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Further and Higher Education (Employer Engagement)

: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for supplying me with the parable. The story that I had in mind was that of the sower who went forth to sow and some of what he sowed fell on stony ground and some yielded an hundredfold. It might be that that principle could be applied to FE if we are to try to produce the best return on investment. I leave it to the Minister to reply to my hon. Friend's excellent suggestion. We cannot treat all universities equally, but in an ideal world, every university would at least have the potential to deploy its intellectual resources to the benefit of business, industry and the university, although we should not expect that to happen everywhere. We should not demand spin-offs as the price of our support. The Opposition support the higher education investment fund and believe in the principle that cash should go to universities with a track record of commercial co-operation. We should encourage the maximum co-operation between employers and the higher education sector because we face a real question about student finance, which the Minister mentioned. Everybody must think with the utmost seriousness about what we ask of our students in the next few years and the extra burdens that will unquestionably be placed on them. It is our duty to think of the most creative possible solutions. I want to try a small idea out on the Minister. Students can be sponsored by the Army or the police when they go through higher education or get loans for their studies from them. Does he think that business and industry might be prepared to sponsor students and help with their top-up fees and the cost of their education? I am sure that this is not an original idea, but it might become an increasingly urgent issue as the higher education financing reforms come into play and students start to face considerable debt problems. I think that everyone in the House recognises that it is good to have graduates in the physical sciences and mathematics. The Minister spoke eloquently about the problem of improving our skills base, but he did not narrow that down to the particular problems. We face a serious shortage of people who specialise in the physical sciences and mathematics. At least, everything that I read leads me to that conclusion; British business and industry certainly seem to complain about that. It strikes me that the top-up fee regime may contain the kernel of a solution to that problem in that British firms that are eager to recruit top-class graduates in the sciences and mathematics may think it worth while to support them. As an arts graduate, I hope that they would also think it worth while to sponsor arts undergraduates. I am grateful to the Minister for his comments, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings will be able to tease a little more out of him on some of his points about further education. The greater the links between business, British employers and higher education, the better it is for employers, students and universities. I doubt whether any of us would accept that universities and institutions of higher educations are businesses or that they should be transformed into businesses or run solely for the purpose of adding to the bottom line of UK plc, but I think that we all accept that they should be run in a business-like way. We will get the most from our higher education institutions if we recognise that they are all different and that the pursuit of equality in all departments is chimerical and that excellence must come first.