A significant Labour rebellion?

BBC Breakfast with Frost, Sunday 25 January 2004.

Charles Clarke MP

The Education Secretary Charles Clarke MP predicted today that the Government will win this week's Commons vote on university tuition fees, but he admitted there was still a "hill to climb".

Interviewed on "Breakfast with Frost", he confirmed that ministers have offered further concessions to win round rebel Labour MPs.

He said they were now prepared to guarantee that there would be no increase in the proposed maximum fee of £3000, without an inquiry and a further vote in Parliament.

He also confirmed there could be no attempt to lift the cap, for several year to come. He told Sir David;

We are prepared to go to the situation of saying we will put on the face of the Bill the fact that no order to increase fees could be introduced until after two General Elections from now.

I think that gives the kind of reassurance people were looking for who have been worried whether there is some secret plan, which there never has been, of course, to increase fees earlier than that.

Significant Labour rebellion?

Despite the concessions, the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy MP said he still hoped the proposals would be defeated because higher fees would impose "a scandalous level of debt" on students.

He said there was a "very significant Labour rebellion", and claimed many Labour MPs were closer to his party's position: that higher education should be funded from general taxation.

Mr Kennedy also talked about Iraq and the doubts now being expressed by senior figures in the US about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. He questioned the Prime Minister's judgement, saying;

The fundamental issue is: Were we sold a pup?

Was this country taken into that war in Iraq on a dodgy basis?

Interview with Charles Kennedy MP

Also on the programme

Newspapers reviewed by Amanda Platell and Michael White

The programme included an interview with the Chief Executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Tim Lamb, as the ECB debates whether England should tour Zimbabwe in the autumn.

He said last week's letter from the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, warning the Board that the situation in Zimbabwe was "bleak and deteriorating", was "probably as close as you'll get to an instruction not to tour".

Sir David also talked to the Chief Scientist of the NASA mission to Mars, Dan McCleese; the newspapers were reviewed by the journalists Amanda Platell and Michael White.

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