My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. I am sorry that my arguments for putting the 10 notional hours in the Bill did not meet with her approval. Of course, secondary legislation can be amended much more readily than
things that are in the Bill. I will have to read her answer on the credit structure as I was getting slightly confused about that—if Oxford would get only 20 credits, oh dear, what has happened to my old university? I will have to read that carefully and see where the argument was going.
On Amendment 6A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, again, I am not quite sure why fees should not increase with inflation. I realise that, at the moment, nobody wants anything to increase at all because we are in a difficult time when money is scarce for a lot of people, but the noble Lord gave figures about how the disparity has grown. I speak from a party that did not want university fees at all—by golly, were we punished for that—but we costed it and worked out that an awful lot of students would not pay fees anyway. The cost of setting up the Student Loans Company and chasing down students all had to be put in the negative. It was a fully costed programme, but obviously it did not serve us well at all.
I hope the Minister will look again at the noble Lord’s amendment. One reads about the UEA getting into all these troubles and probably having to forego its creative writing course, which would be a lamentable outcome, given the incredible people who have come out of that course over the years. Anyway, I thank her for the reply. We shall consider everything she said, but I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.