Clause 23 - Condition that may be required to be imposed by English funding bodies
Higher Education Bill
3:15 pm
Mr George Mudie (Leeds East, Labour)
My hon. Friend is a distinguished member of the Select Committee. He sat through the evidence, I am sure with a straight face. He is now implementing, with great gusto, an end to communism. This is what Mr. Barr saw as the present university system. He saw ''central state funding''. I do not object to that. If the universities lost central state funding they would be in a bad way. He saw ''control of courses'' and ''uniform fees'', both of which have existed in the universities for 100 years, as communism.
The problem is ensuring that communism stays dead, after we introduce this. We know from Lenin, Stalin and Labour party battles in the '80s, that we must not let them fight back. Mr. Barr told the Select Committee:
''Ensuring communism stays dead includes ensuring that the fees cap does not stay in place so long that central planning returns through the back door''.
Later in his evidence—the architecture that we on the Labour Benches are putting in with gusto—he said:
''The fees cap can be raised in stages, bringing in the benefits of competition and increasing resources.''
I tend to agree with him. I know that it is communism, but I can live with central state funding and the control of fees. It might be seen as eastern Europe in some places, but it brought us to what the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough and others were saying about the university system. The university is not a profit cow. The university system is vital to this country's prosperity, if not necessarily the prosperity of individuals. The Government must have a great involvement. We will keep that involvement, but I do not know why on earth we want to bring in the market. I certainly do not see it as communism.