Tuition Fees

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

I will come in a moment to the core issue that divides us. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the fees system that we introduced has no up-front fees—[Interruption.] No, the fees system introduced by the previous Labour Government has no up-front fees. The proposals introduced by this Government do not have up-front fees, but let me explain to him what the fundamental difference is between the policy of the previous Labour Government and that of this coalition Government. We took higher education public funding of universities to record levels, and the fees that we introduced brought extra money to the universities on top of record levels of public funding. The coalition Government’s proposals are based on an 80% cut in public funding to higher education, and the fees that graduates will pay under their plans merely replace the money that has been cut from higher education; they do not generate additional money. That is a massive difference between the policy of this Government and the policy of the Labour party.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Denham]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you know me well enough to know that I enjoy debating in the Chamber and I enjoy taking interventions. I am well aware of the huge number of Members on both sides of the House who want to speak, so I will take some more interventions, but just not now. I will make a little progress before I take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because I am going to make a point that is relevant to him. These plans have huge implications for the devolved Administrations. The cuts will lead directly to reduced funding for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, making their decisions on university funding far more difficult.

This is an enormous decision with profound long-lasting implications. It must not be taken lightly and it should not be taken without all the relevant information being placed before the public and this House, but that is just what the Government want hon. Members to agree to; they want us to vote for a huge rise in fees while they keep every hon. and right hon. Member in the dark about key details of the policy.

Before I set out the key questions, may I say a few words about Lord Browne’s report? He was asked to write his report by the previous Labour Government and we should be grateful to him and his team for the diligence with which they set about their work. However, Lord Browne had two central presumptions with which we do not agree. First, we do not agree that 80% of university teaching grants should be cut or that the cost of most degrees should fall entirely on the shoulders of graduates, with it being relieved only if after paying for 30 years they still cannot clear the debt. Secondly, we do not agree that the university system should be shaped by student choice alone.

By common consent at home and abroad, England enjoys a world-class higher education system—not just in the disproportionate number of the world’s leading research universities but in the richness and diversity of provision across more than 100 universities and many further education colleges. That did not happen by accident. Successive Governments have been prepared to invest in higher education, but they have also allowed a high degree of institutional autonomy. It is the willingness to trust the academic and professional leadership of universities that has produced the excellence England enjoys today. It should not be lightly set aside.

[Mr MacNeil]

As the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, the Conservatives and Liberals want to increase tuition fees. Labour introduced tuition fees and the Scottish National party abolished them. On St Andrew’s day, will he tell us whether he wishes that when he was in government he had followed the example of the SNP?

[Mr Denham]

No, I do not. As I have already said, this party put record levels of funding into English universities and the fees raised extra money on top of that. The strategy that has been followed in Scotland has been one of systematically under-investing in universities, to the long-term damage of the university system in that country. I believe that that is a mistake.

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[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Seven years ago, I helped to co-ordinate the Labour Back-Bench opposition to variable tuition fees and a market in higher education, both before a White Paper that was published a whole year before the vote and subsequently. I did it on a point of principle. I felt that I had not come into politics to make it more difficult for people like me, from my sort of background, to go to university, or to put young people who were qualified and determined to go to university, as I was, in a situation in which the price of a university course became just as much a part of the equation as what to study and where to go.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor may not quite be on that wavelength, but I hope that the leader of the Liberal Democrats will realise that today there are still many young people in Sheffield, as in areas such as mine, on whom there is pressure to go out and work and contribute to the family income at 16. That is why the prospect of debt is important. It is another argument used to put pressure on young people not to go to university.

Labour Back-Bench pressure had real results on the market in higher education, which Liberal Democrats in particular might heed before rushing for an early vote on fees. First, right up until Labour’s White Paper went to print, the Russell group had expected fees of £5,000. It was no magical typesetting fairy that secured the cap at £3,000, it was simply Back-Bench strength and Government fear of defeat. As everyone was charged £3,000, no real market was created.

[Mr MacNeil]

As a student in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I followed people who are now Labour MPs in marches against loans, and then I saw those same people move on from the National Union of Students, become Labour MPs, get on television and advocate tuition fees. Was it a mistake for Labour ever to introduce tuition fees, and is the argument about whether they should be £3,000 or £6,000 just a matter of scale?

[Paul Farrelly]

The scale is certainly important. The level of debt that students acquire is fundamental to the argument about where the Government are going.

The second thing that we achieved was to secure better student support, through grants and new bursaries. Those changes to support were vital in offsetting the deterrent effects of higher fees on less well-off students. That is why anyone on the Government Benches who has concerns—not just Liberal Democrats—should insist on seeing the whole package in a White Paper before rushing to a vote on fees alone.

Thirdly, we gave MPs an opportunity to debate the matter by securing as part of the compromise the democratic handle that now exists, so that the cap could not be raised by the stroke of a Minister’s pen or by a Committee upstairs, hand-picked by the Whips. Instead, we ensured that there had to be a vote on the Floor of the House, so that we were all accountable for our votes.

Those days seem rather distant now, but after 2001, we had an enormous majority—I think about three times the size of the coalition’s majority now. Yet on Second Reading, 74 Labour MPs, including myself, still opposed the proposals, which is 17 more than there are Liberal Democrats in the House now. Every Liberal Democrat joined us in the Lobby, as well as all but one Conservative, and the Government scraped through by five votes, such was the level of concern.

