Parliament and Policy: April and May 2014

Mentions of the Sutton Trust and EEF in Parliament

10 April 2014

In a questions session with The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable), The Sutton Trust was mentioned in a question regarding student loans.

Liam Byrne (Labour ) asked, “The whole House will want to join me in congratulating Toni Pearce on her re-election as president of the National Union of Students. Figures this morning from the Sutton Trust and the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that Toni’s generation will now be paying off their student loans into their 50s. Will the Minister get to the Dispatch Box and confess that this student debt system is now not only unsustainable, but unfair? Does the Conservative party have any plans to raise the £9,000 fee in the next Parliament?

David Willetts (Conservative) replied, “Let us be absolutely clear what today’s IFS report shows. It shows that people on lower earnings throughout their working lives are going to pay back less. That is a deliberate feature of our reforms which means that they are fairer and more progressive than the system we inherited from the Labour Government. Meanwhile, people who earn a lot during their working lives as a result of going to university will pay back more. That is what we intended with these reforms, and that is what the IFS shows we are delivering.”

Mentions of the Sutton Trust and EEF in Policy

Research conducted by the Sutton Trust was referenced in the TUC’s report “Dismantling the Barriers to Social Mobility.“

Sutton Trust research was heavily cited in the national strategy for fair accessdeveloped by OFFA and HEFCE.