A GOOD question I have been asked many times at meetings in Blackburn is "You had a full grant and no loan, Mr Straw. Why can't we?" So here's my answer, at rather greater length.

I did indeed get a full grant, £300 the first year I was at Leeds University, in 1964-65. It then went up to £360. £30 was for my keep during the holidays, which I passed to my mother - a single parent with four other children to maintain. I got by on the remainder, supplemented by whatever holiday jobs I could find. And my tuition fees - £80 a year - were also paid by the local authority.

I was lucky, as I have always recognised. The big problem then was how few chances there were to be lucky if, like me, you came from a low income home.

In 1960, just 1 in 20 went on to university. On the council estate on which I lived, I don't remember any other family in the five blocks whose children went on to university.

Wind the clock forward just over 40 years to today. It isn't 1 in 20 going on to higher education but around 1 in 3. The expansion of higher education in the intervening period has been dramatic, but it has also led to corners being cut - so that the amount spent per student has dropped by a third.

But there's a wider point. If we don't as a country invest more in universities, we will not have enough jobs or high enough wages in future years. It's not an accident the United States has a world-beating economy and invests two-and-a-half times as much per head as we do - the two are directly related.

If we are going to keep up we have to invest more in the universities. The big question, however, is who should pay. Some argue it should be the taxpayer. But hang on, a degree on average gives you much better earnings over your lifetime. It's simply unfair to place the main burden on those who have not been to university.

But if the graduate is to pay towards his or her university education, we have to do it in a way which is linked to earnings, which does not discourage those from low-income homes from applying in the first place.

Our new scheme, up before the Commons next Tuesday, does that. Up-front tuition fees will go. There'll be a grant (for fees and maintenance) of at least £3,000 per year for the poorest students, with the student loan available as now. Graduates will pay back what they owe once they earn over £15,000 a year.

Universities will be able to charge up to £3,000 in fees but if the course is in a less popular they can charge less.

"It's unfair," say critics. But why? I think it is very fair, for example, the University of Central Lancashire, in Preston, should be able to charge less for a course than Oxford if it wants to.

But there's a last part of this jigsaw that is really important, we have to have a big push to increase the numbers of youngsters staying on at 16. To do this, there will be education maintenance allowances of up to £30 per week (£1,500 a year) for students from less well-off families.

George Orwell in the Road to Wigan Pier was struck by how much of Britain's prosperity then was dependent on coal. The days of educating most people just enough so they could endure a lifetime heaving coal in a pit have gone. Our prosperity today depends not on mining coal but mining ideas.

I thank God for my luck and I just want many more to have the same chance. And that can only be delivered by the new scheme, not the old.