Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 General Committees

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2015 (S.I., 2015, No. 1951).

May I add my appreciation to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central at being able to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Percy?

The bundle of measures before the Committee are a miscellany, to put it politely, but at their heart is the proposal to scrap maintenance grant support for disadvantaged students and replace it with a loan system. I will address the specifics of the regulations shortly, but for now I observe that the policy change is not an isolated one; it is part of a pattern that is also happening across other areas of Government. It is mirrored by the changes that were debated in the House on Monday, which removed NHS bursaries for nurses and other staff, and it has been foreshadowed by changes that the Government have made to education support and protection over the past three to four years. That included, of course, the scrapping of 24-plus loans in further education, which is particularly relevant to the case before us today.

As the Minister will be aware, the Government released figures in October 2015 showing clear evidence of the deterrent impact on learners that I and others warned about when loans were introduced as replacements for grants in January 2013. The figures showed that in 2014-15, only £149 million of the £397 million allocated for the process had been taken up, or 62% less. Not surprisingly, people in the further education community lamented the lost opportunity of £250 million that could have helped some of our most disadvantaged learners. With that in mind, my first question to the Minister is whether he took any of those figures into account, particularly their impact on older learners, when formulating the proposals in these regulations.

The truth of the matter is that the Government have ducked and dived to avoid further debate on their direction of travel, and particularly on freezing the threshold, which is not specifically part of these regulations, although it is referred to in the assessment that comes with them. We have seen how they have dealt with the regulations before us. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central has referred eloquently to the failure to bring the debate to the Floor of the House, but I also draw to the Committee’s attention the equality impact assessment that the Government have produced, which is on the table at the back of the room. It runs to some 60 pages, so I am not sure how many Members will have the opportunity to consider it in detail today if they have not read it already. The equality impact assessment was slipped out without ceremony at the end of November, and it came out only after a campaign and legal moves.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

That was several weeks ago.

[Mr Marsden]

Well, there might have been weeks to read it if the Government had actually made it available, but they did not.

This is the document that almost dare not speak its name, not least because the detailed evidence of impact tucked away in its pages, to which I will refer later, is belied by the bland conclusions appended to it that it will be all right on the night. What is driving panic measures such as the threshold freeze is the Government’s dawning recognition that their whole set of financial assumptions about repayment in other areas that underpinned their swingeing fees increases is producing a black hole for them and for future taxpayers.

Mr Percy, I am sure that you and those of us who have been here under all sorts of Governments will have observed the rule of thumb in this place that there are two ways for Ministers and their advisers to present and package things that they feel might be unpalatable. One is to bundle in the controversial bits with more technical or anodyne measures that might lull the reader into a false sense of security. Here is an example of such wording in the impact assessment:

“The following maximum grants and loans for living and other costs will be maintained at 2015/16 levels in 2016/17”.

Another way is to entitle the document innocuously, to increase the camouflage. Both methods have been employed on this occasion.

This is not a bit of incidental tinkering with existing financial regulations. It represents a major departure and reversal of policy, only four years after the Government hailed maintenance grants for students from disadvantaged backgrounds as an essential element in their strategy for fairness and in the acceptance of tripled tuition fees. I am afraid the measures are typical of the ideology-driven but evidence-light approach that this Government too often employ. They will affect probably 500,000 of England’s most disadvantaged students and define their futures for good or ill. Has the Minister made, or had given to him, any breakdown, geographical or otherwise, of that total figure and its impact on higher education institutions? If not, why not?

The statistics about those institutions helpfully provided to me by the House of Commons Library amount to a Domesday Book listing the numbers of students who will lose their grant under the new rules. Institutions in all parts of the country will be affected, both old universities and new ones. Further education colleges will be affected, of course, because they make an increasingly valuable contribution, 10% and more, to higher education for the group of people affected. Of course—this is not irrelevant in today’s circumstances—Scottish students who are taking courses at English universities will be affected.

There are a number of disadvantaged students studying at higher education colleges, and the Association of Colleges tells me that many of the colleges that deliver higher education are in northern towns—Blackpool and Blackburn are cited. Cornwall and the south-west also help to provide the large number of places at HE colleges. The association has said in specific response to these regulations, “We have real concerns about the proposed change as many of the students may never earn enough to pay back the money and the policy does appear to penalise poorer students. The new system therefore needs careful monitoring to ensure it is as fair as possible.”

