Education Maintenance Allowance

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gibb]

I will not give way to the hon. Lady, because I am running out of time and I want to get to this point: child benefit for families without a higher rate taxpayer will be maintained and will be paid for children up to the age of 19 if they are in full-time education. The Government will use some of the savings from child benefit to help fund significant, above-indexation increases in child tax credit, which will be worth something like £30 in 2011-12 and £50 in 2012-13. That is in addition to the increases announced in the Budget: £150 in a year for 2011-12 and £60 in 2012-13.

I can also assure the hon. Member for Glasgow North West that none of us wants any young person to drop out of education because of financial difficulty. However, we cannot justify continuing to fund a programme that is so expensive, unresponsive and poorly targeted. Instead, we will introduce an enhanced discretionary learner support fund.

Currently, £25 million a year is given to schools, colleges and training providers through a discretionary learner support fund, to enable small payments to young people to help them meet the cost of their education. Colleges value the fund, because they are able to provide support to the young people whom they consider to be in most need. They can also respond to any changes that there might be in a student’s household income during the year. After the EMA is abolished, the fund will be significantly increased over the spending review period. The detail of the future arrangements is still being considered, but we envisage that the enhanced learner support fund will build on the principles of the current scheme to provide exceptional targeted support to students aged 16 to 18 who are experiencing financial difficulties.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for saying that. Students in my patch who go to Greenhead and Kirklees colleges will welcome those announcements that the help will be more targeted. Some of the scaremongering around the EMA can now hopefully be put to one side, and I am pleased to hear that it is all about targeting the help on the students who really need it. I thank the Minister for clarifying that.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because he encapsulated in one intervention everything that I have been saying for the past 10 minutes.

In conclusion, I ask the hon. Member for Glasgow North West to bear in mind the economic background to our decision to remove the EMA. In today’s economic climate, with a budget deficit of £155 billion, the highest of any G20 country, we have a particular duty to ensure that we continue to spend where spending is needed and to get the best possible value for taxpayers’ money. We cannot justify spending more than £556 million a year on an allowance 96% of the recipients of which would have stayed on in education even if they had not received it.

We will, of course, continue to support the most vulnerable and to provide help to those who need it. That is why all schools with children from poorer backgrounds will benefit from the pupil premium. That is why we plan to increase and enhance the discretionary learner support fund once the EMA is abolished.

The Government believe that we should trust the professionals working with young people to make the right decisions. Student support officers in schools and colleges are better able to identify those students who need support.