Ministers back tuition fees

UNIVERSITY tuition fees will not be scrapped, ministers said yesterday as they lined up to defend the charges.

Dropping upfront fees of £9,000 a year would only benefit the richest graduates, they said.

Critics speculated about the future of the policy after First Secretary of State Damian Green called for a ‘national debate’ on the issue on Saturday.

But Cabinet minister Michael Gove, a former education secretary, said graduates who went on to earn more ‘should pay something back’. He told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday: ‘It’s wrong if people who don’t go to university find they have to pay more in taxation to support those who do.’

Universities Minister Jo Johnson said: ‘Funding universities out of general taxation would be regressive, benefiting richest graduates.’

He insisted the fees had not deterred poorer graduates from going to university, as Labour claimed. He pointed out that disadvantaged young people were ‘more than 40 per cent more likely to go to university than in 2009’.