Results 1-12 of 12 for ("top up" fees) speaker:Bill Rammell

Orders of the Day: Sale of Student Loans Bill (22 Nov 2007)

Bill Rammell: ..., particularly higher education. Genuine commitment to widening participation requires consistency in decision making. I charitably remind him of the Conservative party's flip-flopping on student fees. When tuition fees were first introduced in 1998, the Conservatives advocated full top-up fees, with no protection. By the time we took the legislation through the House before the last...

Written Answers — Education and Skills: Top-up Fees (16 Mar 2006)

Bill Rammell: The Department has not commissioned any research on the impact of the top-up fees regime on the number of EU domiciled students studying at English higher education institutions. However we will continue to monitor student numbers and any trends in applicants from EU countries. The cost of travelling to and living in the UK will continue to be an important factor in any decision taken by EU...

Adjournment (Summer) (28 Jul 2000)

Mr Bill Rammell: .... I wish to raise two issues that are of particular concern to my constituents in Harlow and to apologise for the fact that I will not be able to stay for my hon. Friend the Minister's summing-up because I have a constituency engagement, but I have already spoken to him. First, I wish to raise the crucially important issue of access to university education. I know from my own...

Equal Opportunities in Britain (7 Jun 2000)

Mr Bill Rammell: ...people from poorer backgrounds indicate that the real determinant of whether someone goes on to further and higher education comes at 16. That is the point at which the young person has to be supported, out of work, through the family. It is absolutely right to bring in those allowances and I want to see them expanded as quickly as possible. We must also face up to the threat of top-up...

Equal Opportunities in Britain (7 Jun 2000)

Mr Bill Rammell: ...progress. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough did not allow me to intervene on him earlier, so I must make this point now. I listened carefully to his impassioned attack on tuition fees, not only top-up fees, introduced by the Government. Logically, that would mean that the Liberal Democrats were in favour of abolishing tuition fees. However, we should not judge people only by...

Oral Answers to Questions — Education and Employment: Top-up Fees (23 Mar 2000)

Mr Bill Rammell: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the experience in Australia, where top-up fees were introduced in 1996 and led to a reduction in overall applications and a narrowing of the social base of students going to Australian universities. Would not the replication of such a system in Britain run completely counter to our aspiration to get 50 per cent. of the under-30s into universities by 2010?...

Oral Answers to Questions — Education and Employment: Mature Students (17 Feb 2000)

Mr Bill Rammell: I welcome the new package of financial support for mature students. Last week, I sat with a mature student in my constituency and went through the new proposals. That exercise demonstrated that they will be a real and significant help, but does my hon. Friend agree that the introduction of university top-up fees is one of the measures that could affect access to university by mature students?...

Oral Answers to Questions — Education and Employment: University Tuition Fees (19 Nov 1998)

Mr Bill Rammell: Was not the introduction of tuition fees a necessary step to restore university funding? Does my hon. Friend agree that the supposed decrease in applications, which many who opposed tuition fees predicted, did not materialise? Will he reassure the House that he will not be following the advice of the recent Fabian Society pamphlet, which was to introduce differential top-up fees so that some...

Orders of the Day — Title (9 Jun 1998)

Mr Bill Rammell: ...conscious of the time, but I want to pursue a crucial issue in response to the answer that I received from the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts). I refer to the Conservative party's stance on top-up fees. I, with the Government, oppose the principle of top-up fees, because there will be no exemption for the poorest students and no loans for them: we run the risk of creating a two-tier...

Orders of the Day — Title (9 Jun 1998)

Mr Bill Rammell: The hon. Gentleman has made much of tuition fees, but will he confirm that his party favours fees, and also favours top-up fees, which would drive a coach and horses through access to higher education?

New clause 5: New Arrangements for Giving Financial Support to Students (8 Jun 1998)

Mr Bill Rammell: I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) is not still in his place. I understood his argument about tuition fees to be that they would simply be a mechanism to deal with course fees. I think that he also referred to maritime students. That was very different from the interpretation of the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) in Committee when we debated these...

Higher Education (23 Jul 1997)

Mr Bill Rammell: Following the previous question, I hope that we intend to stop universities charging top-up tuition fees, and that we shall explore legislation to ensure that that does not happen. Many of the elite institutions are already extraordinarily socially exclusive, and the introduction of further discretionary top-up fees for individual institutions would make that much worse.