Clause 23 - Condition that may be required to be imposed by English funding bodies
Higher Education Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North, Labour)
My amendment will help those youngsters, so I shall explain it carefully. That is why we have a Committee stage—to smoke these things out.
The youngsters who currently are on very low incomes do not pay fees up front, as my hon. Friend rightly points out. The up-front fee does not apply to them. However, my youngsters in that category are not
avoiding university in order not to pay the fees. [Interruption.] It is a different issue; it is about going to university, and my youngsters are put off going to university not by the fact that if they go there is no fee, and certainly not by the fact that if they wish to pay fees under the Government's proposals they can do so at £4.23 a week on earnings of £15,000. The youngsters in Nottingham, North are put off because they cannot afford to go in the first place.
Even using my hon. Friend's mathematics for the most expensive course, which costs £3,000 a year and involves repayments of £9,000, surely everyone will understand that getting money up front in order to get to university, and repaying the most modest amounts when earning between £15,000 and £18,000, is a very good deal for the needy. It is not a quid pro quo; it is getting the money when it is needed. That is what we all fought for. So-called rebels and so-called loyalists fought hard to get the Government to restore the grant to the modest level of £1,000, and we have now managed to get it up to £3,000. I give credit to my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) and for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) and other colleagues of all views for having restored the grant, which is to help poor youngsters when they need help, and not when they are no longer poor but are graduates starting to earn a good salary.