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Higher Education

I think that I may have the pleasure of being the last Back-Bench speaker in this debate. More than anything, I want to look forward, rather than backwards. I may be one of the newer and younger Members of this House, but that means that I have a rather different perspective from some other Members. I do not know how old previous speakers were under the last Conservative Government, but new students now—whom we should be thinking about, and who might be listening to this debate or might read the record of it tomorrow—were five under the last Conservative Government. It does no honour to them at all to say that they have not the brains to look at the choices facing them now, and in the next three years, and the next 10 and 20 years, and throughout their economic lives. It is essential that we look forward, not back. If we do that, we will all realise what choices we have to consider, and students will do that as well. Let me start by saying that anybody who has the academic ability and ambition to go to university should have the opportunity to do so, regardless of how wealthy their parents are. In my view, a person's time at university is the beginning of their independence, and it is all the more important that that independence occurs financially, as well as socially and emotionally. Students at the point of moving away to university—I note that many students in my constituency are being encouraged to stay at home, but we might get on to that separate topic later—begin to plan their lives independently of their family background. That is an incredibly important milestone in social mobility. We are talking about the lives of individuals. We are talking about someone moving away from their background and saying, "I am going to create my life. I am going to do what I want to do with my life." That occurring on a small scale and eventually being writ large across society is how social mobility works. It is about individuals choosing what they wish to do with their lives. I fully support the role of this debate in drawing attention to what choices individual students wish to make. Higher education is, therefore, an investment in one's own future. I accept that, as I suspect hon. Members from all parts of the House would. I hope that they understand the economic ramifications of it. I shall draw further attention to myself by saying that I suspect that I am one of the few Members of this House who is paying off their student loan and putting the Department of Resources to the trouble of calculating the payment to come out of my monthly pay cheque—