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Higher Education

I am sure that my hon. Friend is absolutely right about the sage of Twickenham. I am looking forward to many debates in the general election, but particularly to the debate among the Treasury spokesmen of the three parties. I shall now turn to the text of the motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I have been attempting to do for the past 10 minutes or so. It focuses on the number of applicants for higher education in the forthcoming academic year. The Minister eventually conceded that there has been an increase in demand, as he put it, for places this year, just as there was last year, but the people who apply this year will be competing with the people who lost out last year. In our debates at this time last year, Liberal Democrat and Conservative Members pointed out that a crisis was unfolding before our eyes, and the Minister said that the process was competitive—he has repeated that today—and that the people who lost out could always come back in the following year. So the Government must have known that this year's position would potentially be even worse than last year's, but they do not seem to have a clear response to that yet. Their response last year was completely inadequate: they eventually allowed universities to expand the number of places, but did not provide them with the normal teaching grant from the funding council to make sure that places were funded, so universities took on the cost of the Government's lack of foresight and planning. As this is a Conservative Opposition day, I shall address the Conservatives' proposals.