Part of Higher Education Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:30 pm on 26 February 2004.
My information is that radiographers do not pay any fees as they are exempt per se.
We believe the framework in primary legislation should be the same for all students, but there is a serious problem here. The wording of this amendment, even if it was not flawed and was perfectly reasonable in all other respects, would interfere with a university's charging policy. More importantly, it would transfer
the financial obligation to meet the cost of those students from the employers to the universities. At the moment, the university charges a fee, but that is paid on behalf of the student by the NHS or the DFES. This amendment says that students would not be charged the fee in the first place, meaning that the universities would have to pay for them, which would be entirely wrong.