Higher Education White Paper

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

Well, we will try not to quibble about 50,000 but I can see the odd accountant sitting opposite me. Of those, 65,000 are AAB students. We are not creating new places for them but we are allowing the HE institutions to compete for them. Therefore, the University of X might want to expand certain courses by bringing in more of those students, but that would mean, by definition, that the University of Y might lose out. However, we think that it is necessary to bring in that element of competition. The 20,000 places that I added to that are not for AAB students but for those where universities offer value for money with their courses coming in on average, after waivers and so on, at or below £7,500. Again, it will be open to universities to compete for those places. It is not a question of creating new places at this stage. However, if matters were to become more contestable, we would certainly want to look at that in the future, and, as I made clear in the Statement, we aim to expand the scheme further year after year.

I noted what my noble friend said about the cost of loans. Obviously loans are expensive but they would be considerably more expensive if they were not arranged by the Government. The Government can, after all, borrow at considerably cheaper rates than individuals.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement made in the other place. He will be aware of widespread concerns about the damage that these reforms pose to the position of the humanities in higher education. I wonder whether he shares those concerns and if so, what he will do about them. If he does not share those concerns, why not?

[Lord Henley]

I simply do not accept those concerns, as was made clear in the debate we had some six months ago when we debated the original announcement about student loans. It will be up to the universities to attract the right students. Those students will bring the money with them that will pay for the courses.