Higher Education (England) Regulations

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

As I have probably pointed out before, I represent more students than any other Member, by a long way, and on their behalf I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), the shadow Secretary of State, for securing this debate. She has fought as hard to ensure that Parliament is involved in key decisions on student funding as the Secretary of State has fought to avoid it.

It is not as if the Government do not know the system is at breaking point. They clearly do. In July, after Labour’s commitment in the recent election put the abolition of tuition fees at the centre of the political agenda, the First Secretary of State, the Prime Minister’s deputy, called for a national debate on the issue, and only yesterday the Chancellor of the Exchequer apparently told the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords that the Government were carefully considering a review because—this is the reason he gave—the system had not worked out as originally expected. A bit of an understatement!

Why are the Government ploughing ahead regardless with the fees increase? It is important that we not only reject this increase but look to make fundamental change. According to reports, the Government are considering some change. As the Chair of the Education Select Committee did, they are floating the idea of reducing the interest charged on student debt. Clearly the rate is too high—I have argued against it previously and action should be taken—but of all the changes to make it is perhaps the least important. It is probably attractive to the Government for the reason that the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) pointed out: because it will primarily assist higher earners. It will not help those most in need, however, from the poorest families who will, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, face the greatest debt burden.

What should the Government do then? They should start by reintroducing maintenance grants for students from lower-income households. They were central to the 2012 settlement. The House would not have agreed to the £9,000 fees without those grants, and the fact that the Government got rid of them at the first opportunity when they formed a Conservative Administration on their own says an awful lot about their priorities. They should reconsider and reverse that decision.

Before cutting interest rates, the Government should think about the retrospective changes to repayment terms. Obviously everybody understands that they got their calculations badly wrong on the unrepayable debt. Its measure, the resource accounting and budgeting charge, rose relentlessly from the introduction of the new system in 2012. People make mistakes, but what was wrong was for the Government to make graduates pay for the consequences—to make them pay for the Government’s miscalculation by changing the terms of the deal to which they had signed up. Before the 2015 general election, I asked Ministers for assurances that they would not make those changes, and I was told that they had no plans to do so, but no sooner were the votes counted than those plans were rolled out in the 2015 Budget. Unfreezing the repayment threshold—making graduates pay more than was in the contract they signed up to—is frankly fraudulent. It undermines confidence in the student loans system and trust in democracy, and it should be reversed.

Finally, the Government should reconsider the decision to scrap bursaries and introduce fees and loans for nursing, midwifery and allied health courses, as a number of people have mentioned. Back in January 2016, when we debated the issue in Westminster Hall, the then Health Minister, Ben Gummer, told Members—this is a good one, wait for it—that the move would lead to an increase in applications. Now we know how wrong they were. In my city, there has been a drop of 22% in applications to Sheffield Hallam University, but it did slightly better than the rest of the country, because across the UK the drop is estimated to be 26%.

On issue after issue in relation to student funding, the Government have got it wrong. Today they can start to get it right. They can agree with us in ruling out this increase and, beyond that, they can revert to their 2005 manifesto commitment and join us in committing to abolish tuition fees.

Education and Local Services

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is great to be called at this stage and to have had the opportunity to hear so many fine maiden speeches on both sides of the House. I congratulate all the new Members on making them.

The Queen’s Speech was clearly overshadowed by the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. It is a disaster that shocked the nation. Across the country, local authorities are responding with the seriousness that the disaster deserves. My constituency has most of Sheffield’s high-rise housing and the council has acted promptly to check the safety of properties. Indeed, the cladding of one, Hanover Tower in Broomhall, has failed the test. The council has met tenants and taken immediate action, but the issue will cost money to resolve. Beyond that one block, the council is also putting in place the further measures needed to reassure tenants. Across the city it is retrofitting sprinklers in all tower blocks, but the question is: who is going to foot the bill?

Local councils have been the hardest-hit by Government cuts since 2010 across the entire public sector, and those in our big cities hardest of all. Local services across the board have been hit, from youth services to adult social care, with deep cuts deeply affecting local services. It is therefore all very well for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to say, as he did yesterday, that local authorities should just spend the money on fire safety and then contact him for help. What we need is a guarantee that help will be forthcoming—a clear statement that the funds needed to put Hanover Tower right will be provided, and a guarantee to fund the sprinkler systems across Sheffield, and indeed the same response across the whole country.

