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until April 1991. With inflation touching 10 per cent., the £400 represents not an increase in resources over the 18 months but a reduction for postgraduates.These regulations will cause severe hardship for a large number of students. They will remove postgraduates from entitlement to housing benefit, without offering them loans
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in replacement. They will narrow the whole basis of recruitment to higher education in the next generation, particularly among working-class students--a point that the Minister carefully omitted. I call on the House to reject the regulations.Column 1107
10.40 pmSir George Young (Ealing, Acton) : The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) began by accusing my right hon. Friend the Minister of arrogance. Front-Bench spokesmen may well occasionally display some intellectual superiority, but no one could accuse my right hon. Friend of arrogance. It would be difficult to find a more courteous, patient or sympathetic Minister.
This debate is similar to the one that we held about a week ago on the Lords amendments to the Social Security Bill. Indeed, I heard the expression "Homer nodded" last week : Homer has been wheeled out again and has nodded again tonight. There is actually a common theme running through last week's and this week's debates : does it make sense to focus student support on one Department or two? It was clear from the Opposition interventions in my right hon. Friend's speech, and from the contribution of the hon. Member for Oldham, West, that there is a strong case for having one Minister in charge of student support. Many interventions in the Minister's speech were about the education system, not about social security. The sooner we can put a stop to debates in which social security Ministers have to answer questions about education issues the better.
Each time the Opposition are confronted by the principle of focusing support on the DES they say that they agree with it ; but when confronted with the consequences of that principle they refuse to jump. They always vote to retain the present system. They claim to prefer it because they say that the Government will not be generous to students under the new regime-- so they prefer to stay with the regime they know.
Now, if the Government were minded to be mean to students, they could be so perfectly well under the present regime, but under the new one another £100 million will be available for students. Against that background, it is wholly illogical to adopt the attitude that the Opposition have adopted. Yet tonight I suspect that the Opposition will vote against the consequences of a principle that they have readily accepted.
If the Opposition are sincere, instead of harking back to the present system, they should seek reassurances on the sort of issues raised in this debate. Are the access funds adequate? The Government have already shown flexibility on that. They have already shown a willingness to increase the funds when it is argued that they need to be more generous. I have no doubt that if they are confronted with future evidence that the access funds are inadequate, pressure will be brought to bear by both sides of the House to ensure that the new system is flexible, generous and meets the purposes for which it was constructed.
Mr. Worthington : On what principle was the amount of money in the access funds calculated?
Sir George Young : I do not know. What I do know is that the amount has been increased in response to representations from educational interests to the effect that they are inadequate.
Mr. Pawsey : Can my hon. Friend confirm that the access funds have increased from £15 million to £30 million? If the Government are so mean with student support, how come there are 200,000 more students in higher education now than under the last Labour Government?
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Sir George Young : My hon. Friend provides eloquent force for my argument. The premise on which the Opposition's case is founded--that the Government are minded to be ungenerous to students--does not stand up to the available evidence. If access funds are deemed to be ungenerous, there will be pressure to increase them.
Basically, the regulations continue the disengagement of mainstream students from the social security system, but there is a residual entitlement to benefit if a student has a partner. If a student is a tenant but shares accommodation with a partner, the partner can apply for housing benefit. That is a sensible, but perhaps overgenerous, regime. What assurances can be given that this provision will not be abused by students claiming that their accommodation in a university town is shared by a partner, with the partner getting housing benefit in circumstances that may not have initially been intended by those who drafted the regulations? I am sure that there will be a straightforward response--
Ms. Short : Is the hon. Gentleman advocating sheet inspection?
Sir George Young : --to avoid "abuse", which is a better word, of the system.
The disregards are generous. If a student with a partner receives a loan, the loan does not affect the partner's entitlement to benefit up to the limit of £10, which covers the existing student loan. That is a welcome regime. As my right hon. Friend the Minister explained, regular payments will have a disregard of £10, but one-off lump sum payments will be treated as capital. Where there is a benefit claim, whether the payment is regular or is a one-off lump sum obviously matters. It is advantageous for it to be treated as a one-off lump sum payment. I hope that my right hon. Friend will explain how recipients of benefit will have those payments defined, either as regular payments or as one-off lump sums.
