Tuition fees dispute

Can New Labour resolve its difficulties over higher education?

In an interview broadcast on HARDtalk on 27 November, Britain's school's minister talks to Tim Sebastian about the dispute within the Labour party over plans to introduce university tuition fees.

The Labour government in Britain described education as its top priority.

This week the Queen's speech announced that the government would be pressing ahead with its plans to reform university funding, introducing top-up fees.

However, Labour's 2001 manifesto had pledged that "we will not introduce top-up fees and have legislated to prevent them.

David Miliband explained the apparent contradiction: "It is important for people to understand this system would only come in at the next parliament with a general election in between. We write a manifesto in our system for a session of parliament for a 4 or 5 year term. The new system that we are proposing wouldn't come in until 2006, so voters will have a chance to have their say."

Regarded as one of Labour's intellectuals, Miliband helped to write the party's last two election manifestos. For a year and a half now he has had a chance to put his ideas into practice in ministerial office.

Despite some achievements, he agrees that education is still not providing equality of opportunity.

"It is absolutely clear that we've got too great a link between social class and education attainment in this country. It's the great problem of English education that there is excellence, but too often it's not spread across all the social class spectrum, that's something we're hoping to tackle."

HARDtalk can be seen on BBC World at 04:30 GMT, 11:30 GMT, 15:30 GMT, 19:30 GMT and 00:30 GMT

It can also be seen on BBC News 24 at 04:30 and 23:30