But the problem goes much wider than that. Much of the high-rise in my constituency is in the private rented sector. The council does not own the properties but it has a responsibility for the safety of those living in them, and there are fire safety issues there too. We have seen an explosion in numbers in the private rented sector in recent years, but at the same time, in Sheffield as in so many parts of the country, we have seen a fall, driven by the cuts, in the number of local government staff responsible for compliance in the sector, causing real risk to people in terms of fire and other issues. Do the Government accept that that is one of the issues that needs to be considered as part of any review of fire safety, not simply in high-rise but in accommodation generally in this country?

In the minute that I have left, let me turn to schools and the crisis they are facing. I have 24 state schools in my constituency. Every one of them has faced challenges in making ends meet over the last few years. Headteachers were right—I am disappointed that they have been attacked in the way they have during this debate—to highlight the combined threat of Government cuts and the new funding formula. From 2015-16 to 2019-20, every one of my schools faces cuts of between 6% and 19%—a loss of 103 teachers. Conservative Members seem to be in denial, as the Government are, about the crisis facing our schools.

If the statement that no school will lose out means anything, it must mean it in real terms. If that is the case, perhaps the Secretary of State could write quickly to the headteachers in my constituency to tell them that they need not worry about the redundancies that they are planning or the courses that they are proposing to remove, and to give them the guarantee that they want and that all our children deserve.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I echo the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) in welcoming the fact that the Minister survived the ministerial cull and is still in his place, because I think he has brought a—[Interruption.] He is defying my words at the moment; I was going to say how good he is at listening. I am over here!

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Will the Front Benchers take note of this? The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) is making reference to the Front Benchers, and they appear to be having a conversation. I am sure that everybody wants to hear what the hon. Gentleman wants to say.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend was trying to be nice.

[Paul Blomfield]

I will continue to be nice, because I recognise the thought and effort that the Minister has put into developing the Bill. I commend him for the way in which he has listened to those across the sector and other stakeholders in shifting thinking, as discourse has moved forward. There is a lot more listening to do, because there are still a number of reservations.

The Bill raises some very important issues: on teaching quality, clearly; on widening participation; on reopening the debate on credit accumulation and transfer; and on several other areas. Sadly, however, as other hon. Members have highlighted, those are not necessarily the key challenges for the sector right now. The Secretary of State was right to say in her opening remarks that our university system punches above its weight. Our universities are hugely important in the transformational impact they have on those who study in them, in building the skills base of our country and in contributing over £11 billion to our export earnings, and this hugely successful sector of course contributes through research and innovation to the wider development of our economy. We have one of the world’s best university systems, but universities face real challenges, many of which, frankly, are not covered by the Bill.

Let me turn back to Brexit. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds said that we should look at the opportunities of Brexit. Whether we describe them as opportunities or as challenges, there are real issues to face. She highlighted the fact that we are in the top 10 for research. One reason for that is the enormous funding we have had through FP7—Horizon 2020, as it is now—from the European Union. The EU is spending about £70 billion through Horizon 2020, and until 23 June more was allocated to British-led partnerships than to any other member state. Without that, our research capacity will be deeply affected, with huge economic consequences.

The Minister will recall that I asked him, just days after the Brexit vote, what action he was taking to protect that funding. Reassuringly, he said that we should not worry about anything for the next couple of years because we would still be in the European Union and fully accessing Horizon 2020. That was not an unreasonable answer at that moment—I would have probably given the same one—but when I talked to the vice-chancellors of my two universities in Sheffield two days later, they both reported that locally led research teams had been asked to pull out of trans-European projects bidding for Horizon 2020, because a UK research teams would be a drag on securing funding, given all the associated uncertainty. Mike Galsworthy, who is the director of Scientists for EU, has been trying to monitor the impact on research. He reports that already—just a couple of weeks on—of the 378 responses he has received from research teams, over a quarter are reporting difficulties because everyone fears the risk of having a team from non-EU Britain as a partner.

The Government therefore need, and I hope that the Minister will address this when he winds up, to consider urgently—more urgently than many of the other issues covered by the Bill—what he intends to do to offset the impact we are already seeing. He should commit to underwriting all Horizon 2020 funding to give research teams the reassurance that they can go forward confidently without letting down their partners. He should also talk to those quite close to him—[Interruption] I was thinking of a different form of relationship, but that one will do—about making an early commitment to putting Horizon 2020 at the top of the agenda in our negotiations on what post-Brexit Britain will look like.

