By IRNA,
London : Liberal Democrat MPs split three ways in voting on trebling tuition fees on Thursday, defying the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
As expected the Conservative-led government gained a majority to increase university fees up to £9,000 a year, the highest in the developed world, but at the expense of losing the support of more than half of the 57 Lib Dem MPs, its junior coalition partners.
Only around 20 Lib Dems, mostly those holding ministerial positions, joined Clegg in backing the controversial proposal, which reneges on the party’s election pledge to abolition university fees.
More than a dozen Lib Dems, including several who resigned from junior government posts, voted against, while some 20 others took the option allowed in the coalition agreement to abstain. A few Tories, including at least one junior minister, also voted against.
The vote, the first unity test of the coalition, came as thousands of students, protesting against the increase, were kettled by police outside parliament after clashes erupted when horse-backed officers with batons charged crowds at a backstreet entrance to Parliament Square.
While thousands were hemmed in by police, others were seeking to march into Parliament Square from different entrances with officers trying to hold lines in several streets.
Thousands of marching students were also kettled by police in a previous protest at the end of last month in streets near parliament that lasted several hours despite the controversial tactics being widely criticised for antagonising demonstrators.
Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students (NUS), had urged MPs to ‘do the honourable thing and vote down these damaging proposals’.
‘Students are now descending on Westminster (to parliament) to ensure that promises to voters are kept and they are not sold down the river,’ said Porter.
Prior to the protests, the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) accused the police of “scaremongering” in an attempt to discourage many students and other members of the public from taking part.
In parliament, Labour’s shadow education secretary John Denham said that if all the Lib Dem MPs, in the coalition government, vote against the increase, the proposal will fail.
Students on the march said they were braced for losing the vote but pledged to continue their campaign as happened in the Poll Tax protests that caused a reversal in the charge and led to the downfall of former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990.