Higher Education and Student Finance

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for having to deal with this matter in this way, but questions must be about the policy of the Government and, unfortunately, that one was not.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that if higher fees to attend the best universities deter poor students from going to them, the most able students will not go to the best universities and Britain will be the poorer for it?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman is right. There is a real issue here, and it relates to the Browne review’s proposals for variable fees, which I made very clear we are still considering. Let me set out the argument. On the one hand we have world-class universities—four of the 10 leading universities in the world are in this country and we want to keep it that way—and they are making a very strong case for variable fees. On the other hand, however, if that were to be accepted large numbers of people from modest backgrounds would be deterred by highly priced courses at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, and we see the psychological impact of that—it is very real. We need to weigh up those two factors. That is why, although I have come to the House with the firm proposal of our support for the £7,000 limit, we want to consider further how we might balance those two issues in relation to variability of fees.