Higher Education (Fee Limits and Fee Limit Condition) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I also must declare an interest, as a member of the academic staff of King’s College London. I would also like to note that I was a member of the Augar review. Apropos of the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, of a quinquennial review, I am rather pleased that it has taken only six years since the final report of the Augar review to get to some of the implementation of it.

Obviously, I welcome the Government’s decision finally to raise fees a little, but I would like to say something about foundation years. As the Government’s memorandum points out, this came out of the Augar review’s recommendation: basically, foundation years should go, except in a few specific high-skill and very important subjects, such as medicine. It is worth noting that, although the Government—indeed, their predecessor was in a similar position—decided not to go that far, as has been pointed out,

“there is little evidence that studying a foundation year is always necessary for students wishing to access an undergraduate course in these subjects, and potential foundation year students can choose functionally similar courses—such as Access to HE diplomas—that cost significantly less”—

or, as in the case of A-level resits, cost them nothing at all.

Although I very much welcome the decision to reduce the level of fees on classroom-based foundation years, I recollect for the record that when we first looked at them on the Augar committee, nobody had really noticed, including us. It was pointed out to us by the FE principal member of our committee, Bev Robinson, who basically said, “Do you realise what’s happening?”. She also noted—I cannot tell how widespread this was—that she had come across some very aggressive recruiting by universities of young people who, in her view, would have been much better off either doing access to HE or retaking their A-levels.

I underline that the Government recognise this, and that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also noted:

“While we welcome attempts to encourage under-represented groups into HE, we would be concerned if these came at the expense of poor value for money for those students and for taxpayers”.


The consultation process resulted in a small majority of people saying that they did not want the fees to go up. However, the majority of non-higher education provider respondents definitely wanted the fees to go down. That is where we are.

My view is that there is still a question mark over these years. I thank the Minister for cutting the fees for foundation years in classroom-based subjects, but can she assure us that the Government will continue to monitor enrolments to see whether that does in fact put an end to the enormous growth that there has been? Will she consider asking the department to study the impact of foundation-year study on young people who go by that route, and how successful they are? It is very easy to forget about it again, and it crept up on everybody unawares—and I think everyone is agreed that it is a good thing that we are taking some action.

[Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)]

My Lords, I also have to declare an interest as a visiting professor at King’s. I have other education-related entries on the register, which I will not list here.

I welcome the Government’s decision to allow the increase of fees in line with inflation. It is long overdue, and I wish that previous Administrations had had the good sense to crack on with it, as this Government have. The feast-to-famine approach to funding higher education is hugely inefficient and leads universities to make job cuts and programme closures that they might not otherwise do, if there were greater certainty over their funding. I echo what my noble friend Lord Willetts said about the need to put this situation on a more stable footing, ideally, with annual indexation. That would be eminently sensible. Like him, I would be interested to find out from the Minister, when she replies in due course, how much of that fee increase will be left to institutions once they have dealt with the increase in national insurance contributions down the line.

The key thing is that inflation is an ongoing cost, and the OBR has made forecasts of near 3% inflation for each of the next three years. If the Government do not allow for further indexation in coming years, universities are going to be looking at another real-terms fall in their income of around 11% or 12% by 2030, so it is really no joke at all. I urge the Government to keep on gripping the nettle and dealing with it. From a political point of view, the sooner in the political cycle they do that, the easier it will be. Making these sorts of decisions should not be difficult, but leaving it to years 2, 3 or 4 of a Parliament means that it becomes much less palatable. I urge the Minister to get on and announce the continuing indexation for the coming few years.

Welcome though this funding is, there cannot be something for nothing. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, the sector has to continue to demonstrate value for money for students and taxpayers whose loans underpin the funding of higher education.

I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Willetts mentioned the TEF. I was also glad to see that the Office for Students strategy—now out for consultation—gives a prominent role to the TEF in how it plans to ensure quality in the system. The TEF plays a valuable role in driving excellence and good student outcomes above the baseline ensured by the B3 metrics. It has a really useful role to play in that respect, so I am pleased to see that it is going to be part of the future quality arrangements.