Paul Blomfield
Main Page: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I join the congratulations to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on initiating the debate, which is important to me. I am delighted to represent more students than any other Member of the House—36,000 of them. Both Sheffield’s universities are in my constituency and I have met students from both to talk about their concerns, and mine, about the DSA proposals.
In a letter to Members of 3 June, to brief us in anticipation of the NUS lobby on the Friday of that week, the Minister described the changes as “measures to modernise” DSA. I would have thought better of him than that, because it is the sort of Orwellian doublespeak that makes people cynical about politics. This is not about modernisation, as he knows. It is about balancing the Department’s books on the back of disabled students, just as the Treasury sought to do with other vulnerable groups, with the attack on the student opportunity allocation earlier this year. He fought his corner then, and I hope he will do so in the present case.
In the letter, the Minister identified what he described as unsustainable growth in spending on DSA, with an increase over this Parliament of £37 million. That is a tiny proportion of his budget and just 6% of the £620 million growth in grants and loans to students in private colleges, which is partly policy design and partly a failure by his Department to maintain adequate controls over that budget line. The wrong people are paying for the consequences of those mistakes. The priorities are wrong, and those with disabilities are being punished for the black hole in the Minister’s budget.
Disabled students’ No. 1 priority in choosing a university is the access and support that they will have; that is more important to them than the choice of courses. They are more likely to drop out than non-disabled students. We can all throw statistics around, but I want to share a story about a university of Sheffield student union officer, Kat Chapman. She is dyslexic and recently finished her degree, with a high 2:1. She is delighted to be embarking on a master’s degree at Cambridge. She is the model for the sort of person we want to progress in universities: a woman and a scientist. She clearly said to me that her delight at going to Cambridge
“is overshadowed by the fear of not receiving the same help that I have done through my undergraduate degree.”
The Minister has said that universities should meet the cost of supporting students such as Kat, but will making disabled students more expensive for universities improve access to higher education? Of course not. Universities will fulfil their equality obligations, which the Minister talked about earlier, but that will happen at a cost if there is no funding. The universities that are the most inclusive will face the greatest costs.
The Minister said in a communication of 25 June that
“it is not the case that students with ‘mild’ dyslexia”—
such as Kat—
“will no longer receive DSA funding.”
An assessment of Kat’s needs would determine who pays. I ask him for clarity: which needs will the Government help to meet, and which will it be left to universities to meet? Will he think again about this foolish short-term policy and take the case to the Treasury?