---

Higher Education

As you rightly said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, this is a very important debate. I know that young people will be following our proceedings, and I am pleased to make a contribution, not only because of that, and not only because I am a recovering academic. I taught in the university system in the mid-1980s, and I recall what it was like at that time—the inadequate facilities that we were trying to cope with, the limited experience that students had, the pressure on courses, the large seminar groups, and the difficulty that many had in getting into the system. The system of the 1980s short-changed students who were at university and denied life-changing opportunities to others who should have been at university but could not get there because of the lack of funding. One of the reasons I left academia to come here was to try to address some of those problems and to seek a transformation in the university experience of students, which is what has been happening for the past 10 years. I wanted more people to go to university and those who did go to enjoy high-quality courses. About 300,000 more students are now going to university, and the chances of getting there have improved. I did some research that shows that 10 years ago about 64 per cent. of those applying to university got in; the figure now stands at about 68 per cent., so there is a distinct improvement. In my own constituency, which started from quite a high base, the figure has risen by a further 27 per cent. in the past 10 years. I wanted extra investment to go in to support each student who was at university, and that, too, is exactly what has been happening—it is up by a third in real terms and now stands very favourably against the OECD average. I wanted more students from lower income backgrounds to get into universities, and because of the policies that we have been pursuing, we are seeing the fastest rise in access to university for students from lower decile backgrounds and some of the poorest and most deprived areas in the country. One thing that is making a big difference on that is education maintenance allowance. EMA support makes the difference for people who might otherwise have left the education system at 16 making the choice to stay in. Because of EMA, they see their potential and realise that they can get to university. Any proposal to scale back EMA or to abolish it completely, which we are hearing from Opposition parties, would be detrimental to their declared objectives for universities. I wanted more investment in further education colleges as well as in universities. In my constituency, we have seen a transformation in Warwickshire further education college in the past 10 years—a record level of investment and a sharp increase in the number of students who go through. That is partly attributable to the inspirational leadership of Ioan Morgan, who is due to retire this summer, and whose great work and contribution should be acknowledged. I have also seen the difference in the two local universities, Coventry and Warwick. The latter is now among the top universities internationally. It is highly successful at securing private investment, but it is still dependent on significant public investment to sustain it. It plays a key role in the west midlands economy. The Warwick manufacturing group has become world renowned for its contribution, and Warwick's medical school, which is new under this Government, now trains around 1,000 doctors and levers in important private research money. It is now involved in some leading aspects of medical research. Warwick medical school is supported by £6 million from Advantage West Midlands, the regional development agency. I am concerned at the suggestions we hear from the Opposition parties that RDAs might disappear, which again does not sit very neatly with their alleged aspirations to improve universities and the university experience. Many of those developments have been supported by the controversial reform of funding, about which we have had intense debates. However, I believe that we have settled on a fair policy. It recognises that there will continue to be a major public contribution to support people going through university, but also that there will be a contribution from the students themselves, reflecting the long-term advantage that they will gain. I wanted a review after the original cohort had left university, and I am pleased that that is now happening. I am delighted that the review will involve student representation—indeed, students will be represented by a Warwick university student. We should await the outcome of the review, but if it concludes that we are keeping the fees system, I hope that we will not depart from the core principles of widening access, improving quality and matching any change in fees with changes in grant. May I make one long-term proposal to my hon. Friend the Minister? Can we think again about child trust funds? I raised that in 2003 when we debated revising the cap on fees, but I want to talk about it again. The first child trust funds will be fully maturing in about eight years' time. Will the Government consider allowing some people to convert their child trust fund as it matures into an education trust fund if they choose to use it to fund themselves through university? If they come from a family background that meant that they benefited from additional top-ups during the growth of the child trust fund, could we not provide a further top-up if it is converted into an education trust fund? That, too, would go a long way towards long-term investment for education, and is part of what we must do to widen opportunities and diminish inequalities. We should be thinking not about abolishing the child trust fund, as we hear from Opposition parties, or about limiting its scope, but about widening it in imaginative ways to serve those longer-term educational objectives. When I have discussions with year 10 students in schools in my constituency, I do not find a great love for fees, but I also find no great love for the alternatives when they are discussed. That is certainly true when we discuss the graduate tax or having a slimmed-down university system as a way of getting rid of fees. Those students accept that we must share the costs fairly. They will carefully scrutinise what we propose after the review, just as they scrutinise ideas and suggestions now. They have spotted the quack remedy that we have heard from the Opposition this evening, funded as it is by the bizarre belief that tens of thousands of new graduates will rush to make early repayments of their loans—an unreal suggestion. The Government have higher ambitions, and the young people we are talking about have higher ambitions for themselves. I am certain that the only way that those ambitions will be realised is if we maintain the approach to universities and funding that we have seen from this Government over the last 10 years.