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Theresa May speaking in Derby to set out tuition fee plans - politics live
Theresa May speaking in Derby about tuition fees plan - politics live
(35 minutes later)
May repeats her “other people’s children” line from earlier, saying the country needs to recognise the alternative of a technical education.
Theresa May says we should be concerned when Vice-Chancellors sit on remuneration bodies that determine their pay
May invokes the image of a second child: a middle class girl who wants to be a software developer, but who is told she must go to university, rather than following a different path.
A bit of a change of pace to end the question and answer session:
May asked about Corbyn and Czech claims 'it's for individual MP s to be accountable - where there are allegations of this sort they shoudl be prepared to be open and transparent'
toAnd, with that, the prime minister exits stage left to polite applause.
Having suggested there should be a greater focus on technical education, May refuses to give a target for how many people should be going to university. She says it is “about ensuring the routes are available, the opportunities are available, but also young people are able to make the choice that suits them and suits their needs”.
Answering that question (below) from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, May distinguishes between those she says benefit from university education and those who do not.
I think it is important that both students and tax payers contribute. I think it’s important that students contribute because, as the secretary of state [for education] said at the weekend, you’ve got two groups of people: those who go from university and benefit from going to university; and those who do not.
And we think that those who benefit from going to university should make a contribution to that.
What the review is going to do is to look at that, ensuring that the system is fair both to students and tax payers and ensuring that it is a system that is genuinely open to people from whatever their background.
Theresa May is asked whether tax payers will have to contribute more in future.
She says it is important that “students” and “tax payers” each pay a contribution and says some sections of society benefit from going to university, while others do not. But she does not directly address the question.
The prime minister is now taking questions from journalists. She is asked why she has not committed to reducing interest rates on debts and reintroducing maintenance grants.
May says the government has taken action: it has raised the repayment threshold and has frozen fees.
It is time to take action to ensure that the system is “flexible enough to ensure that everyone gets the education that suits them”, Theresa May says.
The prime minister says the review will focus on four key questions:
Ensuring everyone can access higher education
The funding system
Incentivising choice and competition
How to deliver the skills the country needs.
The review will look at “the whole question of how students and graduates contribute to their education”, May says. She adds that she believes that university students should make a contribution towards their degree.
May claims that Labour’s policy to make fees free would mean tax hikes for the majority who don’t go to uni, force unis to compete with hospitals and schools for funding and result in cap being reintroduced on numbers.
May is in the difficult position of having to acknowledge what’s not working within the further education sector, while knowing that a government of which she was a senior member was responsible for creating it in its current form.
Theresa May gives Labour the soundbite it will run over and over and over again as she says “we now have one of the most expensive systems... in the world” as she launches review of higher education.
May says those who benefit from higher education should bear its costs and that it would be unfair to place it on society as a whole because many people did not go to university and, generally, earn less.
Review will look at whole question of how students pay - principle that students and taxpayers both contribute is an important one, she says
'it's only fair', May says, that people who benefit from education should contribute directly, to their education, to do otherwise would lead to tax increases + higher education to compete with NHS + schools for cash + a cap on numbers she claims
May repeats her “other people’s children” line from earlier (see 11.33am), saying the country needs to recognise the alternative of a technical education.
May invokes the image of a second child: a middle-class girl who wants to be a software developer, but who is told she must go to university, rather than following a different path.
Neither situation is beneficial for the country, May says.
Neither situation is beneficial for the country, May says.
May asks her audience to imagine a working class boy who aspires to make it in the legal profession. His road will be more challenging than that of a boy from private school, she says.
May asks her audience to imagine a working-class boy at a state school who aspires to make it in the legal profession. His road will be more challenging than that of a boy from private school, she says.
May says that working class boy from Derby who wants to become lawyer has odds stacked against him, quoting over representation of privately educated in top universities.
May says that working class boy from Derby who wants to become lawyer has odds stacked against him, quoting over representation of privately educated in top universities.
Pm references her 1997 maiden speech on education when she says she argued that every child should get right opportunities- whether vocational or academic. Trying to stress that this is something that genuinely drives her.
May says the students she has met today in London and Derby will be starting their careers in the “new economies” that will emerge in the next decade or two. The Britain of the 2020s will be outside the European Union that will have different relationships with nations across the world.
May is opening her speech at Derby college. As my colleague Anushka Asthana points out, there are not many students in the audience.
