Higher and Further Education

Debate between Gordon Birtwistle and Paul Blomfield

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

Two and a half years ago, I arrived in this place and two years ago I was introduced to the Browne report on the future funding of universities, which had been asked for by the previous Labour Government. It was to be studied not only in itself, but when the country faced a catastrophic financial situation. I could not have agreed with the Browne report as it was, because having universities charging unlimited sums was not acceptable to me. So I told the current Secretary of State that I could not agree with it and that he had to do something for the poorer families in the country, particularly those in my constituency. We then got the proposal that we have now, with the change from an unlimited to a limited amount of money. The Browne report, asked for by the Labour Government, was talking about making it unlimited. Now, not only was the amount to be absolutely limited at £9,000, but there would be national scholarships to help young people from families who did not have the funding to go to these places. That has happened quite a lot in Burnley; a lot of young people have gone on these special scholarships, getting their first year and, we hope, their second year free at the colleges.

When I went back to the town to discuss the matter with the young people there, I was astonished to hear that they had been fed the story, particularly by the Labour party, that they would have to find the money up front—that the £21,000 would have to be paid before they turned up on the university doorstep. That was parroted by the Labour party and in some of the press.

[Paul Blomfield]

The hon. Gentleman is making a serious claim against the Opposition. Will he say on precisely what occasion anybody speaking on behalf of my party said that?

[Gordon Birtwistle]

A number of members of the Labour party in Burnley were saying to the young people of Burnley, and convincing them, that they would have to find the money up front. That was obviously not the case, so I told them that they would not have to pay the money up front, that the money would be given to them up front and that no repayments would have to be made until they were earning £21,000. They then asked how much they would have to pay when they were earning £22,000, which is a gross salary of £1,850 a month. When they are on that income, their repayment to the taxpayer for funding their education at university will be £8 a month. When I asked them whether they would mind paying back £8 a month if they had a salary of £1,850 they said, “Of course not. We understood that it would be lots more than that.” I then asked them to assume that they were on a salary of £25,000, which is a substantial salary in Burnley, and so would be collecting more than £2,000 a month. When I asked whether they would then object to paying back £30 a month to the taxpayer who had funded their education at university I was again told, “Well of course not, but that is not what we have been told. That is not the understanding that we have. So we are happy to do it.” I even got the student union rep at the university of central Lancashire to say, “That is far better than what we have now.” The young people of Burnley are getting a better deal now than they had before, and that convinced me to support the proposals in the Bill.

I also compared the number of students who go to university with the total number of students who leave school. About 40% go to university, which means that 60% do not. So I looked at the prospects for those young people who do not go to university—I am thinking of the apprenticeship scheme. I was an apprentice engineer in 1958. Over the past 25 years, various Governments, particularly the last one, took the decision to destroy apprenticeships. They said that they did not need apprenticeships, that they would pray and bow to the City and the finance sector, so never mind the manufacturing sector—let it go. The Indians and Chinese could do the manufacturing and we would just make money out of the finance sector. We all saw what happened to the finance sector: it caught a cold and we all got pneumonia.

We have to support manufacturing, so the Government have invested in 800,000 young people who are now apprentices. Many of them are going to university but are being funded by the companies that they work for, which means that they are getting degrees and have a job, but do not have any debt. That is the kind of forward thinking that the Government should demonstrate and that is what we have had.

NHS Reorganisation

Debate between Gordon Birtwistle and Paul Blomfield

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I certainly would. To cut the tariff from 78 to 25% is the most outrageous proposal on health care to have come from this Government.

When questioned on this issue—this is extraordinary—a spokeswoman from the Department of Health said, very casually,

“less than 10 hospitals are likely to be affected significantly by these changes and the tariff is not their only source of income.”

We are talking about 10 of the leading hospitals that care for our children. Let us be clear: the Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has estimated that the change could cut its budget by as much as £4.9 million. That is a reduction of almost 10% in its total funding. It has said that that

“would have a serious impact on the hospital finances and ability to deliver some services.”

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

I am very pleased that the hon. Gentleman has an excellent hospital in his constituency. Will he advise me why the Labour party set in train the closure of Burnley’s children’s ward when it was in power, leaving an area of Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale and more than 250,000 people without a children’s ward, never mind a children’s hospital?

[Paul Blomfield]

I can certainly talk at length about the enormous investment that we made in our hospitals and health services and about the tremendous difference that that made to patients and to reducing the waiting lists that we inherited in 1997. However, I want to make the point about the impact on Sheffield children’s hospital. As the hospital said, the change will have a serious impact on its ability to deliver services that provide critical interventions for those whom we should be protecting most—our children. If the Government are prepared to attack these budgets in such a way, what will the commitment to guarantee health spending increases in real terms in each year of this Parliament be other than another broken promise?