Published on Liberal Democrat Voice By Nick Tyrone | Fri 27th March 2015 – 11:27 am

A new report entitled “A Labour of Love?”, released today by CentreForum and written by Tom Frostick and Chris Thoung, weighs up the pros and cons of Labour’s recently announced policy on tuition fees, one which revolves mostly around the fees being cut from their current £9k maximum to a £6k ceiling. A summary of this report is as follows:

On the plus side, the policy does acknowledge the importance of maintenance grants. It also reopens the discussion that needs to be had regarding the balance between state and individual investment in undergraduate education by lowering the percentage of loans the government estimates will not be repaid. It would also apply to all undergrads, including those currently studying, so would be fair in that regard.

But there is a lot to say about the policy that is negative. If introduced, it would have little to no impact on a staggering lowest 60% of graduate earners and would mostly benefit higher earning graduates only (and even then, up to twenty-eight years after they’ve left university). It is also costed in such a way that could discourage pension saving, and its higher interest rate scheme for wealthier graduates contributes only modestly to the intended progressiveness of the policy.

But for me one of the principle weaknesses in the Labour tuition fee plan is that the reasoning behind it is faulty in and of itself. Applications from disadvantaged students have gone up since the present scheme was introduced at the end of 2010, not down. This perhaps has more to do with the more fundamentally progressive bits of the Coalition’s policy, such as only having to pay back anything at all once they graduate are earn over £21k a year. But the lowering of fees from £9k to £6k is a mostly cosmetic exercise, one that only sheds light on how difficult lowering the fees are from a fiscal discipline point of view in the first place (why not lower them to a pre-Coalition level of £3k? Or better yet in terms of messaging with parts of the Left: nothing at all? Because it would be far too expensive is the answer).

Given that Labour’s focus in creating the £6k policy seemed to be helping the most disadvantaged of potential and current undergraduates, it can only be deemed unworthy. As I said already, the graduates who stand to gain the most from the policy are those on high incomes, particularly those earning more than £80k a year. Anyhow, if you’re interested in understanding more of the detail, I urge you to read our report.

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* Nick Tyrone is a liberal writer. He blogs at nicktyrone.com and is an associate director at CentreForum.