Evan Harris: “If you want to get rid of fees vote more Lib Dems into power”

Former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris has made the extraordinary claim that to get rid of fees "the answer is to vote more liberal democrats into power".

Former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris made the extraordinary claim on Radio Five last night that:

“If you want to get rid of tuition fees, the answer is to vote more liberal democrats into power, not less, because the only way… If you want to get rid of tuition fees realistically the only way to do it…

“If students want to get rid of tuition fees it’s more Liberal Democrats they need, not Tory and Labour.”

This, despite the fact that it was only because of Liberal Democrat MPs that last night’s votes on tuition fees – trebling the cap to £9,000 and raising the lower limit to £6,000 – passed, by a majority of 21. Harris was debating Left Foot Forward’s Will Straw and leading Conservative blogger Shane Greer on the Tony Livesey show.

Listen to it:

Here is the roll of shame of the 34 Lib Dem MPs who broke their pledge by failing to vote against the government:

Danny Alexander
Norman Baker
Sir Alan Beith
Gordon Birtwistle
Tom Brake
Jeremy Browne
Malcolm Bruce
Paul Burstow
Lorely Burt*
Vincent Cable
Alistair Carmichael
Nick Clegg
Edward Davey
Lynne Featherstone
Don Foster
Stephen Gilbert
Duncan Hames
Nick Harvey
David Heath
John Hemming
Simon Hughes*
Mark Hunter
Norman Lamb
David Laws
Michael Moore
Tessa Munt*
Sir Robert Smith*
Andrew Stunell
Jo Swinson
Sarah Teather
John Thurso*
David Ward
Steve Webb
Stephen Williams*

* abstained – still a broken pledge. Chris Huhne and Martin Horwood were both absent in Cancun; only 21 of the party’s 57 MPs voted against the fees rise.

73 Responses to “Evan Harris: “If you want to get rid of fees vote more Lib Dems into power””

  1. AdamBienkov

    Tom King: “He’s stating a fact, though, is he not? The Liberal Democrats are still the only major party whose policy is to abolish fees.”

    In what meaningful respect is it still their policy to abolish fees? They’ve just designed, argued for, and voted through a completely different policy of raising fees.

  2. William J. C. Brown

    .Evan Harris: "If you want to get rid of fees vote more Lib Dems into power" http://bit.ly/hAlZmb

  3. Evan Harris

    It was an interesting debate on the radio last night, and always a pleasure to discuss with Will Straw, though I see that Left Forward Forward has chosen only one extract to concentrate on in this piece and not the discussions of Labour’s betrayals after the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections.

    Does anyone think that Labour will abolish fees?

    That is the Labour Party
    – who introduced fees, despite a pledge not to in 1997 and
    – who introduced top up fees despite pledging not to in 2001 and
    – who set up the Browne Review to look at how to increase fees (no option of alternative in remit) in 2009

    On each occasion Labour did the above actions off their own bat, not even because of a need to compromise with another party to deliver a stable coalition.

    Ed Miliband hasn’t even pledged to reverse last night’s vote.

    So does anyone think Labour – on its own – will abolish fees?

    May be the Lib Dems will retain fee abolition as a party policy (the members decide policy democratically) but they will need to win or be in coalition with Labour to do it.

    Remember that in Scotland after 1999 it was only the Lib Dems in coalition with Labour which abolished fees. It was in Lib Dem manifesto, not Labour’s in 1999. As part of that coalition negotiation both Labour and Lib Dems reneged on pledges made in their manifestos to agree a compromise coalition deal.

    Oh and I see that a far higher proportion of Lib Dem MPs rebelled against the whip on tuition fees last night than did Labour MPs when Labour whipped their MPs to vote to break their 1997 and 2001 pledges on tuition fees. How about a role of shame for Labour MPs voting for the 1998 and 2004 tuition fee policies?

  4. Dr Evan Harris

    And see my comment for good measure RT @wdjstraw Crazy claim from Evan on R5Live last night: http://bit.ly/hAlZmb >>Will Lab abolish fees?

  5. Dr Evan Harris

    @bradleyc27 See my comment on http://bit.ly/hAlZmb

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