Half term at Derby college - so not sure there are many students here to watch the pm and education secretary @DamianHinds pic.twitter.com/lP665l54nL
The education minister, Damian Hinds, is at the podium in Derby, where Theresa May is about to give her much-trailed speech on the government’s post-18 education review. Anyone needing a primer would do well to start here:
Downing Street has dismissed calls for an early Commons vote on plans to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600 (See 10.38am). The prime minister’s spokesman said she remained committed to delivering “more equal and updated” constituency boundaries which better reflected the distribution of voters around the UK.
Asked whether Theresa May was planning to go ahead with the reforms set in train by her predecessor David Cameron, the spokesman said:
Yes. The Boundary Commission is due to report in September with their proposals for revised constituencies. The final proposals must then be debated and approved by Parliament for them to take effect.
We are committed to delivering more equal and updated boundaries so our parliamentary system represents everyone equally.
A new political party hoping to halt Brexit and run candidates in all 650 constituencies at the next general election was launched in Westminster today in an optimistic attempt to capitalise on what its leaders said was disenchantment with established political parties.
Renew has no high-profile candidates or donors and is led by three principals who have almost no previous political experience, although the philosopher AC Grayling was present at today’s launch, saying he was “rooting for” the party and any other anti-Brexit civil society initiative.
James Clarke, a principal and the party’s head of outreach, said he spoke to Labour voters furious that their party had been “hijacked by the hard left” and former Tory voters who were appalled at what they saw as “political cowardice” by the party’s pro-Brexit policy.
Any new political party faces the considerable challenge of winning meaningful support in the context of the first-past-the-post electoral system. Another of the party’s principals, James Torrance, stood as an independent in Kensington, west London, at the last election, winning 393 votes.
Renew says it has 1,000 supporters and has selected 200 candidates. Its organisers say they have been in dialogue with members of Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche movement in France, although it remains separate from the new technocratic party.
A third principal, Sandra Khadhouri, said she used to work in conflict zones for the UK government and international organisations. “My last job was working in Georgia for Nato. I had to decide which conflict zone to go to next, and I decided it had to be Britain.”
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has compared a dead monkey’s head to a Labour backbencher.
Johnson muttered the remark after asking officers what species a trophy monkey was during a visit to a police unit that confiscates wildlife products, Press Association reports. A police officer suggested a macaque, but Johnson said:
What’s this poor chap here? Faint air of a ... Labour backbencher.
He made the comment at the Metropolitan police’s wildlife crime unit in London, where some of the items recovered from raids on the black market are stored.
Peter Hain, a former Northern Ireland secretary, has urged Labour to “lead the resistance” to any hard border on Ireland post-Brexit.
Hain swung behind the leader of the Irish nationalist party, the SDLP, which wrote to Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, today urging him to oppose a hard Brexit because of its implications for the Irish frontier.
Colum Eastwood, the SDLP leader, said in the letter that Brexit has the potential to “dismantle” the Good Friday agreement. Supporting Eastwood’s analysis, Hain said:
Colum Eastwood, of our sister party the SDLP, is right to warn of the dangers Brexit poses to the Northern Ireland peace process and to urge Labour to do all it can to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The former secretary of state, who is a leading figure in the pro-European Open Britain group, added:
Labour must stand firmly behind the agreements between the British and Irish governments and the Northern Ireland parties on which the peace process rests. Already Brextremists on the Conservative benches are calling for these to be torn up precisely because they stand in the way of a hard Brexit.
Labour must lead the resistance any moves to a hard border and to insist that Theresa May stands up to the extremists in her party who insist on dragging her ever further to the right.
There is been some reaction to the lines being trailed before Theresa May’s speech on the post-18 education review, which she is to give in Derby this afternoon. The full details on what May is expected to say are here:
Reacting to the news this afternoon, Nick Hillman, the director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said:
The key question is how much room for manoeuvre they [the review panel] are going to have in terms of public spending.
He questioned whether the panel could be asked to come up with proposals that do not involve an increase in public spending or being allowed to “spend real money”.
Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the University and College Union, said:
The prime minister can complain about how we have one of the most expensive systems of university tuition in the world, but it was the Conservatives that introduced it and without a radical look at the whole system little can really change.
Worryingly, this review already looks like little more than finding new ways to cut spending on universities. Linking the price of some degrees to earnings is deeply flawed and fails to acknowledge the many factors which affect graduate income.
Alistair Jarvis, the chief executive of vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK, said:
A cut in tuition fees may seem like an easy political solution, but it would see universities in England struggle to provide students with the world-class education they currently enjoy.
Unless a cut to fees is met in full from other funding sources, we risk returning to a system where courses are seriously underfunded or the number of places capped. That would be bad for graduate skills and the economy, for social mobility and for student choice.
Here’s the full report on Theresa May’s appearance on ITV’s This Morning programme today from my colleagues, Peter Walker and Jessica Elgot:
