Tristram Hunt
Main Page: Tristram Hunt (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent Central)Off-quota University Places
Tristram Hunt ExcerptsUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Mr Willetts
The Secretary of State for Education, just like me, is trying to deliver improved education opportunities after inheriting a total mess in the public finances from Labour, so we have to take tough decisions. We are trying to save money, but at the same time we are delivering reform of schools, improved access to universities, a better way of funding them in future and the freedom for them to escape from student number controls, albeit under carefully controlled conditions and with clear principles. That is the way to improve education standards in our country, even when money is tight.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Will the Minister tease out for us the conversations he has had with his adviser on fair access, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes)? Has not this whole problem arisen because of the ideological experiment that the Minister is conducting with our universities? What is wrong with the state and the private sector working together, rather than this neo-liberal vision that he has for our universities, undermining their integrity and world-class reputation?
Mr Willetts
We absolutely do want the public and private sectors to work together. That is why we do not like the regime that we inherited from the previous Government, which had what are called “closed places”—that is, specially restricted places that are the only off-quota places that employers can sponsor. I very much value the advice of the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes)—who, if I might say so, made a powerful intervention in a previous debate in this House on higher education, only last week or the week before, about how our student finance reforms will work, which was exactly the right way forward for student finance in this country. [Interruption.]