When Nick Clegg was on Mumsnet...

[LilyBolero]

When Nick Clegg came onto Mumsnet, I specifically asked him how it was fair that 'middle' class people may not be able to afford university in future.

His reply...

I have always believed university admissions should be based on your grades and your ability, not your background or your bank balance. That?s why we have always opposed tuition fees, which push up the cost and make it harder for people other than the very wealthiest to afford to get a degree. We will scrap unfair tuition fees for all students taking their first degrees saving them over £10,000 each. We have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years, so that the change is affordable in these difficult economic times.

That lasted a long time then.

Maybe David Cameron's musk got to him

He is a nasty, smary little liar.
I bet the LD's are happy that he is the face of the party

Its embarrassing isn't it? So glad I didn't vote LibDem.

Nick Clegg is a power hungry fool.

Good luck to him when the election comes round - Sheffield Hallam will kick. him. out.

You FOOLS who voted for the lib dems

I was that fool, but in my defence, I was a confused fool :( sorry!

to be honest, no one should ever believe anything political parties say about tuition fees in a manifesto (or anywhere else in an election campaign).

Labour explicitly said they wouldn't introduce tuition fees during the 1997 campaign, by august they'd announced that they were introducing them in 1998. I don't see why anyone believed that the LibDems were at all serious about scrapping them.

It's not often you get such a blatant abandonment of policy though. Labour were wrong to introduce them at all (at the time I thought 1k a year was reasonable, as 3k could fairly easily be earned in a gap year, but it was clearly a slippery slope).

They also said they weren't going to, repeatedly.

I remember being very panicked in august 1997 when they announced it, and having to hastily find myself a uni place through clearing (as my 5th year higher results were good enough to get in). I was 16 when I started uni, as were many of my peers who'd also gone the panic clearing route.

It was always going to be a slippery slope.

It looks like universities aren't really going to get any more money despite the higher tuition fees anyway, as their HEFCE grant is probably going down by 80%. Basically, students are going to have to pay a lot more but universities won't be able to offer more in return.

i really don't understand how they can blatently say one thing and do something else.

they should make their manifestos law so if they don't do them step down. or summat

sadly, that'd just mean the produced utterly substanceless manifestos (so that they can't be held to account on anything) and then elaborate on the policies in more detail off-manifesto.

But the Libdem party didn't win the election. They came third. They have 57 MPs - less than 10% of the total. Why on earth do you think that as the smaller party in a coalition government they would have the ability to push through their entire manifesto?

Even in the rather remarkable situation that the Libdems had become the largest party and had formed a government, I suspect that they would have had a similar reality check as with the current government - "ooops the figures are worse than we thought".

SGM: They almost certainly aren't going to get more money though. The government is just going to pass the cost on to individual students and give the universities less from taxation.

I agree with you SGM

and re fundraising - yes, universities will need to get better at that, BUT it will be much trickier to get alumni of the future to make donations if they have already paid once. A lot of the gifts UK universities get from alumni at the moment are from the age grioup who benefited from free education and grants. The culture of giving is not the same in the UK as it is in N America.

But as for the Lib Dems and their U-turn, it's just depressing what people will do for a little sniff of power.

But who are they going to get to teach in the evenings and at weekends?
DH is a senior academic in the sciences. His teaching load isn't heavy but it's regular. He comes home, eats, and when ds is in bed he works. At weekends, he works. Sometimes he works until 3am. He travels for his job too - say once a month is at a conference. There just isn't time in his schedule to teach what he teaches during the day, in the evenings also.

I think the Lib Dem pledge to the NUS not to up tution fees was incredibily naive, and proves to me they never really thought they would be in power. That said it probably bagged them most of the student vote, so maybe not that silly after all.

How can Nick Clegg say this only weeks before yesterdays announcement, how bizarre ? Yet again any faith in the Lib Dem influence in goverment is undermined.

If you asked him about it he would probably pull that face he always seems to sport, you know the really pissed off one which suggested that all you stupied people really should just accept what I'm saying because Im right

excuse the spelling, oh and I did go to uni, with the last of the local authority maintenance grant and a final loan amount of a mere £5000

Cable himelf said yesterday "If I'd ever thought we would be in Government I would never have signed it...."

I got an email from Nick Clegg about it this afternoon...

I am painfully aware of the pledge my colleagues and I made to you and to voters on tuition fees ahead of the General Election. Departing from that pledge will be one of the most difficult decisions of my political career. It means doing something that no one likes to do in politics ? acknowledging that the assumptions we made at election time simply don?t work out in practice. With the benefit of hindsight, I signed a pledge at a time when we could not have anticipated the full scale of the financial situation the country faces now and the absence of plausible alternatives for students to the arrangements we are now advocating.

