Tories like me will back Andy Burnham if he puts British students first, writes Laura Trott MP

Those are Andy Burnham's words. They deserve to be welcomed, because they amount to an acknowledgement that Britain has spent too long assuming university is the right answer for almost every young person.

That represents a remarkable shift. Under Tony Blair, Labour set a target for 50 per cent of young people to go to university. The ambition may have been well intentioned, but the result has been a system that has too often prioritised getting young people through the doors of universities over whether those courses actually lead to good outcomes. This is not an argument against higher education. It is an argument against pretending every degree is worth the same. Far too many young people have been sold a pup.

Students can end up with only a handful of teaching hours each week, barely seeing their tutors while taking on tens of thousands of pounds of debt. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, around a quarter of graduates are financially worse off for having gone to university than if they had never gone at all. This is clearly wrong.

We have spent years celebrating record university participation without asking a much more important question: are we actually setting young people up for successful lives?

Our New Deal for Young People would tackle the system from top to bottom.

First, we would stop funding courses that consistently leave students with poor outcomes. That is not about attacking universities. It is about ensuring that taxpayers' money supports courses that genuinely equip young people with the skills they need to thrive. By ending funding for dead-end courses, we can free up billions to invest in better opportunities.

That brings us to one of the greatest injustices in the current system: Plan 2 student loans. For the millions who started university between 2012 and 2023, the system increasingly feels like a scam. Graduates can study hard, get a job and make every repayment they are required to, yet because interest is charged at up to three percentage points above inflation, the amount they owe increases year after year.

Lucy Powell has described that system as “unfair” and “endless”. She is absolutely right, so I hope she plans to fix it. Campaign groups like Rethink Repayment have gathered MPs from across the political spectrum to call on this new cabinet to put the system right.

Our New Deal would go a long way to doing just that by scrapping the additional 3 per cent interest rate and capping Plan 2 loans at RPI, so graduates repay what they borrow without watching their debt spiral ever upwards.

If we stop funnelling young people onto courses that offer poor value and poor outcomes, we can save taxpayers billions, end the debt trap for graduates and reinvest that money in helping the next generation succeed.

That means backing apprenticeships. Our Apprenticeship Guarantee would reform the apprenticeship levy and fully fund training and college places for an additional 100,000 18- to 21-year-olds every year, making apprenticeships a genuine first choice rather than a fallback option. Alongside that would come a First Job Bonus. Instead of paying National Insurance on their first £5,000 of earnings, that money would be placed in a personal savings account.

So I welcome Andy Burnham's comments - it is an argument I have been making for some time as Shadow Education Secretary, and it is encouraging to see others now recognising the old consensus has failed.

What concerns me is that, while Labour has begun to acknowledge some of the problems, they have once again put British students at the back of the queue. At a time when graduates here are seeing their debts soar, Labour appears willing to offer EU students reduced tuition fees as part of negotiations with the EU. It is madness.

Labour's Erasmus deal also leaves taxpayers picking up a “first year discounted” bill of £570 million. In 2019, our contribution was around £296 million. That is a curious definition of a discount.

British students should come first.

Andy Burnham is right that Britain needs a complete rethink of how we prepare young people for the future. The question now is whether he is prepared to follow that argument through. If we really believe university isn't the right answer for everyone, we must stop funding courses that fail young people, end the graduate debt trap, back apprenticeships and restore genuine choice.

That is exactly what our New Deal for Young People would do, and I am willing to work with the Government in the face of opposition from Labour backbenchers to deliver it.

____________________

Laura Trott is the Shadow Education Secretary.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk