Higher Education Fees

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With Mr Speaker standing next to me, I have to inform the House that he has not selected any of the amendments on the Order Paper.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

I beg to move,

That, for the purpose of section 24 of the Higher Education Act 2004, the higher amount should be increased to £9,000, and to £4,500 in the cases described in regulation 5 of the draft regulations in Command Paper Cm 7986, and that the increase should take effect from 1 September 2012.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

With this we shall discuss the following motion on education:

That the draft Higher Education (Basic Amount) (England) Regulations 2010, which were laid before this House on 29 November, be approved.

[Vince Cable]

The terms of the statutory instrument are narrow, but I think you ruled yesterday evening, Mr Speaker, that you would like us to entertain debate on the wider issues involved, because they arouse very strong feelings inside and outside the House. The instrument represents a central part of a policy that is designed to maintain high-quality universities in the long term, that tackles the fiscal deficit and that provides a more progressive system of graduate contributions based on people’s ability to pay.

I shall briefly go over the sequence of events that has led to this debate. I became Secretary of State in May, when the Browne report was being conducted. It had been commissioned by the previous Labour Government last November. They had asked the former chief executive of BP to conduct a report in order to prepare the way for an increase in tuition fees following the earlier introduction of fees, and then top-up fees, by the last Government.