By IANS,
London: British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was secretly plotting to ditch his pledge to axe tuition fee hike two months before the election, a media report said Saturday.
In a grave embarrassment for the deputy prime minister, secret papers have revealed Friday that the Liberal Democrats drew up plans to abandon the pledge even as they were publicly promising university students they would oppose any hike in fees, Daily Mail reported.
The coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party and Clegg’s Liberal Democrat has been facing criticism for its plan to raise university tuition fees up to three times. The country has witnessed a massive protest against the plan by over 50,000 students who marched towards parliament Wednesday.
On March 16, a secret Lib Dem team set up to prepare for a possible coalition government decided to ditch the policy.
But a month later, Clegg publicly denounced the ‘dead weight of debt’ facing students and publicly signed a pledge to oppose any increase in tuition fees. Every one of his party colleagues also signed the pledge.
The revelations that senior Lib Dems were engaged in a calculated act of duplicity will fuel the anger of students already furious at what they see as the betrayal of the party’s election pledge.
Lib Dem politician Vince Cable helped draw up plans that will see the cap on tuition fees treble from 3,000 to 9,000 pounds – saddling future generations of students with 27,000 pounds of debts.
The March document, drawn up by Danny Alexander – now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury – says: “On tuition fees, we should seek agreement on part-time students and leave the rest.
“We will have clear yellow water with the other (parties) on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches.”
Clegg admitted this week that he “should have been more careful” when he signed the pre-election pledge to oppose a rise in tuition fees.
The secret internal document is in a new book on the coalition negotiations by Tory MP Rob Wilson, who interviewed 60 key figures in the negotiations.