Town and Village Plans

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) for securing this incredibly important debate. There is a lot of cross-party agreement on the issue, and I agree with almost everything that hon. Members have said in the debate. My only disagreement with the hon. Gentleman is that I think the issue affects both rural and urban areas.

If we want positive planning in this country, the best place to start is with local neighbourhoods and communities. The reason is obvious: local people know their area best, and they know best how to develop it. They understand not only issues such as local heritage, but infrastructure needs, which are often overlooked in planning but are necessary to make a development successful. I was really pleased that hon. Members raised that today.

I was also extremely pleased that the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk mentioned new towns. I am very keen to hear what the Minister has to say about new towns, because the Government have been a bit tardy, to say the least, in bringing forward new towns or garden cities. I think we probably all agree that garden cities have worked better than new towns, but it would be good to hear an update from the Minister.

There were some weaknesses in the conception of neighbourhood planning. A neighbourhood plan is not a free-standing document; it has to be developed in line with a local plan and strategic objectives. Neighbourhood plans have often been mis-sold to local neighbourhoods, who think that a plan can do something that it cannot. They run into particular problems when no up-to-date local plan is in place. We have all seen neighbourhood plans being developed, voted on and passed in areas where no local plan is in place or there is an issue with the five-year housing supply. Even if the council rejects a development because it is not in line with the local plan, its rejection is often overturned on appeal, using the national planning policy framework and the general presumption in favour of development. If the Minister wishes to give neighbourhood planning more teeth, he needs to look at that.

The Minister also needs to look at resources and at the whole local community effort necessary to developing a neighbourhood plan. I know that the Government have put some resources aside for developing neighbourhood plans, but in my experience such resources are often not enough, particularly in areas of special complexity. Neighbourhood plans are being developed while massive cuts are reducing the ability of planning departments to support parish councils and neighbourhood planning forums to implement them.

We all want neighbourhood plans to be more effective, but there are some issues with them. I was pleased to see, as a sign of cross-party consensus, that “ConservativeHome” has stated that the Government need to look more closely at neighbourhood planning because there are wrinkles to be ironed out. We all want our communities to be given the tools to plan effectively for their area, but we also want neighbourhood plans to be more effectively integrated into our overall planning system. Perhaps they need to be given greater weight—that seems to be one of the crucial issues that the Government still have to address. I appreciate that the Minister is new to his job, but we have great expectations about what he will deliver.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

If the Minister finishes his remarks no later than 5.28 pm, the Member in charge will have time to sum up.

Postgraduate Education

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It was very kind of you to make those comments. May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this timely debate and on his excellent speech. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who gave such an excellent speech that I am going to repeat some of it.

Postgraduate education is important in a number of different ways. It is important for the individuals who undertake study, because they can improve their employment opportunities, become the innovators of tomorrow and contribute to business development and to solving some of the economic and social challenges facing our country and others.

Postgraduate education is therefore important for individuals, but it is also important for universities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield mentioned. Universities obviously benefit from the strengthening of the academic community that results from having postgraduate students. Indeed, I regularly see postgraduate students at Durham university bringing forward ideas, linking them into the work of academic programmes and teams and really taking those ideas in a new direction. That is very exciting for universities.

Increasingly, however, postgraduate education is also a marker of Britain’s academic standing in the world. I see a lot of postgraduate students in Durham from overseas, and they contribute to not only its international community, but its international research teams. Increasingly, that is how research develops in this country, although we mostly see it in science and engineering subjects. Those students are critical to not only securing economic growth, but helping to deal with some of our challenges.

The UK is second only to the United States in attracting international students, so it is important that we ask the Minister some serious questions about whether we will be able to maintain that international standing and whether new procedures or policies will need to be put in place to keep our standing as high as it is. Concern has been expressed in the academic community about whether we will be able to do that.

I thank the Minister again for attending the recent meeting of the all-party university group, when we looked at the White Paper. We really appreciated the time he spent talking to us about it. I hope that the session was not a complete and utter waste of time and that something from the White Paper will emerge in a Bill at some stage for us to consider. As the Minister will know from that session, a number of vice-chancellors have expressed concern about postgraduate study and wanted to hear more from the Government about how it would be strengthened. Indeed, million+ has said that there is a real risk that we will move into a period of decline, particularly in terms of UK-domiciled postgraduate students. Does the Minister share that concern?

