Higher Education Funding Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Barry Sheerman
Main Page: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)Department Debates - View all Barry Sheerman's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Higher Education Funding
Barry Sheerman Excerpts(6 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Joseph Johnson
I can certainly assure my right hon. and learned Friend that we will continue to bear in mind carefully the taxpayer interest. It is critical to remember that the Labour party’s proposals, were they to be funded out of income taxation, would add about 2.5p to the basic rate of income tax, so it is vital that we bear taxpayers’ interests in mind and we will continue to do so. He mentioned the interest rate, which we of course keep under careful review. It is worth remembering that this is a heavily subsidised loan product overall. The Government write off about 30% to 40% of the student loan book. That is a deliberate investment in the skills base of this country, not a symptom of a broken student finance system. The interest rate cannot be looked at in isolation.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Surely the Minister needs to go back to the Dearing principles. Dearing believed that the expansion of higher education should be based on the student who benefits paying the community through the taxpayer, society and the employer. Can we go back to those principles? I am worried that the Minister and the Prime Minister have already made up their minds about the review they are suggesting. The fact of the matter is that we cannot have a higher education system that is created entirely on a pile of student debt. It is time, cross-party, to think about a radical alternative to what we have at the moment.
Joseph Johnson
The Labour party helped to introduce the system we have today and this Government have been building on it since 2010. It is extraordinarily successful at enabling more people from disadvantaged backgrounds to get a chance to benefit from higher education. I am startled that the Labour party wants to roll back all that progress. Why would they want to reverse the changes that have enabled more than 50% more students from disadvantaged backgrounds to get into higher education? That is what the hon. Gentleman’s proposals would end up achieving.