Tuition Fees

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Joan Ruddock

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ruddock]

I accept what my right hon. Friend says—he is correct, and of course it is a disgrace.

The Higher Education Funding Council cannot give these institutions the answers to those questions, and no doubt the Minister cannot tell them either—although I invite him to prove me wrong when he responds. These colleges’ fees structures will need to be decided by March next year, which is a mere four months away. [Interruption.] The Minister can clearly change the timetable, because it is his timetable that means that they have to decide in four months. How does an institution cope with the requirement to make up the loss of possibly all its teaching funding? What significant changes will it have to make to what it offers and how it offers it? It will have to rethink its whole modus operandi.

Yesterday, I spoke to constituents of mine who attend a variety of colleges making up the University of the Arts London. They told me of their own experiences. Some had been able to go to sixth form colleges and do A-levels in arts subjects only because they received the education maintenance allowance that the Government now intend to abolish.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern, which a lot of young people have also expressed to me, that the scrapping of Aimhigher and the EMA and the terrifying prospect of £9,000 a year of debt will put off thousands of young people even thinking that university is for them?