The second issue is about recruiting and retaining talent. Between our two universities in Sheffield, there are 406 EU nationals on a salary of less than £35,000. That figure is important because it means that they would not meet the criteria for successful tier 2 visa applications. These are early-career academics—the talent of the future—who will be driving the research and the teaching quality of the future in our universities. Unless we can give them the confidence that they and their successors from European countries can come to this country to work, teach and research in our universities, we will be severely weakening our talent base.

Such issues are not addressed in the Bill, but it threatens to do more damage in the third area of concern in universities, which is international students—an issue on which the Minister and I agree, and about which many Government Members have made the same point. As the right hon. Member for East Devon (Mr Swire) pointed out, the Home Office has done enormous damage to our ability to compete in the growing international marketplace to recruit international students. Brexit threatens greater damage in relation not just to the 185,000 EU students who are here, but to the 320,000 or so non-EU students. Hobsons, the major international student recruitment consultants, reported just a couple of weeks before the Brexit vote that about a third of non-EU nationals considering coming to the UK would find Britain a less attractive place to study if it exited the European Union, and one can understand why.

The Bill could make the situation worse by undermining the strength of the UK’s university brand through the teaching excellence framework. A one-level TEF might not have that consequence, because it would be a straightforward exercise that, subject to ticking certain boxes, most universities would glide through. However, the subsequent grading system creates a risk of brand damage, because we are developing it unilaterally. If we were measuring our universities equitably in parallel and in partnership with every country in the world, perhaps it would be different, but we are not. We are stepping outside what our competitors are doing and saying that we will spotlight our universities in a very different way. We will say that some are okay, some are outstanding and some are excellent. That will send out the message about those that do not reach the very top grade that international students ought to think twice about going there. I appreciate that that is not the Government’s intention, but it is a potential consequence that they need to consider closely. We already have a quality assurance system through the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education that is widely respected around the world.

If the Government are going down the TEF route, let us get it right. The thinking on this is significantly underdeveloped. I welcome the way in which, during the discussion about teaching quality, the Minister has moved away from an overdependence on quantitative metrics towards a more qualitative approach that involves institutions in the assessment process. However, there is still a focus on quantitative metrics that, as other Members have highlighted, are deeply flawed.

Employment destination is a key metric, but we all know that that is an unsatisfactory way of measuring teaching quality. Someone who comes from the right family, goes to the right school, goes to the right university and comes out with a passable degree will get a good job, because they have the contacts. [Interruption.] I did not catch the Minister’s observation, but I have no doubt he will make his point later. Employment destination might be a measure of the privilege someone was born into, but it is not a measure of teaching quality. We know that privately educated students are more likely to get a good degree than state educated students. We also know that graduate destination can be affected by the regional economy, so it is a very unsatisfactory metric.

In trying to widen participation, I admire the Government’s focus not simply on entry to university, but on success at university and beyond. However, using retention as a metric is potentially flawed, because the easiest way—I am not for a moment suggesting that any of our universities would do this—to get a good retention score is not to accept students who are likely to fail.

[Jo Churchill]

I agree with that point. A problem with the lack of flexibility in the system is that it does not allow those who have more disconnected lives to be iterative with a degree by going out and back in. That is a problem if Members across the House want to improve social mobility. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to be more flexible to allow those whose lives do not conform to the three-year pattern to have access?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I agree with the hon. Lady—I thank her for her intervention, which, like much of the rest of the debate, reflects cross-party concern about the detail of the Bill.

Other hon. Members referred to the research excellence framework as a model for the TEF, but the research excellence framework took time to develop—there was trial and error, remodelling and rethinking. The research excellence framework was not put together with the pace that the TEF has been put together, and nor was it put together without trialling or in a way that creates such risks. That is why, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) said, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee said that the Government needed to do more to demonstrate that the metrics relate to teaching quality. Until they do, we cannot be confident that we will get this right.

The Secretary of State said that there was limited thinking among the Opposition, in that we thought that new providers could not possibly be as good as traditional universities. I do not accept that. Equally, I hope the Government accept that there are risks. In the last Parliament, they got their fingers burnt with new providers. We have seen in the higher education landscape in the United States, which some fear is the model the Government are looking to, the damage caused by an insufficiently well regulated system, in which commercial operators come in, milk the public funds provided through the federal loans system without regard to the quality of education offered or the consequences for those who go through it, and leave them to pick up the debt. Everybody was misled at each stage of the process, which is why so many private providers face federal and state prosecution in the United States. Unless we get the regulatory framework right in the Bill, there will be risks.

