Support for University Students: Covid-19

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is right; this has been a challenge. From taking A-levels, to being at university, to graduating: as he says, these are difficult times. The Government are providing support to people going into employment as well as to students currently completing their studies. We want to make sure that we look after people at every stage of that journey.

[Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]]

Additional funding is welcome, but the University of Greenwich, of which I happen to be chancellor, is experiencing what many other universities are experiencing in London: the removal of the London-weighting element of the teaching grant funding allocation. This is having a very adverse effect on our financial viability, costing us some £2.5 million per year. We put disadvantaged children and children and young people from minority ethnic backgrounds at the very forefront of our concerns in the first part of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. We are finding it very difficult to do this in the face of this cut in our funding allocation. Will the Government reconsider their decisions in that regard to enable us to do that much more for these needy students?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is right to point to the impact the pandemic has had on institutions as well as the students studying at them; I commend the work that they do. The Government have already provided significant support for the higher education sector, bringing forward £2 billion of tuition fee payments, providing £280 million of grant funding for research and establishing a loan scheme to cover up to 80% of a university’s income losses from international students. That, of course, is on top of the generous package of support that my right honourable friend the Chancellor provided for businesses, so we certainly are providing the assistance that institutions need.