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Eleventh Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Wednesday 14 July 2004
[Mr. Joe Benton in the Chair]
Draft Student Fees (Amounts) (England) Regulations 2004
2.30 pm
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury) (LD): On a point of order, Mr. Benton. I am a little confused. I do not know whether this has happened to all members of the Committee. I was invited to come to Room 12 today to consider the ''draft School Fees (Amounts)(England) Regulations 2004''. I hope that does not make this Committee out of order.
The Chairman: It certainly does not make the sitting out of order. Please accept apologies from the Chair for any confusion.
The Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education (Alan Johnson): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Student Fees (Amounts) (England) Regulations 2004.
We have before us something rare and precious: a straightforward set of regulations. Hon. Members may already have seen them in draft form, because we circulated them when the Higher Education Bill was debated in Standing Committee. They perform two functions. First, they set a basic and higher amount for the fees that may be charged to full-time undergraduate students. Secondly, they describe the courses to which lower limits apply in an academic year.
Section 24 of the Higher Education Act 2004 makes provision for the Secretary of State to set the amounts. Section 26 describes the process for agreeing the regulations. The Act requires that the first set of regulations made are laid before, and approved by, each House. That is the purpose of this debate. Future increases in both the basic and higher amounts are restricted to inflation, unless they are approved by affirmative resolution, in the case of the basic amount, or by an amendable motion, in the case of the higher amount. Indeed, that is one of the changes that we made during the passage of the Bill, to strengthen the role of Parliament in the process and to reinforce our commitment that any debate on an above-inflation rise in the higher amount should take place on the Floor of the House.
In any case, no such increase could take place before 2010 at the earliest. That too is written into the Act. We have already spent a great deal of time discussing the principle of variability. I do not propose to go over that ground again now. The regulations simply set the fee levels, which we discussed throughout the passage of the Bill and which will apply to full-time undergraduate courses from 2006-07.
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Only those institutions with an agreed access plan will be able to charge up to the higher fee; those without such a plan will be restricted to the basic fee. The framework for the sanctions regime that will apply if an institution charges more than it should—not that we expect that to happen—is set out in the Act and in the condition of grant that we intend to lay on the Higher Education Funding Council for England. We published a draft of that condition of grant when we debated the fees sections of the Act in Committee.
Ordinarily then, the fee levels set out in regulation 4 will apply: a basic amount of £1,200 and a higher amount of £3,000. However, for some specific courses, different basic and higher amounts will apply, and they are set out in regulation 5. Under that regulation, the basic and higher amounts are set at £600 and £1,500 respectively—half the levels that would normally apply. The courses listed are essentially those for which students pay half-rate fees under the current system. They include: students on a sandwich placement; students who are undertaking a year abroad; students on part-time initial teacher training courses; students whose final year lasts for 15 weeks or fewer.
For those students, we are continuing the half-rate principle, but, whereas at present, institutions must automatically charge a rigid half-rate fee for those courses, in future they will have the discretion to charge up to the fee caps—taking forward the principle of variability. They could charge very much less if they wish, and they will need to justify to their students whatever level they propose. The regulations, backed by the Act's provisions, give effect to our assurance that fees will be no more than £3,000 in real terms. Hon. Members are already familiar with the content of the regulations and the principles that underlie them, and I hope that the Committee will approve them.
2.35 pm
Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): The regulations prescribe the basic and higher amounts for chargeable tuition fees in an academic year for full-time undergraduates at £1,200 and £3,000 respectively, and for a number of higher education courses to which lower and upper limits of £600 and £1,500 are to be applied. The Opposition are opposed in principle to the charging of tuition fees and will, therefore, vote against the measure. We shall shortly announce our alternative proposals.
The amounts proposed come as no surprise. They have been debated exhaustively, and there is no point in detaining the Committee by discussing them now. However, there are one or two matters of detail that I should like the Minister to clarify. Those matters relate to the fees for specified courses under regulation 5.
How will foreign-language students on sandwich courses be affected if they take a year of study overseas? Will fees still be payable under those circumstances and, if so, do the Government think it right that such students should pay fees for those years when they already face considerable expense in travel and living costs?
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In paragraphs (b) and (c), has provision been made for reducing fees for students who might have to miss part of a course through illness, and so have to miss a whole academic year? There are also circumstances of family illness, in which a student might have to take time out to care for a parent. Would that student still have to pay for the missed year? What arrangements would the Minister consider appropriate for waiving or reducing tuition fees on compassionate grounds such as those?
Can the Minister give more details of the other areas in which reduced fees will apply? What category of courses requires fewer than 10 weeks' full-time study? Lastly, how will part-time students be affected by the regulations? Do the Government intend to apply the regulations to part-time courses with a full-time element, such as typical Open university courses, which include a block residential course alongside the distance-learning work?
Irrespective of the Minister's answers, the Conservatives will vote against the regulations, but I should be grateful for his clarification of the points that I have raised.
2.38 pm
Mr. Rendel: It is very nice to be under your chairmanship, Mr. Benton—for the first time in my case, I think, although no doubt you have chaired many other Committees.
