Student Loans Company

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Barry Sheerman

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The Minister is not known as a considerable boffin for nothing.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister mentioned denigration, but no Opposition Member would denigrate the Student Loans Company. In fact, the SLC has offered a good service to many students and parents. If we compare it with our commercial banking sector, in which so many people should have gone to prison, the SLC has done very well indeed. Is there some secret agenda here? This Government are about to sell off £4 billion of student loans, and who is leading that consortium? It is British banks led by Barclays.

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for acknowledging the good work that the SLC does—it is important that we all recognise that. The sale of the student loan book is a policy that the previous Labour Government made possible following the passage of the Sale of Student Loans Act 2008, so there is considerable cross-party recognition of the importance of ensuring the sustainability of our public finances. The sale of the student loan book, which was made possible by the previous Labour Government, is something that this Government are quite prepared to continue.

Higher Education Funding

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

I can certainly assure my right hon. and learned Friend that we will continue to bear in mind carefully the taxpayer interest. It is critical to remember that the Labour party’s proposals, were they to be funded out of income taxation, would add about 2.5p to the basic rate of income tax, so it is vital that we bear taxpayers’ interests in mind and we will continue to do so. He mentioned the interest rate, which we of course keep under careful review. It is worth remembering that this is a heavily subsidised loan product overall. The Government write off about 30% to 40% of the student loan book. That is a deliberate investment in the skills base of this country, not a symptom of a broken student finance system. The interest rate cannot be looked at in isolation.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Surely the Minister needs to go back to the Dearing principles. Dearing believed that the expansion of higher education should be based on the student who benefits paying the community through the taxpayer, society and the employer. Can we go back to those principles? I am worried that the Minister and the Prime Minister have already made up their minds about the review they are suggesting. The fact of the matter is that we cannot have a higher education system that is created entirely on a pile of student debt. It is time, cross-party, to think about a radical alternative to what we have at the moment.

[Joseph Johnson]

The Labour party helped to introduce the system we have today and this Government have been building on it since 2010. It is extraordinarily successful at enabling more people from disadvantaged backgrounds to get a chance to benefit from higher education. I am startled that the Labour party wants to roll back all that progress. Why would they want to reverse the changes that have enabled more than 50% more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to get into higher education? That is what the hon. Gentleman’s proposals would end up achieving.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Johnson of Marylebone and Barry Sheerman

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

My hon. Friend has great expertise in this area, through his association with the parliamentary space committee. I can reassure him, as I did a moment ago, that we are committed to continuing to collaborate closely with European countries to develop our space sector to the benefit of all those in employment in this sector in this country.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister probably knows that precision engineering companies in Huddersfield are very much involved in the Mars probes and the space programme, but does he know that they are increasingly worried, as is the University of Huddersfield, about the future of partnerships across Europe and the funding from Europe that makes that exploration and the existence of those cutting-edge companies possible?

[Joseph Johnson]

At the ESA ministerial council in December, the UK committed a record sum of €1.4 billion to ESA. We are committed to continuing to participate in ESA, which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is not part of the EU but a separate organisation entirely. We see great value in continuing to participate in the programmes it administers.