These changes will affect significant numbers of students, from the north to the south. On the basis of the figures for 2014-15, for example, 14,728 students at Manchester Met University will be affected; 8,167 at the University of Manchester; 1,527 at my own excellent further education college, Blackpool and The Fylde College; 10,924 at Nottingham Trent University; 4,897 at Bournemouth; and 3,738 at King’s College. The other institutions that I have not had the opportunity to mention are far from incidental. The list will be a roll-call of lost opportunities if this issue is not handled carefully.

However, despite this being such a major issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central has observed the Government have refused to bring the changes to the Floor of the House and prefer to try to sneak them through the delegated legislation route, whereby it can be debated and voted on by only a handful of MPs. As he said, there is cross-party support on the issue.

Importantly, the shadow Business Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), in her letter to the Secretary of State explaining why there needed to be a full debate on these measures, wrote that scrapping maintenance grants for lower income students and replacing them with loans would have a regressive impact and should therefore receive further scrutiny from Members of Parliament. That was why she went on to call for a debate on these measures in Government time. She also made the practical point, which I will come on to, that the change would not improve Government finances in the long term, and she also made the link with the adverse impact of freezing student loan repayment, which I have touched on briefly.

Can the Minister explain why the Secretary of State did not deal adequately with any of those points in his reply? As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central has asked, will the Minister also explain why his Department has ignored the words of the Leader of the House in December and is prepared to break the precedent of debates in the House under these circumstances?

Turning to the impact of the regulations, of course we can only speculate on the future cohorts of people who come in, but we have some reason to make those speculations on the basis of existing experience. The National Education Opportunities Network, which is the professional organisation for widening access to education in England, and the University and College Union are currently undertaking research with more than 2,000 final-year A-level and level 3 students to look at how costs influence the HE choices they make. The interim findings from that research show that more than half the students who are deciding not to go into HE are taking that decision because of the lack of direct financial maintenance grant support that they had envisaged for the year ahead. If research suggests that a large number of students are deciding not to go to university due to that lack of support, why are the Government risking even more students dropping out by introducing the regulations?

A study by economists at the Institute of Education in 2014 showed that a £1,000 increase in grants would create a 3.95% increase in participation, and that the removal of grants would see participation levels fall. In fact, the institute said that it should also be of grave concern that more than a third of students had told a recent survey that they would not have chosen to go to university if they had not had access to maintenance grants. Does the Minister not fear a severe drop in participation levels, given that statistics indicate that the accessibility of a maintenance grant is a deciding factor for many when choosing whether to go into higher education? His equality assessment, which has been circulated, as I have said, states:

“At an aggregate level there is currently no evidence that the 2012 reforms, which saw a significant increase in HE fees and associated student debt levels has had a significant impact in deterring the participation of young students from low income backgrounds.”

That is debatable, because the safety net of maintenance grants, introduced in 2012 with that tripling of fees, is now being removed.

My hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State wrote in her letter praying against the regulations:

“Labour are concerned that this change won’t improve Government finances in the long-term.”

Hon. Members might say, “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” but perhaps more cogent is the view of the Institute for Fiscal Studies:

“The replacement of maintenance grants by loans from 2016–17 will raise debt for the poorest students, but do little to improve government finances in the long run.”

The IFS states that in the short term, Government borrowing will drop

“by around £2 billion per year. This is because current spending on grants counts towards current borrowing, while current spending on loans does not.

In the long run, savings will be much less than this. The amount of money lent to students will rise by about £2.3 billion for each cohort, but only around a quarter of these additional loans will be repaid. The net effect is to reduce government borrowing by around £270 million per cohort in the long run in 2016 money—a 3% decline in the government’s estimated contribution to higher education.

About two-thirds of those eligible for the full maintenance grant will repay no more as a result of this reform because they will end up with the additional debt being written off.”

There is the rub. Will the Minister tell us what conversations he has had with his colleagues in the Treasury about the accuracy of those predictions, and why his Department is embarking on a leap in the dark that will, as the IFS makes clear, diminish the contribution to higher education and do little to address the black hole?

