John Denham
Main Page: John Denham (Labour - Southampton, Itchen)(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Vince Cable
I will finish my point.
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Government, like the previous Government, are not making average, across-the-board cuts of 11% in every Department. We have chosen, as did the previous Government, to have some protected Departments—health, schools, pensions and aid. The logical consequence of that is much higher cuts in unprotected Departments. I am sure that he remembers the IFS analysis that told us, in the wake of the March Budget, that a Labour Government were planning to cut unprotected Departments by 25.4%.
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman has been good enough to refer to my letter. He knows full well that the IFS analysis carried out after the Budget does not stand up to scrutiny, and reflects neither the decisions taken by the Chancellor in the comprehensive spending review nor the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) setting out our approach. However, will the Secretary of State help the House by identifying which other major spending programmes have been cut by 80%?
Vince Cable
The 80% fact—and it is a fact—derives from the following: most major Departments have had to take spending reductions of about 25%, as they would have done under a Labour Government. I wish to take the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in opposition through what that has meant for the teaching grant to universities and university funding in general.
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
I note that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have already walked out of the debate. It is a shame that the two architects of this policy do not have the courtesy to stay and listen to both sides of the debate.
I fear I may have to lower Opposition Members’ expectations. Those of my hon. Friends who have come here expecting some good party political knockabout—U-turns, broken promises and fees policies described by the Deputy Prime Minister as a “disaster” that he now claims to believe in—need to know that I am not going to do that speech. So much of the media coverage of this issue has been dominated by Liberal Democrat splits that we could be forgiven for thinking that today’s vote is about the future of the Liberal Democrats. It is not about the future of the Liberal Democrats; it is about something much more important than that. There are millions of parents and millions of current and future students who do not care about the Liberal Democrats, but who do care about the huge fee increase that we are being asked to decide today. Today’s decision must be taken on the facts and on the merits. If this Tory measure goes through with the support or abstention of Liberal Democrats, that party will forfeit the right to call itself a progressive political party.
The House can stop that decision today. The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats says that he cannot support the Government—as well he might, because his local university’s funding will be cut from £38 million to £3 million a year, and it has already said that it wishes to charge the full £9,000 tuition fee. The Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader says that he may vote against the Government, and if he and every Member of the House—not just Liberal Democrat Members, but Conservative Members, Labour Members and Members of other parties—vote against the proposal today, it will fall.
Let me set out why Members should vote against, or vote for a delay and a rethink, rather than abstaining.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Secretary of State said earlier that 15 vice-chancellors support him? I have a petition from the university of Warwick of 240 leading academics in this country who object to the increases in charges and, more importantly, call for a public inquiry into the future of education. What does my right hon. Friend think about that?
Mr Denham
There is widespread disquiet not only in the academic community. Significantly, the Secretary of State referred to the letter from Universities UK but did not read it out, because it makes it absolutely clear that Universities UK opposes the cuts in higher education funding on which the fee increase is based. He has persuaded vice-chancellors, with a gun to their head, that as the money is going the fee increase is the only option in town, but that hardly speaks of him persuading the university community of the policy.
As you said last night, Mr Speaker, today’s vote is on a narrow issue—the fee cap. Behind that, however, is the most profound change in university funding since the University Grants Committee was set up in the 1920s. It is the ending of funding for most university degrees. It is a huge burden of debt on graduates. It is an untried, untested and unstable market for students.
Although there is always room for improvement, England enjoys a world-class university system: world-class in research, with a disproportionate number of the best research universities; and a richness and diversity of higher education to compare with the best. The risks are so high, and the consequences so unclear, that no sane person would rush the proposal through without proper debate or discussion. Today, however, we do not even have the promised higher education White Paper to tell us how it is meant to work.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
While the right hon. Gentleman is talking about fundamental changes, will he talk about his party, including him, voting to introduce fees and breaking the principle of free education? That is a fundamental change, for which he voted, and he voted for top-up fees against manifesto commitments. Will he apologise?
Mr Denham
The 2001 Labour manifesto—I was a Back Bencher at the time, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) was the responsible Minister—ensured that the policy did not come into force until there had been a further general election. That is not the coalition’s proposal.
I am sorry that the Prime Minister has left, because he did his bit yesterday to run down our English universities, saying that they were unsustainable, uncompetitive and unfair. He did not say that they were world class or praise what they had achieved; he could only knock them. “Uncompetitive”? They are the second most popular destination for overseas students in the world, but the Prime Minister tells the world that they are uncompetitive. That is a great deal of help for our universities.
