I’d like to thank the Cabinet Secretary, Professor Diamond and his team for the report and her statement. There are elements of the report that my party welcomes—the sensible postgraduate arrangements, making them equivalent to undergraduates, support for part-timers and support for carers. One small part we had in our manifesto was the suggestion of pilot schemes for Welsh students to study globally at the best educational institutions. So, we’re delighted to see that taken forward. I wonder, though, whether the Cabinet Secretary would agree that she has become the Government’s most expensive Minister. I had thought that there was a consensus that the tuition fee grant at £237 million last year had become unaffordable, and that savings would need to be made. The Labour manifesto referred to having a student support system that was at least as generous as that available in England. That could have allowed savings from that £237 million. It could have allowed savings from the maintenance grant not having to be paid back in Wales. But all those potential savings, we are now told, are going to be spent. I asked Professor Diamond this morning whether there’d be any savings and he said, ‘No, it was going to be broadly equivalent’. I referred him to his terms of reference, which said one of his focuses should be

‘the funding of higher education in the light of continuing constraints on public expenditure’, but he told me that he hadn’t applied that; there’d been a more recent statement from the Welsh Government, and that had led to him producing a package that had no negative effect on the higher education budget. Now, of course, that phrase was included in what on her website the Cabinet Secretary initially styled as the coalition agreement. It’s still searchable, with various lines of Latin underneath it. But that was then restyled ‘the progressive agreement’. But I would like to ask the Cabinet Secretary: what is progressive about handing £1,000 to every student, however well off they are, no questions asked? What is progressive about increasing a maintenance grant that was £5,161—part of which was paid up to family incomes of £50,000—increasing that to over £8,000 and making that payable to households with incomes over £80,000, receiving at least part of that?

Now, students, on account of graduating, will earn more over their lifetime than those who don’t have the privilege of going to university. They come on average from significantly better-off families, yet we propose to give £132 million a year in increased maintenance grant to this group. Now, some in my party, and perhaps some Labour Members, might wish to spend that on the Welsh NHS or on our most deprived communities, but instead of that, it will go in maintenance grants that get paid, including to families earning up to £80,000. How is that progressive?

I wonder—the Cabinet Secretary also mentions rent—how this is going to assist in paying rent. What analysis has the Welsh Government, or Professor Diamond and his team, done of the extent to which this extra money will go to reward landlords? Does she consider that that will be progressive? I also wonder why she thinks it benefits the Welsh economy to transfer over £30 million a year in maintenance grant to students who will be studying in England. Now, Plaid came up with a proposal that they want a potentially complex system that would forgive some of those loans. But, listening to Professor Diamond this morning, there seemed to be at least half a dozen hurdles on the way to that, not least that the Treasury may not agree. Listening to the Cabinet Secretary now, she emphasises the difficulties of that. There is £74 million that’s been put in as a holding sum in the report, supposedly for those costs, but it’s not included in the summary of the costs of the recommendations. Does the Cabinet Secretary really believe that this differential loan forgiveness scheme is ever really going to be implemented? Is not a better way to encourage students to stay in Wales, to support and expand the higher education system here, the provision of a more generous settlement to students who stay in Wales compared to those who choose to go to England and benefit from the loans, as English students have there? We could support the worst-off with some help while still supporting the Welsh education system in that way. Why will she not do that?

Could I also ask her—? She mentions this ‘no detriment’. Is it the case that the terms of reference of the Diamond review were changed two years in and replaced with her progressive agreement? Please tell us how that is progressive.

One final matter: there is a recommendation from Professor Diamond that students may continue to be paid and funded to study elsewhere in the EU, but he states that recommendation is

‘subject to the UK remaining in the EU’.

Is he not aware there was a referendum on 23 June, or does he agree with her party that we should be made to vote again?