Tuition Fees

I read with interest Mark Eriera-Guyer's letter (BFP 10/12/10) on Tuition Fees. Residents will not have forgotten that before he was a Green Parliamentary Candidate, he was a Labour PC supporting the party that introduced Tuition Fees so he has has undergone quite a change of view himself. He also mentioned the abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance. This was a typical nanny state Labour measure in which the government took tax off all of us and give it back to pupils staying on in education whether their parents needed it or not. It was one of the reasons taxpayers debt had risen to £160 billion under Labour. It has been replaced, not abolished, with the Learning Support Grant given to students from families with lower incomes to ensure they don't feel the need to leave school and get a job, but stay on to gain a better chance for themselves in the future.

Mark's current view on Tuition Fees flies in the face of the public vote. The public only elected 57MP's wanting to scrap Tuition Fees. They elected 306 Tory MP's and 257 Labour MP's who backed Tuition Fees.

I always though elections were for the public to decide what policies they want by voting accordingly.

If the public had elected a Lib Dem government then we would have scrapped Trident, introduced a mansion tax, and raised capital gains tax in line with income tax so richer people paid the same tax as working people. Then we could have afforded to scrap Tuition Fees, but that was not the public choice.

Instead the Lib Dems have negotiated a far better deal for students than they would have had left entirely to the Tory Party. There will be no upfront fees, and no student will pay anything back until their income is over £21,000. At £22,000 graduates will pay £7.50 a week, which is not going to break anybody's finances. Many students will not have to pay anything at all.

If the Labour supporting NUS president had has way student grants would have been cut.