Education

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from the urgent question on Core School Budget Allocations on 17 October 2023.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

This is yet another error and case of incompetence under this Government. The average primary school is expected to be more than £12,000 worse off next academic year and the average secondary school £57,000 worse off than under the July publication. How will the Government help headteachers in Slough and across the country deal with the extra stress and pressure on account of this error, especially when they have to make difficult decisions on staffing and additional support for those pupils who need it?

[Nick Gibb]

The actual allocations to schools happen in December each year in the normal way, so this situation will not affect the figures that local authorities have informed schools they will be receiving. Those are based on the October census of pupil numbers and the application of the local formula. We then fund the local authorities on the basis of the national funding. The record funding of £59.6 billion equates to an average of £5,300 per primary school pupil and £6,830 per secondary school pupil.

[Official Report, 17 October 2023, Vol. 738, c. 174.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb):

An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). The correct response should have been:

Core School Budget Allocations

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

I say first to the hon. Member that no funding is being reduced in Harrow. All areas will be receiving significant increases in school funding. The error is about the allocation figures—the notional figures—for 2024-25, and those have been corrected. On special educational needs, we have increased special educational needs funding significantly over the past several years, because of the pressures that local authorities are facing with increased numbers of EHCPs. We are taking a number of measures to help address that, and I will of course ensure that the hon. Member has his meeting in the Department as soon as possible.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

This is yet another error and case of incompetence under this Government. The average primary school is expected to be more than £12,000 worse off next academic year and the average secondary school £57,000 worse off than under the July publication. How will the Government help headteachers in Slough and across the country deal with the extra stress and pressure on account of this error, especially when they have to make difficult decisions on staffing and additional support for those pupils who need it?

[Nick Gibb]

The actual allocations to schools happen in December each year in the normal way, so this situation will not affect the figures that local authorities have informed schools they will be receiving. Those are based on the October census of pupil numbers and the application of the local formula. We then fund the local authorities on the basis of the national funding. The record funding of £59.6 billion equates to an average of £5,300 per primary school pupil and £6,830 per secondary school pupil.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

10. What steps her Department is taking to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

17. What steps her Department is taking to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers.

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

The school workforce census published last week shows that the number of teachers has increased by a further 2,800 this year. There are now more than 468,000 teachers in the state system in England. We have invested £181 million in recruitment this year, including training bursaries and scholarships worth up to £29,000, and we are delivering £30,000 starting salaries, reforming teacher training, delivering half a million training opportunities and working with the sector to address teacher workload and wellbeing.

[Nick Gibb]

In terms of teachers’ pay, we are waiting for the Government’s response. We have received and are looking at the School Teachers Review Body’s recommendations now, and we will respond in the normal way and on the normal timing. In terms of workload, we set up three important workload working groups, and over the years that has resulted in the working hours of teachers coming down by five hours a week, and we have pledged to do more to reduce that further.

[Mr Dhesi]

There were 44,000 leavers from the teaching profession last year. That is 9.7% of the total workforce, and the leaver rate is the highest it has been since 2018. The Government have missed their secondary teacher recruitment targets every year for the past 10 years bar one. All that is yet more evidence of how the incompetent Conservative Government have created the recruitment and retention crisis among teachers, and schools in Slough and across our country are lamenting the detrimental impact on our children’s education. Minister, what are the Government doing to urgently fix the recruitment and retention crisis?

[Nick Gibb]

If the hon. Member looks at the tables attached to the school workforce census, he will see that we have returned to pre-pandemic levels of recruitment. If he looks over a period of years, he will see that the number of teachers coming into state-funded schools and the number leaving are broadly similar.

SEND and Alternative Provision

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

My hon. Friend is passionate about this area. She is absolutely right, and I have heard from parents in my area and across the country that it is the daily grind of poor communication that can wear them down. We will set out more guidance and training for SEN caseworkers in councils, and better communication standards, to stop that happening to parents.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

The Children and Families Act 2014 set out national standards in legislation, but families, parents and guardians of children with special educational needs and disabilities in Slough regularly lament that they feel completely let down because even those legislative safeguards have failed to provide support for children and young people. After so many years of failures, why does the Minister think that announcing new standards and a plan with no legislative underpinning will deliver better outcomes?

