Pledge to win over top-up rebels

Cambridge University students protested against fees

Charles Clarke has pledged the upper threshold for top-up fees will not rise above £3,000 for two general elections.

In what will be seen as a bid to shore up support among Labour MPs, the education secretary pledged the move would be written into the Bill.

The concession comes ahead of Tuesday's key Commons vote.

Mr Clarke said the bill would make clear that increasing the fees above the top threshold would require primary legislation.

'Hill to climb'

In an interview on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme he acknowledged the government still had a way to go to win the vote.

"I am thinking we will win the vote on Tuesday but there is certainly a hill to climb," he said.

And he insisted that the controversial proposal that universities set their own fee level up to the £3,000 upper threshold must stay - despite the fact it is a sticking point for a substantial number of Labour MPs.

"It is perfectly right that there should be variability and that is an aspect of the Bill that we think is very important and can't make any concessions on," he said.

Mr Clarke's comments came after Tony Blair said universities could become "second class" if Labour rebels vote against the government's Higher Education Bill.

"If we don't get the extra investment in, in the future we will have a second-class university system," Mr Blair told the Observer.

He said he was determined to stick to his education reform plans.

Quality

"If we don't put in place a new system of university finance, fewer people will be able to go to university, and fewer people will have the quality education that they want," Mr Blair said.

He questioned the motives of some of the potential backbench rebels.

I didn't join the Labour Party and I didn't become a Labour MP to widen social inequality Frank Dobson MPs consider Blair's crucial week

There have been suggestions that some are more interested in undermining his leadership than in the issue itself.

That was an issue taken up by Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett on BBC Radio 4's World this Weekend programme.

She said Labour was approaching an "abyss".

"I do find it almost impossible to believe that large numbers of Labour MPs are going to go into the lobby with the Conservatives in an attempt to seriously undermine the standing of the government and also to defeat a package which is much better for students, never mind anybody else, than what is available to them now.

"This seems to me to be the politics of madness."

'Deserves our support'

Chancellor Gordon Brown told GMTV many of the rebels would change their minds "over the course of the next day" and said Mr Blair should be prime minister at the next election.

He said Mr Blair "deserves our support, he deserves our total backing but not only that, the policies that we are pursuing... all arrive from deep seated values."

Mr Dobson opposes top-up fees

But Labour ex-health secretary Frank Dobson said that he could not back the government on this particular issue.

"This policy is wrong, I think it's damaging, I think it would lead to greater social equality in this country and I didn't join the Labour Party and I didn't become a Labour MP to widen social inequality," he told the BBC's Politics Show.

Mr Clarke meanwhile dismissed claims that student doctors will face university debts of up to £64,000 if new top-up fees proposals go ahead.

He said the British Medical Association's sums were "flawed" and "excessive" but the body is standing by its figures.