, the Benches facing me have changed their mind more than once.