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Higher Education

This time next week, we shall all be eagerly anticipating the Chancellor's Budget, which may be his last both before and after the general election. We shall be waiting to see whether there is a bold vision for higher education and research in that Budget, but I think we would be foolish to hold our breath. This Government decided not to have a comprehensive spending review to cover the current period and the next two years, quite in contradiction of their previous practice, both under the current Chancellor and the Prime Minister as Chancellor before him; yet higher education and research have been singled out for Budget cuts that have been announced so far, in stark contradiction to what has been announced for other Departments. Higher and further education have so far been the victims of targeted cuts that are announced by the Government, either on a piecemeal basis or alluded to in the pre-Budget report, which specifically mentioned science. I repeat my question to the Minister: what is the future for British science in this country when the pre-Budget report specifically says that science should be a target for cuts in the next period? We will have to wait for eight days to see whether the Chancellor expands on that. We see the contrast, right at the top of the Government, between the Minister's superior, Lord Mandelson, at the other end of the Palace of Westminster, and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families: further and higher education have been put forward for sacrifice in contrast to the message from the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Lord Browne's review is under way. My party considers that the review could have started a lot sooner and, more importantly, could actually have concluded in advance of the impending general election. Then we could have had a genuine debate, with three choices being put forward by the three parties, informed by that review in advance of the general election. Sadly, we shall not get that chance at the coming general election, but it remains the position of the Liberal Democrats that the current tuition fees model for part-financing higher education is bust, and should not form part of the long-term future of funding higher education. We also specifically reject any moves for full variability in tuition fees. The theoretical ability to vary tuition fees exists at the moment, but if the cap were to come off or were to be gradually lifted, it would lead to a market in the cost of higher education, and that is a vision of the future that we simply do not share. Although he is not listening at the moment, I congratulate the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) on using one of his brains to study the blogosphere very carefully. He obviously spends far more time on these matters than I do, whether it is blogs from my own side or from his, or from the Labour side of the Chamber. I am happy to confirm to him that scrapping tuition fees remains the position of my party. We have a six-year proposal to achieve that objective. It is fully costed and will be set out in our manifesto. In year 1, 2010-11, it will cost £595 million, and at the end of year 6 it will, on current figures, cost just under £3 billion. We will, as always, be identifying the sources of those funds.