Student Maintenance Grants

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he obviously has the power of telepathy, because I intend to refer to that later.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend refers to the impact statement. Does he agree that, in 2016, it is a scandal that the impact statement, which the NUS had to drag out of the Government and which confirms that the measures will disproportionately affect black and minority ethnic students, women and disabled people, does not merit a proper debate and vote in this House?

[Mr Marsden]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend, who was a distinguished Schools Minister. His points are absolutely valid, and I shall deal with them in more detail in due course. These measures are not simply incidental tinkering with existing financial regulations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

The Minister prays in aid and relies on the increase in university participation and the record number of students going to university; I did his job once and I remember standing at the Dispatch Box and saying the very same thing. However, today’s debate is not about widening participation or student numbers. It is about the cohort of students whose parents are from poor or working-class backgrounds, including dinner ladies, people who run minicabs, security guards, receptionists, people on zero-hours contracts and others who are unemployed. This debate is about their children, who aspire to go to university, and the state of our nation in relation to that cohort. That is why it is outrageous that, as a former Minister with responsibility for universities, I am allowed just four minutes to make a contribution to this debate.

When we made changes to maintenance grants back in 2009, we increased the amount we gave to students whose parents earned less than £25,000, and we increased partial grants for students whose parents were on incomes of between just over £18,500 and £57,000. It is that settlement, on the back of increased tuition fees, that we are debating today. Frankly, it is an outrage that this scrutiny has had to be dragged out of the Minister because of the work of the National Union of Students and Labour Front Benchers. It should have been a point of debate.

The issue is not about widening participation, but about fair access. There has been a 50% increase in the number of students choosing to stay at home rather than go to universities to which they would love to go. What does that mean? It is likely that the university attended by students who stay at home in a deprived constituency is a modern university, even though those students may have got the three As they needed to do medicine at a more teaching and research-intensive university. That is what this debate is about and that is how it will affect students. The Minister’s own impact assessment says that there will be a disproportionate effect on students from a black and minority ethnic background. Does he think that matters?

The Minister cannot in one breath rightly make statements about unconscious bias and the need for name-blind admissions, but then change the context for those students from poorer backgrounds in a way that disproportionately affects them. The situation is the same for disabled students, and there will also be a great impact on mature students. That is why this debate was required and why I am surprised that the Government are making the changes in this way.

A few years ago there was consensus in the House that the state, the universities and the student would make a contribution to their education, but this settlement withdraws the state even further from where it was after the 2010 Parliament and lands the debt entirely on the student. The Minister says there is no alternative, but the alternative was to go to the universities themselves, whose funding per student has gone up from £22,000 to £28,000. There were alternatives available to the Government, who have made this decision despite the fact that the Minister’s own figures show that 45% of students will not be able to repay their loans.

This does not hang together. It will have a disproportionate effect on poorer students. I have to say that, despite the fact that the Minister is not a bad guy, this is a mistake he will regret.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lammy]

Never.

[Wes Streeting]

That included arguments with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). But even with landslide majorities there was always a full debate and a vote in the House, whether they were abolishing student grants or, more wisely, reintroducing grants following the introduction of top-up fees.

This afternoon, these proposals will impact on 500,000 students from the poorest backgrounds. In my local university, the University of East London, that equates to about £30 million of financial support for students—gone. At my alma mater, the University of Cambridge, the figure is more like £9 million. If there is one thing we know about the higher education sector, it is that not only opportunity but financial support is unevenly distributed. It is completely unfair that students from the poorest backgrounds will now face a postcode lottery when it comes to determining how much non-repayable support they receive.

The very existence of student grants was won as a result of hard-fought negotiations. Student leaders argued that, if we were going to ask people to make a greater contribution, it was only fair that the poorest students received a non-repayable contribution. How must Conservative Members and the few remaining Liberal Democrats feel about the fact that when, under the coalition Government, the then higher education Minister justified the trebling of fees, they were told, “Don’t worry. We’ve got the national scholarship programme, student grants and the £21,000 threshold going up by inflation.” What has happened since? The national scholarship programme has been abandoned; the threshold frozen at £21,000; and now we see the abolition of student grants. We cannot trust a word that these people say, particularly when it comes to fair access to higher education and support for the most disadvantaged. It is an absolute disgrace.

I am proud of what the last Labour Government did to widen access and opportunity to people from working-class backgrounds. I was one of the beneficiaries, from the excellence in cities work that was done in schools right through to the opportunities provided through expanded places.