Further and Higher Education Students: Cost of Living Debate
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Nicholas Brown
Main Page: Nicholas Brown (Independent - Newcastle upon Tyne East)Department Debates - View all Nicholas Brown's debates with the Department for Education
Further and Higher Education Students: Cost of Living
Nicholas Brown Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous); I profoundly agree with the last point that he made. It is an even greater pleasure, Sir George, to serve under your chairmanship and to be able to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate and also on the work done by the all-party parliamentary group for students, which provides material to underpin the debate today.
My own constituency in Newcastle upon Tyne East has a very large student population. Perhaps we are more famous for shipbuilding, heavy engineering and manufacturing cigarettes—all industries that have gone—but we are still famous for having a large student population.
Inflation is an evil that must be exterminated. Mrs Thatcher told us that in 1987 and it made its way into the Conservative manifesto. She might have added that once exterminated, it ought to stay exterminated. For reasons we all understand, it has broken out again and makes us face a series of challenges—some much more easily borne by the rich than by the poor. That is the core point that I want to make in my short address to this debate.
A number of funding authorities have had to address this question. In Northern Ireland, the maximum maintenance awards have been increased by 40%. In Wales the increase is 9.4% and in Scotland, although the support is provided in a different formula, it is a rise of £900 a year, which, depending on circumstances, is an increase between 11.1% and 17.6%. That is the devolved Administrations.
Maintenance loans in England are due to rise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central told us, by just 2.8%. That cannot possibly meet the general challenges of inflation. When we look at the factors that make up the specific pressures on students, such as rent increases, the cost of food, which has been particularly affected by the arable sector price increases, and transport costs as well, we see that students are disproportionately affected. Yet their interests have not been addressed, so they find themselves working longer hours to earn more money to keep themselves and become subject to an enormous amount of stress and anxiety. That could be a separate debate in itself.