I know the Minister is committed to getting the regulatory framework right, but the problem is that we do not know what it will look like. I have asked written questions about it, but we still do not know. He can correct me if I am wrong, but in response to a recent written question, he indicated that we will not know what the regulatory portal and subsequent framework look like in detail until the Bill passes. That is not good enough.

I am conscious of the time and of other Members’ desire to contribute. There is so much more in the Bill, but I will leave my remarks there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The Government continue to work with all partners to raise awareness and interest in STEM careers. Initiatives such as the Inspiring Science Capital Fund, a £30 million programme that we launched with the Wellcome Trust, STEM Ambassadors, which is a £5 million-a-year programme, the Polar Explorer programme I have already mentioned, and the industry-led Your Life campaign are providing inspiration for young people to consider STEM careers. I am pleased to say that over 50% of STEM undergraduates are now women.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Minister will know how important EU research funding is to our universities, particularly in relation to STEM subjects. He will also know that those leading the leave campaign promised that no sector would lose out as a result of Brexit. Forget about the next two years—if I could push him on his earlier answer, what will he be doing to ensure that UK Government funds replace European funding, pound for pound, in supporting research in our universities?

[Joseph Johnson]

We remain members of the European Union. Our institutions are fully able to apply for and win European competitive funding schemes, and they will continue to be able to do so until such time as we change the basis of our relationship with Horizon 2020.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

It is well known that we have huge skills needs in the care sector and the NHS, and that kind of academy is exactly what we need to see more of, so I am delighted that my hon. Friend’s constituency, Petroc College and others are setting an example.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that the number of BIS staff working on the apprenticeship programme is due to fall massively by 2020. What assessment has he made of his Department’s capacity to deliver the apprenticeship target?

[Nick Boles]

The number of BIS staff who will be working on the apprenticeship programme will fall, but only because we are setting up a new, independent institute for apprenticeships that will take over many of the jobs that are currently undertaken by BIS staff. That institute will be in the control of the employers who are paying the levy. I think that is the right way to do it and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will welcome it.

Educational Attainment: Yorkshire and the Humber

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). It was powerful not only in the content of its suggestions but in its description of the importance of education and its ability to transform lives when we get it right. It underlined why we need to get it right, which sadly we are not doing in too many ways, as demonstrated by the gap between north and south.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Jo Cox) on securing this debate. Two years ago, I started a contribution in the House with the words: “Mind the gap”. Sadly, we are here again. Last time, I was talking about the Chancellor’s failure to rebalance our economy between the north and south—there has been no change there, despite the empty rhetoric about a northern powerhouse—but today we are discussing the wholly unacceptable fact that, whereas over 70% of pupils in London achieve five good GCSEs, the figure for Yorkshire and the Humber is just 63%.

Economic success and educational attainment are clearly linked. That was the conclusion of a study that has underpinned contributions from several hon. Members and it was the conclusion of Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s chief inspector, who, in a speech at the end of last year, said:

“There has been much talk about a ‘northern powerhouse’. To succeed, it will require astute leadership, complex regional alliances and billions of pounds spent on infrastructure. And what of education? All that money, all that commitment and optimism, will be wasted if the next generation is not educated sufficiently to take advantage of the opportunities presented by this initiative.”

It is not just that education drives economic success; economic success is critical to higher educational attainment. That point was made very clearly to me by the headteacher of one of Sheffield’s most successful secondary schools. It is in my constituency and is one of the top 100 in the country on GCSE results. His comments echoed the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley in an intervention. He said that

“working with our outstanding sister school in London, I see a real difference in the level of aspiration held by the children and I think that this is an important factor. The children there are deprived but it is a different sort of deprivation. They are financially deprived but are surrounded by wealth and opportunities whereas in the North, entire communities have never really recovered from deindustrialisation.”

He is holding an “aspiration day” next month to do something about this but there is only so much he can do. The fact remains that there are far fewer skilled jobs outside London, far less investment, both public and private sector, and therefore much less opportunity. He estimates the number of children at his school with parents in professional occupations to be in single figures.

Yet rather than using the levers of public sector employment and investment pots to change this, the Government are moving in the opposite direction. They are starving local authorities in deprived areas of the money they need, in sharp contrast with wealthier areas; failing to come up with a coherent industrial strategy focused on the regions; and presiding over private sector jobs growth in London and the south-east at the expense of the regions. Indeed, they are adding to the problem by closing the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills office in Sheffield and moving civil service jobs to London. We cannot separate the issue of our unbalanced economy from the imbalance in educational attainment. I hope the Minister will recognise that and, in responding, outline what joined-up discussions there are across Government to tackle the issue.

