Dr Peter Prinsley

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this important debate. Sheffield is my university. I attended the 45th reunion last weekend and, apart from the fact that many of my former student colleagues had decided to dye their hair grey, everybody was looking remarkably well. I would also like to say that I actually went to university before Mrs Thatcher was the Prime Minister. I am a former NHS surgeon and a father of three children who have all been through our university system. Our universities are among our greatest assets, as we have heard during the many thoughtful contributions this morning. They drive research and support our local economies, but we cannot take them for granted. They are facing considerable financial pressure. Rising operating costs and an increasing reliance on international student income have left many of them in a precarious position. We all know that the importance of universities goes far beyond the lecture theatres. Just this Monday, I spoke in the House about genetic research at the University of East Anglia to help us distinguish between dangerous and less dangerous prostate cancers—a subject that we absolutely need to sort out. That sort of groundbreaking research depends on well-funded universities with the confidence to invest in the long term, particularly in subjects such as my own, medicine, but also in the sciences and many others, where the costs of providing higher education and training are considerable. The Government’s decision to increase tuition fee caps in line with inflation rather than allowing their value to erode makes sense. I also welcome the return of maintenance grants. Those are important steps towards supporting universities and students, but we must recognise that there is a difficult balance at the heart of this debate. Universities need more money, yet increasing tuition fees means that we are asking students to take more debt. I can see that generational difference in my own family. My two eldest children studied under plan 1, my youngest is on plan 2 and the students I met at Thurston community college in my constituency face the prospect of something called plan 5, with repayments potentially stretching over 40 years. I graduated from medical school without tuition fee debt. I began my career, I entered the housing market and I gradually became more secure, but that looks very different for today’s graduates. A maths graduate who recently attended one of my constituency surgeries brought home just how complicated our student finance system has become. He brought a very well worked-out spreadsheet that explained it to me—at least at the time; I could not possibly explain it to Members today. We must avoid a situation in which the financial sustainability of our great universities is secured simply by transferring the ever-greater burden on to the next generation, for generational unfairness is the great challenge of this Parliament. I ask the Minister to consider just two things. First, how can we provide universities with greater long-term funding certainty rather than leaving them so dependent on tuition fees and unpredictable international student recruitment? Secondly, how can we ensure that efforts to stabilise university finances are accompanied by a fair and transparent student finance system so that young people really understand the financial commitments they make? Our universities need financial stability, but our students need financial security. That is a hard thing, but our Government know how to do hard things.