I will vote in favour of the tuition fee changes – it's a workable policy that should not put off poorer students
I suspect that many people base their view of the current student fees controversy on their own experience of university. My opposition to the way in which Labour introduced tuition fees was based upon the burden I feel it would have placed on people like me at the age of 18.
When I went to university in 1979, I had lost both my parents and had no family home or income. I finished first in each of my main A-level subjects but only a maintenance grant and the absence of fees enabled me to enter higher education.
So I resented the way in which successive Labour and Conservative governments undermined a system that enabled someone who had been dependent on free school meals to go to university. I was proud of Liberal Democrat opposition to tuition fees and angry about Labour's broken promises over introducing them and then tripling them.
Before the last general election, I was among those who tried to persuade the federal policy of the Liberal Democrats to adopt a graduate tax policy as a way of scrapping the tuition fees. I believed this would have enabled students in my position to go to university and pay back the costs through a progressive tax system.
Most of those who shared my strong opposition to tuition fees gave some consideration to this policy, but chose instead to opt for the costs of higher education to be born by the general taxpayer with fees phased out, and that was the policy on which the party fought the general election.
The Liberal Democrats did not win a majority to implement their policy and the electoral arithmetic, the economic situation and the Labour party's divisions pushed the party into a coalition with the Conservatives. Two problems have arisen since then.
First, the post-election task of reducing the public sector deficit that was growing at the rate of £3bn a week could not have sustained a policy of simply scrapping the fees. To put it more simply, anyone earning £30,000 a year, spending £40,000 a year and already owing £40,000 would be forced to make painful cuts in expenditure.
Second, the simple graduate tax option is not workable. Students from the European Union could not be charged the tuition fees, while UK-based students paid the costs back at a later point through their income tax. Graduates would in future also have had a powerful incentive to work abroad and avoid UK income tax altogether. Labour introduced fees and set up the Browne review without asking it to consider a graduate tax. The shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, agrees that such a tax is not workable. The current proposals are not, as some say, a student poll tax. Opposition to the poll tax was based on the fact that it did not take into account any ability to pay.
Graduates will in future have to earn almost the average household income in this country before they start paying back the costs of the higher education that will probably help them to earn considerably more than non-graduates in future.
The current proposals scrap first-year fees for students from the poorest backgrounds, provide for significantly more financial support for them while at university and when properly understood should not deter students from going to university. Labour's fees system discriminated against women. Many more women do part-time courses and the old system forced part-time students to pay fees upfront. The new system abolishes upfront fees for part-time students. If women in future earn less (by working part-time or taking career breaks) then the level of repayments will reflect this. This will also help those people who will earn very little money and may never be asked to repay the costs of their higher education.
The crucial test for wavering Liberal Democrat MPs this week should be: is what has now been negotiated fairer and more progressive than the system Labour left behind? If it is, and I believe that it is, then I believe they should vote for it. For me, there is a simpler test. Under these new proposals, I know that an 18-year-old like me who had no parental income would be able to go to university. In the current economic climate, I can settle for that.