David Burton-Sampson

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) for securing the debate. He knows that we both care passionately about this matter, especially given the impact that the closure of the Southend campus of Essex University will have on both our constituencies and our constituents. It is a great shame for the students of today and the students of tomorrow, and a great loss for the city. Let me begin by expressing my backing for my hon. Friend’s positive moves to support students who have expressed concerns to both of us in recent weeks. I understand and share those fears, which is why my hon. Friend and I, together with the leader of Southend city council, are pursuing the university’s leaders to create a workable plan at least to alleviate the worst effects of this deeply disappointing decision and find some resolution for the staff, the students and the city of Southend. I was so fortunate that my own university experiences told a very different story. It is said that education opens doors to worlds you never knew existed. I look around me now; when I started out as a child of a working-class single-parent family—the first to attend university—I could never have imagined standing here today. The opportunities afforded to me by attending university and completing my degree have helped to shape my career and make me the person I am, both personally and professionally. It might come as a surprise, when hon. Members look at the shrinking violet I am now, to learn that I trained as an actor; I took a degree in performing arts at the world-renowned Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The end of the acclaimed East 15 acting school in Southend, a casualty of this campus closure, is therefore a loss very close to my heart. I spoke to a course lecturer over the weekend who is devastated at the loss of this facility—not just the loss for her, as she will not be able to transfer to Colchester, but at the loss for the students, and for the city; it loses the Clifftown theatre, a much-loved cultural resource. Like the rest of my generation, I was lucky enough to get a grant for my degree. That experience changed my life. My degree gave me lifelong skills and abilities and expanded my horizons. The days of grants are sadly long gone, but the ambition should not be gone. That is why the closure of the Southend campus is a disaster. It denies the students of the future opportunities to train in their chosen area. Many of the courses are for key workers, including vitally needed nurses, dental technicians and midwives, who have trained at that campus in Southend for the past 18 years. Now, all that is to end, and local youngsters will have to go elsewhere to fulfil their dreams. If they do not have the means to do so, this could snuff out their ambition and deny their potential, with lifelong repercussions.