“If Labour had achieved what we have, It’d be shouting from the rooftops:” Chris Bowers.
THE Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Brighton Pavilion has taken the battle on tuition fees to Brighton’s students, saying: “If Labour had achieved what we’ve achieved on fair access to university, it would be shouting the news from the rooftops.”
Chris Bowers, who is standing against Caroline Lucas MP in Brighton Pavilion on May 7, addressed students at the University of Sussex last night (February 10) on the Lib Dems’ thorny issue of tuition fees.
In a 20-minute speech, he told students the Lib Dems had had a tricky decision to make in late 2010 having pledged not to raise tuition fees before the May 2010 election, but despite the flak they had taken, he says the decision had proved a good one.
“We pledged not to raise fees because our 2010 manifesto included a costed policy to phase out first degree tuition fees over six years,” Bowers said: “But with the Conservatives and Labour committed to the Browne report which recommended no cap on fees, we either had to stick by our pledge and watch higher education be massacred, or use the influence we had from students’ votes to go into bat for a better deal.”
“We chose to go for the best available deal for students, and the result was a series of vital concessions that have turned tuition fees into a graduate tax in all but name, and one that has made it a lot easier for youngsters from lower-income families to go to university. That is a big step towards equality of opportunity, and something anyone who cares about fairness should be proud of.”
Before attending last nights meeting Bowers tweeted “Off to the lions’ den” and quoted recent figures from the university admissions service Ucas which show the rate of disadvantaged students applying to study in higher education at an all-time high, with 18-year-olds living in the most disadvantaged areas of England 72 per cent more likely to apply to higher education in 2015 than they were nine years ago.
Beth Johnson-Dawes, chair of the University of Sussex Liberal Democrats, said: “It was good to hear the full story about tuition fees, and everyone in the audience listened politely. I spoke to people after the meeting who said it had never made sense to them that the Lib Dems got all the blame for tuition fees, and now they understood why. It just takes longer to explain the full story than you have in most print or broadcast media.”
The Liberal Democrats recently committed to protecting the education budget from cradle to college if they form part of the next government.
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