Financial Support (Students)

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree with him. One of the worst things that we saw under the previous Conservative Government was that a range of young people throughout the country were left with no sense of hope for the future. Seeing people without hope for the future is devastating, but seeing young people without hope for the future is even worse. We must not return to that situation.

I have three final points. First, colleges urgently need to know what will replace the EMA. The details of the discretionary learner support fund are sketchy. Colleges need to know whether, in reality, this will be a £500 million cut. Yesterday, the Secretary of State, appearing before the Select Committee on Education, could not confirm the position to hon. Members.

We need to know urgently whether travel costs will be taken into account and what else the discretionary hardship fund will be able to cover. In my constituency, like many other constituencies, travel is one of the prohibitive factors to attending college. Despite a number of people living in the town centre, Wigan is essentially a rural seat, and students would not be able to travel to college without the EMA.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

The travel situation in Somerset is exactly the same, but there are aspects to rural education that are even more critical. Towns such as Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury do not have sixth forms attached to their schools. Therefore there is no option for students but to travel. There are schools that do have sixth forms, but they do not cover the full range of subjects, so people such as my daughter, who wanted to study environmental science and politics, had to travel to Bridgwater college, which is some distance away. Cutting the EMA will place serious restrictions on the courses that young people can study.

[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Lady is passionate about this issue and has raised it many times. I would like to echo her comments.

There is compelling evidence that the EMA pumps millions of pounds into local economies throughout the country. In my Wigan constituency, where people are losing jobs and homes, and particularly in former coalfield areas, where, despite significant investment, the legacy of those times remains, the EMA could not be more important. The policy is short-sighted from that perspective.

I draw hon. Members’ attention to the IFS study published yesterday. It points out that savings in the short term simply do not make sense, because if we invested in our young people in the short term, we would more than recoup that in the long term.