Pat McFadden
Main Page: Pat McFadden (Labour - Wolverhampton South East)
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
The Browne review takes as its starting-point the changes that the Labour Government introduced in 2004. We all know that those changes were politically difficult, but they achieved two major things: they brought more money into universities and they resulted in a large increase in higher education participation, including and, indeed, particularly among students from poorer backgrounds.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England released figures earlier this year showing that, back in 2004, just one in eight young people from the poorest backgrounds went to university; it is now one in five. Of course there is still a gap in participation rates between rich and poor. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) showed this week, our top universities must do much more to attract a wider variety of students. We did, however, see a big increase in opportunity and participation, following the changes of 2004.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I tried to intervene on the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) as I wanted to correct some of his figures before he started scaremongering. The university of Cambridge takes 15% of students from ethnic minority backgrounds as compared with 10% across the country. He spoke about the one British black Caribbean student out of the 35 applying who gained admission to Oxford university, but failed to mention the 23 black Africans, the three other black students, the seven white and black Caribbean students, the seven white and black Africans, the 35 others of mixed descent and the nine others or, indeed, those directly from the Caribbean—
Mr Speaker
Order. Interventions must be a lot briefer from now onwards. That is very unfair to other Members.
Mr McFadden
We are probably all agreed that the top universities can and should do more to attract ethnic minority students.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, there are some good points in the Browne report. Browne was right to maintain the position whereby fees are not paid up front by students, but by graduates and only after they start earning. This has been portrayed as a new change in the system, but it is not; it has been there since the 2004 changes, although it is still widely misunderstood. Browne is also right to increase the repayment threshold and to include part-time students in the system. Let us be clear, given that the point about part-time students has been portrayed as some great gift from the Government, that the Labour Government explicitly built that into the terms of reference for the Browne review.
It is also right to place a greater emphasis on providing more and better information for students about the quality of courses and teaching. If students are being asked to pay more, they deserve more power within the system, even if that is sometimes uncomfortable for academics or institutions.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Has my right hon. Friend seen the Government’s impact assessment, which suggests that even they recognise that as the teaching grant is withdrawn, fees for part-time students will go up and participation could go down as a result?
Mr McFadden
I was coming to that, because Browne also called for an increase in participation of 10%, yet one of the first acts of this Government was to cut the number of student places by 10,000 when compared with the plans that Labour had put in place. Since the election, both Tory and Lib Dem Ministers have repeatedly attacked Labour’s aim to have a participation rate of 50% for our young people. Their attack on higher participation is an attack on opportunity, which we should resist. I stress that participation is about not just the fee level, but getting people to the point where they can make the choice in the first place. Therefore, abolishing the education maintenance allowance and Aimhigher is a direct attack on participation and opportunity for young people.
Mr McFadden
I will not give way again, as there is not much time remaining.
There is one big problem with the Government’s package: the degree of the reduction in the teaching grant for universities. That is what is forcing the fees so high. Hon. Members have even referred to Labour’s cuts announced this time last year. Let us do a comparison: we announced a small reduction of 1.6% in the teaching grant; the Government’s proposals are accompanied by an 80% reduction in the teaching grant. That is a huge transfer of responsibility and cost from the state to the individual, and it lies at the root of the large increase in fees. Also, rather than the package resulting in more resources for universities, it requires large fees just for universities to be able to stand still. Therefore, the issue is not so much the Browne review as the spending review. That is the problem with the proposals.
Higher education brings a shared benefit to the country and to individuals. As it is a shared benefit, and we believe in a high level of participation, we share the costs. That was Labour’s approach when we made changes in 1998 and 2004. Instead of sharing the cost, the Government’s plans go wrong by replacing, to a large degree, the responsibility of the state with that of the individual. That is why fees are being driven up so much.
The politics of this does matter. The Liberal Democrats are in such trouble not just because they have broken an election promise, but because what they have done is a revelation about how they have conducted politics for years. They signed the NUS pledge because they did not think that they would be in the chair when the music stopped. They are in the chair, and to govern is to choose. The commitment was not just a line in their manifesto but front and centre of their holier-than-thou election campaign. The truth is that they will never be thought of in the same way again.