STUDENTS in Lancaster have attacked the district's local MPs for backing Government plans to introduce tuition fees. Student leaders say poorer students will be put off by charges for courses and they have expressed "severe disappointment" at Hilton Dawson and Geraldine Smith for backing the controversial legislation. The Teaching and Learning Bill will also abolish grants and replace them with loans and University President, Guy McEvoy, said: "I'm surprised that the local MPs didn't back the students. Given the number of students in the Lancaster region I would have thought that both local MPs would be very sensitive about an issue such as this. In Lancaster alone there are more than 10,000 students eligible to vote. Mr Dawson's majority was only around 5,000."

He added: "There is something unsettling about Labour MPs who only got where they are today because they enjoyed free higher education now denying that same ladder to this generation."

Geraldine Smith, who paid her own way through night school, said that the huge expansion in higher education had to be paid for.

"It's a charge on graduates not students. They will only be asked to repay the loans when they're in work and earning over £10,000. I came from a working class background and had to get a job to fund myself through night school."

She added: "A lot of my constituents will think it right that students should foot the bill for some of their higher education."

Hilton Dawson, who has the university and St Martin's in his constituency, said: "There are a number of issues I'm concerned about in the bill but, at the end of the day, we need to get more money into higher education and this one of those hard choices we have to make. I had five years at university, which was grant aided, but that was in an more elitist age during the 70s. These days we're aiming to get 40 per cent of school leavers into higher education and we're experiencing a cultural change, people are beginning to see loans as an investment in their future."

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