Higher Education Fees

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson]

I have indicated the impact of the policy on the budget, but the policy also impacts on the ability of the Executive to restructure the economy. It is important for us to have a supply of skilled labour that will attract inward investment.

Let us consider two of the arguments that have been made today. First, people have said that the policy has everything to do with helping to reduce the deficit and dealing with the economic mess that was left. However, the proposals will lead to more borrowing. The flow of money from graduates will not come through immediately —it will take a number of years—so the deficit will not be reduced. That is not even good economics, let alone good politics. The Browne report says that 70% of those who take loans over the next 30 years will default on all or part of them. Who will pay for that? It will be the taxpayer. Therefore, the public finances will be no better off, unless the plan is to pass greater costs on to students in future. The policy does not make economic sense.

Secondly, many Government Members have argued that the policy will have no impact on the poor, but the proposed scheme accepts that it will. Why have a national scholarship scheme or all the other things that have been put into the system if the policy will have no impact on the poor? Of course it will have an impact the poor, as the Government themselves admit.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

The hon. Gentleman is the Finance and Personnel Minister in the Executive, and I am curious, as I am sure the House is, to understand how much consultation the Secretary of State undertook with the devolved Executive. The Secretary of State knows how serious the implications of his policy are for students from Northern Ireland who go to universities in England and Wales.

[Sammy Wilson]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. We hear a lot about the respect agenda for the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but as far as I am aware there have been no such discussions. Members have argued that there needs to be far more discussion of the details of the scheme and its impact on other Administrations across the UK. That would have been another argument for supporting amendment (b), which was not selected, and it is therefore an argument for voting against the motion.

I have one more point to make, which has not been made so far. Raising fees to the suggested level of £9,000 will make it easy for universities simply to take the easy way out. Rather than examine whether they deliver an efficient service and spend every pound well, they can simply pass the cost on to the consumer—in other words, the student. That will be unfair to students, but it will also go totally against what the Government say they want to do, which is to make public spending more efficient. For those reasons, we will oppose the motions. We believe that they could have been introduced in a much more consensual way, but that was not done. The Government will be poorer for that, and the whole system of higher education will suffer as a result.