Tuition Fees

Debate between Angela Rayner and Tim Loughton

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will have pre-empted some of the interventions from Conservative Members, who like to say that the Welsh Government are not doing things right. Of course, the Welsh Government have invested in their young people. They believe that their young people are the future of the Welsh economy. I congratulate them on making those decisions. Of course, the Welsh Government make decisions about education—before I get an intervention about what Wales is doing about loans.

As I was saying, burdening students with more than £50,000 of debt means that we will see more disadvantaged young people not going to university. After all, we have seen that at many of the most prestigious universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, the number of disadvantaged students is falling.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady complains that we keep asking questions about who said what and when. The trouble is that the Opposition perpetrated a scam on the British people. They clearly led students in our constituencies to believe that their loans would be written off. If she is now saying that that was not the intention, but that they would just cancel future tuition fees, how is it fair to those people, including my children, who have notched up tens of thousands of pounds of debt, which she is complaining about, that she leaves them with a debt when future students will not have a debt? What is fair about that?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I cannot really say it any more clearly than we have said it. We said we would look at that, but that we would not do anything with it unless we could afford it.

I have put forward and will continue to put forward three things that the Government could do right away to help our students, including the hon. Gentleman’s family members. First, the Government have decided to freeze the repayment threshold, which they do not have to do. They could put it in line with earnings. Secondly, they could look at the percentage rate of the loans. It is 6.1%, but it does not have to be that much. It was the Bank of England rate plus 1%, which would now be 1.25%—considerably lower than the current 6.1%. Lastly, if the Government really care about social mobility and getting students into university, let them bring back maintenance grants.

Education and Local Services

Debate between Angela Rayner and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Gentleman will also note that we are in trillions of pounds of debt, and that the debt has doubled on the Government’s watch. They like to talk about the economy, but they failed on every single one of the fiscal rules introduced by the previous Chancellor. I will take no lectures on the economy from Conservative Members.

The Secretary of State seemed to suggest that Labour’s record in power was not one to be proud of. Of course, there are a number of aspects of our record that she failed to mention. Perhaps she will tell the House which party delivered record levels of investment in our schools; or perhaps she will tell us which party, during 13 years in power, slashed the attainment gap, and saw children from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds do just as well as their more affluent peers. It certainly was not her party.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Perhaps it is the hon. Lady who is guilty of not telling the House that under the last Labour Government one in three children left primary school without the expected levels of numeracy and literacy, and there was a 3,500% increase in “equivalents to GCSEs” which were certainly not equivalents to GCSEs. That was conning children that what they were learning in schools was fit for purpose.

[Angela Rayner]

Again, it is clear that Conservative Members like to talk more about the Labour party than about their own record book. [Interruption.] Let me answer the question. Let us just be clear about the position. Where are we now in the programme for international student assessment tables? We are slipping again. It was the previous Secretary of State who said that the Government would be judged according to their standing in the PISA tables, but its status is falling continually, so I will take no more lectures. When the Government talk about, for instance, their free school programmes although they cannot even get the buildings up and running and are spending billions, I think we are seeing a record of shameful waste under the Conservatives.

School Funding

Debate between Angela Rayner and Tim Loughton

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I would go so far as to say that the meritocracy that the Prime Minister talks about is already in tatters.

The National Audit Office has said that the Secretary of State expects schools to make £1.7 billion of savings by “using staff more efficiently.” Can she guarantee today that those so-called efficiencies do not mean fewer staff? A £1.7 billion cut could mean up to 10,000 redundancies for teaching staff in our schools. She has resolutely failed to give us figures on the impact of the planned cut, but her own analysis of the research conducted by the education unions shows that, for example, the cuts in my region—the north-west—would amount to well over £400 million, requiring the loss of more than 2,000 teachers. Given that the Government have failed to meet their own teacher recruitment targets for the past five years in a row, I urge her to think again before she tries to solve school budget crises on the back of hard-working staff.

Make no mistake, this is a crisis. Indeed, schools are already resorting to staff cuts in order to cope. A Unison staff survey conducted last year showed that, even then, more than one in 10 respondents were reporting redundancies in the past year and in the coming year. More than one in five said that their school had left vacant posts unfilled over the past year or had cut maintenance. Nearly a quarter had seen increased class sizes, and over a quarter had experienced cuts to budgets for books and resources over the past year.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I am sorry that she does not agree with fair funding. How can she possibly justify a child in the constituencies of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Home Secretary receiving, on average, £6,229 a year and £6,680 a year respectively while a child in my West Sussex constituency, which has deprived wards, will receive less than £4,200?

[Angela Rayner]

The Labour party is for fair funding, but this is not fair funding; this is unfair funding for every school in our nation. The hon. Gentleman should take heed of what that might mean for his constituency. Pulling people down is not the way forward. If we want to make the best of our economy post-Brexit, we must ensure that we invest in all our schools, not take from one school, robbing one group of young people, to give to another, leading to an overall cut in distribution.