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Higher Education

I, too, congratulate the Minister on introducing today’s debate. Like many others in the House, I share a real interest in widening participation in higher education. As hon. Members may well know, before I entered the House, I worked in higher education and did stints at Ruskin college and the Open university, two institutions that are absolutely committed to widening participation. The debate is important, because it underpins values held by the Labour party, most notably the value of securing equal opportunity for all socio-economic groups when it comes to education. That is one of our foundations, and it remains an important aspiration. I am sorry to start on a contentious note, but I could not disagree more with the hon. Members for Henley (Mr. Johnson) and for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) about the Government’s aspiration of getting 50 per cent. of young people into higher education. We have to look closely at why the Government set that target. It has helped us to shape the debate about higher education by focusing it clearly on getting more people into HE.