I am rehearsing this trip down memory lane not to make myself popular with Whips with long memories but to prick the consciences of every Liberal Democrat, in particular, and to show what can be achieved by standing up and being counted. If most of the 57 Liberal Democrat Members who signed their election pledge stuck to their guns, we would once again prevent a market in higher education. They have much more leverage than we did, but seven years ago, Labour Back Benchers changed the policy enormously by taking up the battle.

I shall talk about the evidence later—anyone who cares about equality of opportunity will know that sound evidence should underpin sound policy—but as a slight detour, I shall shine some light through the fog of excuses that the Lib Dem leadership have been using to cover themselves. They said that the financial situation they found in government was worse than they expected when they made their manifesto pledge, but that is patently untrue, because the Treasury’s own numbers showed a movement of £5 billion to the better in projected debt from April to May this year.

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[Mr MacNeil]

Apologise!

[Ian Murray]

I do not know what I have done to make everyone begin to be rude to me, but the Secretary of State started it, so perhaps I have done something wrong.

Let me compliment the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) on the start of his speech. Will he comment on the massive amount of communication in which he has engaged with the Scottish people, which is similar to the communication in which the Liberal Democrats have engaged? Would he, too, lie to students at a general election by saying that he would write off all the student fees? Would he lie to students to get elected, and then turn his back on that pledge as well?

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[Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

I do not deny for a minute the passion of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but as was pointed out in an intervention, his party promised it would abolish student debt. There was no coalition; there was a minority Government. Yet within a week they said, “We only promised this because we didn’t think we’d win the election. We couldn’t afford it; it was uncosted and it was undeliverable.”

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Malcolm Bruce]

No, I will not give way.

I also want to make it clear that, interestingly, the abolition of tuition fees in Scotland was delivered by the Liberal Democrats and Labour working together, and the abolition of the graduate contribution was delivered by the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats working together. We are not at all a party that comes to this issue embracing the principle of tuition fees; we are a party that has engaged with genuine integrity in a coalition, which has led to our being faced with deep and difficult decisions that none of us finds easy or comfortable, and we are not pretending that we do.

I also want to make it clear that as a result of devolution and the Calman reforms that are coming, the Scottish Parliament and Scottish politicians can decide to have free university education in Scotland for as long as we can prioritise that within the budget. There is not an obligation upon the Scottish Parliament to follow suit. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire rightly said, it is equally true that we will have to ensure that we can maintain our universities to world-class standards and fund them, as is also the case for the universities in England and Wales. The difficult question to be faced is that we must consider not only how we can fund them today, but how we can fund them in five, 10 and 15 years’ time. I completely accept that we can take a decision to do this for free, but if we do I doubt whether we will be able to maintain our universities’ world-class status, or 40%, 50% or 60% participation. Most importantly, if the Liberal Democrats were to disengage from this process I doubt that the students would welcome the consequences of our not having been there.

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[Malcolm Bruce]

I am not going to give way. The repayments are entirely related to what people earn.

[Mr MacNeil]

You pay your fees.

[Malcolm Bruce]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I had the privilege of going to a privately funded school and university, but I did not get the opportunity to go to Oxford or Cambridge because my father was not prepared to pay further fees for me to do the entrance exam, to delay further and then to pay for me through one of those universities. I have no regrets about going to the very good Scottish universities from which I have graduated, but the point is that if I was in that situation today, I could decide for myself that I could go to Oxford or Cambridge because I could get the funding and I would pay it back when I had got the benefit of that education.

This is simply a matter of calculating that an education is a benefit to the entire state—the state should therefore facilitate it, support it and maintain its quality—but it is also a benefit to the individual. Some individuals will use that benefit in ways that are less commercial—they will do things that do not earn them a great deal money—but they will therefore not pay anything like the whole of that investment back; they will not be required to do so. They would be if there was a graduate tax—

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[Anas Sarwar]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and that is why we need a wider debate on the role of the state in educating our young people.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Anas Sarwar]

Not just now; I will give way in a wee moment. I am coming back to the Scottish angle, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to intervene on that point.

The question is who benefits from a university education. Is it, as the coalition believes, only the student who benefits, which means that they should pay most, if not all, of the costs? Or does the country as a whole benefit from a well-educated work force driving our economic prosperity? That is the ideological debate we need to have in this House.

No matter where one goes in the world, unrivalled importance is attached to education. When the Business Secretary and the Prime Minister had their bonding session in China, they might perhaps have learned the Chinese proverb: “If you are planning for a year, sow rice. If you are planning for a decade, plant trees. If you are planning for a lifetime, educate.”

[Anas Sarwar]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and I hope that the Minister will respond to that point when he makes his speech.

Right hon. and hon. Members may be forgiven for thinking that this issue solely affects England, but that could not be further from the truth. The proposals will have profound and far-reaching consequences for the rest of the United Kingdom. I have two universities in my constituency in Scotland and 80% cuts in higher education funding in England mean that Scottish universities stand to lose at least £400 million a year. It also has consequences for Scottish students who wish to study in England and English students who wish to study in Scotland.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the hon. Gentleman feel that it was a mistake that the Labour party first introduced tuition fees in this country—and will he say sorry?

[Anas Sarwar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention but I will take no lectures from a Scottish Government and an SNP who stood at the election promising to scrap student debt for every student across Scotland and who failed on every single promise. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire asked why young people would ever vote for the Labour party in Scotland, but he should look at the polling data for the general election and the opinion polls for the Scottish elections that are coming up. We outpolled the Scottish National party in the youngest bracket—18 to 24-year-olds—and I think that that will be reflected in the results in May.

I also want to take the opportunity to say that the Scottish Government must stop dithering.