The Prime Minister, however, has some interesting thoughts about overseas students. When he was in China, he told Chinese students that
“we won’t go on increasing so fast the fees on overseas students, because in the past we have been pushing up the fees on overseas students and using that as a way of keeping them down on our domestic students. So we have done the difficult thing in our government which is to put up contributions from British students.”
For foreign students, he said,
“we should be able to keep that growth under control.”
Now we know why the Prime Minister wants to push up contributions—to keep down the price for Chinese students. Extraordinary!
Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that the current model of higher education funding is not providing enough money. Quoting the Browne review, he said that public funding per student is lower in real terms than 20 years ago. We are bound to ask, “How the hell did that happen?” It did not happen under Labour. I can tell the Prime Minister how it happened. Between 1989 and 1997, under the previous Conservative Government, public funding per student fell by 36% in real terms. Who was the special adviser to the Conservative Chancellor at that time? It was the Prime Minister. If he wants to know whose fault it was, he ought to look more carefully in the mirror in the morning.
Now, the Prime Minister is at it again. He was cutting university funding then; he is cutting university funding now. This is a Tory policy of cutting higher education; unfortunately, this time they have Liberal Democrats to take it through with them.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Why does my right hon. Friend think that the Government are so intent on destroying the humanities base in this country? Humanities is one of the leading areas of research and excellence, and they are withdrawing public funding. What do they have against it?
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
According to the last figures available, when the shadow Minister was in government, of the 80,000 children on free school meals, only 40 went on to Oxford and Cambridge. Does he not accept that his proposals for a graduate tax would mean less social mobility and people repaying a higher amount at an earlier stage?
Mr Denham
No, I do not. If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will come to that point in a moment.
As a result of these Tory policies, this country will stand alone with Romania as the only OECD countries cutting investment in higher education. The Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, which was meant to be a defence of this policy, shows that he does not understand the most basic features of his policy. The fee increases are not designed to raise extra money for universities. That was Labour’s scheme—we took the difficult decision to introduce top-up fees, to add to record university income, and to enable more students to go to better-funded universities. The Prime Minister’s plan, put forward by the Business Secretary, is totally different. Fees are being trebled simply to reduce the 80% cut in the funding of university teaching, not to raise extra money. Most graduates will be asked not to pay something towards their university education, but to pay the entire cost of their university education. Universities will have to charge £7,000 to £8,000 simply to replace the money they lose, and many universities will lose 90% of their public funding. That is what is at stake today .
If the House passes the fee increase, English students and graduates will face the highest fees of any public university system anywhere in the developed world: higher than France, higher than Germany, and higher—yes—than the United States of America.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman welcome the fact that the repayments threshold is being increased to £21,000, and the fact that anyone earning less than £25,000 a year will pay less than £1 a day for university education?
Mr Denham
I will come to that in a moment. It is on the standard handout. Let me say first, however, that the hon. Gentleman may not realise that the increase to £21,000 will happen in 2016, when it will be worth, in real terms, precisely what our threshold was worth when we introduced it.
Mr Denham
I must make some progress.
Most graduates will be paying off their debts for 30 years. Under the current scheme, the average is 11 years. The children of those graduates will have started university before they have paid their own fees. As I will show, the payment system is not fair.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that reducing access and increasing relative price to our competitors will reduce the productivity and tax receipts of future generations and undermine economic growth? What we should be doing is making the bankers pay the levy rather than giving it back in corporation tax, and investing that money in higher education and the future productivity and economic growth of this country.
Mr Denham
We certainly need to sustain investment in higher education, but as—again—I will show in a moment, it is not necessary to adopt our macro-economic policies to know that the Government could have made a different choice. No other country in the world is taking the step we are taking, and no other country in the world can understand why we are taking it. As always, rather than defending their position, the Government give the pathetic answer, “We had no choice.” But they did have a choice. Everyone knows they had a choice.
We in the Labour party would take a more measured and responsible approach to deficit reduction, but even on its own terms, if the coalition had cut higher education in line with the rest of public services, we would have been looking at fee increases of a few hundred pounds. The Business Secretary has told us that the figure should be not 10%, but 20%. That would mean fee increases of not much over £4,000, rather than the £6,000 to £9,000 for which the House is being asked to vote today.
