Dear Nick, I believe that tertiary education should be available to everyone in the UK, rich or poor, especially poor, who can benefit from it. But I have never supported scrapping tuition fees. That would involve using State taxation powers to compel the lower-paid, who are less likely to have benefited from tertiary education, to subsidise the higher-paid who are more likely. I don’t think John Stuart Mill would have approved. People with degrees get paid more. It is only fair that a person who gets the benefit and is able without hardship to contribute to the cost, should do so. In view of the huge expansion in tertiary education, I believe scrapping tuition fees is unaffordable. It was unaffordable before the banking crisis. It is even less affordable now that the country is burdened with a huge deficit caused by bailing out the banks. That is my personal view but current Lib Dem policy, made democratically by vote at Conference, is otherwise. Scrapping tuition fees is party policy...