08/12/2010

Cameron And Miliband Clash Over Tuition Fees

Ed Miliband has been accused of "rank hypocrisy" by the Prime Minister during a Commons clash over tuition fees.

The Labour Leader encouraged ministers to rethink the rise in fees, saying they were "pulling the ladder" away from poorer students and saddling them with huge debts.

However, David Cameron said that no Labour alternative had been offered.

Thursday's vote will focus on raising tuition fees to £9,000, with the £21,000 salary graduate repayment threshold uprated each year in line with earnings from 2016, instead of every five years.

Other concessions on the table include uprating the existing £15,000 repayment inflation level from 2012 allowing part-time students to apply for student loans if they study for a quarter of the year, instead of a third.

In Prime Minister's questions, Mr Miliband said the government was cutting public funding for universities and "loading the cost onto students and their families".

He added "nobody was convinced" by the policy which was "in chaos" with concessions "being rushed out" regularly.

He discussed how the Liberal Democrats were "split four ways" on how to vote. They had originally pledged to oppose any rise in fees before the election.

He also said: "The most sensible thing is to go away, think again and come up with a better proposal.”

However, the Prime Minster fought back saying that Labour had first opposed tuition fees and then introduced them when in office and commissioned the independent Browne review on university funding before attacking its findings – decisions he said "dragged politics through the mud".

Regarding the recent protests, he added that Mr Miliband's idea of leadership was following the demands of the "big crowd of students in the mall".

Referring to Mr Milliband, he said: "He is behaving like a student politician and frankly that is all he will ever be”.

Earlier, Business Secretary Vince Cable said they would "further enhance a reform package which will put higher education funding and student finance on a sustainable footing, improve the quality and viability of our university system, offer more progressive support to those on lower incomes, both while studying in HE and when repaying as graduates, and contribute to paying down the deficit".

(BMcN/KMcA)

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