Our constructive and open dialogue as a party on such a difficult issue for us has only reinforced my view that, whatever our differences of opinion, Liberal Democrats are motivated by a desire to see fairness hardwired into our society. I should stress that no detailed decisions have yet been taken by the Government on how to take forward Lord Browne?s recommendations. We have broadly endorsed them but this is an enormously complex issue and we will take the time needed to get it right. In this time I want to give members the opportunity to contact me, so I have set up a new email specifically for this discussion ? [email protected].

Most of you will agree that the existing system of the funding of higher education is unsustainable. This is exacerbated by the enormous deficit left to us by Labour necessitating unavoidable cuts in government support for higher education. It must also be remembered that Labour were planning to make massive cuts in the university teaching budget, having earmarked the BIS Department for 20% to 25% cuts. There is no pain free alternative. Unless the current system of Tuition Fees is changed, then either our universities would be bankrupt or far fewer of our young people would get the chance to experience tertiary education. People from my generation were lucky enough to enjoy a university education paid for by the state. In an ideal world, I would like our children and grandchildren to have the same. But we could not be further from an ideal world. We are in a disastrous financial situation that requires us to take tough decisions we would otherwise not have made.

The current system is also unfair in many ways ? not least the raw deal given to part-time students and the low level (near minimum wage) at which graduates currently have to start paying back their loans. The Government will respond fully to Browne?s recommendations in due course but some specific proposals deserve highlighting. Part-time students will have their fees paid up front and will be treated for the first time like their full-time counterparts. Poorer students will pay less, while wealthier students will pay more. And a much more progressive system than the current one both makes more generous maintenance arrangements for those on low incomes and raises the threshold at which repayments start to be made.

As Vince made clear, a pure graduate tax, while superficially attractive, simply won?t work. It is not fair, nor will it reduce our colossal deficit. That is why everyone who has looked closely at it has come to the same conclusion ? not least the last Labour Government in their booklet ?What?s Wrong with a Graduate Tax?. If Ed Miliband ignores his Shadow Chancellor?s advice and continues to support a graduate tax, then we should be extremely confident that it is us who are on the right side of the argument.

I understand there will be some MPs who feel that they cannot depart from their pledge but I have urged them to only come to that final conclusion after a thorough examination of all the facts available. As a starting point, I have drawn attention to yesterday?s response from the Institute for Fiscal Studies - ?the proposed reforms to repayments are highly progressive and ensure that poorest 30% of graduates are better off than under the current system, whilst ensuring that the richest 30% of graduates pay off their loans in full.?

The overriding principle for Liberal Democrats is that any system of higher education funding is fair. It should increase the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds; it should increase social mobility; it should ensure fair access for all and not put anyone off attending university; it should increase the already world-class teaching and research at our universities; and it should ensure that those who earn more pay more.

This is one of the most difficult political decisions I have ever had to make and I have struggled endlessly with it. I could not forgive myself, however, if we did not take decisions now, regardless of how difficult they are politically, that would lead to a fair and sustainable system of higher education funding for future generations.

All best wishes,

Nick Clegg
Leader of the Liberal Democrats

I don't understand that bit about people currently having to pay back loans when they're earning near minimum wage. I've paid mine back, and I was nowhere near minimum wage. I forget what I was earning but I went over the threshold about 5 years into a teaching job (not state sector).

And (to go back to the point about universities having to extend teaching into weekends and evenings) - I think you'd find that a significant number of academics would see jobs abroad and jobs in industry as a lot more attractive. DH would be off to the US like a shot.

I would really know quite what the effect of the Lib dems in government has been on the Conservatives. Because it seems to be NOTHING. I feel quite sick actually at how eager they were to do a deal with the Tories and yet have not affected policy in any way whatsoever.

Problem is that the conservatives got the most votes at the election. So thanks a lot conservative voters!!

The Lib Dems got less than 10% of the MP seats, as ladymuck said. Yet they got about 23% of the votes, so its clear that the electoral system doesnt represent the country's wishes and needs improvement. Then the balance of power will more closely match what we voted for.

They have managed to get a referendum on electoral change which is a big step forward.

They are also raising the point at which people start paying tax, which will reduce the harm caused by the conservative's VAT rise.

The OP's statement is what I believe, and that is why I supported them, and would again. I just wish they had more power to make their well thought out, realistic and excellent policies into reality.

got to love the characterisations of Lib Dems as "power hungry fools" who'll do XYZ for "a sniff of power" by people in a party that was in power for 13 years... and backtracked left right and centre without even being in a coalition. That "sniff of power" cliché comes up time and time again, and just shows this arrogant Labour kind of "we have a right to be in power, you don't" attitude.

I don't think we (the Lib Dems) should have gone into the election with the policy on tuition fees that we did, though - still less signed the NUS pledge. It was no longer tenable. No party fessed up in their manifesto to all the things that were no longer tenable, but that doesn't make it any the better that the LDs didn't.

To be fair to Clegg he said that before the Browne Review reported.