Clegg secures £7 billion extra to fund education for the most disadvantaged – from pre-school through to university

Just as plays have a classic three-act structure, so too do tricky political decisions: first you rule out a potentially popular alternative, then you put out the bad news and finally you sweeten the pill as you try to avert people’s worst fears.

Last weekend saw act one on the tuition fees message, with Vince Cable taking to email to rule out a graduate tax – and trying to preempt Labour support for it by emphasising that party’s own previous opposition to the idea. (Given the subsequent news of now Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson’s continued opposition to a graduate tax, that policy looks to be firmly dead.)

Act two was the publication of the Browne report and Vince’s acceptance of the broad thrust of it. Comments from both himself and Nick Clegg left a large “read between the lines” gap, talking about how the government’s plans would be based on the Browne report whilst also clearly indicating that they would not simply implement it as presented.

Today brings the first part of act three – the sweetening of the pill in the form of over £7 billion to help the most disadvantage children all the way through from pre-school to university.

In a speech later today the Deputy Prime Minister will say,

I can announce today that in the Spending Review we will provide extra funds – a total of over £7 billion – for a “fairness premium”, stretching from the age of two to the age of twenty: from a child’s first shoes to a young adult’s first suit. This is more than £7 billion spent on giving the poorest children a better start in life.

First, all disadvantaged two year olds will have an entitlement to 15 hours a week of pre-school education, in addition to the 15 hours already available to them at three and four years of age. By offering more help at an earlier age to the most disadvantaged children, we will directly tackle the gaps in attainment that open up in the critical early years of life.

Second, a Pupil Premium to help poorer pupils wherever they live in the country. Schools will receive additional funds to offer targeted help to every pupil eligible for free school meals and reduce educational inequalities.

Third, we must make sure that bright but poor children grow up believing that a university education is not out of reach. So we are looking now at what can be done to remove the obstacles to aspiration that hold back bright boys and girls from deprived backgrounds. Their passage must not be blocked.  Alongside new reforms to Higher Education, we are proposing to provide a form of student premium for the least advantaged students…

The spending review is a difficult process. As a government, and as individual ministers, we need to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and know we did the right thing, even when – especially when – it is a hard thing.

But all of us in the coalition government, including the Prime Minister and myself, were not willing to compromise on, or negotiate away, our commitment to ensuring a better future for our children. There’s been lots of talk of “red lines” in the CSR process. It should be obvious from what I’ve said today that the reddest line of all is the one around our commitment to their future.

This announcement is very good news in its own right – a major investment in education and in helping the least well off in our society. (It is £7 billion over the CSR period, within which it builds up to an annual commitment of around £3 billion per year.)

But where does it leave us on tuition fees?

Added together with the Browne report, what looks likely (pending further Comprehensive Spending Review announcements) is that the cost of tuition fees will in effect be abolished for those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, reduced for many others of the least well off (the IFS analysis of the Browne report was that the 30% least well off would benefit, and that is before today’s announcement) and increased for everyone else.

That leaves two problems. First, the opposition made to raising tuition fees by many Liberal Democrat candidates and in many Liberal Democrat leaflets. One reason so many Liberal Democrats readily campaigned against tuition fees – promising to vote against any increase and calling for their abolition – is that it is a crucial issue for many in the party. Liberal Democrat ranks are heavily loaded with graduates who have seen the benefits of a degree to themselves and whose liberalism makes them deeply committed to sharing those benefits as fairly as possible.

Second, the messaging. The whole situation would have looked very different – still troublesome because of the tuition fee increase pledges, but very different – if Vince Cable had emailed party members at the weekend to say, “We’re going to abolish tuition fees for the least well off. As we’re in coalition, we’ve also got to stomach increasing them for everyone else, but the Liberal Democrats remain committed to abolishing them. We will continue to press for the numbers for whom fees are abolished to be increased”.

This is not simply a political messaging problem, it is also one that could hinder the policy itself. As we saw far too often with policies such as complicated tax credits from Gordon Brown, policies which technically look good for the least well off don’t work if the presentation is so complicated that take-up is low.

In the case of tuition fees the overall message from the last few days is that the costs of going to university are going up and people will have even bigger debts. That in itself will almost certainly put some people off going to university even if, sitting down to work out all the detail post-CSR, it turns out they are in the a category who is going to be financially much better off under the plans.

It is also notable that the last part of my hypothetical Vince Cable statement – a repeated pledge to work towards abolishing tuition fees – has been stated by the party’s Federal Policy Committee (who have to approve the party’s general election manifestos) but not by Nick or Vince.

Even so, according to YouGov’s polling this week, Liberal Democrat supporters back Vince Cable and Nick Clegg’s change of stance on tuition fees by 56% – 30%. For one of the party’s most controversial decisions in the last decade, a majority backing is far better than it might be. However, the real risk is elsewhere: from the potential damage to the party’s activist base and from the party finding it harder to appeal in future to those who currently don’t support it.

£7 billion is a major step forward. But the lack of accompanying rhetoric about abolishing tuition fees for as many people as possible and as soon as being the third-largest party allows suggests that Nick Clegg and Vince Cable now do not view it as desirable or achievable to abolish fees even over the six year period planned in the Liberal Democrat manifesto.

Will the steps such as scrapping fees immediately for the poorest students (more generous that the immediate steps a majority Lib Dem government would have taken) and reducing payments significantly for many students be enough to avoid a Lib Dem split in the parliamentary votes?  Most Lib Dem MPs pledged to oppose any fees increase (and the proposals currently allow for big, possibly unlimited, increases).  Yet they also supported, without any votes against from their ranks, a coalition agreement that (only) said they could abstain if they rejected the Browne report.

Today’s speech is certainly the start of the third act of this three act political play, but it is unlikely to have been the end of it.