High Streets

Debate between David Lammy and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

It is the right hon. Gentleman who has not noticed what is happening, particularly with regard to use class orders. The power for local communities to shape their high streets is being taken away.

A steer from Government is required to enable local authorities, stakeholders and communities to get together and pool their resources to shape their high streets. One huge stumbling block to the Grimsey approach remains. While many of us have been arguing for greater powers to assist local communities in shaping their areas, the Government have been busy giving away the powers that do exist to provide for that. In May, the Government legislated to allow changes to use classes so that virtually any class of commercial premises on the high street can become any kind of shop, fast food restaurant or shop in the euphemistically named “financial and professional services sector”, which alongside banks and estate agents includes payday lenders or legal loan sharks and betting shops.

I hope the Minister can tell us what was going through the Government’s mind when they decided that what struggling high streets needed was for it to be made easier for more bookies and payday loan companies to be sprawled across them. I would like to hear the rationale for that decision, because my previous attempts to elicit a response from the Government have failed. Nationally, there are 20% more payday loan shops and 3% more betting shops than there were a year ago.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I hesitate to interrupt my hon. Friend, but does she agree it was extraordinary that the coalition Government opposed my amendment to the Localism Bill, which would have made betting shops a sui generis class under our planning laws, and brought an end to the travesty that is taking place across our high streets?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, and it is a shame the Government did not accept his amendment. We must keep pressing them to change direction, particularly from where they are attempting to go at the moment, which is complete deregulation.

There are 20% more payday loan shops and 3% more betting shops than a year ago, and I do not think there is huge clamour out there in our communities for any more. Indeed, people want the opposite; they want fewer of those shops because they are taking the place of independent retailers, clothes shops and health food shops.

Higher Education Policy

Debate between David Lammy and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point; we should always refer to what is happening in the devolved Administrations as well.

In 2007-08, the fees in the Canadian system were £2,866 and in Australia they were £2,600. What has been proposed for this country is absolutely out of line with our competitor countries across the board. According to quite a conservative estimate, the debt that a student will accrue, if they have to pay the £9,000 maximum and then accommodation and living expenses, could amount to about £48,000. If they then went on to do a master’s and a PhD, the student could come out with a debt of £70,000-plus. That is extraordinary.

[Mr Lammy]

On that excellent point, is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am that the plans will lead to catastrophically low levels of UK students deciding to go on to postgraduate study? Is she concerned that our university sector is actively recruiting abroad—notwithstanding the visa requirements imposed on it—and that we will therefore educate international students but deny that to students from this country?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. My right hon. Friend has made a number of excellent points. It is interesting that we have heard nothing from the Government parties and nothing from the Minister about the impact of the proposals on postgraduate education in this country. The House will have to return to that issue in due course.

Graduates could be incurring extraordinarily high debts. The Government simply have no electoral mandate to do what they have done; it was not in any of the manifestos or in the coalition agreement. The costs are being pushed on to students because of the massive 80% cut being made to the university teaching grant. That does not fall uniformly across all universities; it hits hardest the universities with high numbers of students studying arts-based subjects. We simply do not know what the impact will be on the longer-term career aspirations of our students, but we need to continue to develop jobs in the creative industries. That is important for my region of the north-east, but it is also important across the board.

I am also really concerned that the Government do not seem to be paying any attention whatever to the possible deterrent effect of the proposals. There is an increasing constellation of evidence showing that an increase in tuition fees—particularly to the levels proposed —puts off people from applying to university. An Ipsos MORI survey last year of 2,700 11 to 16-year-olds showed that even marginal increases in tuition fees had a significant deterrent effect on participation among young people. Some 17% of the young people who responded said that they were unlikely to go to university if tuition fees increased to £5,000, with 46% saying that that they would not go if fees were increased to £10,000 a year. If the Government dispute those findings, they need to come up with alternative findings of their own. They have simply not commissioned research into the issue.

The Government say that they are remedying the situation with the national scholarship programme and tuition fee waivers, but we know from work that million+ has carried out on the national scholarship programme so far that it is over complex and that students simply do not know what will be available to them. The information about the programme is not available in an easily accessible format. That could lead to a postcode lottery.

We know, of course, that all these changes are part of a wider trend, with the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance and the future jobs fund, which helped to get young people into jobs. The Government are deliberately engineering a situation where the life opportunities of young people will be increasingly worse than those of their parents, and that is simply a disgrace.

Higher Education

Debate between David Lammy and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proposals are a huge departure. The Minister for Universities and Science indicated that there will be different price levels for different subjects and across the family of our universities. We also know that there will be a different state contribution to courses. That is a huge and profound change, which is far bigger than the change made to higher education in 2004.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on this timely debate. On the point he is making, obviously we need to invest in science, but surely we also need to invest in our arts programmes. A number of industries, not least our creative industries, are growing and are part of our future economic development. The future of such industries must be called into question by today’s announcement.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: arts and the creative arts make a huge contribution to our economy and to the new digital creative economy. The decision to withdraw state funding from such courses is bizarre, particularly as it was made alongside the decision to make massive cuts to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Those subjects cut to the heart of what it means to be a democratic country. We all sit in this Chamber as politicians—politicians who draw on the liberal arts and who, I would have thought, expect the state to make some contribution to that area of study. Even in the United States, with its highly developed private higher education system, every state has a state university, as is the case in California, and all those universities make a massive contribution to the liberal arts. The departure that we are making in the UK leaves countries such as France, Germany and the United States making a contribution to that area of study, yet for the poorest students in this country, that will no longer be accessible.

I put on the record my thanks to the many people up and down the country who have worked in the Aimhigher programme. It is a programme that works. Pupils have been able to attend three-day summer schools attached to our universities as a result. I saw a scheme working with students in the Toxteth area of Liverpool; it was really reaching out to those young men, most of whom came from backgrounds like mine and had been raised by lone parents. They really wanted to aspire for the first time because of the huge inspiration that the scheme gave them. Following the decision that was announced today, what is to happen to Aimhigher? We have heard much today about the new access and success fund, but will the Minister confirm whether that fund will equal the £580 million a year that the previous Government invested in widening participation?

The Browne review promises to introduce stringent access agreements, and the Minister for Universities and Science confirmed that today. With universities charging more than £6,000 a year, will the Minister confirm what penalties they will suffer if they do not meet their access agreements? Will those agreements have teeth? I was saddened to hear the Secretary of State for Education being interviewed on the “Today” programme this morning. We did not want to hear that universities will demonstrate that they will use imaginative ways to attract students from poorer backgrounds; we want a lot more than imagination.

The Minister is really attracted to choice for students and to having funds following students to university. He has made great hay of the pupil premium, so why not have a pupil premium in that area of the education system? Why not fund students from poorer backgrounds better to get that buy-in from the higher education sector? Does he not agree that universities need real, hard commitments on access that are statutory and can be challenged? That is important if we are not to see the situation deteriorate.