| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
22 Jan 2003 : Column 312—continued
Mr. Robert Jackson (Wantage): I congratulate the Secretary of State on a brave and bold policy. Higher education has reached a crossroads, and the
Government are taking the right turning. They are creating a mixed economy in higher education, and that is very welcome. In the last century, one Cambridge college, Trinity, won more Nobel prizes than did the whole of France. Does the right hon. Gentleman share my hope that the new arrangements will make it possible for that college and others to match that record in this century?
Mr. Clarke: I appreciate the support from the hon. Gentleman, whose experience as a Minister with responsibility for higher education informs what he says. I hope that, in this increasingly competitive world, we will be able to achieve that aim. What characterises the hon. Gentleman's contribution to the debate, both publicly in this place and privately, is a desire to discuss the serious issues about the future of our universities. I say to Conservative Front Benchers and to the Liberal Democrats, who are also trying to have a serious debate, that this is a national issue that has to be resolved, and hard decisions must be made. I believe that our proposals are right, but we must discuss the issues properly on their merits—I am encouraged by the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman)—and that is how I want to proceed.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The House will know that I am obliged to take notice of the Modernisation Committee's recommendation that there be an hour for statements. I therefore need the co-operation of the House, and questions must be brief.
Angela Eagle (Wallasey): I welcome the increase in resources and the fact that my right hon. Friend is wrestling with these difficult issues. Does he recognise, however, that many of us on the Labour Benches are very worried about the concept of variable top-up fees and their possible effects on the practical chances of people from poorer backgrounds aspiring to some of the elite universities?
Mr. Clarke: I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says. I know that she speaks for a number of my colleagues, who have expressed precisely the same concern, and that the motive for their concern is the question of access to the elite universities. My hon. Friend will have in her constituency, as I have in mine, estates and areas where the hope of university education is a long way off. The proposals on financial issues and, even more importantly, on getting universities to interrelate with schools in those areas take us a significant way down the path that we need to take.
I cannot hide from the House my acceptance of the fact that the fear of debt, which my hon. Friend mentioned, is a real issue, as I said in response to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis). The question for me is how, and in what context, we deal with that. I am happy to discuss with my honourable Friend and other colleagues the best way of doing that. However, I repeat that finance is not the only issue of access, and we have to consider the matter in the round.
Mr. Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks): Will the access regulator have the power to enforce on universities an
admissions procedure that compels them to admit students who they do not consider will benefit from higher education—yes or no?
Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the defence of the status quo simply serves to reproduce the existing inequalities in our education system, and that is why we have to transform the balance of public investment from higher education to primary, secondary and further education? I congratulate him on his courage in tackling this issue. This is the first Government seriously to propose radical changes to widen access to higher education.
Will the access regulator permit top-up fees only when the university concerned has a proven track record of widening access, rather than on the basis of a statement of intent to do so?
Mr. Clarke: I appreciate my hon. Friend's support, and I pay tribute to his work, on the Select Committee and elsewhere, in the debate on these questions. The role of the access regulator will be to establish that any university that wants to consider raising fees has to have in place a process to widen access. The regulator will also have responsibility for monitoring that process against targets set by the university itself, and it will have the right to state that the university is not doing what it said it would do. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating; there will not be a process of clever bidding, but a real test.
Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury): It has to be right that as many young people as possible are given access to education, but they must also have access to training. Given that a sizeable number of graduates are unemployed or doing jobs that do not require degrees while a number of organisations and public services have a desperate skills shortage, is not the 50 per cent. target for universities wrong? Should we not take a more balanced approach to education and training? In other words, is not training more appropriate for some young people than a university education?
Mr. Clarke: All I can say is that I agree. We proposed two-year vocational degrees precisely to meet those concerns. I know from initial conversations that private business will want to pursue that route, and as I said, my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Health and the Home Secretary also support that policy. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman puts his cogently argued case to his Front-Bench colleagues.
Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North): I guarantee my right hon. Friend a warm welcome at Carrow Road on Saturday afternoon. He talks about rigorous research assessment. Will he get rid of the much-maligned research assessment exercise used in universities? When he talks about public and private sector influence on funding, does he mean that both sectors will write off student debt? Many of us would welcome that as a major step forward, especially if it included the private employers who take on our bright young people but do not put much into their initial training.
Mr. Clarke: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's question. I am sure that, at Carrow Road on Saturday,
we will cheer the team on together and see them defeat the team of the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Higher Education in the FA cup.We are talking not about getting rid of the research assessment exercise but about changing it. Professor Gareth Roberts has been leading the approach to that. There are problems in the system, which is why changes are proposed, and we intend to implement Professor Roberts's recommendations.
On public and private, there are a number of public and private employers who wish to give money and pay fees for people when they take them on. We do that ourselves for teachers of certain specialist disciplines, and the Department of Health does it for certain medical and other disciplines. I hope and believe that that will be extended, as it has a major positive benefit for public sector management and helps with the renewal of operations. I cannot give a firm assurance, but we intend to go down that route, which will mean that employers will contribute more substantially.
Adam Price (East Carmarthen and Dinefwr): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the statement. I am a little slow—I did not have the benefit of an elitist university education—so perhaps he could explain in simple terms why, if it is right for the Government to pay tuition fees in full for students from the lowest income background, even with the reintroduction of the maintenance grant, they are not prepared to do so with deferred top-up fees? Is it not the case that the equality of opportunity that the Secretary of State espouses will not be achieved by deepening the fact and perception of postgraduate debt, which is presumably why his Labour colleagues in Wales disagree with him?
Mr. Clarke: I think that I can help the hon. Gentleman, much as it pains me to do so. We will introduce £1,000 maintenance grants in 2004 and they will run through the whole period. The money will still be there for whatever system we use, but we are ready to consider for 2006 onwards, when the top-up fees come in, the possibility of using that money to pay for the top-up fee component. There is a real debate about the best way of using that resource to target students from the poorest backgrounds, but we cannot make a decision until we have a better idea of how many universities will increase their fees.
Mrs. Betty Williams (Conwy): I heard my right hon. Friend's answer to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr Willis) about the situation in Wales and his explanation for why he made no reference to it in his statement. Is he aware of news which appeared on the Wales section of the BBC website yesterday at 11.15 am, which said:
- "The Assembly will be handed complete responsibility for student finance in Wales".
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |