Tories stick to scrapping fees

Tim Yeo has reaffirmed his party's plan to get rid of tuition fees

The Conservatives have defended their policy of scrapping university tuition fees - despite facing their own internal opponents.

The party's health and education spokesman, Tim Yeo, re-iterated his commitment to opposing tuition fees.

But opponents, including former Conservative education minister, Robert Jackson, say this is "irresponsible" and will damage universities.

He says the policy "underestimates the intelligence of middle class voters".

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's World this Weekend, Mr Yeo gave no sign that the party was planning to re-think its policy on university fees.

Fees rebellion

He re-affirmed that the Conservatives would oppose allowing universities to increase fees to £3,000 per year - arguing that this would raise the prospect of students over-burdened with debt and universities encumbered with an "access regulator".

While the government faces the threat of a rebellion in the new year from its own backbenchers who want to stop the increase to tuition fees - the Conservatives are also being challenged in their proposal to scrap fees.

Mr Jackson, who was higher education minister during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, said that the policy was a short-term attempt to score a political point, which would cause long-term damage to universities.

He said that the Conservative attempt to block fees was motivated only by the desire to give the prime minister "a bloody nose".

In seeking to scrap fees, Mr Jackson said the Conservative party was not acting in the "national interest" and was "behaving very irresponsibly".

Under review?

If they succeeded in stopping fees, Mr Jackson said that there would be a "very high price to pay" as it will have scuppered "the only serious idea" for improving funding for universities.

The vice-chancellor of the country's only private university, Terence Kealey of Buckingham University, also cast doubt on the Conservatives' commitment to scrapping tuition fees.

He said that "friends who are very close to the centre of the Tory party" had told him that the policy came under close scrutiny in the aftermath of Michael Howard's taking over the leadership.

Dr Kealey says that the plan to scrap fees was not "intellectually coherent" but had been kept because it was believed to be electorally popular.

But Mr Yeo, reacting to suggestions that his party's policy to scrap fees had come close to being dropped, said that the position on tuition fees had only been re-examined as part of a general review of party policy.

"It had been discussed by the shadow cabinet, which of course included Michael Howard and we have reaffirmed that policy," said Mr Yeo.

Chris Patten, a former Conservative party chairman and now chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle universities, has also spoken against the Conservative policy on fees - arguing that universities needed the extra funding that fees might provide.

"I very much hope that the government will stick to its guns and get this through, because there is nothing else on offer to the universities," he said.