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5.14 pm
Mr. Robert Jackson (Wantage): I support the Bill, which, I believe, contains hidden depths. On the surface, it looks like a piece of purely technical legislation--so
technical, indeed, that it has been capable of being carried over from one Parliament to another, and from a Conservative to a Labour Government. Notwithstanding the disclaimers in the Minister's opening speech, however, beneath the surface, it opens the way potentially--I stress the word "potentially"--to a revolutionary improvement in the conditions in which higher education is provided in Britain. That is why I strongly disagree with the analysis that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis).
On 27 November 1995, on Second Reading of the earlier, related Bill, I set out something of the background to the legislation as I saw it. The significance of this Bill--the Minister glossed over this point--is that, by privatising the debts of students and former students to the Student Loans Company, it enables that debt to be increased without reference to the public sector borrowing requirement and the limits on public borrowing. That opens the way to a welcome extension of support, through loans, for the many students who are currently excluded, such as part-time and postgraduate students. It opens the way to an extension of student loans to support the payment of tuition fees for higher education. That, in turn, opens the way to an increase in the resources available for higher education--for which the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough called--after many years of falling per capita costs. Perhaps even more important, it will potentially enable universities to recover a stronger sense of their autonomy and independence, after a long period in which those values have been regrettably eclipsed.
On Wednesday, the Government will make a statement about the report of Sir Ron Dearing's committee of inquiry into the funding of higher education. The Bill can, I think, be seen as paving the way for that statement--I do not believe that the timing of today's debate is accidental. As the two are thus intimately linked, and as this is almost certainly the only opportunity that I shall have to make a speech on this issue before the autumn, I want to say one or two things about the new regime of tuition fees which at last seems to be coming into view.
The reports in the press about the Government's intentions are confusing and contradictory. We have already engaged in some discussion of them during points of order. It seems that the Government have decided three main points--first, that there will be a tuition fee; secondly, that this will constitute an additional income for universities; and, thirdly, that the parental contribution to student maintenance will continue.
If those are indeed the Government's intentions, I congratulate them. It is 10 years almost to the month since, as the Minister responsible for higher education, I attempted to launch a public debate about what were then called top-up fees. I remember a conversation with some journalists--leading to blaring headlines--in which the figure of £500 a year was mentioned. Ten years later, after a period of some inflation, it looks as though the figure will be £1,000. My comment is "Better late than never". If the Government are indeed taking that line, let me say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench that, after 10 years, it is high time that the nettle was grasped. If that is what the Government are going to do, they deserve and should have our support.
We should support the Government if they have indeed decided to accept the recommendation of Sir Ron's committee, which envisages a tuition fee of £1,000 a year. I refer my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) to my speech in the public expenditure debate on 6 March, when I argued against replacing the parental contribution to student maintenance by an extension of the loan scheme. As I explained in that speech, replacing parental contributions by loans would be regressive in terms of social and financial equity. Above all, it would remove the prospect of the universities acquiring access to a new stream of income under their own control and, therefore, of strengthening their autonomy and independence.
It is that concern with the universities' independence and autonomy that leads me, however, to say to the Government that I hope that the figure of £1,000 that has been bandied about will not be regarded as a flat-rate sum, and that the legislation to enable tuition fees to be paid by loans from the Student Loans Company Ltd. or its successors will be as flexible as possible. The right approach is that which I set out in my speech in March, according to which the Government should indicate a maximum sum that they are prepared to allow the student loan fund to provide for tuition fees, but, beyond that, the Government should not intervene to require a fee at that rate, and only at that rate, to be levied. Indeed, one might argue that, with the passage of the Bill, even such a limitation on the part of the Government would be unnecessary as, with student loans in the private sector representing no additional cost to public expenditure, the Government no longer have any financial interest in restricting the amount of student borrowing and, therefore, of university charging.
I hope that the Government will disregard the out-of-date view that they have a duty to intervene by fixing a flat-rate fee to ensure that institutions of higher education do not compete with one another. They are already in fierce competition to attract the best students. I hope also that the Government will disregard the view that it is somehow illegitimate to distinguish between courses on the ground of price. There are already huge incentives for students to choose one course rather than another, arising from the different expectations of income after graduation that are held out by different courses--not that any of this seems to be in any way a material factor in influencing student choices. Arguments such as those reflect an outdated and excessively paternalistic concept of the Government's role in relation to students and universities.
It needs to be recognised that, inevitably, the costs of higher education courses vary considerably. There are some courses--for instance, those provided by the conservatoires of music--that cannot be taught without high-cost one-on-one or small-group tuition. There are also remedial and access courses for the all-too-many students with high intellectual potential that has not been sufficiently developed in our schools. Those also often require one-on-one or small-group tuition, leading to costs higher than the average. Similarly, dare I say it, there are students whose intellectual potential and attainments are such that they, too, will benefit significantly from higher-cost methods of tuition.
It would be unnecessary and a reflection of an outdated, bureaucratised concept of the relationship between Government and higher education for the Government to
insist on any policy that presupposes or tends towards the equalisation of costs in higher education. In this context, I want to make special mention--I hope that the Minister will note this point--of the position of Oxford and Cambridge and their college fees. This is an important question because of its relation to the international stature of those universities and the advantages that that brings to this country.
The justification of these college fees is, as I have pointed out, that, for certain types of student, in certain specific situations, it may be desirable that higher tuition costs should be incurred. Admittedly, it was always anomalous in the old bureaucratic system, which we are now, I hope, replacing, that this claim was not fairly and squarely measured against other claims through the higher education funding system operated by the University Grants Committee and its successors. There was always, I concede, something suspect about the fact that the Oxbridge college fees were paid, so to speak, out of the Secretary of State's back pocket. But I hope that, in this new era, the Oxford and Cambridge colleges will not now have to pay a penalty for the special dispensation that they have received in the past. It would not be right for the Government simply to abolish their contribution to Oxbridge college fees. And it would be still worse, and probably unconstitutional under the forthcoming Bill of Rights, for the Government to seek to prevent the colleges from charging such fees.
The proper course is to remit the question of Oxbridge college fees to the higher education funding councils and, at the same time, to leave it to the colleges to charge fees at their own discretion, using the private sector loan scheme that the Bill will open up.
I know that one of the concerns here relates to equality of access to Oxford and Cambridge and, indeed, to all our institutions of higher education. But, again, it would be an example of outdated thinking to conclude from the admirable principle that access should be open equally to all on merit, that the only way of doing that would be by equalising the financial terms for all courses. As I suggested in my speech in March, the right way for the Government to address this issue is for them to say to higher education institutions that, as they benefit and will continue to benefit from substantial taxpayer funding, the Government expect them to continue to operate, under a new regime of tuition fees, what the American private universities call a "means-blind" system of admission. Admission to universities, including our world-class universities, must be strictly on academic merit--and I hope that I need not add that that does not mean that their admission policies should be determined by any sort of quota system.
Behind and above all these technical details, there stands a high principle that I believe the Government wish to honour. That principle is that there is, indeed, such a thing as "society" and that there is and needs to be a wide range of flourishing, independent and diverse "intermediate institutions" between the state and the individual--intermediate institutions of which the university is not the least important.
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