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Higher Education

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I welcome the fact that that is happening in British universities of every kind. I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will go further with the tax breaks and incentives that he can give to people who put something back by investing in the institutions from which they have benefited. Although we have teased each other about this, it is true that variable fees, or top-up fees, as the Lib Dems successfully called them, have been a success story. Those of us who passionately believed in variable fees and still have the bruises from our discussions about them in the House—they were backed by a very narrow vote in the opposition of Liberal Democrat and Conservative Members—are seeing that the measure is showing much success. English universities are out-competing universities in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales on applications, and there is evidence that more children in England from deprived social and economic backgrounds are going into higher education than in other parts of the United Kingdom. That is a success story. Although we did not know about this, one of the less successful aspects of the measure that is now materialising—we have evidence for it—is the paradox that the universities with the most funding for bursaries have fewer students from socially deprived backgrounds to whom to award them. We have a problem that the research-rich universities have a disproportionate amount of funding for bursaries compared with the less well-endowed universities, where the need for bursaries is greater. We must do something about that. I heard what the Minister said about the use of unused funding for social inclusion, but there would be a danger that we could develop a system similar to that in independent schools. Independent schools justify their position to me by saying that they put money back into poorer students, but the ““poorer students”” to whom they give bursaries tend to be those with parents who are not very well-off and are struggling with the fees, rather than children who are from very poor backgrounds, but have ability. There is a danger that such a situation might arise if we were to give the bursaries to people who did not really deserve them.