Business of the House

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the profile of this issue. I will certainly see what action can be taken further to discourage the sort of cold-selling tactics that he has outlined, and I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to write to him.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

Croydon college in my constituency has formed a partnership with the university of Sussex and is looking for accreditation as a university centre so that young people from across south London can study for a good degree, while living at home, for fees much lower than most universities are charging. May we have a debate on what more we can do to ensure that young people from deprived backgrounds continue to have access to university?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It is appalling that of the 80,000 pupils eligible for free school meals, only 40 went to Oxbridge. We are committed to enabling more people from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds to get to university by raising the maintenance grant, introducing a new national scholarship programme, and making the graduate repayment scheme much more progressive. On top of that, we are writing to sixth-formers to draw attention to the financial support that is made available to students. I hope that we can improve on the figures that I mentioned.