Mr Baron
The right hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the fact that most independent experts agree that the graduate tax, which seems to be the policy of the Labour party, will make students worse off because they will have to pay back more debt and pay it back earlier. Why does he not address that fundamental point?
Mr Denham
Let me explain in a straightforward way to the hon. Gentleman and others who may be confused. There are two stages in this process. The first is deciding how much public funding there will be and how much money needs to come from graduates. The second is deciding how the graduates are to make their contributions. The first stage is the critical one to consider today, because it is the 80% cut in university education that is forcing the graduate contributions so high. As for the second, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, as did the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), I will set out the case in a few moments.
Mr Denham
I need to make some progress, because I am coming to an issue that concerns many Members.
The Business Secretary pleads that he has no money in his budget. I do not see why future generations should pay through the nose for his incompetence in allowing his budget to be cut by more than that of almost anyone else in Whitehall. The Government did not have to do that, and the truth is that in the long run it will almost certainly cost the taxpayer more.
What is the Government’s plan? I will tell the House. Every year they will borrow £10 billion to fund student loans, and every year they will write off £3 billion of the £10 billion that they have just borrowed because they cannot collect the loans. That is as much money as they are cutting from university teaching, but as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Higher Education Policy Institute and London Economics have said, the Government have almost certainly underestimated how much debt they will have to write off because students are borrowing more and borrowing it for longer. Students, saddled with debt, will be worse off. The universities, cut, will be worse off. The taxpayer will be worse off. If it were not so serious, it would be comic. Let us look at the Government’s central claim for their proposals.
Stephen Williams
Perhaps the shadow Secretary of State will enlighten us. When he was in the Cabinet—until May last year—and his successor Peter Mandelson proposed £1 billion of cuts from the higher education budget, did he support him or speak against the proposal?
Mr Denham
Being at the Dispatch Box is an interesting experience. [Hon. Members: “Answer the question.”] I am going to answer the question. Half the time we are told, “You never had a plan for dealing with the deficit”, and half the time we are told, “This is what you were going to do to deal with the deficit.” The Government cannot have it both ways. As I have said on many occasions since the publication of the Browne review, the higher education budget would not have been unscathed under our deficit reduction programme, but it would not have been cut by 80%, and we would not have forced the fees up to £6,000 or £9,000.
Mr Denham
I want to make some progress on the issue of fairness, because I believe that it lies at the heart of many of the Government’s arguments and of questions raised by Members in all parts of the House. The Government say that their proposal is fairer, and that it is better for low-income graduates. The Deputy Prime Minister has said:
“The bottom 25% of earners will pay much less in their contributions to their university education than they do at the moment.”—[Official Report, 10 November 2010; Vol. 518, c. 281.]
The Prime Minister said yesterday:
“With our new system, the poorest quarter of graduates will pay back less overall than they do currently.”
He also said:
“The poorest will pay less, the richest will pay more.”—[Official Report, 8 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 281.]
Over the last 24 hours, we have seen a parade of conscience-stricken Ministers saying that they just have to hang on to ministerial office—they just have to keep their red boxes and their cars—because this is really such a good deal for low-income graduates. They will all be better off, they say. When I heard the Prime Minister say yesterday that trebling fees would leave everyone better off, I thought, “I’ve heard that voice before somewhere.” I could not place it at first, but last night I remembered. He is the bloke who does those advertisements on day-time television. You know the ones: “Have you got bad debts, credit card bills, county court judgments against you? Let us wrap them all into one simple payment and reduce your monthly payments.” We all know what is wrong with those advertisements. People are charged higher rates of interest, and end up paying much more. That is exactly what the Prime Minister is proposing today.
We all know what is wrong with the Prime Minister’s claims. Let us now have a look at the Government’s claims. Labour Members do not accept the Government’s comparisons between their scheme and ours—[Interruption.] I mean their comparisons between their scheme and the current scheme. We think that they have chosen their assumptions to produce the figures that they want. Many people do not realise that the £15,000 threshold set in 2006 is the same in real terms as the £21,000 threshold that will start in 2016.
Let us look at the Government’s figures none the less. They say that a graduate in the bottom 10% will pay less, but how much less? What is the change that has led the Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister and many other Ministers to say that the new system is so fair and so wonderful? According to the Government’s own dodgy figures, the poorest 10% of graduates will pay an average of just £88 a year less—£1.60 a week. As the advertisement says, every little helps; but to see Members of Parliament, including Ministers, sell their consciences for just £88 a year is a tragedy.
