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Higher Education

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue, because a considerable dead-weight cost is attached to the proposal. In addition, inequality problems would arise because the proposal favours the very wealthiest students, with poorer students possibly seeking to borrow money in order to pay back early what they owe. For those reasons, we reject the Opposition proposal. Given the current nature of the economy, let us consider where graduates find themselves at this time. We are obviously pleased that the worst fears of the Association of Graduate Recruiters about the effect of the recession on graduate vacancies have not been realised. The latest figures from the association and elsewhere suggest that things in the graduate labour market are beginning to look up. The Government's response to the particular problems that graduates have faced during the recession and the help that we and our partners have given to enhance employability skills and to boost students' CVs will now start to pay dividends. The creation of the graduate talent pool and of no fewer than 24,000 graduate internships have been an important part of that, as has the scheme that we launched recently with Raleigh International to provide overseas placements for young people from poorer backgrounds. However, we must do more to help those who have taken up the new university places that we have created to carry the benefits of that opportunity through to the world of work. That is why we also recently announced 8,500 internships with small businesses, in partnership with the Federation of Small Businesses. Those internships are in priority sectors like the digital economy, the low-carbon economy and advanced manufacturing, and we hope to see their number grow over the next period. We hope that that approach will foster new relationships between small and medium-sized enterprises and universities. We also hope that it will also introduce graduates to the jobs of the future and give them an insight into the world of the entrepreneur. We have also asked all higher education institutions to produce a statement on how they can promote employability, and on how they plan to make access to information about employability outcomes available to prospective students. That hard effort to increase the number of internships was scoffed at by the Opposition when we first proposed it. They said that it would not and could not work, and that it was wasted money. However, I remind them that our proposals are eons away from the failed youth training scheme that was offered to young people in the previous recession, when neither graduates nor young people who were a long way from going to university were supported. We are working with the Federation of Small Businesses and with industry to ensure that young people are not sitting unemployed. That is why there has been the decline in unemployment figures; they are employed and they are getting the skills, particularly the soft skills, that industry needs. We remain committed to widening participation and access. We continue to monitor the situation for students this year, reflecting and remembering that now, in March, we are still very early in the cycle. I would ask the hon. Member for Havant not to be opportunistic with his prospective parliamentary candidates and others about this participation scheme, and ask him to think carefully about the messages that he is sending to young people. I also say to him that if he is serious about wanting to stand on this side of the Dispatch Box, he must come forward with a proposal that is properly costed and funded and that is actually workable. I remind him again that when we announced our policy to provide the support that we are giving young people in this more difficult economic time, he opposed those policies as well. He was wrong then and he is wrong now, and that is why I suspect he will never make it from being not a bad writer to being a Minister in a future Government.