Clause 23 - Condition that may be required to be imposed by English funding bodies
Higher Education Bill
3:45 pm
Mr George Mudie (Leeds East, Labour)
That is a good point and I shall deal with it. Social inclusion has not been helped in that respect. I would applaud the Government if £3,000 were being given without the £3,000 tuition fees being charged. We have had a complicated discussion about that, and I think that overnight the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough finessed the figures on the cost even more than I did. I appreciate the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for
Nottingham, North raised—that is what we are in politics for.
We should consider what is being offered to working-class kids. They are being charged £3,000 in deferred fees, which means that they will have a bill of £9,000. Hopefully, the kids to whom we are giving £3,000 in a grant will pay off their fees and then call in the normal loan. However, I fear that there will be a worrying temptation to leave the £9,000 as a debt to be picked up when they graduate and to take their grant and the normal loan. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and I have spent a useful six months getting into the ribs of Mr. Barrett, of Barclays, over credit cards and how blithely we are racking up debt. I appreciate that that is a different kind of debt, but the principle is the same. We heard some horrifying tales of spiralling personal debt.
Jonathan Shaw rose—
Mr. Plaskitt rose—