North of Tyne mayor says ‘people are tired of being controlled by Westminster and Party HQs’ and announces he is leaving Labour
In his interview for broadcasters this morning Rishi Sunak also paid tribute to Ben Wallace, following the defence secretary’s announcement that he expects to leave cabinet at the next reshuffle and to stand down as an MP at the next election.
Asked if he was sorry to see Wallace go, Sunak replied:
Of course I am … Ben’s been a great defence secretary. I’ve enjoyed working with him and he’s got a track record he can be very proud of.
[Wallace has] been in politics and public service for a very long time, and, as he said, he wants to be able to spend more time with his family, and as a dad myself I completely understand and sympathise with that.
Sunak said the policy partly intended to reinforce the message that “you don’t have to go to university to succeed in life”. He explained:
For many people university is the right answer and it does brilliantly, but actually there are a range of people who are being let down by the current system.
They’re being taken advantage of with low-quality courses that don’t lead to a job that it makes it worth it, leaves them financially worse-off. That’s what we’re clamping down on today – but, at the same time, making sure that young people have a range of fantastic alternative opportunities, whether that be apprentices or higher technical qualifications, for example.
Sunak brushed aside concerns that the policy would cut revenue for some universities. When this point was put to him, he said what mattered was the “overall financial sustainability” of the university system. He said the policy would make higher education better value for taxpayers. He explained:
I think it’s important that the system is also fair for taxpayers, because ultimately as taxpayers that fund the system – and we’ve got a situation at the moment where around half of people who go to university don’t end up paying back the cost of that degree – that costs the taxpayer money.
So, we need to make sure the system is not just fair for students and they’re getting the right outcome, but it’s also fair for taxpayers.
He stressed that it would be for the Office for Students, not the government, to decide what might count as ‘rip off courses”. He said:
What the regulator will do is look at a range of different outcomes for courses. So, what kind of jobs are students going on to, do they complete the course, how much do they earn in later life?
On the basis of all of that, they’ll be able to figure out ‘well, hang on, that course actually isn’t delivering value for money. It’s letting people down and we should not put students on it because we’re letting them down’.
