The Health Secretary has defended the Government’s decision to increase university tuition fees, saying it is a “proportionate and reasonable thing” to do.
The Labour Party has faced criticism for raising fees to £9,535 in England next year after Sir Keir Starmer supported abolishing them during his leadership campaign in 2020.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced on Monday that undergraduate tuition fees – which have been frozen at £9,250 since 2017 – would rise in line with inflation from 2025/26.
She said maximum maintenance loans would also rise to help students with living costs.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Sky News: “I think it was a proportionate and reasonable thing for the Education Secretary to put fees and maintenance support up in line with inflation.”
The Labour Party’s election manifesto did not include plans to raise fees but it said the current higher education funding settlement “does not work” for the taxpayer, universities or students.
The move came after university leaders warned of significant financial concerns as a result of frozen tuition fees paid by domestic students and a fall in the number of international students.
The University and College Union (UCU) called the rise “morally wrong” while the National Union of Students (NUS) said students were being asked to “foot the bill” for cash-strapped universities.
When challenged on the policy, Mr Streeting told Sky News: “I think the risk is if we didn’t put the fee price and the maintenance support up in line with inflation then students really would be sold short because the investment in their teaching wouldn’t keep up with rising cost pressures.
“So students may be sold short in terms of the quality of education, and of course the maintenance support wouldn’t rise and I think there are lots of students who are dealing with cost-of-living pressures like everyone else at the moment.”
Professor Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor of King’s College London, previously suggested that universities needed between £12,000 and £13,000 per year in tuition fees to meet costs.
Mr Streeting, a former president of the NUS, told Times Radio: “We don’t put inflationary increases in our manifesto across a whole range of things that go up by inflation – we didn’t, for example, say that working-age benefits would rise with inflation but our Budget delivered it.”
Health union leaders have warned that the Labour Government’s decision to raise fees could “discourage” more people from going to university to train to be nurses, doctors and midwives.
But the Health Secretary said he would still go to university even with the tuition fee increase.
Mr Streeting told LBC Radio that he did not think the student finance system was perfect and he was glad the Education Secretary was reviewing it.
But he said: “I would just say to anyone listening, and I speak as someone who comes from a working class background, going to university changed my life and life chances – I wouldn’t be talking to you today, I don’t think, if I hadn’t gone down that path.
“I’d just say to anyone who’s listening, I can hand on heart say that if I was making the same decision again today, with fees set where they are today, I would choose to go to university.”
In 2020, Sir Keir, then-shadow Brexit secretary, said his party must stand by its plan to “end the national scandal of spiralling student debt” by scrapping tuition fees.
But three years later, Sir Keir revealed he was preparing to “move on” from this commitment as the country found itself in a “different financial situation”.
Conservative Party co-chairman Nigel Huddleston said raising university tuition fees marks a pattern of Labour saying one thing in opposition and doing another once in power.
He told Sky News: “I’m concerned about it because it’s yet another example of what we’re seeing as a pattern here, of Labour in opposition saying one thing, and then in government doing another, usually at the cost of somebody – in this case students.”
In an article in the Times, Ms Phillipson said universities have been forced to cut courses and jobs due to financial pressures and she warned there could be “worse to follow” without action.
She said: “I will not stand idly by and watch students’ futures jeopardised and good jobs ripped out of our regions.”
The Government – which is calling on universities to support disadvantaged students and use their money responsibly – will set out more higher education reforms in the next few months.
