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Sale of Student Loans Bill

My hon. Friend is right: the book is likely to be sold on. That is the nature of this kind of business. The absolute assurance that the House seeks is that nothing is likely to occur that will jeopardise the circumstances of students or institutions of higher education. It would be difficult for any Minister, of any party, to predict how the situation might pan out. The book could be sold on over a period of years. However, allowing for that difficulty, some feel for the sort of advice that the Government have been given, some understanding of the projections they have made, and some estimate of how they expect matters to be concluded, is the least the House deserves. The House will certainly want that, both today and during our further scrutiny of the Bill. As the Minister will appreciate, another issue on which there is widespread public concern is data protection. We had a useful exchange on that earlier. Clause 6 extends previous legislation to allow data about borrowers that is held by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to be passed to loan purchasers, or potential purchasers. The Bill makes it clear that where information is shared with potential purchasers for the purpose of considering the purchase, details must be anonymised, but of course recent difficulties were about not theory, but practice. It may be necessary for the Minister to reflect on events and consider those details once again. I do not expect him to come up with an answer off the cuff today, but we might usefully consider the issue during the passage of the Bill. In the light of recent events, I would not be surprised if we came to a conclusion that was agreeable to Members across the House to strengthen protection. That would be helpful to Government, to the House, and to people affected by the legislation. It is our intention to scrutinise closely that aspect of the Bill and, if necessary, to propose amendments, if we feel that data protection is not adequately dealt with in the measures before the House. I do not want to stray into further discussion on the loss, disclosed by the Chancellor, of the details of 25 million benefit recipients. We had a word about it earlier, and it is unfair to rub salt in the wounds; I would be the last person to do that. However, I know that the Minister will have heard the story with horror, knowing that he was coming before the House today to debate the issue before us. He will be very sensitive about it, so I expect him to offer the House and the public reassurance that he will tighten the provisions of Bill, in the same spirit in which I offered to assist. We have a history of working together on legislation to best effect. On the proceeds of the sale—a matter raised by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough—there are no provisions in the Bill for the hypothecation of proceeds for reinvestment in higher education. We can therefore assume that the receipts will swell the Consolidated Fund, as the Minister confirmed that in reply to an intervention. I am certain that he will today wish to pledge to the House that higher education will get its fair share of the windfall. He would not be sticking up for his brief and defending those over whom he has stewardship if he did not do that. I would like to hear him make that firm commitment before the end of today’s proceedings. I would like the Minister to speak in a little more detail, with full technical embellishments, about the position regarding Wales. He has a bit of a record—not a happy one, it has to be said—when it comes to dealing with legislation relating to Wales. Some of us remember the Further Education and Training Bill. It will worry him to hear that I have already received representations about the aspects of the Bill relating to Wales, on matters that were mentioned by the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams). We need to be assured that those matters have been taken fully into account. Again, we will want to scrutinise that in some detail in Committee. As the Minister will recall, procedural concerns were raised with regard to the extension of powers to the Welsh Assembly when we discussed the Further Education and Training Act 2007; that was when we last faced each other in discussions on legislation. This is the second time in the space of a few weeks that I have faced the Minister on an occasion when he has felt obliged to adopt Conservative ideas. The first occasion was when, in a damascene conversion, he accepted Conservative arguments about the Learning and Skills Council’s intervention powers in further education colleges. Once again today, a Conservative idea is being embraced by the Minister. It is often suggested that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but as Adlai Stevenson once said, ““Flattery is all right so long as you don’t inhale””.