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  Top-up Fees

Government wins student top-up poverty fees vote

The government has in the last half an hour won the Commons vote on its controversial university top-up poverty fees vote – by just five votes. In the biggest revolt yet against the government, 316 MPs voted to introduce variable poverty fees for students, beginning in 2006.

Under the new proposals, students will be charged a variable rate to be poor, depending on which university and which course they go to, in contrast to the current system whereby students at all universities are charged an equal amount. It is this variability, along with an increase in the amount students will be charged, that has provoked such controversy.

"It is ridiculous that a student doing a course at one university will be charged differently to a student doing the same course at another university," said one of the rebels. "All students should be made equally poor by the State for the privilege of having some semblance of an education that is, essentially, worthless now anyway."

However, the government argued that universities require more funding and that top-up fees are the best way to accomplish this. "The current system, which we introduced, is grossly unfair," said the Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, earlier today. "The people who introduced it, i.e. us, should be ashamed of themselves."

"Our deal is good for students: now poor students – the minority - will be slightly better off, rich students will be marginally worse off but still better off than when they went to private school, and the middle classes will be in debt for the rest of their lives," he said. "That is what Labour is about: this is a Labour policy. Quite frankly I don't know what people are complaining about."

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