The power is in your hands

HAVING a say . . . Labour MP and Shadow Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills John Denham meets local students with candidate Debbie Abrahams

Election 2011

A HIGH-PROFILE Labour MP has urged local voters to issue a blow to the coalition and send a message that broken promises will not be tolerated.

John Denham, Shadow Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills, said voters must hit their opposition in the polling booths during Thursday’s by-election.

During a visit to Uppermill cafe Jamaica Blue yesterday, he spoke to concerned students from the Oldham Sixth Form, University Campus Oldham and Hulme Grammar.

Slamming the coalition he said: “They have broken promises on tuition fees, on policing and on VAT and Thursday is a chance to send a clear message about that.

“Nick Clegg is breaking a promise that he made and introducing an unfair system.”

He argued that programmes due to be scrapped by the coalition such as Aim Higher, that encourages local school pupils to go to university and EMA, the Educational Maintenance Allowance, had encouraged Oldhamers into higher education.

He said: “The number of students increased by over 60 per cent here.”

“If you kick away those ladders my worry is that growth in the increase in numbers in this sort of area will grind to a halt.”

Candidate Debbie Abrahams, said: “It is severely affecting students in terms of the course that they do or the university they are selecting.

“It’s grossly unfair.”

Umair Naheem, an 18-year-old student from Oldham Sixth Form, said: “I’m worried, by the time I finish I will be in at least £70,000 to £80,000 worth of debt and there are already rumours about a lack of jobs.

“How am I going to be able to pay that off?”

However when questioned over Labour’s role in introducing the tuition fees in the first place, John Denham argued that the coalition’s move to increase the cap on fees to £9000 per year is on a different scale.

“When we introduced top-up fees we had record levels of funding in universities, every penny went to increase student numbers and improve the quality of higher education.

“That was fair.

“This is completely different, the fees students will now pay is to replace the cut in higher education funding.

“It doesn’t bring new money into the vast majority of universities.”

Introduced by Labour in 1998, the party also increased the cap for universities to be able to charge up £3000 a year in variable fees.

The MP argued that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had singled out Higher Education for the biggest cuts of 80 per cent.