Oral Answers to Questions

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Where there are incidents and allegations of serious electoral fraud they need to be reported to the police. These are very serious matters; these are potentially criminal offences, and they need to be investigated by the police. So if there is evidence, it needs to be passed to the police as soon as possible.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

During the election campaign, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“We will resist, vote against, campaign against, any lifting of that cap”

on tuition fees. Will he take this opportunity to apologise to the hundreds of thousands of students and families whom he has betrayed since becoming a Tory?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course I regret—who would not regret?—making a promise and signing a pledge, as happened in this case, that we have now found that we are unable to keep. Of course I wish that the proposal for a graduate tax put forward now by the hon. Gentleman’s leader, which comes from a party that introduced tuition fees having previously said that it would not do so, would work and that it was an alternative that we could implement. We looked at it very carefully—it has also been proposed by the National Union of Students—but it is not workable and it is not fair. What we will be doing shortly, when we come forward with our response to the Browne report, is install new measures that will ensure that the way in which students go to university is fairer and less punitive on those who are disadvantaged than the system that we inherited from the Labour party.