Student Finance

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 3:44 pm on 4 November 1997.

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Photo of Stephen Dorrell Stephen Dorrell Shadow Secretary of State for Education 3:44, 4 November 1997

I am absolutely delighted to endorse Gerry Malone as the Conservative candidate for Winchester, and I look forward to welcoming him back to the House of Commons as the next Member of Parliament for that constituency. He is right to insist that the Government should explain to the electorate of Winchester how they will deliver the objectives set out by the policy that they have introduced.

The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) is wrong to say that I have explicitly endorsed every detail of the Dearing report. The Government made a serious mistake, and I have demonstrated how they have tripped over themselves as a consequence—I have more to say on that. They were so anxious to get to this place to make an announcement that they did not read the Dearing report.

The Dearing report is a major piece of work and its recommendations should have been the subject of more serious analysis by the Secretary of State and the Government. Instead, at the end of July, we were presented with a few thoughts sketched out on the back of a couple of envelopes, and higher education policy developed on that basis during the summer. That was pretty obvious to any onlooker.

Let us consider the saga of the gap year students. Within days of the Secretary of State announcing the policy, we heard stories of students who were signed up for courses starting in autumn 1998 shifting to start in autumn 1997 to avoid being affected. Ministers were caught completely unawares.

On 7 August, the noble Baroness Blackstone, who was apparently left in charge while the Secretary of State took a well-earned holiday, dismissed as "irresponsible scaremongering" the hyping of fears that students who had deferred their entry to university until 1998 would bring it forward a year and be pushed into trying to take up places in autumn 1997. The noble Baroness said: This sort of irresponsible scaremongering helps no-one—neither the students, the universities, nor the admissions service.

On 11 August, we heard that the Government had changed their position; someone briefed The Times on behalf of the holidaying Secretary of State, and said: It's a one-off and not for those who have decided to go off back-packing. It should not be presented as a U-turn. The aide, who no doubt thought that he was being helpful, was of course talking about the proposal to allow students to start a course in 1998 provided that they had signed up to a course of charitable work in the gap year.

It is just as well that that first concession was not presented as a U-turn, because the true U-turn came three days later, when the Government announced that the fears were not all scaremongering hype, and that the gap year arrangement would be open not only to those who had signed up for charitable work but to all 19,000 students who were expecting to start their courses in autumn 1998.

Within three weeks of the Secretary of State announcing his gap year policy, there have been three different versions. That was the first example of the noble Baroness's deft political touch.