The Opposition are wholly inconsistent tonight, as last week, in conceding the principle but failing to accept the logical and welcome consequence of the principle by supporting the regulations. 10.47 pm
Mr. Dick Douglas (Dunfermline, West) : The regulations pose the wrong question in relation to the student population. I shall pay particular regard to Scotland, and I declare an interest in that I am a member of the court of Stirling university. The purpose of the regulations is to reallocate resources between the Department of Education and Science and the Department of Social Security. It is understandable that, in the interests of good housekeeping, the Government want support for students to come within the vote of the Department of Education and Science.
Like other Ministers, the Minister pleads in aid the increased numbers coming forward to receive the "benefits" of higher, or tertiary--a dreadful word--education. That is not the point. I shall speak not for England, Wales and Northern Ireland but for Scotland. To make headway in becoming a leading industrial nation, we cannot possibly be satisfied with the numbers coming forward. That is a basic consideration. Do the regulations
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and the general thrust of Government policy make it easier or harder for the broad mass of young people from, say, the age of 17 to enhance their educational potential? They will make it harder, although it will be easier for those whose parents have a reasonable income. Such parents will persuade their children to seek a loan because in theory it is a good option, when inflation is allowed for, at zero interest. Parents who practise good housekeeping in their own interests, although it may not be in the interests of the nation, will persuade their offspring to take a loan.Matters are different for young people from working-class families, which is another term that I dislike although I do not abjure it because I know the class to which I belong. Such young people do not have a cushy background and will look at the figures. We have talked generally about student loans, but many hon. Members spend £50 or more on one dinner and that is more than a student receives to keep himself for a week. [Interruption.] All right, let us say that that is the amount that some hon. Members could spend on two dinners. I cannot speak for people in another place, but my comparison is reasonably fair. The onerous nature of the grant loan provision will deter many students from continuing further education.
A few weeks ago I went to Glasgow with some people whom one might loosely call rectors--to use the old Scottish term--of Scottish universities, to see Mr. Harrison of the Student Loans Company plc. The Minister suggested that we might go to Edinburgh. I hope that all hon. Members know that there is a difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh and that it is not just in relation to football teams. In the Student Loans Company plc the Government are erecting a massive debt collecting agency. Eventually, teams of snoopers will be employed to collect the debts that will arise if students are forced into loans.
Our nation--I am talking about Scotland--has been living on its intellectual capital for the last 20 to 25 years. Fundamental research in our universities is decreasing at a time when it should be increasing. Now universities are to be forced to undertake the onerous task of assessing hardship. There are eight Scottish universities. Will there be eight criteria for hardship? What criteria will Ministers lay down or what guidance will they give to universities? Will those institutions have to think up schemes for themselves? That is no way to administer the public purse. Will students be willing to saddle themselves with financial difficulties or will they be attracted abroad to carry out postgraduate work or fundamental research? That is the cost-benefit analysis that the nation must make. The thrust of the Government's policy is to tidy up matters between Departments. That may look good in bureaucratic terms, but it is entirely wrong for the long-term cost benefit of the nation.
I am speaking for Scotland. If there were a Scottish Parliament, it would place a high priority on education and it would tell the Scottish people that they had to pay for it. They would recognise their responsibility to attract more people into further education because of the underlying support for it.
I must be careful not to bore the House with my personal background. I left school at 14, but I have been a student all my life. I took my last degree part time at the London School of Economics in 1986. I accepted the challenge that we should not just talk about students, but should actually find out what they are like. I must beware of giving a random sample of one, but when I went to the LSE it was packed not with British, but with foreign
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students. It was full of Americans. We are forcing our universities to attract students from overseas so that they can pay their way.Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman : The overseas students obviously regard our universities as good value.
Mr. Douglas : I accept that our universities are good value, but they have to bid to a central bureaucracy on the basis of their good housekeeping. That is the quasi-market structure that the Government are trying to introduce.
The thrust of the regulations and their priorities are wrong. The Government are deterring people from working-class backgrounds from going on to higher education, so that their gifts can be used for the benefit of the nation. I am not suggesting that students should live in the lap of luxury, but onerous burdens are being placed upon them.
I shall give another example from my direct experience at Stirling. There is a proposal to put up the rents for accommodation. We are asking the students--and for reasons that I will not go into now I am resisting this-- to enhance the accommodation for disabled students. It involves the paltry sum of £60,000. The university wants to expand, but constraints are being imposed on it albeit by its short historical experience.
To constrain universities and students is to the long-term detriment of the nation. I ask the Government not to be parsimonious and not to think of the well-heeled student or his well-heeled parents. We should be attracting into education those who do not have financial help from their parents.
