Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Brown of Cambridge Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

I rise to speak in support of the desire of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for there to be a strong focus in the Bill on care leavers as a very special group of students. When we were developing our strategy for care leavers at Aston University, I was absolutely horrified to discover that care leavers at 19 were very much more likely to be in prison than at university. It seems to me that supporting care leavers at university is a much better way of spending public money than supporting them at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

I hope the Government can put something in the Bill such as the noble Earl described, or something in every university’s access agreement, to ensure that this group of very special people get a really good opportunity to be socially mobile and successful.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

Noble Lords on all sides of the House appreciate the personal commitment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to this issue. However, I have to say that there has always been a long queue of people who wish, for various reasons, to exempt students from fees. My view has always been that this is an extremely dangerous route to go down. Students do not pay fees, and as soon as one implies in some way that fees are a barrier to students getting into university, one feeds a misconception that can do enormous damage. Indeed, if students from care were not, through the Exchequer, repaying these fees, that would be a loss of revenues for the university. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has recognised that because his Amendment 449A provides an alternative means of financing their education out of public expenditure.

We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, quite correctly, that we need to support more care leavers in university. If there were ever any public expenditure of the sort the noble Earl envisages in Amendment 449A, rather than devoting it to a group of students being exempt from fees that they are not going to pay anyway, it should be devoted to helping people leaving care to go to university. Exempting them from a fee that they are not going to pay anyway, or will pay only if they are in a well-paid job afterwards, is not the most effective way to help care leavers.