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Higher Education

I am grateful for the chance to take part in this valuable debate. I congratulate my friend and colleague, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), on obtaining this important debate. My Government had an excellent record in further and higher education, particularly when he was a Minister in that Department. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), I signed a pledge not to vote for an increase in tuition fees, and I had to fight through a crowd of Lib Dems in this House to do so. I had imagined that that same crowd of Lib Dems would be here today; I cannot imagine what has happened to them. As I said, my Government had an excellent record in further and higher education, but I voted against tuition fees in any form or fashion because my view was that society as a whole benefits from education and society as a whole should pay. It was also my view that I had benefited. As the child of people who left school at 14, I have benefited from an education at one of our better education institutions, nestling as it does in the mists of the fens of East Anglia, and I was not prepared to draw up the ladder behind me to another generation of young people. I also knew that this is where it would all come to. It was all very well for us to introduce tuition fees in a very careful way, hedged about with all sorts of support—very judicious—but I knew that it would end in a Tory-led Government ramping up fees unconscionably, leading to a more divided education system than we have ever seen.