Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:47 pm on 13 September 2017.
Of course my hon. Friend is absolutely right. The last Labour Government left youth unemployment 30% to 50% higher than when it came in. The ultimate opportunity destroyer in our country is a Labour Government running our economy.
I shall add a further reason why disadvantaged young people would lose out under Labour’s policy: who would pay for those people who did get to university to go to university? It would be some of those disadvantaged young people who had missed out, it would be their families, it would be pensioners—we would all be paying for the cohort of young people most likely to become higher-rate taxpayers to get a degree.