Education (Student Support)

Rachel Maclean Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree that we have to make sure that we target interventions and make sure that they work, but part of the reason I have brought the motion before the House today is that the interventions are simply not working. Since 2017, we have 700 fewer students training to be nurses, so the impact is absolutely clear, and I hope that Government Members will support our motion.

Some universities are even looking at closing down specialist courses entirely. If today’s regulations pass, there is every reason to believe that this will get worse. Nearly two thirds of postgraduate nursing students are over 25, more than a quarter are from ethnic minorities and 80% are women, so the impact of today’s regulations will surely be even worse than the previous cuts. Even if the Government are determined to make the change, there are good reasons not to make it now. This policy would move postgraduate nursing students over to the main student finance system, which means dealing with the Student Loans Company.

There is every reason to believe that the Student Loans Company is not yet ready. In recent weeks, the Government have been dealing with an error by the company that has led to 793 nurses being hit with unexpected demands to repay accidental overpayments they were unaware of. The Government’s response was a hardship fund of up to £1,000 per student, yet the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), admitted in a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden) that the majority of students were overpaid by more than £1,000 and will be left short. Perhaps when he responds, the Minister will tell us how he can possibly expect nursing students affected by this policy to have any faith in the system they will be stuck in.

With the Government finally embarking on their flagship review of higher education, they could have allowed this issue to be considered as part of the review before going ahead with this change today. Ministers have insisted that this change is necessary now to make how we fund training sustainable, yet there is little reason to believe that it will achieve this. The average NHS nurse earns just over £31,000 a year and the average graduate now leaves university with £50,000 of debt. A new nurse with a postgraduate qualification will take 86 years to repay their undergraduate debt on the average NHS salary—that is before we add interest—which is nearly triple the current repayment period before debt is written off, meaning they will not even begin to repay the debt. How many postgraduate students affected by this policy will repay any of, let alone all, their additional loan, and how much of that debt will simply be written off by the taxpayer in decades to come?

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not agree it is completely wrong to talk about debt in the way she is—in this place—as though it is some sort of credit card debt? It completely misrepresents the situation for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds thinking about going to university. Her words will be putting them off.

[Angela Rayner]

I am not sure it is my words that are putting people off; I would say the thought of having £50,000 of debt hanging over them for a very long time is putting people off going into education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I will keep my remarks brief. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). I agree with him that we need a new long-term system that works and removes the cap from people who wish to study as nurses. The vice-chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, Alistair Fitt, has said that nursing bursaries “had to end” and were not a sustainable system. The cap on places was discouraging people who wished to enter the nursing profession, which is so important for all our constituencies.

In Worcestershire, we need more nurses, not fewer. I welcome the work that has been going on in a partnership between my NHS trust and the University of Worcester. I backed their calls for a medical school, and the work being done on the ground is already reducing nursing vacancy rates. They are down from 8.4% to 7.5%, and nursing turnover rates are down from 14% to 10% in the last year. That is a tribute to local professionals working hard to tackle the real problems in my area for the benefit of my constituents. I want to see more of that.

Under the new system under the regulations, postgraduate healthcare students will be 25% better off as they take part in their studies. These are new measures, and we need to back the Government. We should not vote for the Labour party’s motion to annul these Government regulations, which will help more people to enter the nursing profession at senior levels. We are talking about the senior leadership roles that we need in all our hospitals to deal with the needs of our population and their healthcare.

Finally—I said I would be brief, and I will be—we definitely need to stop the rhetoric about student debt, because it puts people off going to university. I refer Labour Members to the comments of Martin Lewis, a respected financial expert, who just last week said that it was completely wrong—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady is making a serious speech. There should not be so much chuntering going on.

[Rachel Maclean]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Martin Lewis’s comments were, it is true, aimed at politicians on both sides of the House, but we have all heard the Labour party’s recent claims about student debt. The idea that that is the same thing as a debt has, in reality, put people from different backgrounds off studying at university. Student debt is not the same thing as a credit card debt. It is a graduate tax that people pay only when their income reaches a certain level, and that is the same for nursing students. We have to go forward with a sustainable solution.

[Dr Whitford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

I will not, because time is short.

Conservative Members will work to fight against the weaponisation for political ends of students and people who want to be students. We will open up more opportunities for everyone in this country to make a career in the NHS, if that is what they choose to do, and we will run the economy in a balanced way to support our precious NHS during this Parliament and in the years to come. I will not be voting for Labour’s motion tonight.

Question put.

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I remind the House that the motion is subject to double-majority voting of the House, and of Members representing constituencies in England.