Ministers airbrush report

Cabinet ministers used their political muscle to soften a potentially damaging select committee report on university access, it was claimed this week.

Members of the education sub-committee claim that attacks on the government's student grants policy and criticism of chancellor Gordon Brown were expunged from the committee's report on access after intervention by senior ministers.

Sub-committee member Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrats' higher education spokesman, said it was the "most craven and fawning performance of the (Labour) majority (on the committee) ever witnessed in a select committee report".

The report, published yesterday, has 37 recommendations, none of which reflects the quantity and critical nature of much of the evidence taken on the deterrent effects of the government's axing of maintenance grants in 1999. The report is part of the committee's wider inquiry into higher education.

Both Dr Harris and Conservative MP Nick St Aubyn, a select committee member, are angry that the report makes no criticism of Mr Brown, who last year accused Oxford University of elitism after Magdalen College rejected state-school pupil Laura Spence. The report does say, however, that access difficulties are not necessarily solely the fault of universities.

In protest, Dr Harris has published his own, unofficial minority report. Mr St Aubyn's official minority report appears in the full report.

Dr Harris said: "The whole report fails... because it fails to tackle (or even address) the single biggest factor preventing suitably qualified young people from poorer backgrounds entering higher education - that is, the extent of debt and aversion to it, made worse by the abolition of maintenance grants. The failure of the majority to even consider the issue, let alone make recommendations, brings the select committee into disrepute."

Mr St Aubyn said: "It is a failed opportunity where the needs of students have been sacrificed on the altar of Labour politics. (It) has brought the select committee into disrepute."

Mr St Aubyn, who is parliamentary private secretary to shadow chancellor Michael Portillo, said the committee's Labour Party members were more concerned about criticism of Mr Brown than with the reputation of Oxford.

Mr St Aubyn is taking advice from select committee officials to see what courses of action are open to him over the handling of the report, particularly the role of committee chairman Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield. Mr St Aubyn said he would not resign.

Owain James, president of the National Union of Students, which gave evidence to the committee, said: "The report only tackles half of the issues. But simply ignoring the issue of student debt and debt aversion does not mean that the issue will go away."

Maggie Woodrow, chairwoman of the European Access Network, based at Westminster University, who gave evidence, said: "After I'd read this report, I thought I'd left half of it on the train. Support for low-income students and support for higher education institutions are two sides of the access coin, but not in this report."

Paul Mackney, general secretary of lecturers' union Natfhe, who was disappointed that the committee did not call him to give evidence, said:

"The government will have to invest in bringing working-class students into higher education by restoring grants and scrapping the fees that are the real deterrents to access."

A spokesman for the Association of University Teachers said: "It is regrettable that it is not a wider report and that the many positive recommendations in the report will now be obscured because it has turned into a pre-election free-for-all."

Vice-chancellors, represented by Universities UK, were pleased with several recommendations, including the proposed increase in cash premiums for institutions recruiting students from deprived areas.

Mr Sheerman commented: "Cabinet members have far more important things to do. Members knew that there would be very limited discussion of student finance in this report because we would deal with it in the forthcoming retention report. As for the complaints about our report and the chancellor, all I can say is that it is a cheap, party political shot at Gordon Brown."

• Higher education minister Baroness Blackstone told the committee last week that the government accepted that academic pay had declined relative to salaries in other professions.

Labour MP Gordon Marsden had asked her whether she thought the £330 million three-year package for academic pay, announced recently, would be sufficient to address staff recruitment and retention problems.

She said the quality of academic staff was central to a world-class university system. But pay was a matter for universities, not government, and she told lecturing unions, such as Natfhe, that they should call off their on-going industrial action over pay.

Responding to the minister's comments after the meeting, Tom Wilson, head of universities for Natfhe, said: "We welcome the government's recognition on lecturers' pay. While we acknowledge the desire to suspend the industrial action, we trust that the government is putting equal pressure on employers."

Later, committee chairman Barry Sheerman told Baroness Blackstone that all committee members thought that the income threshold at which graduates start to repay their student loans was too low, presently £10,000.