Labour backs £6k tuition fee cap
By Alex Stevenson Follow @alex__stevenson
Labour would cut the maximum tuition fee to £6,000 if it was in power now, Ed Miliband has said.
The policy move, one of the most significant in Mr Miliband's first leader of the opposition, is fully costed but will not necessarily appear in the party's manifesto commitment.
It comes as the government prepares to increase the maximum permitted tuition fee to £9,000 for students starting university from next September.
"Parents up and down the country are incredibly worried about their sons and daughters," Mr Miliband told the Sunday Mirror newspaper.
"We want to take action to make it easier for people to go to university and not feel burdened down by debt. If we were in government now, we would cut the maximum tuition fee from £9,000 to £6,000 a year."
Students would have to pay more interest on their loans to help pay for the measure once they start earning over £65,000, however.
The policy proposal would also be funded by scrapping planned corporation tax cuts targeting the banks.
"This is a clear and costed plan. It responds to what I know going around the country talking to people, which is people are fearful about the level of debt they're going to incur," Mr Miliband told ITV News.
"Unless we invest in our young people, we're not going to succeed in our country in the future."
For much of his first year in office Mr Miliband has avoided making specific policy commitments like today's on higher education funding, instead instituting a policy review starting from a "blank sheet of paper".
An interview with the Observer newspaper appeared to offer a clue as to why the leader of the opposition was now keen to demonstrate an alternative exists to the government's policies.
"We've actually got to show there is a different way of doing things. And, you know, I think the country is actually up for this moment of reckoning," he said.
"You've got to take risks. You're not going to be liked. You've got to take risks. You've got to tell it like it is.
"The most important lesson for my party is that we are not going to get back into power by saying let's carry on where we left off in 2010. We are not going to get back into power by saying the other lot are crap."
