Higher Education (Basic Amount) (England) Regulations 2010

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

Voting against the regulations would inflict huge damage for the reasons that I have explained, given the nature of the loans and the fact that they will not be repaid until the individual is earning a reasonable amount. If the individual never earns anything or takes a career break, he will not have to repay. I do not believe that the regulations will inflict that damage. I am making it clear that for the House to reject the Motion would be fatal.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve]

The Minister is reminding us that the difficulties on the consumer side are not as great as some noble Lords have suggested. I accept that this is an ingenious splice of a graduate tax and a graduate loan system that is highly protective of the poorest. I think that many noble Lords are asking the Minister to address the question of damage to the supply side produced by moving too rapidly. I hope that, before the Minister finishes his speech, he could say a bit about the Government’s assumptions on the range of closures, mergers, bankruptcies and disproportionate patterns of damage to certain courses but not others. That will give the House a better basis for understanding what the Government anticipate than continual harping on an issue that I accept is of great concern to prospective students and their families but has not been sufficiently well explained. The students are well protected, but the institutions may not be.

[Lord Henley]

I believe that the institutions themselves can benefit from this, as I made clear in my opening remarks. The institutions are autonomous; they are not, as the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, put it, emanations of the state. Those autonomous institutions can make decisions on what courses they offer in seeking to attract appropriate students and on matters such as the length of courses and in what fields they are offered. There will be changes, but it is not for the Government to predict what will happen. We believe that we are making provision for students and those from less well-off families and we are providing opportunities for the institutions themselves. We also believe that it is necessary to put the measures in place so that everyone knows what is happening for the academic year starting in autumn 2012. That is why I stress again, as I have done two or three times, that the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, are fatal.