[Claire Coutinho]

A combination of plans within the strategy will support that. We have seen an increase in need and better awareness of different conditions, so the national standards will bring together the best evidence so that people’s needs are met consistently and at a high quality across the country. On accountability, we have improved the area inspection framework by recognising that we need to bring in not just education and councils but health partners.

Education

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Ministerial Corrections

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. In 2019, we launched the Government’s first ever integrated strategy to recruit and retain more teachers in schools, which had a number of different strands in it, including supporting teachers on the way in, recruiting more, and various routes into teaching. Of course, we have an independent pay review body and this year, for academic year 2022-23, we accepted all its recommendations in full.

Inflation

The following is an extract from Education Questions on 16 January 2023.

[Mr Dhesi]

In addition to having grave concerns about recruiting and retaining teachers, schools in Slough and across our country continue to struggle with their budgets, with a quarter of primary school senior leaders reporting that they have had to cut outings and trips due to budgetary constraints. How will the Government ensure that children do not miss out on these vital opportunities?

[Gillian Keegan]

The autumn statement announced significant additional investment in core schools funding. The core schools budget will increase by £2 billion in 2023-24 and 2024-25. That will be paid into schools’ bank accounts in April, and I am sure they will welcome that additional funding.

[Official Report, 16 January 2023, Vol. 726, c. 16.]

Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Education:

An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi).

The correct response should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We are spending £1.6 billion a year on free school meals for children. We want to make sure that that funding is targeted at the most needy. That is precisely what is happening. We accept the point, and I agree with the hon. Lady that it is important that free school meals are provided to children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who cannot afford meals at lunchtime—and we are doing that. As I said, we have increased the number of children eligible for benefit-related free school meals from 1.7 million to 1.9 million pupils.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

16. What recent assessment her Department has made of the impact of inflation on (a) school budgets and (b) the costs to parents associated with the school day.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

Schools, like families and businesses across the world, are facing global inflationary pressures. The Prime Minister has pledged to halve inflation, and school funding will increase by £2 billion next year as well as the year after that. This will be the highest real-terms spending on schools in history, totalling £58.8 billion by 2024-25. In 2010, school funding stood at £35 billion, so we will be delivering a 68% increase in cash terms. The Government have also announced further support for parents worth £26 billion next year.

[Mr Dhesi]

In addition to having grave concerns about recruiting and retaining teachers, schools in Slough and across our country continue to struggle with their budgets, with a quarter of primary school senior leaders reporting that they have had to cut outings and trips due to budgetary constraints. How will the Government ensure that children do not miss out on these vital opportunities?

[Gillian Keegan]

The autumn statement announced significant additional investment in core schools funding. The core schools budget will increase by £2 billion in 2023-24 and 2024-25. That will be paid into schools’ bank accounts in April, and I am sure they will welcome that additional funding.

Childcare: Affordability and Availability

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the affordability and availability of childcare.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I am eternally grateful to have secured—to have been granted—this debate so that we can address the important issue of childcare affordability and availability, because the simple reality is that this Government are seriously failing children, parents and businesses through the chronic lack of affordable and high-quality childcare in our country. My Slough constituents are far from impressed. Indeed, the reason why I put in for the debate was to express their anger and to try to express to the Chamber just how frustrated many individuals, not just in my constituency but across our country, are. As far as I can tell, Ministers have little interest in doing something substantial and radical to rectify this. However, the Government’s usual lack of effort and ambition, as frustrating as it is, does not mean that we should not at least try to persuade them that they need to up their game.

