Source: Alamy

Causing protest: many Lib Dem MPs broke pledge to oppose fee rises in 2010

The Liberal Democrats have reached a ¡°credible position¡± by accepting ?9,000 tuition charges in the short term and treating the abolition of fees as a future aspiration, according to the party¡¯s deputy leader, Simon Hughes.

The Lib Dems, who again could be power brokers in any future coalition, reached a compromise over their official policy on higher education funding at the party¡¯s autumn conference in Glasgow on 15 ?September.

Senior Lib Dem figures had originally proposed a motion that backed ?9,000 fees and committed the party to ¡°retaining the current system of higher education finance¡±.

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But that was thrown out by delegates, who supported an amended motion.

The changed wording accepts that the ?9,000 regime is ¡°preferable¡± to Labour¡¯s policy, adding that the Lib Dems will review the system after the 2015 general election and then scrap fees ¡°if possible or necessary¡±.

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Vince Cable, the business secretary, ended up backing the amended motion while disagreeing with the goal of abolishing fees.

¡°We and the other major parties are not going to go back to free tuition,¡± he told delegates. ¡°Even if a party promised it, I don¡¯t think the public would believe it.¡±

The Lib Dem leadership wanted to update the party¡¯s official policy, which until now stated that it would phase out tuition charges ¨C problematic given that many of the party¡¯s MPs broke their pledge to oppose fee rises in 2010.

Mr Hughes, who took on the role of ¡°access champion¡± in 2011, told Times?Higher Education after the debate: ¡°The party still has a strong anti-fees view.

¡°We are trying to be realistic: fees?have been implemented. We¡¯re saying that rather than try and go back to where we were [abolishing fees] immediately, let¡¯s pause, reflect, take evidence, see the effect and then come back to it again in the round after the election. I think that¡¯s a?more credible position.¡±

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Mr Hughes said that on access, it was ¡°not the fees¡­but the funding for living costs that is the real issue¡±.

As a result of the vote, the Lib Dems are likely to have a short-term higher education funding policy close to that of the Conservatives at the next election.

Labour, which in 2011 unveiled a holding policy promising to lower fees to ?6,000, must now weigh up whether maintaining a different stance will attract enough votes to balance the higher costs of implementing such a system.

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Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem MP?for Cambridge, who voted against ?9,000 fees in 2010, told the conference that he wanted ¡°an option to eliminate fees¡± kept for consideration by the party in the longer term.

But he added: ¡°I really don¡¯t think the public would believe us if we said it at the next election.¡±

The original motion proposing support for the ?9,000 system was the fruit of a Lib Dem working group on post-16 education policy.

Baroness Brinton, who chaired the working group, criticised the party¡¯s former policy to abolish fees. ¡°We had no method for paying for it,¡± she told a Million+/National Union of Students fringe event at the conference on 15 September.

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She added: ¡°The group¡¯s position was: we quite like the current system provided we get more support for?students from lower-income backgrounds.¡±

john.morgan@tsleducation.com