10.58 pm
Mr. Matthew Taylor (Truro) : I, too, only recently left full-time undergraduate life. I reinforce what has been said about the experience of undergraduates who, in many universities and colleges, are absolutely dependent upon some form of benefit. That is a reflection of, for example, the housing costs in the surrounding areas, and there is little that can be done about that.
The impact of the regulations and the removing of the benefits will be dramatic, at least for some universities and for some students. The Government's action fails to recognise the reality of life, at least for some students. Nor does it address the position of postgraduate students. The Minister's replies on that subject were inadequate.
It is ironic that this debate immediately precedes one on the assisted places scheme. There is a sharp contrast between the Government's attitude to the provision of basic maintenance for ordinary students on difficult courses throughout the country and their willingness to push ahead with pet schemes to support tiny numbers of privileged young people under the assisted places scheme. The regulations, which will remove students' entitlement to housing benefit and income support, have met with rejection from several bodies. It should hardly suprise the Government that they have been rejected by the National Union of Students or even, these days, by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals. The Minister's response to the criticisms of the Social Security Advisory Committee was not only weak but deliberately misinterpreted its observations. It is extraordinary to find the Government using in their support a report that is damning of their actions, as is that of the SSAC.
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It is all very well to argue that the committee would have been in favour of the Government's proposals if they were to be implemented in a different way, but the fact remains that the SSAC is against them as they stand. Nothing that the Minister said responded adequately to the SSAC's criticisms.The Government are failing to make available sufficient alternative finance to meet the students' needs. I am not among those who believe that--
Mr. Pawsey : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Taylor : In just a moment, but I have little time.
I do not accept that it is preferable to operate a system whereby all students receive the same amount, but which incorporates a tiny safety net- -as is suggested. A scheme tied to the real cost of being a student in certain areas would be advantageous. The Liberal Democrats would move towards a common scheme, whereby the benefits system would be used to meet the differing needs of students throughout the country.
I hope that the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) does not intend to repeat the point that he made earlier.
Mr. Pawsey : The alternative finance to which the hon. Gentleman referred already exists in the form of the £420 interest-free student loan. Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that student support in the United Kingdom continues to offer the highest benefits in the western world? If the Government were as cavalier as has been implied, there would not be 200,000 more students in advanced education today than when Labour was in office.
Mr. Taylor : By comparison with other countries, we are not devoting sufficient resources to higher and further education. Nor are we turning out the numbers that we should. The Government are culpable of a paucity of provision that they should be embarrassed to have mentioned in such debates. The theory that the loan scheme will broadly compensate students for the loss of housing and social security benefits ignores the fact that in many parts of the country many of them will be substantially worse off-- even if one does not allow for the fact that there are to be no increases in student grant with the introduction of the loan system.
The Government, together with the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth, appear to be ignoring graduate students, as they will not be eligible for student loans. It is extraordinary to find the Government introducing a system that will deprive graduate students of a large measure of the support that they currently receive. It is inappropriate that we should be debating this matter. The Government are abusing their powers, but that question will have to be dealt with elsewhere rather than here. One might be forgiven for wondering whether the Government care about the adequacy of the provisions. The increased grants for postgraduate students do not allow sufficiently for inflation. That is quite separate from the loss of benefit. The Minister has totally failed to answer the Social Security Advisory Committee's criticisms. It pointed out correctly that if a student has made the relevant contribution and meets the usual criteria, there is no obvious reason why his unemployment benefit should be withdrawn. I referred earlier to seasonal workers ; there are
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many of them in my constituency. To reverse the position, if the long break for students were in the winter instead of the summer, they would be in an almost identical position to that of seasonal workers. It would equally be possible to argue that they were deliberately going to an area where they knew that they would be out of work for a time. I hope that the Government are not suggesting that benefit should be withdrawn from them. The reason why those people are eligible for help is that they need help. However, the Minister seems to be completely uninterested in that fact. The SSAC also said that it believed unanimously that there should be a safety net to ensure that students are not left destitute, and that they should receive income support. The Government say that the access funds provide the answer to that criticism. Unless, however, much more money is provided, I do not believe that the access funds, when compared with the benefit support that is being withdrawn, can be considered in any sense to be adequate. Even after it has been uprated, the amount works out at only £116 for each postgraduate and £27 for each first-degree or other higher education student. However, the average student outside London gets £6.23 a week and a London student £14.38 a week under the present benefit arrangements. This is, therefore, a considerable cut in student support.The Social Security Advisory Committee also said that it is impossible to judge at this stage whether the amount being put into the access funds is adequate. The Government's commitment to ensuring that the access funds are administered fairly and properly is revealed to be wholly lacking, since no guidelines have been provided to the institutions that administer them. Social Security Ministers are responding to the debate. They know well that under the social security arrangements one treats individuals who are in the same circumstances in the same way. That is one of the most important principles of any support system.