If the Government’s real aim were to ease the pressure on the lowest-paid graduates, I would support it. The Government would have needed to make only minor changes to the current scheme to achieve that aim. However, nothing about the tiny benefit for the lowest-income graduates justifies doubling or trebling the debt of the vast majority of graduates. The IFS yesterday said that graduates from the 30% of poorest households would pay more. The heaviest burden will fall on graduates on average earnings; they will be the hardest hit in terms of how much of their earnings they will have to pay over the coming years. They will be hit harder than the graduates who go into the highest paid jobs. That is what the House of Commons Library says. That is what London Economics says. That is also what somebody to whom the House might wish to listen has said. Many Members will remember David Rendel, who for many years was the Member for Newbury and the higher education spokesman of the Liberal Democrats. In an e-mail I have received, he says the following to a number of his colleagues:
“There are those who are claiming that the current proposals are progressive. But this is only the case if by “progressive” you mean that in any one year richer graduates will pay more than poorer graduates. For all the middle- and higher-earning graduates, over their lifetimes the more they earn the less they pay. Since a very large part of the justification of charging tuition fees is the higher lifetime earnings of graduates…a scheme in which graduates with large lifetime earnings pay less than graduates with comparatively small lifetime earnings cannot be regarded as either progressive or fair. (In this regard”—
says the former higher education spokesman for the Liberal Democrats—
“the new proposals, because they include a real-terms interest charge, are in fact more regressive than Labour’s scheme!).”
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his honesty and candour in making a substantial spending commitment. Will he tell the House how much?
Mr Denham
The hon. Gentleman has clearly not been listening. I have been talking about the changes that were open to his party to make.
It is because the average graduates going into typical jobs will get hit hardest compared with the highest-earning graduates, that we will need a fairer system of graduate contribution in the years to come.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman will not accept comparisons between the existing scheme and the Government’s proposals, but will he accept the analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing that the proposed system is more progressive than both the current scheme and the measures put forward in the Browne review?
Mr Denham
I must make some progress.
The “fairest” can be judged only by how much graduates pay. It must also be measured by the chance of becoming a graduate at all. Over the past few years the proportion of students from poorer backgrounds has steadily increased. There is much more to be done, and even more to be done on access to the most selective universities, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has brilliantly shown this week.
The progress we have made was not an accident, however; it took great efforts by the majority of universities, and we constructed the support, the routes and the ladders of opportunity for more and more of those bright, talented young people. All that has been kicked away.
Andrew Percy
I wanted to make the point the shadow Secretary of State has just made when I tried to intervene on the Secretary of State’s opening speech. Participation has been widening, but there is evidence that the poorest children are not going to the best universities, and that remains a problem. The concern for many of us on the Government Benches—or some of us, certainly—is that increasing fees even further will mean they will be even less likely to go to the best universities.
Mr Denham
I am very sorry that the Secretary of State did not give way to the hon. Gentleman, because I think anybody who is showing the integrity and courage he is displaying in standing out and being critical of his party’s policies deserves a hearing from his own side of the House. In what he says, the hon. Gentleman is in some very good company, as I will show in a moment.
We created ladders of opportunity for young people from low-income backgrounds, but they are now being knocked over. The Minister for Universities and Science was recently asked a parliamentary question about the impact of Aimhigher. He said that
“evidence from colleges, schools and academies showed that involvement in the activities provided through Aimhigher was associated with higher than predicted attainment at GCSE and greater confidence among learners that they were able to achieve.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 590W.]
I repeat:
“greater confidence among learners that they were able to achieve.”
So what is the Minister doing? He is closing it down.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Figures from the Library show that the Labour Government put £230 million into widening participation. Aimhigher has gone and the rest of that money has not yet been confirmed by the new Government. If it goes, will it not mean that the £150 million made available is in fact a cut in terms of widening participation?
Mr Denham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The scheme that was trumpeted at the weekend—and which I will talk about shortly—is dwarfed by the scale of the cuts and the uncertainty in the higher education budget. It is a loan that is dwarfed by the cut through the stopping, in about four weeks from now, of education maintenance allowance awards, which will stop for young people going to further education college this January.
