Government Policy on Health

Debate between Wes Streeting and Graham Stuart

Monday 9th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am delighted to see my hon. Friend here representing Bishop Auckland. The people of his constituency will be struck by the fact that this afternoon the Conservative party has chosen to create a mountain out of a molehill about a former Health Secretary coming in to lend his advice and experience to a Labour Government. On covid corruption, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to be angry, as indeed the country is, too. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been very clear that, when it comes to cronyism and corruption in covid contracts, we want our money back and the covid corruption commissioner is coming to get it.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

There is just one standard and it applies to whichever party is in power, and that should be respected. All this whataboutery relating to what may have gone on under a Conservative Government! Anyone who has done something wrong should be pursued. Anyone in authority should be accountable. It is the failure of accountability, a failure of recognition, by the right hon. Gentleman that lets down the House today. Can he confirm to the House that Alan Milburn did not have access to official sensitive papers? Anyone who visits a Minister—they come in all the time—sits on one side of the table and the official sensitive documents are on the other side. Can he confirm that Alan Milburn did not have access that no other visitor would have?

[Wes Streeting]

In the meetings that I asked my right honourable friend to attend—I need to make sure that I get this absolutely right—I tend to think that I saw him on the other side of the table in the corner. I cannot guarantee that he sat at that point in every single one of the meetings, but he certainly was not sitting next to me. With regard to the papers for the meetings that he attended, they were discussion papers about the challenges facing health and social care. They were not Government decision papers or recommendations for Ministers. There is a distinction between those two things. I decide who attends meetings in the Department, and, when it comes to wide-ranging policy discussions, I decide what reading material people receive.

Student Maintenance Grants

Debate between Wes Streeting and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

That included arguments with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). But even with landslide majorities there was always a full debate and a vote in the House, whether they were abolishing student grants or, more wisely, reintroducing grants following the introduction of top-up fees.

This afternoon, these proposals will impact on 500,000 students from the poorest backgrounds. In my local university, the University of East London, that equates to about £30 million of financial support for students—gone. At my alma mater, the University of Cambridge, the figure is more like £9 million. If there is one thing we know about the higher education sector, it is that not only opportunity but financial support is unevenly distributed. It is completely unfair that students from the poorest backgrounds will now face a postcode lottery when it comes to determining how much non-repayable support they receive.

The very existence of student grants was won as a result of hard-fought negotiations. Student leaders argued that, if we were going to ask people to make a greater contribution, it was only fair that the poorest students received a non-repayable contribution. How must Conservative Members and the few remaining Liberal Democrats feel about the fact that when, under the coalition Government, the then higher education Minister justified the trebling of fees, they were told, “Don’t worry. We’ve got the national scholarship programme, student grants and the £21,000 threshold going up by inflation.” What has happened since? The national scholarship programme has been abandoned; the threshold frozen at £21,000; and now we see the abolition of student grants. We cannot trust a word that these people say, particularly when it comes to fair access to higher education and support for the most disadvantaged. It is an absolute disgrace.

I am proud of what the last Labour Government did to widen access and opportunity to people from working-class backgrounds. I was one of the beneficiaries, from the excellence in cities work that was done in schools right through to the opportunities provided through expanded places.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is doubtless equally proud of the fact that the Labour Government said that they would not introduce tuition fees, and then did; and said that they would not introduce top-up fees, and then did. Does he accept that he and others who said five years ago that the introduction of increased fees would lead to a reduction in those from poorer backgrounds going to university were wrong? They were wrong then, and we believe that they are wrong today.

[Wes Streeting]

I remember the debate here in 2003, and I think it was to the credit of the Government of the day that the introduction of higher fees did not come in until after a general election, when at least the voters could make their judgment on whether they wanted to re-elect a Labour Government, which they duly did.

So much has been said about participation numbers this afternoon. I am certainly not going to make prophecies of doom about participation, but we should bear in mind a few facts. First, there is the issue of equity. How can it possibly be justified that students from the poorest backgrounds graduate with the largest amount of debt? How can it possibly be fair that under these repayment mechanisms, the wealthiest graduates who go on to the most successful jobs will end up paying less over the course of their working career than people from middle and lower incomes? That cannot possibly be justified as fair. We should take seriously the evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies published in 2014 showing that a £1,000 increase in the maintenance grant led to a 3.95% increase in participation. Removing the grant does not necessarily mean that participation will plummet, but I think there is a risk that it could suffer.

There is a huge amount of complacency from this Government about the impact of higher tuition fees on applications to part-time routes and for mature students. It does not have to be that way; other choices are possible. We should look at what the Labour Government in Wales have done. They have not chosen to abolish student grants; they have kept those grants in place.

If the Tories want to talk about hard choices, how are they going to look the poorest students from the poorest backgrounds in the eye and explain why this Government continue to alleviate the tax burden on the wealthiest, while making the poorest pay the cost of their higher education? A 75% contribution to the cost of higher education is, by anyone’s estimation, too much, and there is not a single item in the Conservative manifesto that Government Members can point to in order to justify this outrageous attack on the poorest students.