Disabled Students Allowance

Andrew Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). His powerful arguments and testimony, like those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), underline the argument made by the hon. Gentleman who represents the other place, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). I agreed with everything he said in his opening speech.

I was particularly keen to take part in the debate because in our area we are lucky to have not only two great universities but ACE centre south—ACE stands for aids to communication and education—which has achieved great things working with students with severe communication disabilities and giving them a voice. Twenty years ago, many of them would have been locked in a world without communication and unable to go to school, let alone university. Now, however, some of the young people whom the centre has helped have got PhDs. Quite rightly, there was cross-party support to save the ACE centre when it had financial difficulties in 2012. We need a big cross-party effort to stave off the cuts to DSA. It is heartening to see so many Members present and to hear the arguments from both sides of the Chamber.

The cuts risk rolling back what has been achieved and blocking access to education for many disabled students from poorer backgrounds, in particular, including those who have dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Bolton university in my constituency is not rich and has 900 students who receive DSA. Imagine the impact of the proposals on those students and the university, which has not got the resources to look after them if they do not have enough money.

[Mr Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As has been said, there is a real danger that the proposals will provide universities and other institutions with a perverse disincentive, with the best will in the world, to accommodate all the students that they would like, especially those who have the most severe disabilities. Like other hon. Members, I have been contacted by many students, academic support staff and lecturers who are appalled, as I am, by the proposed cuts. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to the disability officers of the two university student unions in my constituency. They brought powerful testimony of how students at both Oxford’s universities have benefited from DSA and are well on their way to building fulfilling careers. Their determination to help ensure that young people with disabilities have the same opportunities in future is inspiring. One of them told me:

“I pretty much failed the first year of my law degree due to my disability and not being fit to study. I couldn’t afford to buy any of the accessibility items I needed. DSA gave me a lifeline. With the specialist equipment including a specialist mouse bar, laptop, dictaphone, extra-large screen, specialist software, printing and book allowance and various other provisions, I was able to retake everything the following year and actually cope with the work load. Without DSA I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

Even under the current system, it is not easy to get support. One student in my constituency is having to get an unnecessary diagnosis of dyslexia because his diagnosis undertaken the previous year in the sixth form was not accepted by the DSA authorities. Since there is no clinical need for a new diagnosis, he is having to apply to the university hardship fund to pay for it privately.

For all its difficulties, DSA provides an essential lifeline for people with disabilities who without it would have to give up on their education and ambitions, or would not have been able to apply in the first place. Cutting it will make many disabled students’ lives much more difficult, but, worst of all, it will result in a country where people with disabilities begin to think that they cannot even aspire to higher education and must limit their ambitions. It will do incalculable damage to equality. I urge that the proposed cuts be abandoned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Willetts]

That is a separate issue. The graduate repayment system is a fair, sustainable and viable way of financing our universities, and it would be a mistake to try to reverse that.

I turn to some of the specific issues that have been raised. Let me say clearly to right hon. and hon. Members that we will fund non-medical help that would not be a reasonable adjustment for higher education institutions to make. We will define the obligations of the institutions, and on top of that there will be support for non-medical help, which in certain situations will include support for students with specific learning difficulties, as well as other groups. Hon. Members mentioned IT, and we will make a contribution to the costs of higher-cost and higher-specification computers in certain circumstances if they are required purely because of the student’s disability. We will pay the extra costs that arise from those computers being required by students with a disability, rather than have a general payment for laptops when they are now widespread across society. We will also cover additional costs of specialist accommodation in exceptional circumstances.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

Have the Minister and the Government looked into the implications more widely, beyond higher education, of the Government making such a definition of what is a reasonable adjustment by universities? Is there not a real risk that others will cite that definition and say that anything that goes beyond it is not a reasonable adjustment for them, thereby denying disabled people in other areas too?

[Mr Willetts]

That will be the last intervention that I take, because time is tight.

We are consulting, and we will produce guidance that will help make the crucial distinction between what institutions can legitimately be expected to do and where individual funding is required.

We are talking about education, and I want to come back to that, because several Members raised the topic. It is a distinct responsibility. We are consulting, and we will continue to meet a whole range of groups representing disabled people. We have already discussed the policy changes with, for example, the National Union of Students, Universities UK and the Office for Fair Access, and there will be many further such meetings in the future.

Institutions will be expected to have reasonable adjustments in place by September 2015. We believe that the time scales provide sufficient time for us to work with institutions and stakeholders to ensure that changes are introduced effectively, but I understand that some institutions are concerned that they will be disproportionately affected due to their high numbers of disabled students. Several Members have made that point, which will be considered before guidance is issued to the sector in the autumn. The guidance will help institutions understand better the role that DSA will play, enabling them to consider the support they will need to provide. We will also provide regular updates for the HE sector over the coming months.

Student information and guidance, which will include information on DSA changes as well as on the wider student support package, will be available in September in the normal way. Once we conclude our consultation meetings, we will be in a position to issue draft guidance in early autumn on what DSA will cover. That guidance will benefit higher education institutions and assessment centres in particular. Stakeholders will have the chance to review it and ensure that it is sufficiently clear and understandable before it goes live. I undertake to lay the relevant regulations at that time, which will allow Members to see the regulations and the draft guidance in parallel. Before adopting either, the Government will continue to have due regard to the impact of the changes on the aims set out in the Equality Act 2010. We will publish our analysis on that at the same time.

A point was raised about existing students and DSA students beginning university in 2014-15. They will remain on the current arrangements in 2015-16. I have already announced that the maximum available DSA amounts will not be changing. We are not adopting a blunt approach to the provision of non-medical help. We realise that non-medical help will be the responsibility of higher education institutions, but we recognise that in certain areas, perhaps as a result of the impact or severity of a disability, DSA has an additional role to play once reasonable adjustment has been made. In the case of complex needs, we will assess the severity of the impact on the education of the student. It will not be a simple physical assessment of their disability; it will be an assessment of how the disability challenges they face affect their ability to benefit from higher education. That is the assessment that has to be made. We will focus on the educational impact and the severity of their educational needs. I would also like to—[Interruption.]