Higher Education (England) Regulations

Conor Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Lady makes two important points, but she fails to recognise two important things that have happened alongside that. Lord Adonis made it clear that the Frankenstein that the Government have created with tuition fees is completely unsustainable, so Conservative Members cannot hide behind that if they think it limits their responsibility for trebling tuition fees. They are now trying to justify increasing them.

Our young people need that opportunity, but the Government feel that tuition fees need to rise again. When we last debated this issue, I said that Conservative Members might disagree with our desire to reduce tuition fees but it was wrong to deny the House the right to make the choice. Today, despite the Government’s best efforts, the House can make that choice, and I know that our constituents will remember the choice each of us makes.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

The £9,000 limit was introduced more than five years ago, but given inflation over that period, in real terms it is £8,500 today, and by 2020 it will be £8,000. Is it not the case that the direct consequence of the perfectly honourable position that the hon. Lady advocates is that less money will go into higher education?

[Angela Rayner]

I am at a loss about how to answer the hon. Gentleman. Our young people know the reality of the debt they take on today. I have just spoken about many different ways in which the Government could alleviate our students’ debt: there is the interest rate, the income threshold, and even maintenance grants if they really cared about students from poorer and disadvantaged backgrounds. Despite what the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) said, part-time and mature students are dropping out at record levels, and students are deterred from going to university.

We could debate this issue for many hours, but the motion that Members of this House can vote on tonight is clear. It is not about the debt or whether we abolish the £9,000 tuition fees; it is about whether the Government hike fees by another £250 a year—more than £1,000 over the lifetime of a course—making them unsustainable and completely unfair for students. That is the choice that Members have to make today. If they decide not to support this motion, they will have to answer to the students in their constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill). Many Members in this House will have incredibly fond memories of her predecessor, who was not only a lady of incredible principle, but a lady with an irrepressible and irreverent sense of fun. She will be greatly missed on both sides of the House. The hon. Lady said her predecessor was a great advocate of Labour values, but I have to say that she was also a great advocate for national independence and the role of this Chamber in our national life. For those reasons, she will be missed especially by many of us on the Government side of the House.

When the hon. Lady was speaking, I was thinking whether I could possibly find any linkage between my south coast constituency of Bournemouth West and her midlands constituency of Birmingham Edgbaston, but then she mentioned J. R. R. Tolkien and something in her constituency that inspired him to write. Of course, Tolkien did much of his best writing from the Miramar hotel in my constituency, and I hope that that has established some sort of link between us.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Lady for what she said on mental health, something that is profoundly important to many of us in the House, and particularly those of us who have had family members who have been severely affected by different mental health conditions over the decades. If the hon. Lady carries on in the vein in which she began this afternoon, she will find a warm hand to meet hers across the aisle in this Chamber. She made an excellent maiden speech, and she has shown early promise that she will be a worthy successor to Gisela Stuart.

I have two universities in my constituency, Bournemouth University and the Arts University Bournemouth. They add enormously to the area I serve. They provide economic growth and social enrichment, as well as personal development for those who attend them. They are at the heart of the constituency I serve. Only last night, I had the vice-chancellor of Bournemouth University and Professor Keith Brown from the National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work downstairs in the Churchill Room, doing an event to highlight the financial scamming of vulnerable people. In a week’s time, I will be going to the Bournemouth visual effects conference, to which people will come from around the world—people from Disney and others—to see the projects undertaken by young people in the competition there.

Bournemouth University is absolutely at the core of my constituency, and I have been in touch over all the years I have been a Member of Parliament with all the different presidents of the students union—Toby Horner, Murray Simpson, Chloe Schendel-Wilson and Daniel Asaya, and on behalf of the students, they have told me—as have many of the students I have met— of their concerns about our policy on higher education and particularly on student finance.

However, this is an Opposition day, and this is an Opposition day motion, so it is appropriate that we scrutinise the Opposition. There has been a lot of talk about what was said during the election, so I have dug it out. The Leader of the Opposition, in his now famous interview, said:

“Yes, there is a block of those that currently have a massive debt, and I’m looking at ways that we could reduce that, ameliorate that, lengthen the period of paying it off, or some other means of reducing that debt burden.

I don’t have the simple answer for it yet—I don’t think anybody would expect me to, because this election was called unexpectedly… And I don’t see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the £9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it.”

That was heard loud and clear by students in Bournemouth and elsewhere.

Then the shadow Secretary of State, in her outburst of candour on “The Andrew Marr Show”, said:

“It’s a huge amount; it’s £100 billion… It’s a huge amount of money. It’s a big abacus that I’m working on with that. But we’ve got to start dealing with this debt”.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

My hon. Friend highlights the words of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Secretary of State, but is it not a fact that it was not just students in his university town who interpreted the Leader of the Opposition’s comments as a debt write-off? Two shadow Ministers broadcast their interpretation that this would be a 100% write-off of student debt.

[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend has pre-empted what I was about to come on to. There was a lot of shouting going on when the students heard that the Labour party was going to get rid of their debts, abolish their fees, and deal with historical debt.

Let me quote what a Labour candidate—a Member in the current and previous Parliaments—said to camera. The hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), surrounded by primary school children, looked to camera and said:

“Just this morning Jeremy Corbyn has announced that the tuition fees will be abolished straight away from September if there’s a Labour government, and that we will bring back immediately EMA”,

education maintenance allowance,

“and also”—

this is critical—

“that every existing student will have all their debts wiped off.”

He ended:

“That’s fantastic news, isn’t it guys?”

Well, it turned out not to be such fantastic news because it turned out not to be true. They were the first Opposition in history to U-turn on a manifesto without the burden of actually having to get elected into office. The reason it was not implementable is the enormous burden it would have added to the public finances—5% on GDP. It was an absolute betrayal of our electorate and students to promise them that we could do that.

We have seen the greatest expansion of student numbers in this country, from a mere 4,357 in 1920 to 73,163 in 1990.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the expansion of student numbers, and that is right, but is it not also right that the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds has gone up as well—not just the number but the proportion?

[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend and neighbour is absolutely correct. Some of the people who in previous generations, when I was at university, could not have dreamed about getting into university are getting in and getting these life chances under this Government, and, in fairness, the Labour Government before this lot took over as the Opposition.

In 1990, only 77,163 people completed their first degree. That was the year that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I began at Southampton University. By 2015, that number was almost 400,000. There are now five times more people enjoying the benefit of a university education than when I was at university. One could say, to coin a phrase, that we on these Benches are the party for many, not just the few.

I have a serious warning to the Opposition. I sat in hustings on campus at Bournemouth University in the 2010 election, when the Liberal candidate was cheered to the rafters. In 2015, the Labour party was cheered to the rafters. If Labour Members look to their left—not metaphorically but literally—they will see the consequences of making promises to students that they know they cannot deliver. It is wrong to do so.