Tuition Fees

Stephen Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I thought that that intervention might be worth waiting for, but the hon. Gentleman merely echoes his next-door neighbour on the Opposition Benches, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), to whom I have given an answer.

I have sought to answer in correspondence some of the questions that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen has asked, and I am happy to debate the technical points and to correspond further with him, because my colleagues should rightly have as much information as possible. That is how we intend to approach the debate. He said that the costings and calculations were not made available, but they have been made available—to him, his colleagues and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The models are very complex ones that produce different outcomes depending on assumptions, and we are very happy to share them. We could have hidden them in a black box and pretended that the outcomes were true, but we have shared the assumptions and analysis and are happy to continue to do so.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

Debates at elections and the Browne report’s methodology have been mentioned several times, but is not one of the fundamental flaws in the deliberative process that Lord Browne went through the fact that, although the report could have been published before the general election, the then Secretary of State, Lord Mandelson, deliberately made sure that we could not have a constructive debate during the campaign, because the Labour party knew that the report paved the way for a rise in fees?

[Vince Cable]

Well, my hon. Friend knows the background, as he was shadowing the portfolio at the time and spoke to the individuals involved. He makes that point, and it is useful that I finish on this note—