Tuition fees – time to admit we got it wrong

By Lisa Nandy MP / @lisanandy

This week – the first back after conference recess – the end of universal child benefits and the Browne Review recommendation to lift the cap on tuition fees dominated discussion in the commons. Despite Ed Miliband’s characteristically thoughtful approach in Prime Minister’s Questions, the debate is angry. But it is fuelled by genuine differences in opinion about the sort of society we want; in spite of misleading attempts by many politicians and sections of the media to pretend that we are attacking each other for political gain.

Although there is clearly still too much of the knockabout politics the public hate, the commons can be remarkably collegiate. As a new MP I was, and continue to be, encouraged and supported by more experienced colleagues on both sides of the house. And even in this most divided of weeks, in the debate to mark Anti-Slavery day, Labour, Tory and Liberal colleagues united to urge government to think again about the decision not to opt into the EU Convention on Trafficking in Human Beings.

Earlier this week, I met with Ed Timpson, the Tory MP for Crewe and Nantwich, to discuss the cross-party enquiry he and I have set up. We are doing it because we are angry that children in care have consistently been let down over several decades and we know it is only by working together that we will help them get the opportunities they deserve.

So when there is the sort of row that exploded this week over tuition fees and child benefit it is not (always) because politicians are seeking to make political capital. So far the Liberals, for obvious reasons, have been in the firing line over tuition fees but the spotlight is rightly starting to shift to Labour’s response. It is time for us to admit we got it wrong.

Even with a deferred payment regime, charging at the point of need should never have been the starting point for a party that believes ability and choice are more important than accident of birth. It has potentially allowed the coalition government to lift the cap altogether from tuition fees and remove state funding from subjects such as the arts and humanities. This represents a direct shift in responsibility for funding from the state to the student. Without a rejection of the very principle behind tuition fees we will never credibly be able to defend a generation of graduates who will leave university with decades of debt, while trying to care and pay for aging parents and children and struggling to get onto the property ladder.

And worse, we will not be able to stop hundreds of thousands of talented, less affluent young people choosing not to go to university because of the prospect of huge debt. Ed Miliband was right to call for a graduate tax that recognises that the individual’s gain from higher education, i.e. their increased income, should be used to help fund others’ education. But we must also recognise that education and skills are a collective good and of benefit to the wider economy. As the University and College Union argued convincingly this week, businesses profit from graduates’ skills and ought to make some form of structured contribution.

This is the real debate. The Tories must not be able to convince us, or wider society, that their individual, atomistic vision should take the place of a collective and collegiate society. Their policy will see institutions forced to close and whole areas without provision in certain subjects. Those students who want to stay at home to avoid the maximum cost of university may well be severely restricted in their choice of study. I was reminded this week of the words on our membership cards: “by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone”. Education is a social good – let’s put that front and centre of our approach to this important issue.