We know that the first 1,001 days of a child’s life are integral to their development, and evidence shows that improvements in children’s outcomes in both the long and the short term are strongly associated with the quality of their early childhood education and care. The Local Government Association has told me that by the time disadvantaged young people, in particular, sit their GCSEs at the age of 16, they are about 18 months behind their peers, and about 40% of that gap has emerged by the age of five. It is therefore crucial that we provide the best possible environment in which to bring up children.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I welcome the case that my hon. Friend is making, and congratulate him on securing the debate. Has he seen the report published today by the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on support for childcare costs in universal credit? It highlights two big problems. One is that people claiming universal credit have to pay the up-front costs of the first month’s childcare; they have to pay the first month’s childcare costs themselves and are reimbursed later. For some people, finding such a large sum of money is simply not possible. Secondly, the cap on monthly childcare support is the same as it was in 2005; it has not been uprated, so it nowhere near covers the costs of full-time childcare support.

[Mr Dhesi]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, not only for that impressive intervention but for his tireless, persistent work in this area to try to shine a light on the injustices. I sincerely hope that the Minister and the Government will look closely at the findings in the Select Committee report and take action accordingly.

Since this Government came to power in 2010, parents of children under the age of two have had to deal with a 60% increase in the cost of a part-time nursery place. Average earnings have grown at only half that rate over the same period, putting ever greater pressure on already squeezed family budgets. As one Mumsnet user wrote:

“When we started using nursery 9 years ago it was £45 a day. Now the same nursery we use for our…3 year old is £90. He gets 30 hours free in January but they…will also be putting fees up then. Honestly when he goes to school we will have £1,000 extra”

to pay

“a month. It’s more than our mortgage.”

That is not an isolated case. A joint survey by Mumsnet and Pregnant Then Screwed found that close to two thirds of parents are spending on childcare as much as, or even more than they spend on their rent or mortgage. Shockingly, one in four parents is cutting down on food, heating or clothing in order to afford sky-high childcare costs.

What are parents doing in response? Increasingly, they are being forced to take themselves out of the labour market. Under this Conservative Government, a day’s pay is not worthwhile for a parent needing childcare.

Sadly, women are often hit hardest by the Government’s failed childcare system. Only three in 10 mothers with a child aged one work full time, and three in 10 mothers with a child under 14 say they have reduced their working hours for childcare reasons. The Office for National Statistics found that the number of women who are not in work in order to look after family has risen by 3% in the past year alone. That is the first sustained increase in at least 30 years, reversing decades of reduction. Women who are reducing their hours, forgoing promotions or even leaving work altogether due to unaffordable childcare suffer lasting financial consequences, and that widens the gender pay and pensions gaps.

This is also a huge issue for business. At a time when so many vacancies are going unfilled, this motherhood penalty equates to 43,000 women dropping out of the workforce in the last year alone. It is no wonder that even the Confederation of British Industry is calling for reform, highlighting that childcare costs in the UK are now some of the highest in the OECD and that our economy is suffering from losing £28 billion of economic output every year, because women are being forced to choose between their careers and their children. We could add a whopping £57 billion to our GDP simply by increasing female participation in the workforce—something that greater childcare provision would help achieve.

On this Government’s watch, the childcare system is failing families, women, businesses and our economy. I would therefore think that addressing it was a priority, especially given how formative these early years are for our children, so why are the Government not taking decisive action to fix this mess? They tried to convince us that they were by announcing the 15 and 30-hour free childcare entitlement, alongside their commitment to the tax-free childcare scheme. As with so many other Conservative policies over the past 12 years, even this small stepping stone towards improving the accessibility of childcare has failed to deliver the bare minimum. As I pointed out last month in the Chamber, the Government, not satisfied with hammering parents, women, businesses and the economy, have set their sights on making it too expensive for childcare providers to operate by consistently underfunding the 15 and 30-hour entitlement by more than £2 an hour, thus forcing providers to use their own resources to plug the gap and further driving up the cost of childcare. Meanwhile, Ministers have spent a whopping £2.37 billion less than they allocated for their flagship tax-free childcare scheme in the past four years alone.

