Higher Education Reform

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the support for our proposals from my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee on Education. I will absolutely be listening—this is a real consultation—to his proposals and concerns about the maths and English GCSEs. I completely agree that the concept of someone having to pay back more than they have borrowed is unfair; addressing that is a manifesto commitment, so we are delivering it. I am proud that we are touching 20,000 students on degree apprenticeships. I want to go much further than that and have set a target of 10%.

On the international baccalaureate, my right hon. Friend will know, because he has known me for a very long time, that I am about delivery and outcomes. I have the Department focused on skills, schools and family. Sometimes if you try to hug the world, you don’t do anything well enough, but I hear what he says. Let me deliver what I can while I have the privilege of leading the Department and then go back and do some more afterwards.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement; I recognise that a lot is going on this morning and that not everything has happened on the normal timeline, so I appreciate it. I add my voice to those expressing solidarity with the Ukrainian people as the horrific events unfold.

The UK Government are presiding over a cost of living crisis, yet they are pursuing policy after policy such as the national insurance hike, the universal credit cut, the mandatory energy loan—even for students without a permanent address, who will have to pay it back despite not necessarily getting it this year—and now this. The UK Government’s decision to create a lifelong graduate tax by increasing the number of years in which graduates pay back will affect only those who are not well off enough to pay it back already. So the tax will hit hardest those who are already struggling to make ends meet.

If new students will on average pay £6,000 more back, where is the money going to come from? Has the Secretary of State done any assessment of the effect on those people’s pension pots as they approach retirement age, given that £6,000 less disposable income will be available to them? If half the students will be paying back the loan for almost their entire lifetime, it makes little difference to them what the total value of the loan is. The changes proposed benefit those who are already paying back, not those who have no hope of doing so.

In Scotland we believe in free education. We believe that it is important, and we will keep tuition free. I make no apologies for that position; it is the right thing to do. How can the Secretary of State and his Cabinet colleagues who paid nothing to attend university justify burdening those who go to university now with lifelong debt?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s remarks and her solidarity on the situation in Ukraine.

I respectfully disagree with the hon. Lady because, when we look at the overall reforms, we should focus on the outcomes for students. That is what the reforms do. The lifelong learning entitlement, the work that we have done on skills, the ability to do a T-level as a fusion between an apprenticeship and an A-level—there are different paths to achieving a great career as an adult.

Non-graduates continue to pay—at the moment, all taxpayers fund higher education in England at 41p in the pound. We do not think that that is fair or equitable. As former students reach 50 or 51 years old at the 30-year repayment stage, they are coming to their peak ability to earn, so it is only fair that they be able to pay back the loan that they have taken out to give them the opportunity of a great job.