There are specific things that can be done to support schools in addressing the challenge of under-attainment. I was in touch with one of the primary heads in my constituency in advance of this debate—the head of one of the fastest improving schools in the country—and he made two suggestions for how the Government could act. I hope the Minister will comment on both. First, how will the new schools funding formula ensure that resources can be directed to those schools seeking to improve attainment outside the south of England and those serving deprived communities? The early indications are that money might actually move away from deprived communities.

Secondly, the headteacher asked how we could alter admissions criteria to help disadvantaged children to access the best schools, given that people with more money are buying advantage by purchasing houses nearer the best schools, meaning that the gap, even within Yorkshire, is widening. We must act because it is simply not acceptable that, by virtue of growing up in Sheffield and not London, a child is less likely to do well at school.

What will not address the challenge of raising standards in our schools in Yorkshire and the Humber is, as others have said, the forced academisation programme. Academisation might be a useful distraction for the Government, but it is not an answer to underachievement. It is an issue on which I have received a lot of correspondence from constituents. The secondary head I mentioned earlier runs a very successful academy in my constituency. It is a great school and one that I am proud to work with, but the simple truth is that one size does not fit all.

My constituents have also raised serious concerns about teaching standards and conditions in a system that permits or even rewards the use of unqualified teachers; about the undermining of national pay structures; about local accountability, given the Government’s thrust towards multi-academy trusts to drive change; and about teacher morale, with further reorganisation to be forced on them. As others have said, there is no evidence that forced academisation will improve standards, and there is quite a lot of evidence to show the reverse. What it will be—the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) alluded to it—is a distraction, with time and resources taken away from the central task of improving the quality of our schools.

In the words of my constituent Kathryn:

“Schools and heads who have not chosen to become academies do not want it...The DFE does not have the capacity to convert those who have currently applied so why add an extra burden to a struggling department?”

What happened to the Government’s emphasis on freedom for headteachers? Another constituent, Jane, told me that she was leaving teaching, complaining that the Prime Minister

“talks of head teachers being in charge of academies instead of ‘bureaucrats’ from the authority getting in the way”,

yet she was

“not aware of outside control until we became an academy”.

We have already heard how, as things stand, Yorkshire and the Humber is losing out. This forced academisation agenda will only make things worse. Increasing numbers of Conservative Members and of Conservative councillors across the country are saying this, with even leaders of academy trusts saying it, too. I urge the Government to think again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I think the Opposition will find that they are on a hiding to nothing if they try consistently to pick holes in and talk down the apprenticeship programme, which is dramatically successful and dramatically popular. Of course some people will not complete their apprenticeship, because an apprenticeship is not just a training programme; it is a job, and sometimes employers will decide that someone is not suited to continuing in that job. We want standards to go up and we want more numbers. Frankly, it would be good to have a bit of support from the Opposition for a programme that they claim to have invented.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

13. What plans his Department has for the form of the consultation on its decision to close its office in St Paul’s Place, Sheffield.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Joseph Johnson)]

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is consulting for 90 days with staff and trade unions, including on firm proposals to move policy directorate roles to London, potentially resulting in the closure of the Sheffield office. BIS is also consulting on how it can avoid making redundancies, and no decisions will be taken before the end of the consultation on 2 May.

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the Minister for confirming that no decision will be taken on the closure of the office before the end of the 90-day consultation. The chief executive of Sheffield Council has written to the permanent secretary to point out that moving 247 jobs from Sheffield to London will add around £2.5 million to the annual operating costs of the Department, and he has offered to work with him to consider alternatives. Will the Department take up that offer before a final decision is made?

[Joseph Johnson]

The Department is in consultation with staff, trade unions and local authorities. The savings from those changes will result in £350 million across the spending review period, or 30% to 40% of such budgets. That important saving comes from the consolidation of 80 sites in seven centres of excellence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

I am more than happy to do so. The reason we put the role of virtual school heads on a statutory footing in the last Parliament is that they make a significant contribution, acting as the pushy parent promoting the educational progress and achievement of children in care by championing their needs and working closely with schools. Since March last year they have had responsibility for managing the pupil premium plus, which provides an extra £1,900 for every child in care to enable them to access the extra support that makes sure they can really fulfil their potential.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T5. This morning I spoke to the headteacher of one of Sheffield’s best-performing secondary schools, which is in my constituency. The Secretary of State talks about the need for certainty in the funding formula, but that headteacher is deeply concerned by the uncertainty created by the lack of detail in this morning’s statement. Like all good heads, he plans in advance, and he is now recruiting for 2017, but he is unsure what his funding will be in that year. When can I tell him that he will know whether he is a winner or a loser as a result of the consultation?

