David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn have clashed at Prime
Minister's Questions over the axing of student grants and bursaries for nurses
in England.
Mr Cameron said replacing bursaries with loans would mean
more nurses would be trained - and scrapping student grants would let more go
to university.
He accused Mr Corbyn of wanting to "cap
aspiration.
But the Labour leader said the PM was saddling students with
debt and robbing the NHS of talented would-be nurses.
On Tuesday, Labour failed in a last-ditch bid to block the
replacement of student maintenance grants in England, which are worth up to
£3,500 for university students from poorer families, with loans.
Opposition MPs have objected to the way in which the government
has implemented the change without a Commons vote.
Mr Corbyn said the prime minister had "form" for
hitting the less well off with policies that did not feature in the
Conservative election manifesto, such as now abandoned plans to scrap tax
credits.
He asked why a student called Liam, who is training to be a
maths teacher, would finish his course with debts of more than £50,000, roughly
twice his annual income.
Mr Cameron replied: "What I would say to Liam is he is
now in a country with a university system with more people going to university
than ever before and more people from low-income backgrounds going to
university than ever before.
"In addition, what I would say to Liam, and I wish him
well, is that he will not pay back a penny of his loan until he's earning
£21,000, he will not start paying back in full until he's earning £35,000.
"Our policy is actually going to put more money in the
hands of students like Liam, which is why we're doing it.
He claimed Labour plans to scrap loans and fees would cost
£10bn, meaning the country would go back to "a situation where people went
out, worked hard, pay their taxes for an elite to go to university.
He added: "We're uncapping aspiration, you want to put
a cap on it.
Mr Corbyn then asked why student nurses were being hit with
an effective pay cut of £900 through the scrapping of bursaries, quoting the
example of "Vicky", a single mother from York, who said she could not
afford to train as a mental health nurse.
Mr Cameron claimed "two out of three Vickys.. who want
to be nurses" are rejected under the current system and nurses have to be
brought in from "Bulgaria and Romania" to do jobs that home-grown
nurses should be doing.
Mr Corbyn claimed "nine out of 10 hospitals currently
have a nurse shortage" and the government's plans would make this worse.
The Labour leader then highlighted comments from Tory MP and
former nurse Maria Caulfield who said she would have struggled to train without
a bursary.
Mr Cameron denied this, claiming the proposals would
actually "uncap" the numbers that go into nursing and create 10,000
extra nurse degree places.
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