Clause 41 - Transfer of certain functions to National Assembly for Wales
Higher Education Bill
6:15 pm
Mr Simon Thomas (Chief Whip; Ceredigion, Plaid Cymru)
We have to justify that; that is what devolution means. As the hon. Gentleman is pressing me on the point, I must remind him that, in its submission to the Richard commission, the education committee of the National Assembly said that it wanted to see those powers extended to Wales. The Conservative members of that committee did not demur from that opinion. [Hon. Members: ''It is devolution.''] Exactly so. That is my point.
In the last National Assembly elections, the Conservative party welcomed the devolution of those powers to the National Assembly. It is this end of devolution that does not seem to be working so well for the Conservatives—they seem not to know what the Cardiff end thinks of such matters. I am sure the hon. Gentleman's views are genuinely held, but they should be addressed to the Conservative leader in the National Assembly, who until recently supported such moves.
There is a practical point that can be best addressed through a couple of questions to the Minister. I shall focus on 2006, when the new regime will come in. What will the situation be for a student living in Wales and choosing to attend an English university in 2006? That student might go to a university with an access plan agreed with OFFA that means that a full £3,000 fee can be charged. However, the National Assembly might not yet have agreed its student support system in the light of a full tuition fee system. Therefore, for at least one year, if not longer, that student will attend an institution where a £3,000 fee is levied under OFFA, because of the access plan, but there is no corresponding £3,000 to be paid to the student in support.
I hope hon. Members follow that hypothetical situation. For the purposes of argument I am assuming that the student would have been eligible in England for the full £3,000, which is the element of grant plus bursary that matches the £3,000 tuition fee. If the student comes from Wales, the £3,000 support will not be there to attract them to attend the English institution. That might deter Welsh students from going to places that offer the best courses for them, and persuade them to accept second best. As a graduate of a Welsh university, I am not saying that they are second best, but students want to go where the best courses are. Some courses are available only in
England or in Wales, and some are taught better in some institutions than in others. Students will choose to go where the best course is.
The converse can also be argued. What happens to an English student who chooses to attend a Welsh university in 2006? If they attend a course at an English university, they might pay full tuition fees of £3,000 under an access regime and receive the £3,000 support. However, by attending a Welsh institution, there will be no OFFA, no access plan, and nothing has been decided as to whether Wales will adopt that structure. The Bill devolves powers to enable a National Assembly to have access plans and a body such as OFFA in the Assembly, but no decision has been taken as to whether that will happen.
We must debate the matters on the basis of what we know today. An English student studying at a Welsh institution will be entering an institution without an access agreement. That institution might still charge the £1,000 tuition fee—it would have no right to charge more under the Bill—but what student support will the student receive? Will they be able to receive the full £3,000 support, even though they attend a Welsh university without an access agreement, or will they receive a minimum of support? What will that minimum support be? That is an important question for any English student seeking to study in Wales post-2006. Will the support match the tuition fee in England, or will it differ because Welsh universities will not have an OFFA-agreed access arrangement?
I would not call those examples injustices, but I would call them problems and anomalies that we must iron out. We need clarity. Throughout the Committee it has been constructive of the Minister to produce the draft regulations. They have enormously helped most members of the Committee to understand how students in their constituencies would be supported or otherwise as they enter further education. I know that the regulations have persuaded some Government Members to support the Bill. I remain against the Bill in principle, but I must ask the Under-Secretary of State for Wales what will happen to the students whose situation I described? Those matters must be explained.
One problem is that the National Assembly Government have not made a statement of principle or policy on the matter. They have kicked the business into the Rees commission and into a post-2006 situation. In principle, I support that. Of course it is right that the Assembly and Assembly Government should choose how to run the system, but that is bad decision making and bad public policy making. It is not helpful that we do not know what an English student studying in Wales or a Welsh student studying in England will receive in support or can expect to pay in tuition fees after 2006.
The simple fact is that at least 45,000 students—those domiciled in Wales and studying in England or domiciled in England and studying in Wales—do not know what the situation will be in 2006–07 because we cannot marry what is happening in England with what may happen in Wales. All that we can do is take a best shot and assume, as does the statement that I read out, that there will be some form of tuition fee system in
Wales and some form of student support grant alongside it.
I have two final points. First, I commend the National Assembly Government for what they have done to date on student support. As the Committee may know, they were the first to reintroduce a grant—in this case, a learning grant—which has been an example to the rest of the United Kingdom. In particular, I like to think that that decision has been useful in the Government's decision to reintroduce grants to England, and that deserves to be put on record.
Secondly, will the Minister explain why the devolution settlement has been approached in the way that it has? Members who have read the Bill and considered the statements made by Ministers will assume that the Bill devolves support for students in higher education institutions to the National Assembly, and in a broad sense, it does. However, if we consider the detailed architecture of the Bill, we can see that student support is devolved to the National Assembly in a particular context. It is not a full assumption of devolution over all student support and charging mechanisms. It is the assumption of devolution over a particular set.
In other words, if the Assembly decided to change the present system of tuition fees and support for students, it could do so only along the same lines as England. It may vary the amounts and elements of the tuition fees, and the access plans may be different, but all the elements of the Bill's architecture for England will have to be present in Wales. There will have to be variable tuition fees if anything happens to increase the basic tuition fee, and there will have to be student support linked to those tuition fees. There will have to be access plans and a version of OFFA, although it may be incorporated within the Assembly body or the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales—we do not know, as the Assembly has complete control over that. To continue the architecture analogy, the doors and windows may be in different places, but the basic infrastructure must be the same.
Matters could have been different. There could have been a simple devolution so that the Assembly was in complete control of a student support system and tuition fees. That may have meant that it would have followed a different path from that detailed in the Bill. As such, it is appropriate to invite the Minister to explain the thinking behind the method of devolution that the Government have chosen, compared with any other.
In conclusion, my party will support the element of devolution, but we feel that there are important questions, including those raised by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, about the effects of the new system, particularly in the first couple of years when there is not a similar scheme in Wales running parallel to the scheme in England. As this is the first opportunity to discuss the subject, it is also important that the Minister takes some time to explain why the Government have chosen the system of devolution that they have.