Prime Minister pledges tuition fee overhaul and £10bn boost for first-time buyers
THERESA May launched a policy blitz aimed at young voters last night, including a freeze on tuition fees and £10billion to help first-time home buyers.
As well as capping university bills at £9,250 a year and raising the threshold for graduates to start paying back their student loans to £25,000, the Prime Minister pledged to “look again” at the issue of student financing, including bringing back the old maintenance grant.
It is understood the Government is also exploring ways to give students incentives to study subjects that “plug the skills gap” by offering lower fees, better interest rates and grants to budding engineers, scientists and doctors.
Promising to “build a better future for our country,” Mrs May also announced additional funding for the Government’s Help To Buy scheme, which will help 135,000 more young people get on the property ladder. But one Cabinet minister warned of generational battles ahead as he refused to rule out more building on the greenbelt.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the “older generation” had to “take some difficult decisions about where there needs to be new housing”. Recognising that students felt they were not getting “value for money”, Mrs May said: “In my first speech on the steps of Downing Street, I set my Government a mission to make our country a fairer place
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Theresa MayGETTY
Theresa May launched a policy blitz aimed at young voters last night
As well as capping university bills at £9,250 a year and raising the threshold for graduates to start paying back their student loans to £25,000, the Prime Minister pledged to “look again” at the issue of student financing, including bringing back the old maintenance grant.
It is understood the Government is also exploring ways to give students incentives to study subjects that “plug the skills gap” by offering lower fees, better interest rates and grants to budding engineers, scientists and doctors.
Promising to “build a better future for our country,” Mrs May also announced additional funding for the Government’s Help To Buy scheme, which will help 135,000 more young people get on the property ladder. But one Cabinet minister warned of generational battles ahead as he refused to rule out more building on the greenbelt.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the “older generation” had to “take some difficult decisions about where there needs to be new housing”. Recognising that students felt they were not getting “value for money”, Mrs May said: “In my first speech on the steps of Downing Street, I set my Government a mission to make our country a fairer place.
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“Today I announce the next steps in that mission – with more help for students and graduates with tuition fees and billions of pounds of investment that will help thousands more people get a home of their own.
“This country has world-class universities and I am proud that more young people than ever from disadvantaged backgrounds are attending them.
“But we know that the cost of higher education is a worry, which is why we are pledging to help students with an immediate freeze in maximum fee levels and by increasing the amount graduates can earn before they start paying their fees back, amounting to a saving of £360 a year, while the Government looks again at the question of funding and student finance.
“Taken together, these are key parts of my plan to spread opportunity and build a better future for our country.”
Theresa May
Making progress as a nation means supporting young people and families
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Announcing a £10billion expansion of the Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme, where the Government lends buyers up to 20 per cent of the cost of the property, leaving them only needing a five per cent deposit, Chancellor Philip Hammond said: “Young people are worried that life will be harder for them than it was for their parents and owning a home is a key part of that. This Government understands that for many people finding a deposit is still a very big hurdle.
“Making progress as a nation means supporting young people and families to achieve their dreams of home ownership.
Mr Grayling, a key ally of Mrs May, said: “Getting more young people on the housing ladder is a really central part of what we’re going to need to do. I’m not in favour of wholesale development of greenbelt land but I suspect in every part of the country there are little bits of land where the local community would say actually it wouldn’t be a problem to develop that to enable the next generation to get on the housing ladder.”
The unapologetically youth-centred policies are designed to appeal to so-called “Corbynistas” who overwhelmingly favoured the Labour leader during the last election.
They are also intended to head off a threatened revolt ahead of today’s party conference, with backbench Tory MPs demanding Mrs May acts on energy prices, benefits and migration to reassert the party’s capitalist credentials. The announcements came as Boris Johnson was once again accused of undermining the Prime Minister by calling for a public sector pay rise, as well as saying there should be no “monkeying around” over Brexit.
The Foreign Secretary said any post-withdrawal transition period must not last “a second more” than two years.
He also argued that the UK should not have to abide by any new EU rules during the transition period and that Britain should not make payments to Brussels after it.
The four “red lines” prompted Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson – seen as another rival for the national leadership – to call for “serious people” to take charge of the Brexit process. She also issued her own demand for more civil service jobs to be located north of the border.
Brexit is not going to take centre stage at the four-day event in Manchester. Instead, Mrs May will seek to push her domestic agenda and hammer home the message that Labour is “unfit to govern”.
“Yes, we have to get the best Brexit deal – but we must also take action here at home to make this a fairer place to live for ordinary working people,” she said. “The social contract in our country is that the next generation should always have it better than the last. Conservatives have a plan to make that a reality.” With most polls putting the Tories and Labour neck and neck, Mrs May is under pressure to make up for the mistakes of the party’s disastrous manifesto and election campaign.
Last week she defended free market capitalism in a speech at the Bank of England and restated her determination to retain a “balanced approach” to public spending, despite political pressure to ease austerity.
Downing Street sources say Mrs May is keen to offer young people “genuine” help rather than “pie in the sky promises”.
A Number 10 insider said: “We are not looking at abolishing tuition fees – that’s the blue water between us and Labour’s pie in the sky promises. We believe that it is right that people who benefit from higher education make a fair contribution towards those costs.
“But we will be looking at building greater fairness, greater competition, greater value for money into the system.”
Among the proposals under consideration is index-linking the right skills courses to a more favourable student loan interest rate.
It would mean those studying to become professionals on the UK Shortage Occupations list, which includes engineers, healthcare professionals and physics and maths teachers, could be offered lower fees than someone studying a degree in a subject like media studies.
Tuition fees were due to rise with inflation from £9,250 in 2017/18 to £9,500 in 2018/19 but they will be frozen while the Government looks again at the entire funding model.
The amount graduates can earn before they start repayments is being raised from £21,000 to £25,000 and will rise in line with earnings after next year. The £1.2billion proposals will be brought forward in next month’s Budget.
Meanwhile, the Government has pledged to build one million homes by the end of 2020, with a further half a million more by the end of 2022.
The Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme has already helped more than a million people, over 80 per cent of whom are first-time buyers.
Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said the rights of private sector tenants will be increased. Under the new initiative, all landlords will have to become members of an ombudsman redress scheme in a bid to improve the resolution of disputes for tenants.
All letting agents will be registered and new incentives will be launched to ensure landlords offer tenancies of at least 12 months. “Everyone has a right to feel safe and secure in their own homes and we’ll make sure they do,” he said.