The Government appear to be creating a system under which no student can be sure of his treatment by any institution. He can be virtually certain that an entirely different set of rules would apply in another institution. It is a complete and utter mess that people will be entitled to support not on the basis of what they need but purely on the basis of what the Government have allowed to a particular institution and what it feels on a particular day and at a particular time about that individual. That is a disgraceful way in which to operate a system of support and it is disgraceful that the House is being asked to agree to it.
11.8 pm
Ms. Clare Short (Birmingham, Ladywood) : The order is the final part of the Government's package in their move from student grants to student loans. We are removing the right of students to claim unemployment benefit- -for which they paid--housing benefit and income support. It means that some students' standard of living will be below that laid down in social security legislation.
We have heard that the regulations are defective. The Minister says to us, "I am putting something that is totally defective before you, but we expect you to vote it through and we shall put it right later." That says something about the Government's respect for the House of Commons.
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The regulations provide that those who have to pay rent are not deemed to be paying rent and that those who are available and looking for work are deemed not to be available for and looking for work. That is what we are talking about.The move from student grants and the availability of means-tested benefits for those who need them to student loans is deeply mistaken. It is a backward move. Compared with other countries, Britain is backward educationally. It is no good for Conservative Members to say that the numbers in higher education in Britain are increasing when we are starting from way behind and the number is increasing less rapidly than in other countries. Even South Korea has more of its young people in higher education than Britain. That is an enormous cost to the life opportunities of talented people who are not being given the chance to participate in higher education and is massively damaging to the future of Britain's economy. We are failing to nurture the talent of our people and thus slipping ever backwards relatively in our economic performance.
Mr. Pawsey : Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms. Short : No, I will not give way.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Robert Jackson) : The hon. Lady is factually incorrect.
Ms. Short : I am not factually incorrect.
The Minister for Social Security has perhaps some excuse--he is not an education Minister--for pretending to the House that there is not low participation in higher education among people from low-income backgrounds.
Mr. Quentin Davies (Stamford and Spalding) rose
Ms. Short : The statistics show that if one comes from a family with a manual background the chances of participating in higher education are very low. I am sure that the Minister knows that. Mr. Davies rose --
Ms. Short : We are massively wasting the talent of many people from low-income backgrounds--
Mr. Davies rose --
Ms. Short : I have made it clear that I do not intend to give way, but the hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) is harassing me. Time is short. He is disrupting the limited remarks that I have time to make and I ask for your protection, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that I can make them.
As I said, we are wasting the talent of people from low-income backgrounds and this move will make things fundamentally worse. The Government's excuse for the move is that students should not be supported by the social security system. That is uncontentious across the House. But it is a big fib. If one wants to remove students from the social security system, one gives them grants that leave them above the means-tested standards. The Government are removing their eligibility for means-tested benefits so that some of them will fall to a level of income lower than those who live on means-tested benefits.
The present system is that we have means-tested grants backed by access to unemployment benefit if it has been
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paid for and housing benefit and income support if they are needed. It is an efficient system in that the money is targeted and goes to those in need. People who are not in need are not eligible for means-tested benefits and those who do well as a result of their higher education and earn a higher income will pay back through the tax system. We are moving to a system that will penalise people on low incomes.Less than 20 per cent. of students claim income support in the summer vacation. To be eligible for income support they have to be available for and actively seeking work. Under this Government those tests have been made harder and harder. This provision will penalise students who come from areas of the country where there is high unemployment. Only 11.5 per cent. of all students claim housing benefit and 2 per cent. claim housing benefit in the summer. They are the students who do not have another home to go to. Those are the groups that will be penalised by the move that we are making tonight.
It is ideology run mad. The lunacy is that it will be less equitable and efficient and will cost more. Those who already have more will be better off under the new scheme and those with least will be worse off. That is what the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) did not understand. The Government are making available more money but are distributing it in such a way that the poorest will have less than they have now. Those are the facts of this new, ridiculous structure, which will cost more but be less equitable and efficient. The principle of the Thatcher years is that for those who have more, more will be given, but for those who have less, it will be taken away. That is how the regulations will apply to students.
