Covid-19: Educational Settings

Claudia Webbe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

This is an incredibly challenging problem for many people living in rural communities. I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss what further measures we could take. I am beginning to think about some of the additional resource of textbooks and other resources that can maybe be made available to families and communities that have these acute problems, where it may not be something we can work around in terms of a technical solution. There may be other routes forward, but I will ask my Department to organise swiftly a meeting between him and me to discuss this issue and any other educational issues in his constituency.

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) [V]]

The pandemic has highlighted the injustice of tuition fees. Students are incurring on average £57,000-worth of debt to be isolated in university halls and to be restricted to online learning, and beyond that, education must be a universal right, not a costly privilege. The last decade of extortionate tuition fees has saddled young people with debt, deterred working-class people from gaining higher education and reduced our universities to profit-seeking businesses. Will the Government take this opportunity to support students by refunding rents, scrapping tuition fees and cancelling student debt for good?

[Gavin Williamson]

The statistics bear out something rather different from what the hon. Lady said. We have seen a massive expansion of the university sector, with more young people going to university than ever before. If she took the time to look at the statistics and the facts, as opposed to not basing her question on the statistics or facts, she would discover that more children from the most disadvantaged families are going to university—often they are the first from that family—than ever before. That is something that this party should feel incredibly proud of, and I would like to see even more youngsters from the most deprived backgrounds going to some of the best universities in the country.