Rather than ensuring we have even more childcare providers to meet the significant demand for childcare across our country, the Government have created an environment in which 4,000 childcare providers closed between March 2021 and 2022—that is 4,000 providers in just one year. We have childcare costs rising twice as fast as wages and businesses struggling to fill vacancies while women who want to work cannot because of childcare. Despite the demand, thousands of childcare providers are closing while the Government underfund the sector. That is this Government’s record.

As a country, we can and must do much better. The Government must recognise that families need support from the end of parental leave right through to the end of primary school. While more investment is needed, surely as a minimum the Government should stick to their original commitments. I ask the Minister to commit to investing in the childcare system the more than £2 billion her party has pledged. During this cost of living crisis, families are already struggling, so when will the Minister step in to ensure that parents are not forced to sacrifice a meal or a night of heating over the winter months to pay for their child’s care? Maybe the Government would be in a better position if they had developed a long-term plan. With five Education Secretaries this year alone, the Minister is probably just happy to get through the year without any more chaos. However, families across our country should not be made to suffer because of the Government’s continued incompetence.

Parents need the introduction of universal primary breakfast clubs for every primary-aged child in England, which I look forward to hearing more about, I hope, from the shadow Minister. That would help disadvantaged pupils, in particular, to access additional support from staff and friends, allowing them to catch up on learning. Where is the Government’s commitment to that? Instead of cutting hundreds of Sure Start centres, the Government should be investing in local children’s centres and helping parents with young families in some of the most disadvantaged areas in our country to get them the best possible start in life. Why aren’t they?

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. This is a vital debate to have in the Chamber at this time. Does he agree that for very young children, nursery might be the first place where teachers can pick up on special needs and then help to refer them for autism diagnoses? People often wait far too long to receive that diagnosis. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the register, but I was shocked to hear that training placements for educational psychologists may be being funded to a lesser degree in the future, and that some educational psychologists are actually having to fund their own placements. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is vital that the Government address some of those concerns on the part of the profession, and that they also ensure that children with autism and special needs have the support that they need at the earliest stage in their childcare?

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the hon. Member. She has made some excellent points, no doubt based on her experience. Indeed, we know that those early years are incredibly important for the child, but also for teachers, or those in authority, to pick up on certain issues, whether it is a child being on the spectrum, or other special educational needs. That issue comes up again and again in my constituency, so I am incredibly grateful to her for that intervention.

Given that so many childcare providers have been forced to close on this Government’s watch, is it too much for my constituents, and parents across the country, to expect that there will be childcare places locally? I do not think so. What are the Government doing to not just halt but reverse the decline in the availability of childcare?

As we can see, the current picture of childcare in England is far from ideal, and it does not seem as if this Conservative Government are willing to take any meaningful steps to change that. Instead, in the face of all those issues, they are happy to sit on the billions of pounds that they have pledged to the sector, while hoping that no one notices. Well, hard-working families across our country are noticing the impact and deserve better. If the Government really want to build a better future for Britain, they must start by looking after those very people who are Britain’s future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the Minister for the various facts and figures on the amounts that the Government are pledging. Will she commit to reinvesting the £2 billion that her party has already pledged into the childcare system?

[Claire Coutinho]

I am not entirely familiar with that figure. Perhaps we can discuss it after the debate and I can come back to him with a fuller answer. As I have said, over the last five years, we have spent £20 billion on early years. Not only are we supporting the sector with the money that I have set out today but we are also supporting it with energy support. I know from talking to lots of people in the industry that one of the things they are worried about is energy bills. We have set out significant relief over the winter to help with that issue.

Funding increases are taking place across England. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Slough, I am glad to say that the hourly funding rate for two-year-olds will increase by 62p to £6.87 an hour, and the rate for three and four-year-olds will increase by 6p to £6.27. We have also already announced an additional £10 million for maintained nursery schools supplementary funding from 2023-24. We are introducing a minimum and maximum hourly rate that a local authority can receive for their maintained nursery schools supplementary funding, to create a fairer distribution of that funding. The minimum rate will be set at £3.80 in 2023-24. Slough is one of the local authorities that will benefit from this new minimum hourly rate.

