Tuition Fees Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Chris Elmore
Main Page: Chris Elmore (Labour - Bridgend)Department Debates - View all Chris Elmore's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am really trying to make this debate constructive, instead of ping-ponging who said what. It should be about what the young people and students of today expect of us. They are telling us that the current debt levels are unsustainable, and they clearly are unsustainable.
Conservative Members say all the time that a record number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to university. If only that was the whole story. The evidence shows that students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are the most likely to be deterred by debt.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that something different is happening in Wales, with the implementation of the Diamond review? It is moving back to a grant-based system, so the vast majority of students will receive a full grant and support for living costs, which is something that the National Union of Students and various other student union bodies have called for. That shows that there can be a different way. That is the difference between having a Labour Government in Wales and a Tory Government in England.
Angela Rayner
I am sure that my hon. Friend will have pre-empted some of the interventions from Conservative Members, who like to say that the Welsh Government are not doing things right. Of course, the Welsh Government have invested in their young people. They believe that their young people are the future of the Welsh economy. I congratulate them on making those decisions. Of course, the Welsh Government make decisions about education—before I get an intervention about what Wales is doing about loans.
As I was saying, burdening students with more than £50,000 of debt means that we will see more disadvantaged young people not going to university. After all, we have seen that at many of the most prestigious universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, the number of disadvantaged students is falling.