Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. I welcome the parity that you’ve announced between part-time and full-time students, and between undergraduates and postgraduate students. I’d like to add my own thanks to those of the Cabinet Secretary to the National Union of Students for fighting the good fight for part-time and postgrad students for so long. I also welcome the proposal that doctoral studies should be supported. However, I fail to see how offering £1,000 per student, regardless of income, is a positive step forward. The Cabinet Secretary may say that we may be taking about a relatively small amount of money here, but that money could be spent elsewhere in the education system, such as making essential repairs to a rural school. The Welsh Government is constantly complaining that they’re not given sufficient funds, yet you can find the cash to give this handout to students from families on higher incomes. Whilst I’m not necessarily against the principle of a student loan system, I’m wary of saddling Welsh students with debt at the beginning of their careers. Graduates are now facing debts at the same level as my first mortgage. Is this really what we want for Welsh students?

I’d welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s explanation of how she is ensuring that students and graduates achieve a quality career service that will help them make the best decisions about which course to study and how much debt to incur. At the end of the day, these people are going to be saddled with an amount of debt. We need to make sure that they understand the level of debt, how long that’s going to take them to pay off, and that that’s actually a proper and worthy investment in their future before they actually incur the debt. Without quality careers advice, we risk Welsh students incurring debt for no good reason, as I said. I do believe the Cabinet Secretary has missed the opportunity to incentivise students to study those subjects such as science and engineering, which are desperately needed in our economy, by providing free tuition and means-tested grants for those subjects.

I’m also concerned about the potential inflation of student costs, which could be caused in terms of rent et cetera, as landlords and others cotton on to the fact that students have access to loans and potentially more money. We saw it happen when student loans were introduced in the 1990s. Rent for student accommodation rocketed for a start. And, so, what is the Cabinet Secretary’s assessment on inflation of costs for students, due to the measures announced today? Thank you.