Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Let us be clear. We are consulting widely on these changes. The main change is that people should only be supported with extra services, rather than, for example, getting laptops indiscriminately, as they do at the moment. We are talking directly to the representative groups involved and students will not lose out by these changes.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Every one of the 14 letters that the Governor of the Bank of England has written to the Chancellor explaining why the inflation target has not been met has mentioned the rising input cost of resources. What are the Government doing to tackle the problems of input resource price spikes and to incentivise infrastructure in the circular economy to cope with that?

[Vince Cable]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is referring specifically to energy costs, which has been the main issue in the inflation of raw material inputs. My colleague the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks gave a very full answer in explaining the compensation mechanisms that we are introducing to offset them.