The Government recognise that the regulations will create hardship for students from low-income households and therefore have introduced access funds--they tell us to prevent hardship. The funds will be distributed by the Government to education institutions on the basis of a formula about which we know nothing which will then distribute them to people in need. The Minister tells us that universities and polytechnics know which of their students are in need. That is not true. When a student goes to a university or polytechnic he or she does not fill out forms on income but participates in education. Being aware of the quality of a student's work tells one nothing of his or her income or maintenance means. It is an inefficient way of getting money to those in need. The Minister has not answered the point, but the legality of this move is questionable. Given that he will not answer the point, it is likely to be contested in the courts.
The Minister misled the House--I am surprised that he did so--about the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee, which was set up to replace the previous committee and to make it more favourable to the Government's social security policy. Officials appointed to it by the Government were split eight to six. The majority said that they were willing to accept the removal of housing benefit, but only on one condition. They were worried that some students would become destitute-- their word, not mine--because of the provisions of the scheme. They expressed an overriding concern about that and recommended that the Government should follow the principle that they adopted for 16 and 17-year -olds and that to avoid hardship the Secretary of State for Social Security should have discretion to authorise payment of income support for a limited period during the summer vacation.
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The Government refused to accept that recommendation and therefore have the support of no member of that committee. It was wrong of the Minister to call the committee in aid when the Government are not complying with its recommendations.As the committee said, the effect of the regulations is that destitute students will be running round our cities in the summer. Another badge of the Thatcher years is the many young homeless and destitute people in our cities. In future, highly talented qualified young people who are studying will be destitute in our cities. The proof that the Government's claim that the purpose of the regulations is to avoid students being dependent on the social security system is a big fib are their provisions for postgraduate students, who will not have access to loans and will be deprived of the right to claim housing benefit. They will simply be worse off. The Government are increasing their grants by less than inflation and taking the extra money from the pool available for postgraduate students. We shall have fewer postgraduates in the future than we have at present.
I am the first member of my family to have had a university education. I received that education because full grants were available. When I was 17 years old and was getting 2s. 6d. pocket money, I would not have contemplated the loan that is envisaged. I now know that I could have paid it back, but at that time I would not have dared. The effect of the regulations is that future generations of people like me will not have access to higher education. That is what the Government are doing tonight.
11.18 pm
Mr. Scott : The regulations cover several provisions across five separate benefits. I shall seek, in as co-ordinated and orderly a manner as possible, to respond to the points that have been made.
Mr. Douglas : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not it a courtesy that the Minister should ask the permission of the House to speak a second time?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : The Minister does not need the leave of the House on this occasion. He moved a motion.
Mr. Scott : I try to take advice on those matters and I thought for one moment that the hon. Gentleman had caught me out. I am grateful for your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Much of this evening's debate, not least the opening speech by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), has circulated round the issue of the adequacy of and the reasons for the access funds. I want to address that issue at the outset.
In response to an intervention, I said that the regulations do not in any sense relate to the distribution of the access funds. They give effect to withdrawal of benefit entitlement from most full-time students except those in vulnerable groups and the treatment of income of those in vulnerable groups who will retain entitlement. I repeat what I said : there will be no regulations covering the payment of access funds. They will be operated by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under powers in the Education Act 1944.
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Mr. Meacher : The point about there being no regulations covering the access funds is that large sums of taxpayers' money will be handed over for the unfettered discretion of education institutions. We have no idea how that money is to be used, how it will be allocated, how many will get it and how much they will get. I submit that it is improper for the Government to ask Parliament to pass legislation as open ended as that. The courts will disagree with such legislation as they have disagreed with previous legislation.
Mr. Scott : In a sense that is surprising. I seem to remember being urged by the Opposition on more than one occasion to further enhance the resources available to the independent living fund, which provides substantial sums of taxpayers' money to be distributed at the unfettered discretion of the trustees of the fund in order to meet need. Perhaps what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander according to the hon. Member for Oldham, West. Flexibility and funds distributed by people with particular expertise in and sympathy for the needs of individual groups of people in need of help is not a principle against which I would argue. The hon. Member for Oldham, West can pick and choose the issues to which he wants to apply that principle. I believe firmly in it.
