Universities: Financial Sustainability

Luke Hall Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that Labour’s policy to scrap tuition fees, even for the wealthiest people in our society, would put the whole sector in mortal peril and risk tens of thousands of students not being able to go to university at all?

[Chris Skidmore]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What I have seen, going around to universities, is institutions that have been able to develop scholarship opportunities and help some of the poorest students in society to access higher education in a way that they would only have dreamed of a decade ago, at the same time as investing in capital, buildings, research and making sure, above all, that they improve the student experience by ensuring that the buildings, facilities and accommodation are really top-quality. The investment that has gone in, as a direct result of making sure that we have the finance and capital available for universities, has been spent well by them, in contrast to returning to a dark-ages position of our simply having no ability for students to pay fees. This would mean that we would return to the bad old days of student-number caps.