Business of the House (Thursday)

Ben Wallace Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend; the effect on women is also something that the House should be given time to consider. Million+ is a great institution that has put forward many practical alternatives. It disputes some of the Government’s assertions about who will bear the greatest burden, which is something that we have now heard the Institute for Fiscal Studies doing too. We will simply not have time in five hours to get to what is fact and what is fiction in the Government’s position.

The market system is most fully developed in the United States, and we should be given time to look at the effects there.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

Obviously this debate is focused on the opportunity to debate the subject tomorrow, but on Monday the Opposition had their eighth allotted Opposition day debate. They chose to discuss not tuition fees but local government funding. Perhaps when they are complaining about a lack of time, they could remind the House that when they had the opportunity on Monday, they did not take it.

[Paul Farrelly]

I do not know where the hon. Gentleman has been for the past few days, but we have just had an Opposition day debate on that very subject.

If we had the time, one of the things that we should look at is the experience in the US. Some 34% of young white people in the United States earn an honours degree, compared with only 19% of African-Americans and 10% of Hispanics. Again, we will not have time to look at the international experience. In Canada, when fees for medical schools went up from roughly the same level as ours are now—the equivalent of £3,000 in their currency—to $15,000, which is much the same as £9,000, participation among children from lower income backgrounds dropped by a third. We simply will not have the time—[Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] We will not have the time to rehearse all that evidence.