Clause 23 - Condition that may be required to be imposed by English funding bodies
Higher Education Bill
4:45 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)
That is a point I was going to come on to. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers) raised on Second Reading the very concerns that he has raised. That is why we have set up the committee under Sir Alan Langlands, the vice-chancellor of Dundee university, to look at the effect of these measures on professions such as architecture, particularly for those people outside the threshold for grants and bursaries. Sir Alan will commence his work next year and it will be ready for 2006. The committee will look at best practice among employers and consider all these problems to see whether there is anything further the Government need do. Amendment No. 110 is not the way to resolve this important issue.
Amendments Nos. 3 and 120 deal with writing the £3,000 cap into the Bill, and the retail prices index plus, which is the mechanism to increase that cap. The Opposition voiced concerns about what will happen after 2010. A Government amendment to clause 24 will ensure that the pledge given by the Secretary of State in the White Paper in January that we would not increase the cap for the period of the next Government will be written into the Bill. That has not happened yet, Mr. Gale, but I hope that you do not mind my referring to it as it is important to the debate.
I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Newbury back in his place as I mentioned him earlier. He said that, at his fascinating dinner in the Oxford McDonald's, a college principal spoke of the fee cap going after 2010. The fee cap does not go in 2010.
The fee cap is where it should be in the legislation. It is the practice of Governments of all persuasions to balance what goes into primary legislation and what
goes into secondary legislation. The level of the fee cap ought to be set in secondary, not primary, legislation. When my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East was a Minister in the late 1990s, the fee cap went into regulations—into secondary, not primary, legislation. That is the proper place for it.
I shall return to the other points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East, but he asked about tracking student grants and bursaries and the student support package with the fee. Of course, the amendment would keep all the important issues such as the maintenance loan and the grant in secondary legislation, but it would put the fee into primary legislation.