Liberal Democrats postpone scrapping tuition fees

11 Jan 2010

The Liberal Democrat leader,Nick Clegg, has said he will delay the party's promise to scrap university tuition fees in order to find money for other priorities, including schools.

In a speech this morning, setting out his plans for the election manifesto, Mr Clegg said the original plans to immediately scrap tuition fees would now have to be phased in over six years. 

However, he said spending on schools would remain a top priority. An extra £2.5 billion would go into school spending to cut class size and to provide a pupil premium for schools serving deprived areas. He said there would be an extra £2,500 per pupil for schools serving the one million most deprived students in England.

This would be funded by  ending 'wasteful' programmes at the Department for Children Schools and Families and by changes to the tax credit system. 

     The full speech is at: http://www.libdems.org.uk/speeches.aspx

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