Set up small universities in towns to drive growth, shadow Commons leader says
Jesse Norman said there were 50 small cities and towns he had identified which lacked a university, which he believed could be a catalyst for economic growth.
He told MPs that the first students graduated this year from the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering – a university in his Hereford and South Herefordshire constituency. He said it had given them the 'hands-on skill of an apprenticeship, but also the rigour of a masters' degree'.
He said smaller institutions, which were more 'agile', had been lost from the university landscape.
Mr Norman told MPs: 'I mention it now because it highlights what I think could be considered a lack of ambition in the way we've thought about higher education as a country over the last 50, possibly even longer, years.
'This is an institution that is not just focused on marginal educational gain, but transformational improvement. To take a person, male or female, young or old, who might never have thought of going to university at all to help them find their passions, head, hands and heart and take them as far as they can go.'
He added: 'This is the small modular reactor of British higher education.
'I raise this because I want to invite the Government and members across this House to consider whether we could not do this elsewhere. There are 50, at least, small cities and towns and large towns in this country which lack higher education and higher economic growth. There's a huge need for specialist Stem skills, vast amounts of talent deprived of opportunity and this can be part of the solution.'
The call from Mr Norman during business questions comes against a backdrop of difficulties for the university sector across the UK. Numerous university bosses have announced large numbers of redundancies in recent months in a bid to save costs.
The University of Nottingham announced 258 in April while in Scotland the University of Edinburgh said 350 jobs would be cut. In the Welsh capital, Cardiff University announced plans to cut 400 jobs, which was later reduced to 286, and Queen's University in Belfast said 270 jobs could go.
Earlier this month, the chief executive of Universities UK, Vivienne Stern, said falling per-student funding, a decline in international student numbers amid immigration rule changes, and a drop in research grants were all contributing to falling income for institutions.
This week the Government announced it was considering a 6% levy on international students, which Universities UK fears could further damage student numbers.
Commons leader Lucy Powell acknowledged the importance of Stem subjects, and told MPs her son was studying engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Ms Powell said: 'I hear what he says about the new technical university in his constituency in Herefordshire, it sounds like a really very important and good innovation to provide technical education and engineering pathways, particularly for people from backgrounds that might not otherwise access such education.'
Ms Powell said she was disappointed in the lack of praise from Mr Norman for the growth figures, released on Thursday, which showed a 0.7% increase in gross domestic product (GDP) between January and March.
Mr Norman had said: 'We've had a week of mixed economics, growth slightly up, wage growth weak, a spike in unemployment, as everyone had predicted in the case of national insurance.
'We've also had an immigration policy launched with echoes of Enoch Powell and a prime minister who doesn't know the difference it appears between capital and current spending in relation to hospices who are seeking to support people day-to-day across this country who are literally at death's door.'
Ms Powell replied: 'He didn't seem to want to welcome the good news on growth figures out this morning, and he didn't mention the interest rate cut last week either.'
She added: 'Former chancellor George Osborne said of his current leader and the stance of his current party that they're more interested in culture wars than having a serious economic plan. I mean he's right, isn't he?'
She continued: 'They've got no idea where they stand on the economy, they've got no plan for the economy, we've got a plan, we've got a plan for growth, a plan to improve living standards, a plan to put money back in people's pockets and today people are starting to see the fruits of that.'
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Yet when the number crunchers in Horse Guards Road sat down to work out how much the Welsh Government should get at the last spending review in 2021, that comparability factor fell to just 33.5%. Ouch. For every £1 spent on transport by Westminster, since the last spending review the Welsh Government has received a population adjusted share (5%) of 33.5%. Or about 1.6p. For context, it used to be around 4p. If Mr Chadwick and Mr Iorwerth are right and the UK government plans to plough even more money into rail in England in the coming years on projects like HS2, East Coast and what the Tories used to call Northern Powerhouse rail, then the new comparability factor that the Treasury mathematicians will conjure up this time could be even lower. But even that is massively misleading. Because if the UK government also promises to plough vast sums into rail in Wales then the comparability factor for the Welsh Government would not rise - it would fall further still. Is your mind boggling yet? We said it was complex. What the Welsh Government wants Because the Welsh Government isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending, the transport comparability factor really just reflects how much money is going on rail. The less that's spent on rail, the higher a share of the overall transport pot the Welsh Government gets. The more that goes on rail, the lower a share of the overall transport spot the Welsh Government gets. The real problem for Cardiff Bay then is not the comparability factor. Neither is it the fact that East West rail isn't classified as England-only. The problem, as far as the Welsh Government is concerned, is the fact that the England and Wales rail pot itself isn't shared fairly. HS2 and East Coast rail are the symbols of a system that is broken that pours vast sums into English rail projects while Wales misses out. Even if they were classified as England-only, the money would go to the Welsh Government which isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending. "The way that the system operates at the moment—for years I've been saying—is redundant," Wales' transport minister Ken Skates has said. "The east-west line, which has been in development, I believe, for around about 20 years now, is part of the rail network enhancements pipeline, where everything in a large footprint, a substantial footprint, including Wales, is packaged together. "Where you have all schemes in England and Wales packaged together in what's called the regional network enhancement pipeline it means that projects in Wales are always going to be competing on the business case with projects in affluent areas of the south-east, of London. That means that we are at a disadvantage. "I want to see it change. I've been saying it for years. There's nothing new in this story. I've been saying that we need reform for years and suddenly people have woken up to it." Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has said the same. "What we have is a situation where there is a pipeline of projects for England and Wales. Are we getting our fair share? Absolutely not. Are we making the case? Absolutely." "I've made the case very, very clearly that, when it comes to rail, we have been short-changed, and I do hope that we will get some movement on that in the next week from the spending review," she said. What does this mean for the spending review When Rachel Reeves stands up in the Commons on Wednesday, we fully expect she will announce some funding for rail in Wales, as you can see in our piece here, and our expectation is that will be about the rail stations earmarked in the work by Lord Burns after the M4 relief road was axed. They would be in Cardiff East, Parkway, Newport West, Maindy, Llanwern and Magor. But what matters is how much and when - and how that compares to the money being spent in England. Imagine the chancellor announces a few hundred million pounds for those rail stations in Wales in the spending review, what we do not - and will likely not know for many years - is whether that amount is a fair reflection of the mass spending she has announced in England because we know she has also touted £15bn of improvements in England. It will likely take years for academics to assess what kind of share of the rail pot has been spent in Wales. In the past, it certainly has not been fair. In 2018, a Welsh Government commissioned report by Professor Mark Barry estimated that the Network Rail Wales route, which covers 11% of the UK network, received just over 1% of the enhancement budget for the 2011-2016 period. 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