Disabled Students’ Allowance Scheme

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be delighted to share that with colleagues in other departments.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I welcome the improvements to which my noble friend has just referred but can she say something about the totality of resources available to disabled students so that all those who are entitled to this equipment have access to it?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend will be aware that changes have been made to how the allowance works. There will be a single annual allowance of £25,000, which will replace four separate allowances. Our aim is that it will be simpler and more flexible. When we did the equality impact assessment we found that, over three years, four students out of about 70,000 would be disadvantaged by this but that visually and hearing-impaired students in particular would have much flexibility about how they used the resource available to them.