Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts
Thursday 31st March 2011

(13 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Vince Cable Portrait Vince Cable
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The hon. Gentleman might be confusing the coming year with the year for which fee levels are being announced. However, as I said earlier, there is a wide distribution of proposed charge levels by the universities that have already made announcements—less than a quarter of all universities—and this reflects the policy that we introduced.

Margot James Portrait Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
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Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that the Government will not attempt to reduce the number of places at universities charging the full rate of £9,000 a year in order to oblige a greater proportion of students to attend universities that charge less?

Vince Cable Portrait Vince Cable
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We certainly wish to encourage providers that charge highly competitive fee levels, but we also wish to encourage high-quality universities of the kind my hon. Friend described. I do not think that the two are in any way incompatible.