Universities: Funding and Employment

Danny Beales Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) for securing this important and timely debate on the issues in our constituencies in respect of our fantastic higher education institutions.

I have the pleasure of representing Brunel University, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned earlier. Many of the students and staff who make up the university community also live in my constituency. Brunel educates 16,000 students a year and contributes £750 million to the UK economy. It is an important employer, an important buyer of services and the centre of much of our community activity. It hosts a range of community sports groups, concerts and conferences, and has links with local schools. Brunel University even—I have some distant memories and scars on my back—hosts the election hustings, of which I have some positive and negative experience.

Unfortunately, because of the long-term funding challenges, which Members have already raised, and, particularly in Brunel’s case, a reliance on international students from particular regions who have been affected by visa changes, the funding crisis at our university means that Brunel has been hit extremely hard and is projecting a deficit this year of £32.9 million. Brunel has therefore instituted a scheme of redundancies of 125 academic staff and 239 other staff across the university and professional services. Around 20% of the workforce at Brunel is affected.

A few weeks ago, I met staff members from the university in Parliament at UCU’s lobby day. They told me they had dedicated their lives—sometimes 20-plus years—to the university. There is a deep level of concern among them and their colleagues about not only their futures but the university’s. It is a deeply disappointing situation for the university to be in. As has been said, universities are central to human capital, to education and to opening opportunities, as well as to research for our nation and more globally, as we face the challenges that we see before us. The cuts are bad for staff and bad for students, who want the very best possible education.

Moreover, I am concerned about the knock-on effects on the local economy in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Brunel is a very good institution and an incredibly important part of my community. As we face up to the missions around recruiting more medical staff through its recently opened medical college, or supporting those who are not in education, employment and training into training and work, Brunel stands at the centre of our community to meet the longer-term challenges that the Government face.

I hope that we can put in place a more sustainable, long-term funding solution for higher education that will stabilise Brunel and the broader sector’s finances. More immediately, I hope the Government will consider how relatively small amounts of transition funding, through grants or loans, might be made available to institutions such as Brunel. Newer universities do not have very large reserves, historic estates or trusts on which to draw to change the institution at pace, so without those relatively small amounts of funding the cuts will bite harder, and they will have to make more redundancies than they might otherwise need to make. I hope the Government will explore those options for universities such as Brunel.

I hope that, through long-term funding settlements, we can secure Brunel’s future and ensure that it continues to provide the best quality of teaching and remains the best possible institution for students, staff and the broader community in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.