Clause 23 - Condition that may be required to be imposed by English funding bodies
Higher Education Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Alan Johnson (Minister of State (Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education), Department for Education and Skills; Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, Labour)
No, I do not expect that to happen, although, incidentally, it would happen under the proposal for a national bursary scheme to which I am speaking, which is why we oppose the amendment. The money that comes into the universities of Wolverhampton, Hull or Exeter should be distributed to the students of that university. Slices of that money should not be taken away and put into a national bursary scheme, because that would breach the principle, and be both bureaucratic and unpopular. Universities UK is against a national bursary scheme, which, I am pleased to say on record, we also oppose. Although I have enormous respect for Nick Barr, he is not a member of the Government. The number of
people whom the hon. Member for Newbury bumps into at Oxford dinners is amazing.
Amendments Nos. 252 and 144 are about the RPI plus 0.5 per cent., but, as hon. Members have pointed out, they state a minimum, not a maximum. Although they are wrong, I understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North tabled them. HEPPI—the higher education pay and prices index—is the higher education version of RPI, although it is more. However, we are not going down that route, because we think that RPI is sensible. In any case, I am sure that my hon. Friend would accept that setting a floor rather than a maximum would give future Governments a loophole to increase the figures, theoretically, by any amount.