As well as increasing our support to providers, we also want families to benefit from the childcare support they are entitled to, saving them money and helping to give their children the best start in life. We know that childcare is a key concern for parents and recognise that cost of living pressures are impacting families across the country, which is why we are committed to improving and refining the offers that we have in place. We have also put many direct cost of living measures in place, from furlough to energy support relief, and direct family household support this year as well.

One of our key areas of support is the 30 hours free childcare entitlement, a Conservative commitment introduced in 2017, which has helped hundreds of thousands of working parents get back into the labour market, with nearly 350,000 children registered for a place this year. The entitlement saves those families up to £6,000 per child per year. That offer of 30 hours of free childcare is making a real difference to the lives of eligible working families. In our 2021 childcare and early years survey of parents we found that 73% of parents reported having more money to spend since they used their 30 hours and 38% thought that without the 30 hours they would be working fewer hours.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dhesi]

Thank you, Mr Hosie, for your expert chairing of today’s debate. I thank all the Members who have participated for their excellent interventions. I particularly want to thank the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), especially given his knowledge and expertise of the area as a former elected councillor and cabinet member for children’s services and, like me, as a parent. He highlighted the various technical issues that need to be addressed.

I thank the Minister for her promises to parents, and also the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for the first-class work that she is doing to hold the Government to account and for highlighting the increased importance of the role that grandparents and family members play as they try to plug the gap to help parents, and in particular for helping to delineate the problems of the recruitment of nursery staff.

We have heard in today’s debate how important affordable and high quality childcare is, and about the difficulty that families face today in accessing childcare and all the consequences that follow on from that to children, parents and businesses. Fixing the problems with childcare provision should be far more of a priority for the Government than it appears to be, so I look forward to seeing what the Minister implements to support families in the coming year.

This is the last day of the school term for many, just as it is for parliamentarians here today, so I want to put on the record my thanks to all nursery nurses, daycare centre staff, breakfast club providers, teachers and everyone else in the childcare sector for the really important work that they do for our children.

Finally, as this is the last Westminster Hall debate of 2022, I want to put on record my thanks to all the staff of the House who support these important debates. I wish all the staff of the House and everyone here a very merry Christmas. I look forward to seeing everyone in the new year.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the affordability and availability of childcare.

Education

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Ministerial Corrections

[Claire Coutinho]

As I said in answer to earlier questions, we put an extra £0.5 billion into the early years sector in the 2021 spending review to increase the hourly rate, split over the three-year spending review period. We are also spending money on qualifications and training for teachers. This sector is very important to us, and we continue to consider all the ways we can support it.

Accessible and Affordable Childcare

The following is an extract from Education questions on Monday 28 November 2022.

[Mr Dhesi]

The Government are knowingly underfunding the entitlement to 15 or 30 hours of childcare by over £2 per hour, thereby forcing providers to cross-subsidise and leading to astronomical costs for parents. New Ofsted data shows that 4,000 childcare providers closed within the year to March 2022, thereby further limiting access to childcare. When parents are having to pay more for their childcare than on their rent or mortgage, and adults without children are saying that childcare costs are forcing them out of parenting and precluding them from that, does she agree that she and the Government are presiding over a broken childcare system?

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Childcare is of course enormously important, and it is this Conservative Government who have expanded the childcare offer successively over a number of years. Last year in the spending review, we set out an additional £500 million to come into the sector, and we are also supporting private providers with their energy bills this year.

[Official Report, 28 November 2022, Vol. 723, c. 637.]

Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho):

An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi).

The correct response should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

We understand the pressures that many households are under, and that is why we are spending more than £1.6 billion per year so that children have access to nutritious meals during the school day and in holidays. The Government have indeed expanded free school meals more than any other Government in recent decades. We have put in place generous protection that means families on universal credit will also retain their free school meal eligibility. We now have a third of children in this country on free school meals, and I know that is very welcome for the families. We will have extended free school meals, and we will continue to support further education students with them as well.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

3. What steps he is taking to help ensure childcare is (a) accessible and (b) affordable.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)]

We are committed to improving the cost, choice and accessibility of childcare, and have spent more than £20 billion over the last five years supporting families with the cost of childcare.