Mr. Douglas : Will each institution of higher or further education devise its own criteria? Is that what we are being asked to support? Surely the Minister's colleagues will tell him that that cannot be right and that guidance will be given by the Department of Education and Science.
Mr. Scott : I shall try to address the various points that have already been raised, and how the access funds should be administered is one of them. I have just made the point that they will be operated under the powers of the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Education Act 1944.
Allocations have already been made to the funding councils and their allocations to individual colleges will be announced in the next few weeks. There was some criticism that that was all a bit late in the day. The 1989 student number data upon which the allocations will be based will not be available to those in the DES administering the access funds until later this month. The beginning of August is therefore the earliest date by which allocations can be notified to colleges. However, I believe that that still gives them adequate time before the beginning of the next academic year to make their dispositions.
Mr. Worthington : The Scottish colleges of further education to which the regulations apply start in the middle of August.
Mr. Scott : Even so, they will have a number of weeks at least in which to make their dispositions. In practice, I estimate that it will be some weeks before students come forward and ask for help from the access funds. They will have their loans and top-up grants. The access funds are, as it were, a residual--
Mr. Worthington : Is the Minister aware that the student loans scheme does not apply to Scottish FE colleges?
Mr. Scott : Of course, I understand that. I thought that the hon. Gentleman was making a general point about further education within Scotland. I believe that the access funds will be better administered by each individual education institution. Institutions will be given guidance,
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but that guidance will be largely in terms of accounting procedures and how the institutions account for the money that they get from the funding councils. They will be much more finely tuned to the needs of individuals. [Interruption.] I ask the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) to pause for just a moment. I cannot believe that the existence of access funds will not become more well known in institutions of further education.I anticipate that the National Union of Students, if no other body, will make it well known that access funds are in existence. It will be in the interest of institutions themselves also to make it known that such funds are available. They will get to know the students, and will be much better equipped to meet and assess the needs of individual students than the social security system could possibly be. The funds will be much better focused on students' needs than the generality of social security claimants could ever be. Higher education institutions will be much better informed.
There are some advantages of that system compared with the other system. For example, no student who is living in hall in any university or institution of higher education can claim housing benefit at the moment. However, a student who is in hall might be eligible for help from the access funds if he runs into particular hardship, That will certainly be an advantage of the new system. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science have already said that they intend to monitor carefully the operation of the access funds and to make sure that they are adequate to meet students' needs in the new circumstances. For example, they will reflect different rent levels in different parts of the country. That will be an important flexibility for the funds. They will become well known among students and among those who are responsible for administering them. The institutions will be able to administer them in a much more flexible manner than we possibly could through the social security system.
There is no disincentive, as the hon. Member for Oldham, West alleged, for local education authorities to make hardship payments. They are fully reimbursed by the Department of Education and Science for any payments that they make. There is no disincentive whatever for them to make special hardship payments. The payments are made entirely at the discretion of local education authorities in order to prevent hardship.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas) raised several points. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) alleged that students might pretend to cohabit to get housing benefit under the new scheme. It is, of course, up to local authorities to satisfy themselves that the conditions for entitlement to benefit are being met. If both partners are students, they would not be entitled to housing benefit unless they had dependent children, otherwise one partner must not be a student. Although I am sensitive to my hon. Friend's point--we are always conscious of the need to protect public funds--I do not see that that need be a major problem.
My hon. Friend mentioned that he saw the disregards within the present system as very generous. I certainly agree with that--they are generous. They are best targeted on those who need help most. He asked also how we would check whether the payments made from the access funds
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were regular or lump sum payments. I see no difficulty about that. Already within the income-related benefits system charitable payments can be assessed, whether they are regular or lump sum payments. Exactly the same criteria will apply in the new system of access funds as apply to charitable funds already.The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West was critical of the Government because of the percentage of students in higher education, and implied that we are performing less well than other countries. The number of 18-year- olds in higher education has steadily risen since the Government came to office. When they came to office, 11 per cent. of 18-year-olds were going into higher education. By 1990 the figure had risen to 15 per cent. We estimate that, by the end of the decade, the figure will be up to 23 per cent. When we came to office in 1979, we pledged that, by 1990, we would have achieved 1 million students in higher education. We achieved that by 1988, and the figure is still rising. As I have said, this year we have a record number of students in higher education and next year it looks as if the figures will be even better. A lot of distorted statistics have been pushed backwards and forwards across the Floor of the House this evening, but the fact is that this country's percentage of the 18-year-old cohort who graduate is one of the highest in the world--
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