Interviewed on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Today on BBC Radio4, David Lammy, local MP and minister for Higher Education, repeatedly failed to rule out a massive hike in student tuition fees if Labour wins the next general election.

Some university vice-chancellors want to increase tuition fees to £20,000 a year but Lammy has refused to rule out such an increase. Pushed repeatedly on the matter, Mr Lammy only admitted that the government will try to distance itself from the decision by passing the issue on to an 'independent review' - to be established in the summer. Experts predict that a final decision will be put off until after the next general election--to avoid students and their parents punishing Labour at the ballot box for their crippling 'tax on learning'.

Sean Sullivan, who is Mr. Lammy's Conservative challenger in Tottenham, said:

“University courses last 3-4 years. It would be obscene to lumber students with debts of £60,00-£80,000. Labour proudly scrapped the student living grant and introduced these crippling tuition fees.  They are a tax on learning and hurt working class students most of all.  No wonder social mobility under Labour is now worse than under any post-war government. Lammy should come clean and tell us how much extra students will have to fork out if Labour is re-elected”.

Sullivan , who has led high-profile campaigns against tuition fees, said that he would like to see Labour’s crazy target  to get  50% of all children into university scrapped, for more vocational courses to be offered and for the grant to be returned to bright children from low-paid families.  He added: "This Labour government is full of people (including Mr Lammy) who benefited in the past from enlightened Conservative education policies. But now they've made it themselves, they are pulling the ladder up behind them, denying the opportunities they once had to the bright but poor kids of today in places like Tottenham." 

The Today interview took place on Tuesday, 17^th March, 2009.

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