[Nicky Morgan]

It is important that we understand the basic principles behind why we are having a consultation on the funding formula—that the same pupils, with the same characteristics, across the country need to attract the same amounts of money. There will obviously be another consultation on the details, but it is important that we know about the weightings behind the factors and that there is certainty and transparency for all schools going forward. We have said there will be a phased transition, and that we will be very mindful of those schools where there is potential for there to be less funding, to make sure they are not destabilised. However, it is absolutely right that it is this Government who have grasped this nettle after many years of previous Governments absolutely flunking that test.

Student Maintenance Grants

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I have the privilege to represent more students than any other Member of the House. I am pleased to have the chance to raise their concerns, and more importantly, the concerns of those who hope to take their place in the future but will, I fear, be deterred from doing so by the Government’s proposals. Such a decision is one of huge significance for 500,000 students.

It is a major reversal of Government policy, and it is being taken without any mandate. The Minister for Universities and Science tried to bluster his way out of that by referring to page 35 of the Conservative manifesto. I challenge his colleague, the Minister for Skills, to read out the precise section of the manifesto that gives the Government the mandate to remove maintenance grants from the poorest students. I will happily give way now if the Minister for Universities and Science wishes to read it out.

[Joseph Johnson]

Keep going.

[Paul Blomfield]

I urge Conservative Members to think carefully about the policy. [Interruption.] Their party—it is a shame none of them is listening—has consistently supported maintenance grants. In November 2009, the then Conservative shadow Minister told the House that it

“is students from the poorest backgrounds who are most desperate when they cannot get their maintenance grant”.—[Official Report, 3 November 2009; Vol. 498, c. 737.]

When we debated the Government’s changes to student funding in November 2010, a Conservative Minister said:

“Our proposals…help to encourage people from poorer backgrounds…because of the higher education maintenance grant… That crucial commitment…is one of the reasons we commend these proposals to the House.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 940.]

Reflecting on their approach, in September 2012 a Conservative Minister said:

“The maintenance grant and support for bursaries are going up. That is why we…have record rates of application to university”.—[Official Report, 11 September 2012; Vol. 550, c. 216.]

In opposition and in government, Conservative shadow Ministers and Ministers have rightly made the case for maintenance grants year after year.

That was, however, suddenly thrown into reverse by the Chancellor in the July Budget, without any proper consideration of its impact. Such a consideration is important because we are talking about the poorest students. We still have not seen the original assessment behind the July decision, but even the massaged assessment that the Government were prepared to publish in November, four months after the decision was made, is extremely worrying.

Conservative Members should pay heed to it, because it is the Government’s own assessment. On participation by low-income households, it warns of the evidence from past reforms on which the Government are relying that

“there are limits to its direct applicability”.

On gender, it expects a “decrease in female participation”. On age, it says that there is a

“risk for the participation of older students”.

On ethnicity, it says that there is a

“risk to the participation of students from ethnic minority backgrounds”.

On religion, it talks about

“a decline in the participation of some Muslim students”.

That is the real impact on real people.

That impact has been confirmed by those affected. A survey of students in receipt of maintenance grants found that 35% said that, because of their circumstances, they would not have gone to university without a grant. A new survey by Populus says that 40% of parents from low-income households believe their children will be discouraged from going to university without a grant. Evidence from the Institute of Education shows that for every £l,000 increase in the grant, there is a 4% increase in participation from lower-income families. No doubt the reverse is true, so with the level of cuts being made, there will be a significant decrease on the basis of that assessment.

The irony is that the Government have set ambitious objectives for widening participation. The problem is that this policy will prevent that. I urge Conservative Members to vote with us to annul it.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

If the Government do decide to change the caps on tuition fees, there will, of course, be a debate in this House.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that retrospectively changing the terms of a contract is, in effect, mis-selling? Will he guarantee that in this Parliament there will be no further changes to either thresholds or interest rates?

[Sajid Javid]

The changes in question are entirely lawful. That is the advice that I received and it is perfectly consistent with the aims. Hon. Members should remember that the loans that are provided are on significantly better terms than those that are available commercially, and they achieve the objective of allowing all those who wish to go to university and who have the ability to do so.