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Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con): If the hon. Gentleman forgives me, I want to agree with everything he has just said. Does he agree that it would be better to spend taxpayers' money on those early years of a child's education—[Hon. Members: ''We are.'']—rather than on an artificial target of 50 per cent. going to university? As he said, it is wrong to force people into university just because of some artificial target when they might be better suited to a further education course. The right way to affect a child's life chances is right at the beginning of their life, not when they are 18. The Chairman: Order. I hesitate to set a dangerous precedent, but we are supposed to be discussing OFFA, and I have not heard that word very recently. Mr. Mudie: Thank you, Mr. Gale, for rightly bringing me back on track. I appeal to the hon. Lady not to limit herself to agreeing with what I said in Column Number: 514 the past 10 minutes. What about the 10 minutes before that?I take the outreach work very seriously, and I hope that OFFA will pursue that. It does matter; it is not a sop. Youngsters see university as a strange world up on a hill, and it is not part of their world; it belongs to another group of people not related to them, and is strange, worrying and expensive. If the outreach process gets those youngsters into university so that they can see that it is filled with ordinary people and is a nice, exciting place, we will have gone a long way to widening participation. Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion) (PC): I apologise to members of the Committee, particularly the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie), because I may miss the later part of the debate owing to a long-standing engagement this afternoon. However, I want to support just about everything that he said, apart from one thing. I also oppose amendment No. 24. I listened with interest to the philosophical ideas of the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) and although he said some important things, they do not read across well to the Bill's implementation. My concern is that OFFA will not be strong enough. It will be a paper tiger and will not achieve increased participation from the poorest and most disadvantaged in our society, which is what the Government say they want to achieve. A couple of days ago, we had an exchange involving the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), the Minister and myself, in which it was acknowledged that the proportion of people from the most deprived groups at university had increased by a measly 1 per cent. We all accept that that is not good enough. The question is how OFFA and related provisions in the Bill can increase that participation. The real work is now being done by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, through widening participation. In that respect I disagree with the hon. Member for Leeds, East. He said that we could not take people from postcode areas and socially engineer them into university, but that is what we need to do, even though there are some challenges. HEFCW has set a target for higher education institutions in Wales to increase the numbers coming from the 100 poorest communities in Wales—the 100 community first areas—from the current 8.5 per cent. to about 11 per cent. In other words, the proportion of young people at higher education institutions from those areas is to reflect the general proportion in the population as a whole, according to academic ability. That point needs to be made, but it has not so far been addressed. I do not think that anyone in the Committee believes in eugenics, so surely no one would seriously say that a person's intellectual potential is decided by postcode. Wherever a person lives, they must have the same potential for intellectual merit for university purposes as someone from any other part of the United Kingdom. The differences come from opportunity, culture, education, what is available in the home and the opportunities that a child receives from his or her first day in nursery and onwards. I Column Number: 515 agree with the hon. Gentleman about that. It is right to set clear targets for higher education institutions to attract both applicants and admissions from those poorest communities because, no matter how we look at the issue, they use taxpayers' money. I should like that to be promoted by the Bill and OFFA.The draft regulations to which the hon. Gentleman referred do not apply to Wales yet—the situation there will be different. However, my reading of the regulations is that OFFA will not do what I described. That will still be the responsibility of HEFCE and HEFCW, which is basically the widening participation and funding route. Admissions are not addressed in the plans, which is why amendment No. 24 is not only wrong in principle, but wrong in practice. OFFA will not be doing much admission work. The plans are at a higher level, although I am concerned that they are at too a high level and not firmly integrated with the day-to-day admissions work of universities.
4 pmThe problem is not as simple as telling a higher education institution, ''You must have x admissions from the 100 poorest communities,'' or whatever, because those people will not be ready. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that they will not be ready to enter university on day one and suddenly cope with the range of expectations of them. I am sure that he was right about Leeds, but there has been excellent outreach work in Aberystwyth, going into communities, locally and throughout west Wales. Summer school work and other schemes have been undertaken to attract pupils to becoming familiar with the university environment and studying, as the hon. Member for Cambridge said, before they take the plunge into university life. The ability is there; it is innate in our population. The problem is to unlock that ability and to ensure that the poorest people and those in the communities that least expect their young people to go to university have the opportunity to be fast-tracked. If we must do that to ensure better equity in society, I agree with the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) that that is not social engineering, but social justice. I support that fully. There are problems with OFFA. I am worried that it will be a bureaucratic sledgehammer to crack a nut. It might be better to concentrate on building and enhancing the widening participation plans in HEFCE and HEFCW. My final point is that there is a downside in Wales, and that is a message for all of us in England Wales. None the less, I support the identifying of the 100 most deprived communities—the community first areas—and working in those communities to encourage young people to consider university as part of their future. Many communities in Wales, particularly in rural areas, are outwith those 100 wards but have sub-wards or sub-areas with particular difficulties—for example, transport. One of the problems with postcode work is Column Number: 516 that we forget about the wider community setting in which people live.Many communities throughout south Wales and in the declining ex-mining valleys of south Wales are not included in the 100 community first areas, but suffer from the same poverty of aspiration. We must work with the higher education institutions to ensure that they do not just meet their social engineering targets, but that they look at the wider aspects of widening participation. That target for higher education institutions is a challenge. We are trying to address that in the Bill by encouraging a much closer correlation between public expenditure and the public good that we expect from that expenditure. I see nothing wrong with that. Although I have serious questions about how OFFA will benefit many parts of England—it is for English Members to criticise or accept that—the tools are right within the framework of the Bill. That is why I hope that the Committee will resist amendment No. 24. Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con) rose— Alan Johnson rose—
The Chairman: Order. It is the paramount duty of the Chair to protect the rights of Back Benchers, but we have been debating this clause for a very long time and I notice that the Minister rose, as he is entitled to do. It seems to me that it would be appropriate at this point to hear from the Minister. It will then be for hon. Members to determine whether they wish to speak again. However, if the Member in charge of the lead amendment rises to his feet to wind up the debate before 5 o'clock when the guillotine falls, I shall feel obliged to call him. Alan Johnson: Thank you, Mr. Gale. As our sitting will finish at 5 o'clock, it is important to respond to some of the points that have been made and to some of the specific questions that have been asked. I realise that the debate is not over and that the quality will deteriorate in the next few minutes, but it will pick up again afterwards. I hope that other hon. Members will have a chance to speak after me. What strikes me is that we have had a high-quality debate, which is extraordinary because the argument made by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell and other Opposition Members was that we should have no regulation whatsoever and many of the arguments from Labour Members were that we should go further. Nevertheless, the points of agreement were more numerous than the points of disagreement, and I want to explain why we set so much store by that and will try to calm some of the concerns expressed by Opposition Members that the provision will be obnoxious—to use the words of the hon. Member for Hertsmere—and to reassure Labour Members that it will not be ineffective and that we have achieved the right balance. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell obviously feels passionately about this issue. He said that we were trying to tell universities what they could and could not do, that these were social engineering measures and that we were gerrymandering admissions. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North said that the Opposition were Column Number: 517 building a straw man. The problem with the hon. Gentleman's comments is that the Opposition are not arguing against what we are proposing, but against what they believe we might mean by what we are proposing. In some cases, they are arguing against interference with the admissions policies of universities. We have not proposed that, and would not propose that. We have gone to great lengths to say why we agree with them that it would be totally wrong to do so. I accept many of the points made by Opposition Members, but they advanced very eloquent and passionate arguments against something that we are not proposing.
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