There are two big issues with regard to postgraduate education. One is access, which several people have mentioned, and the other is financing. The Milburn report, which was called “Unleashing Aspiration”, addressed access and said that postgraduate qualifications

“have increasingly become an important route into many professional careers—in the law, creative industries, the Civil Service, management professions and others. But these courses are substantially more expensive than undergraduate degrees—often costing up to £12,000 per year—and there is no student support framework equivalent to the framework for undergraduate. New proposals need to be formulated to establish a clear, transparent and fair system of student financial support for postgraduate learners.”

That throws a real challenge out to the Government. If they are really serious about higher education contributing to social mobility, it should not stop at undergraduate level, and we need to look at postgraduate level.

While I am on my feet, I would not like to miss the opportunity to say that I am glad that the Milburn report did not think about widening access to higher education just in terms of getting some—a few—bright students from lower-income backgrounds into Oxford and Cambridge. It considered the wider issue of making higher education available across the piece to low-income students and, importantly, put the issue of postgraduate education on the agenda. I hope that the shadow Minister as well as the Minister will speak about that issue.

There is growing concern about access. I come from a low-income background and did several years of postgraduate study, but I am not sure whether that would be possible now for someone of my background. That is of concern to us. In researching the issue we could not find any study with up-to-date figures about the diversity or lack of it in postgraduate education, or about the current barriers, and we could not discover whether under-represented groups have been considered specifically. Perhaps the Minister would comment on that.

Before the Labour Government left office in March 2010 the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills put forward a series of recommendations on improving postgraduate education, in “One Step Beyond: Making the most of postgraduate education”. To be fair to the Minister, that report and its recommendations did not just fall off a precipice, which has happened in other contexts. They were brought back in the Government’s response to the postgraduate review, and the recommendations are almost identical. Obviously, those are excellent recommendations. One, for example, states:

“Universities UK and Research Councils UK should do more to identify and promote the economic and social value of postgraduate study.”

The response also states that attention needs to be given to funding. Some specific proposals are mentioned about getting research councils to work with other bodies

“to offer longer periods of postgraduate research”

so that perhaps students can earn income as well. I am sure that hon. Members will be pleased that I am not going to go through the list, as there is not time; but are those proposals being addressed? They seem to offer at least a partial way forward for improving access to higher education and the funding regime.

I also want to ask whether the Department has thought about what recent changes in undergraduate student finance and funding would mean for postgraduate education. The withdrawal of about 80% of teaching funding in England is affecting postgraduate courses, and possibly making them more expensive. In addition, students will finish undergraduate courses with a level of debt that may make them less likely to take up career development loans, in particular, or additional debt to undertake postgraduate study. The National Union of Students says that that is a real worry; in its view the average postgraduate taught fee will rise by about 24% by 2012-13. That could obviously add a disincentive.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central also pointed out valuable work by the NUS in surveying current postgraduate students about their financial circumstances. It is worth repeating a few of the points that were made. The survey, carried out in October 2010, was a large one, and 60% said that accessibility of finance or funding was a major factor in deciding whether to undertake postgraduate study. That figure rose to 70% among respondents studying full-time. The 67% who were entirely self-funded were very concerned about debt, overdrafts and credit cards. Self-funded students were also more likely than funded students to consider leaving or suspending their studies, owing to financial concerns. I want to raise that with the Minister, because the more we rely on self-funding, the more students may drop out, as they are just unable to carry on with their studies and raise the necessary income. Fifty-two per cent. of those in receipt of financial support said that postgraduate study would not have been an option for them without it. From my experience I would also make that point.

There are two big challenges: access and funding. Addressing those issues is important, because, as hon. Members have said, not only is postgraduate education important for individuals and universities; it is essential for the country to invest in it, if we are to grow our way out of the economic crisis. If the Minister needs evidence for that he need only read the Centre for Cities report produced a few days ago. It made clear the link between growing a knowledge-based, higher-level-skilled economy and being able to ride out economic downturns. We need that to happen here: beyond the five cities that were identified in the report as potentially doing well, we need universities and research to be at the heart of economic regeneration. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how he will ensure that that happens.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Even though Luton Town twice beat Kettering Town 5-0, both home and away, this season, I am still pleased to call the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker).