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Higher Education

I am grateful to the Minister for his kind remarks about my party’s position on some aspects of higher education. Of course, we agree with many things that he said and I admire him for the sincerity with which he speaks about widening participation. I do not want the occasion to be entirely glutinous and consensual, but I wish to congratulate British universities on their achievements. They are not only huge money-spinners for the British economy, generating £45 billion according to Universities UK, but the chief motors of social mobility and the chief emancipators of women in the past 100 years. In spite of all the social and political obligations that we politicians place on them, and all the hectoring that we give them about widening participation, they remain places of light, learning and scholarship.