Maintenance grants must not be forgotten in tuition-fee debate

Speakers at the Labour Party conference have said that the problems with the current university and student-finance model go wider than just tuition fees.

At the Labour Party conference in Brighton on 25 September, shadow chancellor John McDonnell called on Philip Hammond to “act now” before the tuition-fee system becomes unmanageable. He quoted an Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis that said if tuition fees were written off now it would cost £11 billion pounds but if left until 2020 the write-off cost would be triple that.

McDonnell said he would support any effective measures that the government brought forward, such as reducing fees, but Labour was committed to abolishing fees.