David Cameron suffered a torrid time at Prime Minister's Questions alongside the embattled Nick Clegg and Vince Cable over tuition fees today.
David Cameron suffered a torrid time at Prime Minister’s Questions alongside the embattled Nick Clegg and Vince Cable over tuition fees today. In heated exchanges with Ed Miliband, the prime minister claimed that under alternative proposals for a graduate tax:
“… people on £6,000, £7,000, £9,000 would have to start paying back.”
However, under the National Union Students’s plans, graduates earning less than £15,000 will be exempt from the tax, as re-iterated in NUS president Aaron Porter’s letter to Nick Clegg this week:
“… you’ve argued that your proposals are fairer because graduates would only start paying back when they earn £21,000 as opposed to £15,000 in our proposals drafted in 2008.”
On Sunday, Mr Clegg accused Porter of “not being straight”, and on the Daily Politics today Baroness Warsi went further, accusing the NUS of “peddling a lot of myths” – yet this is exactly what Mr Cameron is guilty of.
Speaking on Sky News this lunchtime, Porter ramped up the pressure on the Liberal Democrats, saying:
“They have two clear choices: they can be loyal and keep their promise to the Conservative party, or they can be loyal to students… The anger will continue for the next few days and again beyond the vote.”
Update 1700hrs
The full transcript of today’s PMQs is now online; featuring Democratic Unionist Party MP for Belfast North Nigel Dodds’s question to Mr Cameron:
“In light of his experience of the World cup bid in Zurich last week, can the Prime Minister tell us what his view now is of an organisation that engages in the most convoluted and bizarre voting arrangements, that says one thing and then votes exactly the opposite way, and that has a leader who seems more interested in power and prestige than accountability…
“And after he has finished with the Lib Dems, can he tell us what he thinks of FIFA?”
It’s the way you tell ’em!
15 Responses to “Who’s not being straight now?”
David Carter
RT @leftfootfwd: Who's not being straight now? http://bit.ly/dKcQFP writes @ShamikDas #Fees #PMQs
Andrew Simpson
RT @leftfootfwd: Who's not being straight now? http://bit.ly/ffjiIl
Leonie
RT @leftfootfwd: Who's not being straight now? http://bit.ly/dKcQFP writes @ShamikDas #Fees #PMQs
Stephen W
What is the difference between a graduate tax that starts at £15,000 and tuition fees repayable at 9% of incomes over £21,000 that makes the first a great idea and the 2nd a travesty?
And why is it progressive to have a lower threshold, and to charge people the same regardless of whether they go to Oxford or Wolverhampton? With the obvious difference in income potential from going to Oxford?
Please do enlighten us?
Mike
@Stephen W: For me it’s the fact that the source of funding has shifted from public to individual, giving up on the idea that universities should be anything but a process by which a person adds the letters ‘BA’ to their CV. We’ll see a two-tier system as those with prestige can afford not to pass students if they don’t measure up and those without can’t afford to put off potential customers, increasing the gap between best and worst and leading to a generalised ‘dumbing down’.
Also, grad taxes hit graduates. This is an obvious point that people don’t get. They don’t put people into too much debt if they’ve found they can’t do it and drop out. Say you’re a working class person, the first for whom there is even the idea of going to university. You don’t know if you’ll be able to hack it or even what it entails, so are you going to risk getting into debt when it could end up doing nothing but harm? No, but for those born to go to uni, for whom the debt isn’t as daunting, it is less of a concern.
I favour a small individual fee coupled with significant public funding to recognise the benefits to both society and the individual that universities should bring (and hopefully to prompt those benefits- why would you, for example, put on public lectures if spending on anything other than the students, your source of income, places you at a disadvantage in the education market-place?)