Red alert

By John Morgan. Is the new student loans system an affordable, progressive system of graduate contributions - or a dodgy move to get debt off the books that could bring grave fiscal consequences? John Morgan sifts through the rhetoric, rates and RABs
On a freezing day in December 2010, Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary, moved the government's motion to raise the cap on undergraduate tuition fees to £9,000. He told MPs that the replacement of the government teaching grant with higher fees repaid by graduates was "a central part of a policy that is designed to maintain high-quality universities in the long term, that tackles the fiscal deficit and that provides a more progressive system of graduate contributions based on people's ability to pay".
After a five-hour debate, conducted as 50,000 protesters and 3,000 police officers massed outside the Houses of Parliament, MPs voted by 323 to 302 to support the motion.
But there is another debate still running: about the implications of that decision for the finances of the government, higher education and individual students.