Further and Higher Education Students: Cost of Living

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir George. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) for securing this important debate.

Further and higher education students in my constituency of Liverpool, West Derby and across the country are facing immense pressure from the cost of living crisis, with rising bills, inflation and the Government’s real-term cuts to students’ maintenance loans. The maintenance loan simply does not allow students to cover basic costs or to live and study in dignity. The National Union of Students reports that more than a quarter of higher education students are left with less than £50 a month after covering rent and bills, and that 42% are surviving on less than £100. The impact on students’ health, wellbeing and education is devastating. Some 22% of surveyed students say that they often skip meals to save money, and, shamefully, a quarter of universities now have food banks.

A staggering 90% of students say that the rising cost of living is negatively impacting their mental health. Students are the very future of our country, and they are being driven into poverty simply for wanting to go to college and university to study. Surely higher education should be seen as a right accessible to all who want to go—an investment in a public good that is essential to the future success of this nation.

At a recent talk in Parliament with a superb class of sixth-form students from St John Bosco, in West Derby, about their plans for the future, it absolutely broke my heart to hear that many of the students felt that higher education was simply not an option for them because of the cost involved. I often hear talk about glass ceilings in politics; listening to the class that day reinforced my view that the cost of higher education for the working class was now becoming one of the biggest glass ceilings of all.

For over a decade in power, the Government have completely failed to support students in Liverpool, West Derby and right across the country. The coalition Government scrapped the education maintenance allowance, and the bursary fund that replaced it has less than a third of the EMA’s budget and stricter eligibility criteria that have excluded many who desperately need that support. That simply cannot go on. We need systemic change. We need an end to the underfunding of our entire education system, an end to under-investment in students and an end to the failed free market experiment in higher education.

The Minister has an opportunity in the upcoming King’s Speech to introduce legislation to support students and transform our education system. I call on him to listen to the NUS and

“urgently and dramatically increase the level of maintenance support”.

I also call on him to listen to the APPG’s recommendations, which were outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central. Finally, I ask him to listen to students in West Derby who are calling for tuition fees to be abolished and for a system of non-repayable financial support to be put in place so that they are not excluded from accessing higher education. Students and their families in West Derby deserve nothing less.