MP Jeremy Corbyn [Simon Lamrock]

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ISLINGTON North MP Jeremy Corbyn has slammed the govern­ment’s decision to increase university tuition fees as “a disgrace”.

Bridget Phillipson, the secretary of state for education, announced in parliament this week that university fees in England would be increased to £9,535 next year to help ease financial pressures institutions say they are facing.

But Mr Corbyn warned that students are “put off going to university by the already very high fees”, and that rising costs would make higher education increasingly inaccessible.

Speaking to Ms Phillipson in parliament on Monday, he said: “There were no proposals in her statement to reform university finance; there was only a proposal to charge stu­dents more. Will that not drive more people away from university education rather than to it?”

Mr Corbyn added that “universities should not be dependent just on student income to survive”, and called for a move in the other direc­tion – towards the total abolition of tuition fees.

“Should we not be moving in the direction of lowering fees,” he said, “or indeed removing them altogether, in order to make higher and further education genuinely open to all in our society?”

In response, Ms Phillipson said that the increase was needed next year “to stabilise the sector”.

She said: “It is a difficult decision but a necessary one, because it is no good encouraging young people to go to university if their institutions continue to be in financial peril.”