Part of Higher Education Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 11:15 am on 9 March 2004.
I want to be helpful. The hon. Gentleman was not here, but we discussed the fact that the regulator has the power to issue sanctions where the access plan is breached. HEFCE has the power to issue sanctions, having worked closely with the regulator, where the fee cap is breached. That is a matter of degree, so I guess that the heinous crime would be the sort of situation to which the hon. Gentleman referred: if a university decided that it would introduce what he, and everybody else, understood in 1998 to be the definition of top-up fees. We are not proposing that here. The Government have set a maximum fee of £3,000, but if the university decides that it will not receive any student support, but will top it up to whatever level that it likes, that will be a serious breach, in which circumstances the regulator and HEFCE will have a serious punishment reserved to them.
Circumstances such as the hon. Gentleman described, for instance if an institution said that it would have a summer school in June, but did not do so—possibly for some perfectly valid reason—would not be treated as seriously. That would be a breach of the access plan, but would be in a completely different ballpark to breaching the fee level. I hope that that is helpful; we have certainly discussed the matter at great length in relation to other amendments.