Clegg to decide - third party of protest or coalition partner?

The vote on tuition fees on Thursday is a chance to find out whether the Lib Dems in the coalition government really understand the choice that they made to share power. The decision they need to make is not about the moral issue of charging for university education, but about whether they would prefer to be the third party of protest or a legitimate, responsible member of the executive.

The debate on whether tuition fees should be charged at all is something I have addressed already. There is an argument against tuition fees being charged full-stop on economic and moral grounds. There is an argument that tuition fees should be nominal, so that students who benefit from university education contribute towards it, but the burden is shared with the state. There is also an argument that students should pay for their entire education, as they benefit from it, and in our current financial situation we need to ask them to do so. There are therefore legitimate grounds to oppose, abstain or vote for the rise in tuition fees. Where there is a difference is in the responsibilities of the three main parties.

Labour MPs can vote for or against and not many would bat an eyelid. It has been conveniently forgotten by many that Labour introduced tuition fees in 2002 having expressly committed in their 2001 election manifesto not to do. This, perhaps, is why they have been relatively quiet on the implications of Nick Clegg committing to oppose tuition fees then vote for them in government. Also, the rise has been suggested by Lord Browne of Madingly's commission, which was set up by the previous Labour government. However, as we know now, Labour is the party of opposition, and oppose they probably will, whether they believe it to be right or wrong.

Conservative MPs will vote for, and I imagine will be whipped into doing so, as they are the majority party in government and there should be a certain amount of discipline installed into them. They didn't make any rash promises on this issue before the election and there are few grounds of principle involved on which they can vote against or abstain.

Then there are the Lib Dems. They made their pledge to oppose tuition fees before the election. That is true, but it was the type of pledge you make when you are a third party and may never need to actually have the responsibility of government. It was an economically-irresponsible pledge considering the deficit, but it has been hung around them like a noose.  Which Lib Dem MPs vote for or against or abstain, depends on what their role is in our new political landscape. To understand what they might do, and what they should do, relies upon the clearing up of two major fallacies that many protesters are either not getting, or ignoring.

1) The Lib Dems are in government. They are in the coalition. If they hadn't joined the Conservatives in a coalition then there would be no effective government, given that minority rule in a time of economic problems is not advisable. When you join a coalition, you have to negotiate and compromise. This means you get to keep some of your promises to the electorate, you have to drop some of your promises and some of your promises will be amended. The Lib Dems secured an agreement that they could abstain in the vote on tuition fees, and Nick Clegg has offered that to his MPs, on the basis that they ALL do so. However, some Lib Dem MPs have said they will honour their pre-election pledge and vote against, thereby breaking the coalition agreement. This means Clegg cannot abstain and has a responsibility to vote for the legislation. As does every other Lib Dem government minister, and there are quite a few of them. Those Lib Dems voting against are saying that they are not prepared to be in power, and that's fine, but they must live with that decision.

2) The actual legislation being voted upon has the hallmarks of Lib Dem intervention, particularly on some of the provisions made to make it more progressive. Because you don't pay until you earn £21,000 you pay nothing unless you are in the top 60% of earners in the country - so you at that point are NOT poor. Because the interest rate charge rises as income rises there is a progressive nature to the payments, with those on higher incomes paying a higher proportion of those incomes. The Lib Dems HAVE had their influence here, and it is therefore a coalition policy, and members of the coalition government need to vote for it or shouldn't be in government. Vince Cable, for instance, should he not want to vote for the policy, needs to resign from the government payroll.

The fact is that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are socially liberal but economically conservative. Many who suggested they were a natural coalition party for Labour understood little about their politics. Clegg has managed to pull the Conservative party towards the centre, and should be applauded for that.

I completely understand the anger of students. I have students at school who want to protest and if there is anything they should protest about it is this as they are being asked to pay for the debts dropped on them by older generations.

However, they are also being asked to pay for a university system aimed at 50% of the population. If you want services like that you need money to be spent. If you want money to be spent you have to collect it in taxes. Those taxes could be paid by everyone or by those who directly benefit from the service. It has been decided that those who benefit will pay and there may be no going back on it. They need to receive a service worth paying for and £3000 a year wasn't doing that.

