LABOUR PARTY AND TUITION FEES

That this House notes the comments of Lord Mandelson in the foreword to his updated memoir The Third Man that `I assumed, as the Treasury did, that the outcome [of the Browne Review] would have to include a significant increase in tuition fees' and that he felt that tuition fees would have to double in order to offset the deficit-reduction measures that the Labour Party would also have implemented had it won the election; recalls that fees were introduced in 1997 by a Labour government with a Parliamentary majority of 179; further recalls that they were then tripled in 2001, by a Labour government with a Parliamentary majority of 167; further notes that by Lord Mandelson's admission, had the Labour Party continued in office after the 2010 general election, it would have sought to at the very least double tuition fees; and regrets that the current Labour leadership has not been open and transparent about this issue.