Clause 23 - Condition that may be required to be imposed by English funding bodies
Higher Education Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Simon Thomas (Chief Whip; Ceredigion, Plaid Cymru)
I did not quite say that. I said that the £3,000 trade-off, balancing maintenance grants against tuition fees, did not appear until very late in the day. The specifics did not appear. They are important, because they lead to that nil sum for poorer students, which was vital to get some Labour Members to support Second Reading but does not hide the central problem of the Bill—the introduction of the market into higher education.
The question has been raised about the market in further education and in part-time higher education. The existence of a market in other sections of our post-16 and post-18 education is not, in itself, a wonderful justification for introducing the market into tuition fees. I believe the question is whether the market in further education works for the benefit of students. We must look at this more closely.
What is the nature of this so-called market? For part-time students, the existence of current fixed rate tuition fees acts as an equaliser in the market. In fact, there is no real market, because there is a stabilising element. Within further education, we have to bear it in mind that markets work only when there are price mechanisms, incentives and penalties. Speaking for my own constituency and the other areas of Wales with which I am familiar, that does not happen in further education. We are not talking about tuition fees of £3,000 or even £1,000 in further education—if I can use the term tuition fees. We are talking about hundreds of pounds. It is still an obstacle, but it is not of the same magnitude.