So, many reasons to vote against, although I would hope some of those people voting against could be bothered to understand the actual legislation. Maybe doing so would go against their "narrative". They want to call this a Thatcherite policy (which is interesting as it was a Labour policy, and Thatcher was all for investments in the supply-side of the economy - which university education is).

Let's hope the education they want us to pay for is not wasted on this quoted protester.

"There are no jobs and yet I'm being asked to take on massive debts. At £9,000 a year that's £21,000 of debt"

1) If you don't get a job after university you don't have to pay back anything
2) Do the Maths!

The child that benefits should need it.

Everytime I find myself wondering about universal benefits, I think of the wonderful support staff at my school, many of whom work on far lower wages than I ever have, and yet are funding the child benefit  of multi-millionaires. Is this really what William Beveridge envisaged all those years ago as what the welfare state was for? I sincerely doubt it. Did he also imagine the UK would find itself over a trillion pounds in debt? Unlikely. So we can't keep harking back to what the welfare state was created to do, the country has changed. And so, surely, must benefits.

It was fascinating to watch the new leadership of the Labour Party take the bait and fall into the trap of 'over-opposition' - where they simply oppose in a knee-jerk fashion every policy the coalition come up with. Are they, the party that calls itself the progressive option, really going to justify taking money from the public purse to give child benefit to hedge fund managers? Oh yes they were. Thankfully, it may well be that opposing every cut was just a 'holding position' and now they have their shadow cabinet together we have Douglas Alexander, with the work and pensions brief, tentatively supporting Iain Duncan-Smith's welfare reform.

But back to benefits. The idea is that from 2013 those households with one person earning the higher rate of tax (at the moment this means they earn £44,000) will not receive child benefit. There is a lot to commend in this idea, but the devil will be in its' implementation.

The main argument against it was that a couple earning £43,000 each (£86,000) would not lose their child benefit (£33 a week for 2 children) but if one person earns £44,000 they would. This seemed not to make sense at first and was highlighted as 'unfair'.

But if you think about it, a couple who are both earning £43,000 a year are most likely to both be working for a reason, but are not likely to be very "rich". These couples - who would therefore have their children in full-time childcare - which is expensive - cannot be very numerous, and also there is an argument that the government would like them both to be working as productive members of society as it helps with employment numbers.

But if you have a couple where one earns over £44,000 and the other doesn't you have a large net in which you can catch the couples consisting of one who earns hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and the other who doesn't have to work as their partner earns so much. They should not be receiving child benefit, and this way they won't. So in that way it can be seen to be a progressive policy.

When I say the devil is in the implementation, I mean that the current way child benefit is collected and administered means it is not possible to automatically stop paying it. It is paid to the mother of the child, (allegedly because the father wouldn't be trusted to spend it on the child instead of drink) and the mother does not have to tell the father they are getting it. This led to an amusing discussion on air between Radio DJ Chris Evans and his wife when the news broke which was the first time he found out she actually got child benefit.

Anyway, the only way child benefit won't be paid is if someone in the household earns over £44,000, which could be found out by the Inland Revenue through PAYE if you work full-time, or your self-assessment if you are self-employed. But if it's the man who earns over £44,000 they would have to say whether their partner receives child benefit (even if you are married you have separate tax arrangements obviously) and a man could justfiably say "I don't know" then get out of paying it. They can't legally be forced to ask their wife.

Additionally, should the mother of the children earn below the threshold they might be asked whether their partner earns over £44,000, but tax affairs are private, for data protection reasons if nothing else. So the mother could say they don't know and that's that.

David Cameron suggested that the British public could be trusted to tell the truth but how far they'll go to tell the truth, given it penalises them a considerable amount of money remains to be seen.

I have no doubt we need to do something about the transfer of money from someone earning £10,000 a year to someone earning £10,000 a day. By 2013 hopefully they'll work out what to do. Meanwhile, coffee shops must prepare for a drop in machiatto sales, ballet classes might have slightly less demand, and Gymboree may have to reconsider it's entire business model.

Next stop should be Winter Fuel payments and free London transport passes for FTSE Chief-Executives and retired barristers. Oh no, wait a minute, they are old, and they vote in their droves.................