The IFS states:

“Students from households with pre-tax incomes of up to £25,000 (those currently eligible for a full maintenance grant) will have a little more “cash in pocket” whilst at university. But they will also graduate with around £12,500 more debt, on average, from a three-year course. This means that students from the poorest backgrounds are now likely to leave university owing substantially more to the government than their better-off peers.”

It also states:

“The poorest 40% of students going to university in England will now graduate with debts of up to £53,000 from a three-year course, rather than up to £40,500. This will result from the replacement of maintenance grants”.

The removal of those grants threatens access to higher education and, importantly, follows on from the removal of the national scholarship programme, which was designed to help students from low-income households. The programme has been scrapped, just as the Government are doing to maintenance grants.

In 2012, when the Government tripled tuition fees, they tried to sweeten the pill by talking up the centrality of the maintenance grant to ensuring that the most disadvantaged could still access higher education.

“The increase in maintenance grant for students from household with the lowest incomes, the National Scholarship Programme, and additional fair access requirements on institutions wanting to charge over £6,000 in graduate contributions should ensure that the reforms do not affect individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds disproportionately.”

That is what the Conservative-led Government said in 2011-12 through the Minister’s predecessor, but the regulations will disadvantage the same groups of students the Government promised to protect two years ago. In June 2011, the Minister’s predecessor, David Willetts, pledged in Parliament:

“We want students from a wide range of backgrounds to benefit from the reforms. We are increasing maintenance grants and loans for nearly all students”.—[Official Report, 28 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 770.]

He had previously defended the measure as a quid pro quo for the trebling of tuition fees, saying:

“Our proposals are progressive, because they help to encourage people from poorer backgrounds to go to university, because of the higher education maintenance grant, and because of the higher repayment threshold. That crucial commitment to taking progressive measures is one of the reasons we commend these proposals to the House.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 940.]

Does the Minister accept that the Government have now broken both those promises? His colleague, who is now Lord Willetts, must be revolving in his ermine at the way his promises have been so lightly regarded by the Government.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a bit of a non sequitur in what he says? On one hand he says that the debt will be increased, but on the other he says that it will be written off. If both propositions are true, there should be no detrimental effect on the students involved.

[Mr Marsden]

The hon. Lady needs to look more carefully at the differential impacts. The point that I, and I am sure my hon. Friends, would make about this is that debt aversion depends on where someone is coming from. It is perfectly possible to have a situation with those common factors. It is not, however, at all clear from any of the evidence that has been put forward that that would not be a significant disincentive.

I was talking about the things that were said previously: those words will do little to enhance the Government’s alleged commitment to increasing social mobility. The Government and their predecessors set great store by the principle of “nudge”—actions that persuade people to change their behaviour for the better. I remind the Minister that is possible to nudge people away from desirable outcomes such as getting higher education, rather than towards them. The question that the Minister and his colleagues must answer is what attention they have devoted in the regulations, which are highly specific, to preventing that.

A new BIS study included in the impact statement by the Government says that more than half the applicants said they felt put off by the cost of university. Also, for poorer applicants, tuition fee loans and the income-contingent repayment threshold were more important in persuading them to apply, despite the costs. However, the Government seriously underestimate the effect that the grant and the cost of universities have on student decisions. That is backed up by what the Sutton Trust has said:

“Shifting grants to loans may move them off the balance sheet, but it could also put off many low and middle income students and tip the balance against their going to university. Since grants were reintroduced, there have been significant improvements”—

and we welcome that—

“in participation from full time less advantaged students, and this will be put at risk by today’s Budget plans.

The reality is that the Government has miscalculated the levels of repayments it will get from its student loans under the new fees system. Rather than penalising poorer students, it should have a fundamental review of the repayments system. We need long term solutions not a short term fix.”

Research from the NUS that was published yesterday by Populus shows that parents are concerned that the Government’s plans to scrap the maintenance grant will discourage their children from applying to university. Two fifths of those with a combined income of £25,000 or less believe that their children would be discouraged from applying to university if grants were replaced by loans. More than half the parents believed that the plan to scrap grants undermined the Government’s objective of increasing access to university for poorer students.

I want to deal with some other surveys that have been conducted. The changes may well pile even more pressure on to students to alter their work-study balance while pursuing a degree. According to the 2015 Endsleigh survey, produced by a company that has specialised in the area for many years, already 77% of students must work to help fund their studies, using time that could be spent on academic work. That already high number looks set to increase further with the removal of maintenance grants.

