Who’s not being straight now?

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!