Rising Student Debt will act as Disincentive to study says Lib Dem

9.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 14th Aug 2007

Liberal Democrats would scrap tuition and top-up fees and provide £2,000 grants to poorer students

Following figures published yesterday that show students in Northamptonshire are leaving university with debts exceeding £13,000, Lib Dem Parliamentary Spokesperson, Andrew Simpson, has called for tuition fees to be scrapped and grants to be reintroduced to poorer students.

"A place at university should not be based on the ability to manage debt" said Andrew. "Everybody in society benefits from well-qualified, highly educated people living and working here - we should be encouraging more people to go to university not putting them off through increasing debt".

The figures showed that Northamptonshire tops the average debt figure for students graduating anywhere else in the country with average debt levels now at £13,174. This is the year after the Government introduced tuition fees.

"Liberal Democrats would scrap tuition and top-up fees and provide £2,000 grants to poorer students" continued Andrew. " Labour broke 2 promises on tuition fees when in 1997 Tony Blair said they had 'no plans to introduce tuition fees' and the 2001 Labour manifesto said 'we will not introduce top-up fees', only the Lib Dems are pledged to remove them."