Scrap and at least permanently cap tuition fees and scrap the very idea of charging commercial interest rates. Introduce an equitable graduate tax as percentage of earnings, ringfenced for funding higher eductaion.

I put this suggestion in the section on civil liberties because every person should be enabled in a developed country to be educated to the highest standard they can achieve. A young person's suitability for higher education should be determined by their academic ability, talent and ambition, not by how much their parents earn.

Ringfencing higher education for the higest paid minority, such as children of financiers, has no place in the 21st century. It is oppressive, it harms social freedom, social mobility. It deprives the country of academic ambition and of the diverse talent and skills it needs in a modern world.

Why is this idea important?

This is important and vital now because a decision is about to be made on student funding, which could land the next generation of students some £40,000 in debt. Instead of contibuting to the economy, ever being able to afford to raise a family (and pay for their children's education) or buy a home, our children would spend their working lives repaying debt.

This is important to put to the UK political leaders because having benefitted from free education, they are now planning to pull up the ladder behing them. Virtually all front benchers come from a priviledged class and have no real idea of average family finances. They cannot be expected to understand why young people of lower or middle-class background would not wish to ammass debt that is several times their parents' income.

This is important because abolition of tuition fees is the eletction pledge of one half of the governing coalition and it should not be broken.

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