Lords rejects Labour attempt to derail tuition fees legislation

Majority of peers choose not to back amendment calling for more consultation but they back plan for £9,000 cap on fees
Lord Triesman
Lord Triesman: he led the Labour charge against raising the tuition fees cap to £9,000. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images

Labour peers today mounted a strong challenge to plans to treble university tuition fees, including recruiting to their cause a crossbench peer and principal of an Oxford college, but were ultimately defeated in a House of Lords vote that allowed the government plans to clear parliament.

The Lords chamber was packed for a vote in which a majority of peers chose not to back an amendment allowing for more consultation. Those voting in favour of the amendment numbered 215, but 283 voted against the call for more time. Peers also voted to support the government's bid to raise the cap on tuition fees to £9,000.

In the debate, peers were warned off voting down the legislation after it had been passed, however narrowly, in the Commons chamber last week. Secondary legislation has only been voted down three times in the Lords since 1968.

Labour spokesman Lord Triesman led the charge against the measure, saying the government was attempting to drive through the "privatisation" of universities with a £9,000 bill the "going rate".

He said: "This afternoon's decision will switch the concept of universities from being a public good, as they have always been through modern history, to essentially a private sector market driven by personal private investment." He added: "Stripped back to the realities, this is a 200% starting fee hike and, for most, it will be a 300% increase. It will result in all probability across the board in about a 300% increase in student debt." Triesman admitted, though, that a Labour government would have presided over a fee increase, adding: "There was always a likelihood there would be an increase in fees, but on these kind of scales, it was never contemplated."

Labour's ranks were joined by the principal of Jesus College, Oxford. Lord Krebs asked the government to explain why it is cutting university funding when Britain is already spending less on higher education as a proportion of GDP than Hungary, Mexico, Poland and Brazil.

The bishop of Lincoln, the Rt Rev John Saxbee, who is the Church of England's chair of education, said he was concerned about the withdrawal of funding to humanities and social sciences, subjects he believed were essential to encouraging "rounded human beings". He added: "We must ask whether the normalising of debt in this way is morally defensible, or socially sustainable. Higher education is not a privatised commodity to be bought and sold on the open market."

Lady Sharp, the Liberal Democrat higher education spokeswoman in the Lords, said she thought there were advantages to the government's scheme and that in some respects it was progressive. However, she was concerned that the government would be unlikely to raise money from the proposal, because some graduates could be expected not to pay off their loans.

The former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown said he had sought to persuade his party not to pledge they would scrap tuition fees but was overruled by ruling policy bodies. He said: "This is not a credit card debt. It's equivalent to a mortgage."

Lord Bilimoria, a crossbench businessman and a former chancellor of Thames Valley University, tabled an amendment calling for the increase in fees to be phased in. He said: "There are cuts, and there is carpet bombing."

A former Labour education minister, Lady Blackstone, called on the government to cut less of the teaching grant, in order to absorb some of the costs being passed to the student.

Opening the Lords debate in a packed chamber, government spokesman Lord Henley said: "There is absolutely no mechanism for the Commons to address or put right a defeat in these circumstances - and accepting one or both of the noble Lords' amendments would therefore be, in practice, a veto."

Referring to the normal ricochet of legislation between the two houses, he said: "There is no ping-pong in this case."