The Health Secretary defended the government’s decision to increase university tuition fees, saying it was a “proportionate and reasonable thing to do”.

The Labor Party has been criticized for increasing fees to £9,535 in England next year after Sir Keir Starmer backed their abolition during his 2020 leadership campaign.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced on Monday that undergraduate tuition fees – which have been frozen at £9,250 since 2017 – would increase in line with inflation from 2025/26.

She said the maximum amount of maintenance loans would also increase to help students cover their living costs.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Sky News: “I think it was a proportionate and reasonable thing for the Education Secretary to do to align fees and maintenance support with inflation. »

Labour’s election platform did not include an increase in tuition fees, but it said the current rules on higher education funding “don’t work” for the taxpayer, universities or students.

The move comes after university leaders warned of significant financial concerns resulting from the freezing of tuition fees paid by domestic students and falling numbers of international students.

The Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) called the rise “morally reprehensible”, while the National Union of Students (NUS) said students were being asked to “foot the bill” for colleges short of funds. money.

Asked about the policy, Mr Streeting told Sky News: “I think the risk is that if we didn’t align the price of tuition fees and maintenance support with inflation, students would be really sold short because the investment in their education would not be sufficient. I cannot cope with the increasing cost pressure.

“So students might be sold short in terms of quality of education, and of course maintenance assistance wouldn’t increase and I think there are a lot of students who are facing cost of living pressures like everyone else right now. »

Professor Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor of King’s College London, previously suggested universities needed £12,000 to £13,000 a year in tuition fees to meet costs.

Mr Streeting, a former NUS president, told Times Radio: “We don’t put inflationary increases in our program on a whole range of things that go up through inflation – we haven’t, for example, said that working-age benefits would increase with inflation, but our budget delivered on its promises.

Health union leaders have warned that the Labor Government’s decision to increase tuition fees could “discourage” more people from going to university to become nurses, doctors and midwives.

But the health secretary said he would continue to go to college even with tuition increases.

Mr Streeting told LBC Radio he did not think the student finance system was perfect and was happy the Education Secretary was reviewing it.

But he said: “I would just say to anyone who will listen to me, and I speak as someone from a working-class background, that going to university changed my life and my life chances – I won’t tell you wouldn’t speak today, I don’t. think, if I hadn’t taken this route.

“I would just say to anyone listening that I can say without hesitation that if I made the same decision again today, with the fees set where they are today, I would choose to go to the university.”

In 2020, Sir Keir, then shadow Brexit secretary, said his party must stick to its plan to “end the national scandal of spiraling student debt” by scrapping tuition fees.

But three years later, Sir Keir revealed he was preparing to “override” that pledge as the country found itself in a “different financial situation”.

Conservative Party co-chair Nigel Huddleston said the increase in university tuition fees was a pattern of Labor saying one thing in opposition and doing another when in power.

He told Sky News: “It worries me because it’s yet another example of what we see as a trend here, where Labor in opposition says one thing and then in government does one thing. other, usually to the detriment of someone…in this case, the students.

Writing in The Times, Ms Phillipson said universities have been forced to cut courses and jobs due to financial pressures and warned that if no action was taken there could be “worse to come”. follow “.

She said: “I will not stand idly by and watch the future of compromised students and good jobs ripped from our regions. »

The government – which is calling on universities to support disadvantaged students and use their money responsibly – will launch new higher education reforms in the coming months.