Ministers have been accused of an “outrageous” attempt to sneak through their proposals to end student grants in England without proper scrutiny by MPs.

The plan to scrap maintenance grants, which help half a million of the poorest students pay for university life, will go through a legislation committee on Thursday, without a vote and debate on the floor of the House of Commons.

It was first put forward by George Osborne in July, when he proposed turning maintenance grants into loans from September 2016 in a bid to save money.

Labour is opposing the change and the lack of scrutiny. Gordon Marsden, the shadow universities minister, said it was “not simply technical tinkering but a major change by the government that will deprive around half a million of England’s students from lower income and disadvantaged households, of maintenance grant funding”.

He added: “It will leave them having to take out loans as a leap in the dark. It has been done without consultation, with warning signs already being flagged up by the department’s own equality assessment and wholly without the detailed and proper parliamentary scrutiny such a step-change demands.”

Wes Streeting, MP for Ilford North and a former president of the National Union of Students, who will sit on the committee, said: “It is shocking that something as significant as abolishing student grants is being done through delegated legislation in the hope that people won’t notice it. It is part of a worrying pattern of behaviour of this government because their majority is so small.

“It means the committee is stacked in the government’s favour so they don’t have to worry about the inconvenience of getting MPs to turn up and they don’t actually have to vote on the substance of the proposals, just on whether the issue has been heard.

“On the issues around the equity and impact of cancelling student grants, we are just not going to give this the proper scrutiny it deserves. It’s outrageous and a disgrace that it is being done in this way.”

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, criticised the “sly” attempt to end the grants by turning them into loans.

“This is a very frightening prospect for young people and their parents … Plans to cut maintenance grants are wrong and we will fight these plans tooth and nail. Social mobility is a real priority and these changes threaten to further entrench inequality. It is something I oppose.”

The House of Lords, which is dominated by Labour and the Lib Dems, could have blocked the move if it had been done through primary legislation, but peers may not have a chance to thoroughly scrutinise the regulations unless they call for a motion to debate the changes.



Asked why student grants were being ended through delegated legislation, a government spokesman said the changes were being scrutinised by a committee of MPs, using the process approved by parliament in the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998.

Thousands of students from campuses around the country protested against the scrapping of grants outside parliament in November, supported by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.

Critics of the move argue that it will deter young people from low-income families from higher education. Under the current system, university students from families with household incomes of £25,000 or less are entitled to a grant to cover living costs of £3,387 a year. The grant decreases as the family’s income increases and ends when a household earns more than £42,620.

Under the new system, from September 2016 students will get a higher amount of up to £8,200 but this will all have to be repaid under the same terms as existing loans once a graduate earns more than £21,000 a year.

More recently, Osborne has announced he is examining whether to end bursaries for student nurses and midwives, meaning they would have to repay the cost of their tuition fees.