The Government claim that they want to strengthen our skills base and that they have given more support for postgraduates. The initial steps that were announced on that are welcome; but there is a risk that they will be undercut because of the debt aversion of the group of students who will lose their grants. The NUS found that after a student finished their undergraduate degree, access to a maintenance grant could also influence their post-study choices.

I want to turn my attention to the specifics of the equality impact assessment that BIS produced for the regulations. It concedes, for example, that black and minority ethnic students, in particular, will be disproportionately worse off than others following the removal of maintenance grants:

“We believe that the proposed changes will disproportionately affect people from ethnic minority backgrounds. This is based on evidence of debt aversion in this group and the increased likelihood for these students to receive the full maintenance grant. We have assessed that there is a small risk to the participation of students”—

given participation rates—

“both from high and low socio-economic backgrounds”.

Additionally, there is risk to the outcomes of these students if they choose not to take out the additional loan available.”

However, a recent BIS study also stated that non-white applicants were likely to cite the importance of maintenance grants in overcoming their concerns about costs. Thus the removal of the maintenance grant will seriously discourage BME students from attending HE institutions.

There is potentially bad news for older learners as well. The equality analysis states:

“Mature students will be disproportionately impacted by the policy proposals to remove the full maintenance grant and replace with additional loan as well as the freezing of targeted grants. The proportion of students aged 21 and over that claim maintenance grant support is significantly higher than their representation in the population of all student support claimants. The available evidence points to the cost sensitivity and debt averseness of this group. The policy change presents a risk for the participation of older students in higher education.”

The assessment has worrying words for disabled students as well:

“As for all students from low income backgrounds we expect the risk to participation of low income disabled students…to continue to be mitigated by the high average returns to HE investment and the repayment protection for low earning graduates.”

That, of course, assumes that current ratios quoted in that respect will remain the same with the massive expansion of the cohort entering full-time work in the next 10 to 15 years. There is no evidence whatever on that.

However, the Government have conceded in the assessment that disabled people will also be disproportionately affected by the decision not to protect the real value of disabled students’ allowances. The assessment says:

“Students from low income backgrounds will be able to access DSA at same level in cash terms but may be disproportionately affected by the freezing (real terms reduction)”—

a term the Government were reluctant to use at the beginning of the equality impact assessment—

“of DSAs and dependants grants.”

For all of the groups that I have cited so far, I and the rest of the Committee want to know what the Government propose to do to mitigate those disproportionate impacts, which their own equality impact assessment so candidly concedes will be the case.

In addition, there is the separate worrying implication that a significant number of would-be students may be discriminated against under these regulations because of their religious beliefs. The impact assessment states:

“There is evidence to suggest that there are groups of Muslim students whose religion prohibits them from taking out an interest bearing loan. This means that this group of students will no longer have access to funding for living costs as non-repayable finance is no longer available. This could lead to a decline in the participation of some Muslim students.”

The complacency about the failure to have available a sharia-compliant alternative to grants that will be withdrawn borders on discrimination. Does the Minister agree that the regulations as they stand will restrict Muslim students from accessing valuable finance, while the removal of grants threatens to weaken further their ability and capacity to carry through their higher education studies?

The Government claim that they are making an alternative to traditional loans available that is sharia-compliant, but it is not there yet, is it, Minister? Yet the Government have known about the issue since April 2014. Will the Minister guarantee that the change will not be implemented until there are firm regulations in law for an alternative finance proposal that will be acceptable to people of the Muslim faith?

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I want to share my own example, because these matters are often seen as hypothetical. I started my undergraduate degree in 1990, the first year that voluntary loans were introduced. I did not take one of those because Muslim students are very risk-averse and debt-averse and do not want to carry interest-bearing loans. Does my hon. Friend agree that these are real people, not just hypothetical examples?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend makes an absolutely real point. We are not just dealing with statistics—although the statistics of potential discrimination and deprivation are frightening—we are dealing with lots of individual case histories. In the area my hon. Friend mentioned, she precisely underlined why the Government need to get a grip on that particular issue, which they have not so far.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I, too, want to talk about a real situation. I listened to the hon. Gentleman’s speech, but, as somebody who failed my 12-plus, came from a very low-income family, went through university, just missed out on a grant, went to bar school, took out loans, worked all the way through it and was able to do so, I find it somewhat patronising to be told that it is not possible to do that. These loans will not be paid back before the person is earning. If they are earning money, it seems only fair that they give something back so that more people from backgrounds such as mine can go to university.

