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Dr. Howells: The hon. Gentleman knows, because he served on the Committee with me, that that can happen only in specific circumstances. If universities put up tuition fees to a particular level and do not stick to the deal, there must be some way of protecting the students who have entered the university on that contract. Is he saying that if a university reneges on a deal with students, it should be allowed to get away with it?
Chris Grayling: What I am saying is that when the Government told us in Committee that the fine could be £500,000, they did not tell us that they would slip through provision to fine the universities millions of pounds more if they did not do as they were told.
Universities can be fined a further amount if they do not spend all their widening participation money. They can be forced to repay that money with a surcharge. In total, they can be fined millions of pounds if they do not do what the access regulator tells them. The access regulator, remember, is an unreconstructed old Labour class warrior. What conclusions should we and the university sector draw? Is it any wonder that last week I was told by a board member of one of Britain's leading universities that universities will have no choice but to discriminate against applicants from independent schools?
Then there are the benchmarks that HESA has just produced, criticising 17 universities for not admitting enough state school pupils. The figures show, for example, that Cambridge university should increase the number of state school pupils that it admits from 57 per cent. to 75 per cent. We do not believe we should have a national benchmark telling Cambridge university how many state school students it should admit. My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) and I have not always seen eye to eye in recent months, but his point about 46 per cent. being an appropriate benchmark was a telling one that the Government should listen to carefully.
I thought that even the Prime Minister agreed with our proposition. In response to a question from me last year, he said that
"people should go to university based on their merit, whatever their class or background. That is what should happen."—[Official Report, 26 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 256.]
He is right, so why is he presiding over a Government who have the express goal of doing the opposite?
The publication of the benchmarks prompted widespread criticism. Senior figures at Oxford reopened the issue of that university becoming a wholly private institution. The warden of Trinity college told the Government to
"get its tanks off our lawns".
The Minister said today that benchmarks are of little importance. He played them down and did not explain why they were mentioned in the original official guidance to the access regulator. Let me press him: will he or the Under-Secretary who winds up the debate give a clear commitment to scrap the benchmarks? Why are they called benchmarks? Referring to statistics is fine, but benchmarks or performance indicators require a purpose.
No Conservative Member wants bright young students to be deprived of educational opportunities. We want universities to continue their good work to attract students from different backgrounds. However, all the evidence shows that the Government are missing the point with their ill-thought-out policy, which will do damage to the country.
The problem is not the university admissions system. The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) seemed unaware of that when he spoke of the actions of what he dubbed "the Conservative establishment." Almost all young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds who have good GCSEs go on to higher education. The problem is not post-GCSE attainment but that those young people do not get good exam results initially.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman may recall that I was not in total agreement with the Government about variable tuition fees. However, in many communities such as my constituency, fear of debt is a genuine issue, whatever the attainment. How will the Conservative party's imposition of a commercial interest rate on student loans help to provide more fairness and equality of opportunity to get to university?
Chris Grayling: The hon. Gentleman knows that many of those entering university for the first time choose to do that in a local college or university. They suffer from the Government's ill-thought-out policy of imposing tuition fees. People who live at home and some mature students will be clobbered by the Government's fees. Under our scheme, that will not happen: they will leave university without debt. Under the Government's scheme, they will leave with heavy debt.
If the Government want more young people from lower socio-economic groups to go to university, they must tackle the poverty of aspiration that exists in too many parts of our society. That was well described by my hon. Friends the Members for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) and for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb). We need to ensure that fewer young people are trapped in what the Government described as "bog-standard comprehensives". We need to ensure that we have more discipline in schools, that we allow teachers to teach and not only work to maintain order in the classroom. We must look after our schools. That is the route to solving the problem.
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The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) mentioned rising school standards. He should ask himself why, if standards are rising so high, so many universities need to hold remedial classes for students when they arrive, to pick up the pieces in maths, English and foreign languages, in which our schools have failed to do their job.
A worrying aspect of the debate is the way in which the Government are so hung up on Oxford and Cambridge. They appear to believe that only Oxford and Cambridge matter. Many of our universities are deeply disappointed in the Government's approach. Every university has its strengths, as, to give him credit, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis) pointed out. Throughout the country, there are universities with departments that are at the forefront of their subject. To suggest that going to a modern university is bad for students is to do a disservice to all the hard-working teams in modern universities.
Students in Northumbria university's excellent law school do not view their counterparts up the road in Newcastle with awestruck envy. They believe that their course is better. Students at the sports science department at the university of Hertfordshire mingle with some of the greatest sportsmen and women of our nation. Modern universities are quick to challenge some of the broader assumptions. The third highest performing university in terms of graduate starting salaries is not Oxford or Cambridge but South Bank university. It was proud to point that out to me when I visited it last week. Our modern universities do a first-rate job and we should not talk them down, as the Government seem to do.
The Government's approach has nothing to do with the interests of this country, helping our universities to excel on the world stage or delivering higher-quality academic achievement. It has everything to do with perpetuating class envy, which, we believed, was part of the Labour party's history. Sadly, it still appears to be present in the Labour party today.
I spent yesterday afternoon at Old Trafford watching Arsenal's unbeaten run come to an end. Next May, we shall ensure that the Government's unbeaten run comes to an end. When that happens, we shall return some sense to higher education policy. Under the next Conservative Government, students will be judged on merit, ability and potential. We will abolish the access regulator. There will be no more access agreements or fines if universities do not do what the Government tell them.
Our alternative approach to student funding will scrap fees and cut debt for all students. It will strengthen our universities financially, with no strings attached. We will tackle the real cause of problems in our education system—the standard of education in our primary and secondary schools—by giving teachers more control and parents more choice.
6.45 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Ivan Lewis):
Like my hon. Friend the Minister, I welcome the debate because it shattered some myths that are often repeated and truly
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exposed the differences between us and the Conservative party on issues that are vital to the character and destiny of our nation.
The debate matters because it concerns the aspirations, ambitions and anxieties of many young people and their families as they chart their path to the future. As politicians, we should never underestimate how the apparent need for short-term point scoring deeply affects many teenagers who are working hard to gain a place in higher education.
Several important contributions were made and, in the short time available, I shall try to answer some of them. First, let me deal with the contribution of the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Let us be clear about Conservative funding policy for higher education. As defined by the shadow Chancellor, it is to match the Government's spending on schools. The implication is that there will be cuts in early-years and higher education and in adult skills. Although Conservative Members claim that they would no longer cap the numbers who go into higher education, the funding available to universities would be cut and we would return to the days of the previous Conservative Government.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of determination to break our unbeaten record. The structural problems that we are discussing today were caused by the unbroken 18 years of Conservative Government, which created the low achievement and low aspirations that are endemic in so many parts of our community.
Now that Sir Martin Harris declares himself to be an old Labour class warrior, he is unacceptable to the hon. Gentleman, but when he was vice-chancellor of one of the best universities in the country, the hon. Gentleman would have given him autonomy in decision making.
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