Higher Education (Fee Limits and Student Support) (England) (Coronavirus) (Revocation) Regulations 2020

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this statutory instrument as drawing a line under a particular chapter of confusion in government policy. The real question I want to put to the Minister is: what is going to happen next? What is the government’s future policy on fees and student numbers? At the moment, we have a higher education sector that has no certainty about the financial perspective in which it operates, and there is a duty on the Government to show greater clarity.

I have some sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, said about whether students should pay the full fee in the present difficult circumstances. However, just to cut the fee alone and do nothing else would gravely damage the financial position of one of the most successful sectors in Britain: the university sector. What we need is comprehensive reform. We need more teaching grant, because that is the only way to compensate for a reduction in fee. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, mentioned, because of the difficulty students have in getting jobs, we need the reintroduction of maintenance loans.

I am an enthusiast for universities. I was, until recently, the chair of Lancaster University. I agree totally with the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, that we need to get more people into university, but we will not do that successfully unless we have a long-term, sustainable funding model, and that is just totally unclear at present.