A minister was accused of selling everyone “short” with Labour’s new hike in the university tuition fees cap during a spiky interview this morning.
The government has chosen to increase tuition fees cap in England for the first time in more than seven years, up to £9,535 from April 2025.
The shock announcement comes amid warnings the university sector is facing a funding crisis and actually need fees to rise to £12,500 a year.
The news – which leaked hours before the official parliamentary announcement – comes just four years after PM Keir Starmer pledged to scrap the fees altogether when he ran to be Labour leader, too.
There were also no details of the costs to attend university going up in the party’s 2024 manifesto.
So on Tuesday morning, Sky News presenter Gareth Barlow put it to health secretary Wes Streeting: “You’ve sold students short, because you’ve put [fees] up and they’re having to pay more money.
“Universities have been sold short because they don’t have the funding they need.
“Commons sold short, because the announcement not made there first.
“Electorate sold short, because it’s not in the manifesto.
“It’s not a great look, is it?”
“I think it was a proportionate and reasonable thing,” Streeting began, before the presenter asked why it was not in Labour’s October Budget.
Streeting sidestepped that question, and just said it was rising in line with inflation while the education secretary conducts a wider review of student financing and how it works.
The minister said: “For students, in terms of their upfront costs, nothing changes. In fact, they will have more financial support available than they would have before because we’re keeping that support rising in line with inflation which is the right thing to do.
“We do need a wider look at how the system works, and I can tell you from experience, having worked in this area in the past, it is fiendishly complicated.”
The health secretary also said if it had not been increased, “students really would be sold short” because the investment in their teaching would not keep up with rising cost pressures, and impacting the quality of their education.
“And of course the maintenance costs wouldn’t rise and I think a lot of students are dealing with cost of living pressures like everybody else at the moment,” he added.
Barlow then asked if it was in Labour’s manifesto, would any Brits have voted for it – to which the minister said there a plenty of things which go up in line with inflation which do not appear in the manifesto.
Streeting also defending the prime minister’s former pledges, saying that Starmer wants to remove the fees but – because of the “state of the economy and public finances” – he was not able to make that commitment in the manifesto.
He said: “We’ve been upfront with the public about this.”