[Mr Dhesi]

The Government are knowingly underfunding the entitlement to 15 or 30 hours of childcare by over £2 per hour, thereby forcing providers to cross-subsidise and leading to astronomical costs for parents. New Ofsted data shows that 4,000 childcare providers closed within the year to March 2022, thereby further limiting access to childcare. When parents are having to pay more for their childcare than on their rent or mortgage, and adults without children are saying that childcare costs are forcing them out of parenting and precluding them from that, does she agree that she and the Government are presiding over a broken childcare system?

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Childcare is of course enormously important, and it is this Conservative Government who have expanded the childcare offer successively over a number of years. Last year in the spending review, we set out an additional £500 million to come into the sector, and we are also supporting private providers with their energy bills this year.

University Tuition Fees

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. The petition calls for debates between MPs and university students, as the hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) highlighted, on reducing university fees to £3,000 a year. Considering that more than 1,800 of my constituents called for this, we might struggle to facilitate that particular demand in Slough—which, by the way, is the youth capital of Britain: the town or city with the lowest average age.

The petition points to a particular issue with higher education today: that students—our constituents—do not feel listened to. For years, the Government and universities have skyrocketed fees at will, without listening to students, robbing them of a voice on a matter that will impact them for the rest of their lives. They simply do not feel heard. I will focus my speech on ensuring that their voices are at the forefront, and I encourage the Minister and her Department to listen carefully to that voice.

When fees were introduced in 1998, they stood at £1,000, but they have now risen to an eye-watering £9,250, with university fees last at £3,000 in 2005. The Government anticipated that their grand plan to triple fees in 2012 would create a market in fees, but in reality almost all universities began charging the maximum amount, in part due to Government-backed loans and a lack of incentive to offer anything lower. Early fears of a reduction in applications were allayed; but, nearly a decade after these new fees were introduced, it is quite clear that they have created another crisis—for recent graduates. Unsurprisingly, students’ expectations of what a university course provides during their studies and once they graduate have risen alongside their fees. If we consider that the decision to go to university, often taken at 17, is one that will have a financial impact for decades to come, I do not blame them.

The perceived benefits seem to be waning. One third of working-age graduates are not in high-skilled employment. Almost half of parents would prefer their child to take up a vocational qualification ahead of university. In 2020, for the second consecutive year, the rate of graduate employment fell—a problem that has been compounded for graduates entering an extremely difficult job market over the past two years.

Many of the conversations around fees were reignited by the pandemic, as students questioned the value for money of online classes. Between September and December 2020, half of students reported that moving fully to online learning would have a negative impact on their academic experience, and one third have indicated that their courses are, and were, poor or very poor value for money. Astronomical fees and subsequent debts have forced students to evaluate whether a graduation gift of an average debt of £45,900 is worth it. That is without considering the cost pressures of accommodation; those who for religious reasons are unable to take an interest loan, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) has just noted; and the mental health pressures of university studies. After all that, the Government’s own calculations indicate that only 25% of current full-time undergraduates expect to pay off their debt in full.

On the set thresholds and time limits on debt repayments, I am sure the Minister will say how everyone is treated equally under the system, but I am afraid that is simply not true. Not only have the Government already moved the goalposts on repayment agreements, but they are set to do it again. In fact, most recent reports indicate that Ministers plan on reducing the salary threshold for loan repayments to below £25,000. That, alongside a rise in national insurance, is an unforgivable squeeze on lower and middle earners, while leaving wealthier students largely unaffected. It is no wonder that current students and graduates are concerned about the impact that their studies will have on their future. Will the Minister guarantee that students will be listened to and their concerns about loans, repayments and debt taken seriously? Education has the potential to change people’s lives and provide a better future. It should not limit people’s prospects before their adult lives have even begun.