[Mr Marsden]

It is always dangerous to draw general a conclusion from ad hominem examples. I and other Members of this House can quote lots of examples. I can quote examples from my casework of people who have come to me at a later age who have been deterred. The onus is on the Government when making these changes to demonstrate that they will work, not by making ad hominem arguments—however much I applaud the hon. Gentleman for doing what he did to get to where he is today—but by looking at the broad statistics and the analysis that has been put forward today.

[Lucy Frazer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Marsden]

I will not take another intervention from the hon. Lady. She has had one. [Interruption.] I did answer the first. The hon. Lady will have an opportunity to speak later if she wishes to.

The equality analysis makes reference to the damaging effect that the proposed regulations will have on female students. As my colleague, the shadow Equalities Minister, said to me, the changes will have an unfair impact on women—especially mothers. When the Government increased fees, the number of mature students fell, so I think we can expect exactly the same effect with these loans. The impact assessment also states that female students will be particularly affected by the freeze to childcare grants, parents’ learning allowances and ESAs, given their significant over-representation in these populations. What action does the Minister plan to take to protect female students from the cumulative negative impact that the change could have on their ability to pursue higher education?

Those details from the Government’s own impact assessment should surely give them pause for thought, given that they threaten to affect the most debt-averse groups. Worryingly, it appears that the Government are yet to produce an up-to-date estimate of the impact that the shift from grants to loans will have on the resource accounting and budgeting charge, which calculates the cost to the Government of the higher education funding system, based on—this is relevant to the issues that other Members raised—how much students are expected ultimately to repay of their loans.

In November, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), asked about that issue in a written question. She received the following bland reply:

“This estimate will be updated in Summer 2016, alongside publication of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills accounts.”

Given, as I have already emphasised, the IFS’s scepticism about the savings that the changes will make, will the Minister tell us why his Department did not obtain an up-to-date estimate before proposing the changes? Is that not a dereliction of duty on a key question, both for sound government finance and for cost-benefit analysis? Summer 2016 will be way too late, as by that time the new regulations could have deprived 500,000 or so young people of their grants and set a potentially perilous alternative in motion. This Government proposal was not in the Conservative party manifesto. For all those reasons, I and my colleagues will vote that the proposal has not been adequately considered.

[The Chair]

There is only an hour left. I will call the Minister towards the end of the debate, and, as Mr Marsden indicated that he would like to respond, he will have five minutes at the end. Many Members wish to speak, so I ask that they limit their speeches as much as possible so that we can get everybody in.

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[The Minister for Universities and Science (Joseph Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I welcome the chance to set out the case for this statutory instrument, which details the higher education student support arrangements for the 2016-17 academic year. It is, as hon. Members said, an important instrument, and its provisions touch on some of the principles that guide the Government’s higher education policies.

The instrument includes an increase in loans for living costs for current full-time students, as well as a number of policy and technical changes to ensure that the student finance system remains fair. The most significant provision is the change to the student support package for new students, and I will devote the majority of my remarks to this.

Before discussing the content of the instrument, I would like to clarify the parliamentary process—an issue raised by a number of Opposition Members. Changes to student support are made annually through secondary legislation, through amendments to the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011. There are a number of hon. Members here who are not able to vote in the Committee, but who have none the less made valuable contributions to this important debate, illustrating the fact that Parliament is having an opportunity to examine this measure.

These regulations are made under the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, which was passed under the previous Labour Government. Today’s Delegated Legislation Committee therefore follows the procedure agreed by Parliament. This debate follows an early-day motion in the Commons, and I understand that the other place will also get the chance to consider this instrument following the tabling of a motion yesterday by Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

[Mr Marsden]

I share other Opposition Members’ respect for the Minister and I sense that he is in a dilemma because he is not entirely comfortable with this process. He is trying to justify it by saying that it is due custom and practice. He is absolutely right about that, but any Government have the ability to break due custom and practice. I know that only too well, because I sat in this House in 2006, when we had the great casino debate. That measure was obviously going to affect Blackpool and could have been brought to a Delegated Legislation Committee, but because of the strength of feeling on the matter in the House, the Government of the day allowed a 90-minute debate on the Floor of the House. If we can debate casinos on the Floor of the House for 90 minutes, why cannot we debate this issue?