I raised the point of order about school fees partly because I was genuinely concerned—I am not sufficiently familiar with House of Commons procedures to know whether the summons card was important to order in Committee—and partly because all sorts of rumours had been flying around about huge increases in further education college fees in the near future. I therefore thought that it was important to clarify whether the Minister had any intention of introducing fees for schoolchildren as well as students. I hope that he will be able to assure us that he has no intention of charging school fees, as the summons card appeared to indicate. I would also be interested to know when, if ever, he is likely to introduce any further proposals on further education colleges.
That, of course, is not the subject of today's debate on the regulations. Like the Conservative spokesman, the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), I am very sad that the regulations are before the Committee. The setting of the amounts is the final implementation of what we regard as the iniquitous decision to go ahead with charging top-up fees for young people at our universities. At least the fees are to be paid after they have graduated, which, as we have said many times in the past, is at least one marginal improvement on the current scheme. This debate is the last chance to prevent top-up fees from going ahead. It is therefore sensible to make what points we can in an attempt—a final attempt, perhaps—to persuade sufficient Labour Members to support us on the issue.
Many honourable arguments have been advanced by the Minister. We all accept that he has done a remarkable job in getting the legislation through. Much though we regret what a good job he did, it is
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accepted that, from his point of view and that of his party, he did an excellent job in putting through the legislation, particularly in Committee, when he was in charge of the proceedings. Many Government Members have also made what they considered were honourable arguments in favour of the legislation.
We have welcomed some of the Government's concessions. As soon as we realised the problem of the gap-year students, I said that the Government would not be able to hold to all through. I said right from the beginning that the arguments were so strongly in favour of allowing gap-year students not to pay top-up fees that the Government would in the end be forced by the sheer weight of that argument and the problems that such measures could cause in their party to reverse the decision. I am delighted that the Minister decided to reverse that part of the legislation. One or two other concessions were accepted in Committee and other stages during the passage of the Bill.
Given how many Labour Members voted for the Bill on Second Reading purely because of the Whip—we know that many were unhappy to do so—the fact that the Government got their motion through by only five votes demonstrates that the general argument was undoubtedly won by those of us who opposed top-up fees. Come Friday morning, even more Labour Members might accept that they have lost the argument, even if they did not lose the vote in the House.
If the regulations are passed today, the final decision about whether they are implemented fully will lie with the electorate. There will almost certainly be a general election before the regulations are enacted and students go to university in 2006. The electorate will have a chance to cast their vote on this decision, along with many others taken by the Government.
The main danger of implementing a top-up fee of £3,000 is that, in practice, it is not variable. A large proportion of the fees that will be charged will be full fees of £3,000. It is worth my bringing to the Committee's attention an article in The Independent yesterday, which stated:
''a vice-chancellor who was among the most critical of the Government's decision to allow top-up fees of up to £3,000 a year from 2006, announced that his university would be charging the maximum fee for all courses.
Dr. Michael Goldstein, vice-chancellor of Coventry University, said the decision was 'not something which has been taken lightly.' It was taken to ensure that certain courses were not seen as more 'exclusive' than others.''
From the Labour party's point of view, exclusivity is one of the main problems with setting top-up fees at such a level. The strongest argument against the implementation of fees and top-up fees at universities is that doing so causes a problem mainly for those from the poorest backgrounds. Such people are known to have the most aversion to debt. Whether or not they receive a bursary, whether they would be charged fees under the current scene or whatever the actual conditions, they still are most frightened about what is happening and are most likely to be put off from attending university. It is the fear of the resulting debt that is damaging the life chances of students from the
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most disadvantaged backgrounds, whom the Government purport to support and genuinely believe that they are supporting.
The Government believe that the charging of fees at the rate of £3,000 is justified because of the value to the graduate—by charging fees, graduates can attain a university education, then get a better paid job, and end up a lot better off than they would have been if they had not paid the fees and had not attended university. The basic flaw in that argument is, as it has always been, that the fees are not in any sense proportional to the value to the graduate. In fact, they are in effect a poll tax on graduates and not a proportional tax on them.
There is growing evidence that young people are being put off by that imposition from going to university. I am sure that all hon. Members must have found, as I have done, that people are already saying to them, ''We have decided not to go to university, because it simply will not be worth it'', particularly for the course that they want to study. [Hon. Members: ''No''] Labour Members are saying that they have not heard from any such people. All I can say is that plenty of people have come to me. I am unsure why their constituents are not going to them with the same problem; perhaps they feel that they will not get a very good hearing.
Is there an alternative? In a lecture only last night, I heard a senior member of the academic community—to save his blushes, I will not mention who it was—claiming that opponents believe that students from the third world should be subsidising middle-class students from the UK. Of course, that is not the policy of the Liberal Democrats, whatever he might have thought. There are few students from the third world in this country whose earnings are above £100,000. It is those earnings above £100,000 that the Liberal Democrats believe should be the source of greater finance for our higher education institutions, which it is universally accepted is needed. We have never doubted that there is a need for the money. Our only argument with the Government is about where it should be drawn from.
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