Higher Education

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 7:16 pm on 4 June 1985.

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Photo of Mr Giles Radice Mr Giles Radice Shadow Secretary of State for Education 7:16, 4 June 1985

I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not—many hon. Members want to speak and this is a short debate.

On student numbers, the Green Paper accepts variant Y which, predictably, is the lowest Department of Education and Science estimate of student numbers in the 1990s, without even bothering to argue the case. The Government's response is discourteous and intellectually disreputable.

On resources, the Government cannot decide whether their justification for the cuts that they want to make is that the economy has been so unsuccessful that the country cannot afford its present higher education system and that the Government's economic policy has been so unsuccessful that we cannot afford it, or that student numbers are falling. The problem with the latter argument is that student numbers, as even the Green Paper admits, will be at a record level until 1990. The argument until 1990 must be in terms of insufficient resources. After that date, argument is about rationalisation or, to use the Under-Secretary of State's unhappy phrase, "rolling the wicket for rationalisation". I should have thought that it is much more like "digging up the wicket for destruction".

A muddle runs throughout the Green Paper. The Government wants higher education to contribute more effectively to the national economy but appears to believe that an impoverished and contracting higher education system will serve our economic needs best. That is nonsense.

Despite the lip service paid in the Green Paper to the importance of arts subjects for their own sake and that of industry and commerce, the shift to science and engineering will take place — contrary to the UGC's advice and what the House of Lords Select Committee said —at the expense of the arts. That also is nonsense.

Despite the Jarratt report's recommendation about long-term planning and long-term planning horizons, and despite the experience of 1981, the Green Paper appears to believe that a higher education can become more efficient against a background of contraction and closure. That again is nonsense. The Government want to cut resources to higher education not because there are rational arguments for doing so but because the Cabinet wants to cut public spending. That is the reality behind the Green Paper.

The Green Paper is a muddle and its arguments are weak — when they are stated at all — because the Government's higher education policy is not shaped by educational considerations, demography or sound economics but because they believe in cutting public spending. The consequences of this ideological fixation are likely to be appalling— — loss of opportunities for young people, the closure of whole departments or even institutions, loss of jobs, redundancies, institutions’ research functions being downgraded or abolished, little expansion in continuing education and the collapse of morale throughout higher education.

As our motion says, the Green Paper is a recipe for national economic, industrial and social decline. The Labour party rejects the Government's barbaric, Philistine and defeatist approach. We accept the advice of the UGC and the NAB—the Government's advisers— about access, continuing education, student numbers and resources.