Education, Skills and Training

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I welcome the Minister back to his place and suggest that he reads Hansard later, because he missed a very good Front-Bench speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray).

This alleged legislative programme lacks imagination, is lacklustre and ultimately fails to address the challenges facing the country. The Queen’s speech was 937 words long, lasted less than nine minutes and has been rightly condemned for being uninspiring and offering no vision. Is this the sign of a Government who have run out of ideas in facing up to the challenges the country and our constituents face, or is the Prime Minister just too busy fighting his party’s internal EU civil war? The country cannot wait for the Government Benches to kiss and make up. We need a Government focused on building a fairer and more prosperous country, not one at odds over the EU referendum or distracted by its election expenses.

Ultimately, the Queen’s Speech does nothing to help realise the potential of our young people, our students or our education sector. Last week, amid all the doom and gloom of the UK Government’s Queen’s Speech, the SNP, as any Opposition party worthy of Government should, put forward an alternative Queen’s Speech that offered real positive change. At the heart of it was a progressive set of values that would help to realise the potential of our young people. In it, the SNP again called for the post-study work visa to be reinstated. This came on the back of an international students survey conducted by Hobsons that underlined the importance of such a visa as an incentive for international students when deciding whether to come to Scotland to study.

The SNP has long called for the visa to be reinstated. Indeed, I held my first Westminster Hall debate on the very issue. We are supported by Scotland’s universities, colleges, businesses and all parties, including the Conservatives, in the Scottish Parliament. The visa gave those international students the opportunity to live and work in Scotland after they had graduated from one of our excellent universities. The closure of the post-study route to remain has effectively removed that opportunity.

This is what has led to the disgraceful planned deportation of the Brain family from Dingwall. The Chancellor’s wholly ignorant and cold indifference to the plight of a seven-year-old Gaelic-speaking boy who has known no other home than the Scottish highlands was one of the worst answers I have heard in this place since I was elected. The Government must do the right thing and U-turn on their current position. They have certainly had plenty of practice of late.

This decision and the removal of the visa itself not only damages our international reputation, but is an economically illiterate policy, because the vast majority of these students are not able to contribute to the country that has provided them with an excellent higher education. For example, research undertaken by the Scottish Government’s post-study working group suggested that a number of new entrants to Scottish universities from India fell by 63% between 2010-11 and 2013-14. It could be argued that colleges have been hit harder following the demise of the visa, as the number of international students studying in Scotland’s colleges has fallen from 2,039 in 2010-11 to 561—a shocking decline of 72%. The removal of the visa sends a clear message to our important international market that the UK FE and HE sectors are closed for business. The visa has supporters in this place beyond these Benches. The all-party group on migration produced a report, whose Conservative chairman noted:

“Higher education is one of our country’s leading export success stories, but the government’s current approach to post-study work is jeopardising Britain’s position in the global race for talent”.

With the negative tone pursued by the UK Government over the EU referendum, combined with the removal of the post-study work visa, it has become increasingly clear that this Government are out of step with what is best for our universities. The Higher Education and Research Bill, one of the few announced in the Queen’s Speech last week, contains some worrying reforms that the Government plan to bring forward. It would appear that the Government are once again working against the wishes of students when it comes to designing an education system for the 21st century.

The NUS has expressed deep concern about the unhealthy fixation of this Government with university marketisation, which, combined with the threat of lifting the £9,000 cap on tuition fees, has led the NUS to announce its intention to oppose the most damaging aspects of the Bill. In addition, it completely opposes any link between perceived teaching quality and fees.

Another issue that is not going to go away is the Chancellor’s crazy policy of abolishing bursaries for those studying to become the next generation of nurses, midwives and allied health workers. The arguments to see the reinstatement of the bursary support are well trodden and despite this issue being devolved, I have made them at length in this House. Thanks to the report published today by London Economics, we now have a better understanding of what the impact of the change will be. The students and HE institutions themselves will be significantly worse off and the cost savings to the Exchequer are, in the end, likely to be very minimal.

Students and graduates will be hit with a punitive 71% increase in the cost of going to university and will see their debt on graduation rising from just under £7,000 to just under £49,000. This will undoubtedly hit the numbers applying to study these courses, with London Economics forecasting a 6% to 7% fall in student numbers or more than 2,000 in the first year. Along with other factors, this will result in these institutions losing between £57 million and £77 million a year. Not only will the Government fail to address the shortfall in nurses coming into the NHS; they will actually make the problem more acute, and we will have to rely on migrant nurses coming from other countries whose nursing resources are already stretched as a result of emigration to the UK.

This Queen’s Speech represents a missed opportunity truly to transform the education sector. Teachers, pupils and university and college staff are working incredibly hard. It is disappointing that the Government have chosen not to match that level of hard work by introducing a programme of government to meet the challenges of a 21st-century education sector.

The SNP Scottish Government are going in the opposite direction. Instead of working against students and universities, we are working with them. Whereas the Tories promote front-door tuition fees down here and back-door tuition fees in Holyrood, the SNP Scottish Government have guaranteed free university education in Scotland. Our fundamental principle is that university access should be on the basis of the ability to learn, not the ability to pay.

It appears that the EU referendum and quashing noisy Tory Brexit voices are the priority for the Prime Minister and his Government colleagues. This is at the expense of growing our economy, creating jobs and delivering a modern and inclusive education sector of excellence. The UK Government cannot and should not be defined by a single issue. If they have run out of steam and ideas, I would strongly suggest that they take a good look at the SNP’s alternative Queen’s Speech.

[Several hon. Members rose—]