[Joseph Johnson]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman acknowledges that we are following due custom and practice. I will carry on explaining the Government’s intentions in bringing this instrument before the Committee.

The instrument provides that those students beginning courses in 2016-17 will qualify for increased loans for their living costs while studying, instead of maintenance grants. An eligible student whose family income is £25,000 or less and who is living away from home and studying outside London will qualify for up to 10.3% more living costs support in 2016-17 than they would receive under current arrangements. That is an additional £766 of support, and that increase in support for living costs has been called for by individual students. Indeed, the 2012 report by the National Union of Students entitled “The Pound In Your Pocket” indicated that there are two main considerations for students when deciding whether to go to university. The first is whether they have the means to meet their costs when needed, and the second is whether the eventual benefits of higher education will outweigh the costs. With these regulations, we are ensuring that students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have access to more support than ever before. Students understand the value of obtaining a degree.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

We published the full equality impact assessment on 5 December, which, in reference to the earlier comments made by the hon. Member for Blackpool South, gave the Committee plenty of time to analyse it and go through it closely before today’s meeting. The Government have been fully transparent with respect to the equality impact assessment.

[Mr Marsden]

On a point of order, Mr Percy. The Minister is playing with words in terms of 5 December. Actually, the date on the impact assessment is November, so obviously they got it out even later. The fact of the matter is that the membership of this Committee, with the exception of himself and myself, was drawn up only a few days ago, so how Members could be expected to know that they would need to look at it in December is another matter.

[The Chair]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I think it is more a point of debate, and he has made his point on the record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

I thank all my hon. Friends, and Government Back-Bench Members, for their contributions. I am sorry that time does not permit me to draw more on them. I want to make two or three points before we close. First, the Minister moved into very broad territory at the end that was not related to these Committee proceedings at all. I put a list of specific questions to him, not least on the sharia issue. I hope that replies to those questions will be forthcoming promptly for the sake of all Committee members, particularly the Government Members who have expressed concerns.

Let us be straightforward: nobody is accusing the Minister—I certainly am not—of having bad faith in this matter, or of not wanting to proceed in a proper and progressive manner, but there is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If we will the ends of social mobility, we must also will the means. The whole point that we have made in this debate is that this process was not in the manifesto. Frankly, I thought that what he said about the generalised point was fairly risible; I thought it was only the Chancellor of the Exchequer who worked on the principle “Always read the small print, even if it’s not there.” I hope that the Minister will not follow that particular principle.

The truth of the matter is that if the Government stretch the process and nudge people away for too long, the envelope being stretched will eventually be broken. That is what we are saying. If the Minister and his colleagues are so confident about their policies, why did they not bring them to the Floor of the House? More to the point, why did they not consult independent experts and various representative organisations? Why did they not commission some research from any of the reputable independent policy bodies?

Last month, with a number of other MPs, I sat in this corridor listening to the hundreds of students who came to lobby us. Their message was a constant one: scrapping maintenance grants will leave people struggling to go to university. Incidentally, when the Minister answers, I hope that he will answer the points made by Opposition Members about the Barnett consequentials.

If the Minister and his colleagues believe in their case, why have they not brought it to the Floor of the House? There is an old saying that a speaker who knows he has been given a poor brief marks the paper at a certain part of his response, “Argument weak here—shout like mad”. The Minister is a courteous man, so shouting like mad is probably not on his agenda, but the brief that he has been given has simply folded up the Government’s tents. The proposals should have been made to the whole House, and no amount of the bravura and bluster that the Prime Minister gave my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) in the House yesterday while dodging his question about the grants will alter that fact.

We have talked about consequences. We have talked about our own experiences. I was a tutor for the Open University for 20 years, and I know that the experience of many of the students whom I taught was that they had been put off higher education at an earlier age by the costs. Such things do not alter just because we are in the digital world of the 21st century. I appeal to the Minister to think again, to consider specifically the issues brought today and, for goodness’ sake, if he really thinks that he has a good argument, to put it on the Floor of the House.