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Higher Education Fees

I am afraid that I cannot take any more interventions because of the time. We are talking about creating a system that will allow greater access, be more affordable and, in my view, ensure that higher education is properly funded. Let me address the issue of better access. I am proud to be a graduate of Aberystwyth university, and when I graduated 20 years ago, the university had 2,700 undergraduates, whereas the current figure is almost 10,000. That increase is most welcome; I think both sides of the House welcome the fact that more young people have opportunities in education. However, those opportunities come at a cost and the Labour party continually allowed a situation to develop in which more and more people were going to university but sufficient funding provision was not put in place.