Student Maintenance Grants

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

I received a full maintenance grant when I was at university, and its impact was not just money in my bank account, but the feeling of confidence and freedom that I could choose the degree that I wanted at my first choice of university—that important point has not really been covered by the debate. When I graduated, I did not have £53,000 of debt, which is what the poorest 40% of students will graduate with. I remind Conservative Members that we are talking about the poorest students from the poorest backgrounds in our country. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, these are the sons and daughters of dinner ladies, bus drivers, and care workers on zero-hours contracts, and we should not forget the reality and background of those students. Let me say to the Minister, and to other hon. Members—particularly those who are chuntering from a sedentary position—that this is not scaremongering. This is a serious debate—

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The debate was five years ago.

[Emma Reynolds]

There he goes again. This is a serious debate about the impact of the proposals on our poorest constituents. That debate should be taken seriously by the Minister and by Conservative Members. This is not just about participation; this is about fair access and about which university someone chooses to go to, if they have that first choice. Some of my constituents in Wolverhampton might not choose to apply to Oxford, Cambridge or even perhaps the University of Sussex, because it is too far away and will be too expensive. This is about the choices that the poorest children must now make, given the level of indebtedness that they will face.

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[Wes Streeting]

That included arguments with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). But even with landslide majorities there was always a full debate and a vote in the House, whether they were abolishing student grants or, more wisely, reintroducing grants following the introduction of top-up fees.

This afternoon, these proposals will impact on 500,000 students from the poorest backgrounds. In my local university, the University of East London, that equates to about £30 million of financial support for students—gone. At my alma mater, the University of Cambridge, the figure is more like £9 million. If there is one thing we know about the higher education sector, it is that not only opportunity but financial support is unevenly distributed. It is completely unfair that students from the poorest backgrounds will now face a postcode lottery when it comes to determining how much non-repayable support they receive.

The very existence of student grants was won as a result of hard-fought negotiations. Student leaders argued that, if we were going to ask people to make a greater contribution, it was only fair that the poorest students received a non-repayable contribution. How must Conservative Members and the few remaining Liberal Democrats feel about the fact that when, under the coalition Government, the then higher education Minister justified the trebling of fees, they were told, “Don’t worry. We’ve got the national scholarship programme, student grants and the £21,000 threshold going up by inflation.” What has happened since? The national scholarship programme has been abandoned; the threshold frozen at £21,000; and now we see the abolition of student grants. We cannot trust a word that these people say, particularly when it comes to fair access to higher education and support for the most disadvantaged. It is an absolute disgrace.

I am proud of what the last Labour Government did to widen access and opportunity to people from working-class backgrounds. I was one of the beneficiaries, from the excellence in cities work that was done in schools right through to the opportunities provided through expanded places.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is doubtless equally proud of the fact that the Labour Government said that they would not introduce tuition fees, and then did; and said that they would not introduce top-up fees, and then did. Does he accept that he and others who said five years ago that the introduction of increased fees would lead to a reduction in those from poorer backgrounds going to university were wrong? They were wrong then, and we believe that they are wrong today.

[Wes Streeting]

I remember the debate here in 2003, and I think it was to the credit of the Government of the day that the introduction of higher fees did not come in until after a general election, when at least the voters could make their judgment on whether they wanted to re-elect a Labour Government, which they duly did.

So much has been said about participation numbers this afternoon. I am certainly not going to make prophecies of doom about participation, but we should bear in mind a few facts. First, there is the issue of equity. How can it possibly be justified that students from the poorest backgrounds graduate with the largest amount of debt? How can it possibly be fair that under these repayment mechanisms, the wealthiest graduates who go on to the most successful jobs will end up paying less over the course of their working career than people from middle and lower incomes? That cannot possibly be justified as fair. We should take seriously the evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies published in 2014 showing that a £1,000 increase in the maintenance grant led to a 3.95% increase in participation. Removing the grant does not necessarily mean that participation will plummet, but I think there is a risk that it could suffer.

There is a huge amount of complacency from this Government about the impact of higher tuition fees on applications to part-time routes and for mature students. It does not have to be that way; other choices are possible. We should look at what the Labour Government in Wales have done. They have not chosen to abolish student grants; they have kept those grants in place.

If the Tories want to talk about hard choices, how are they going to look the poorest students from the poorest backgrounds in the eye and explain why this Government continue to alleviate the tax burden on the wealthiest, while making the poorest pay the cost of their higher education? A 75% contribution to the cost of higher education is, by anyone’s estimation, too much, and there is not a single item in the Conservative manifesto that Government Members can point to in order to justify this outrageous attack on the poorest students.

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[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman told us in his speech how hard he has worked. Given that he is from Cardiff and that he has such an accent, I can absolutely acknowledge that he is a very hard-working individual. He will know that a general election was fought following that decision being taken and before they were introduced.

We all know that the Chancellor prefers governing from the shadows, and this shameless betrayal of previous promises and the shabby manner in which this has been handled in Parliament bear all the hallmarks of the current Chancellor of the Exchequer. Being young in Britain should be a time of opportunity—a time when opportunity knocks. Instead, we have the Chancellor introducing an opportunity tax. His proposals are an assault on aspiration, on opportunity and on those who want to get on in life. That is why we oppose them and also why the Welsh Government, under Labour First Minister, Carwyn Jones, is keeping maintenance grants. By the way, those who say that these proposals affect only England should think again—I say this to Welsh Conservative MPs as well: of the 30,000 students studying at Cardiff University, nearly 9,000 are from England.

[Graham Stuart]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the shadow Minister would not wish to mislead the House, but he has just said that tuition fees were introduced not after the 1997 election, but after the following general election. That is not true. They were introduced in 1998. Having said that they would not introduce them, the Government started the process 12 weeks later.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a point of debate, not a point of order for the Chair. We have very little time.