EMAs have, of course, never been just about getting young people to university. Many young people have been enabled to succeed in getting other qualifications, and in going into better jobs or into the vastly increased number of apprenticeships that we created. EMAs make a difference to those aiming for university, yet the Government are shutting them down.
The whole House knows about the work of Sir Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust. No one outside the education establishment has done more—or, indeed, been prepared to invest more of their own money—to campaign for fair access for students from low-income homes. He supported Labour’s fees policy in 2004, but he says about the current proposals that
“there is no doubt that such a significant increase in tuition costs would be a serious deterrent for those from non-privileged backgrounds. The double whammy of major cuts to state funding of universities and higher fees is inequitable and is sure to freeze social mobility. That is a bitter legacy for any politician.”
I hope Members will think about that, especially those final words.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
My constituency is in the fifth most deprived local authority area in London and the 19th most deprived in England. Participation rates among people going into higher education increased by over 80% between 1997 and last year. How can these proposals do other than bring that figure down and deter people from poor backgrounds from going to university? I have not had a single communication from a constituent telling me these proposals will make it more likely that they will go to university, but I have had many representations saying they will put them off going to university. Is that also the experience of my right hon. Friend?
Mr Denham
I will not take any further interventions. I have been speaking longer than I had intended, and I still have a couple of substantive points that I wish to make.
At the weekend we got a bit of a breakthrough. The Government finally admitted that high fees will put off low-income students. They announced the national scholarship scheme and fee waivers for students on free school meals. The Government like this idea: it saves them money, because they do not have to make loans. It costs universities money instead, because they have to match funds. It is also a limited plan covering 18,000 out of the 2 million students in higher education. In case Members do not know this, I will point out that free school meals are generally available only to those families where no one works. What about the millions of working families who earn just a little above benefit levels, however? I look forward to the next election when Tory and Lib Dem MPs will have to explain why John Smith, whose parents do not work, will get £18,000 knocked off their fees, while Susan Jones in the same street, whose parents have always worked and paid their taxes, gets no help at all. I am glad the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is present on the Front Bench, because he should have a word with his colleagues about how this supports the idea that work should pay.
This system will punish the very universities that have done the most to widen participation. The university of Bedfordshire, which took 120 students from free-school meal backgrounds in 2006-07, would have had to find £750,000 in match funding, whereas Cambridge, which took just 20, would have had to find only £120,000. Where is the sense in punishing success and rewarding failure? The IFS says that it
“provides a financial incentive for universities…to turn away students from poorer backgrounds.”
It does not make sense.
All the signs suggest a Government policy in disarray. There is no White Paper, and every day the Government try to respond to the latest criticism. Last week, we showed that two thirds of part timers would not benefit from their scheme, so they had to rush out a minor change yesterday. Last week, under pressure from me, the Business Secretary said he would write to the Office for Fair Access to give guidance about fair access and he has, but it was an empty document. Let me address one point: the House has been told that universities might charge £9,000 in “exceptional circumstances”, but nowhere in the guidance document that has been issued does the term “exceptional circumstances” appear. The Business Secretary does not tell the director of OFFA to limit the highest fees to exceptional circumstances or ask him to tell us what exceptional circumstances are. The truth is that he came to the House making a fine promise about the £9,000 and the exceptional circumstances but he has done nothing to bring that about in practice because he knows he will not be able to enforce it. That is not the right way to handle the House.
If I had more time, I would speak about the objections of the British Medical Association, the teaching organisations and the fact that the universities that train teachers have no idea how they will be funded. Let me end by saying a few words to those Ministers and Back Benchers who are struggling, even now, to reconcile party loyalty with a desire to do the right thing and support future students and our universities. [Laughter.]
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
They are not laughing in the Public Gallery.
Mr Denham
Millions of parents, students and future students will be watching the debate and they will wonder why it is such a laughing matter for right hon. and hon. Members.
Let me say a few words to those who are wrestling with this issue. It would be crass to compare the two issues, but I once resigned on a point of principle when I was a Minister. I say to Ministers and Back Benchers who are considering their positions today, “I know what you are going through. It is hard to stand aside from friends and colleagues with whom you’ve shared many a battle, but after you’ve done it, you realise it wasn’t half as bad as you thought it would be. The self respect you gain far outweighs any temporary loss of position, power or income.” The truth is that in any generous political party—mine is not the only generous political party in the House—there is usually a way back. This decision matters so much to so many people that I say to hon. Members, “If you don’t believe in it, vote against it.”