Tony Blair said that tuition fees were the fairest option for funding universities

Prime Minister Tony Blair has defended plans to increase tuition fees, saying it was only "fair" that students should pay towards the costs of university.

Speaking at Labour's annual conference in Bournemouth, Mr Blair said that taxpayers could not be expected to pay for the increase in university places.

"To pretend it will all come from the taxpayer is dishonest. It won't and it wouldn't be fair if it did," Mr Blair told the conference.

But the Prime Minister told delegates he would not back down on the controversial plans to raise tuition fees to �3,000 per year, saying more funding was vital to ensure Britain developed the skills needed in the hi-tech global economy.

Conservative plans to scrap fees were attacked by Mr Blair, who said that it would mean cutting hundreds and thousands of university places.

'A fair future'

And he insisted that calls from Labour's left wing and the Liberal Democrats for extra funding from tax hikes on the rich would not work.

Education remained Labour's "number one priority", said Mr Blair, describing it as "the surest guarantee of a fair future".

Earlier, Education Secretary Charles Clarke said raising the amount universities could charge tuition for fees - from the current flat rate of �1,100 a year - was the fairest policy.

"It is reasonable and fair to ask graduates to contribute a proportion of the costs of the university education which they benefit from for the rest of their life," he added.

HAVE YOUR SAY Will top up fees deter students? Things are already bad enough, let's not make them any worse!. Matt, England Send us your comments

Before his speech, a series of delegates had expressed doubts about the plans for student funding, including the chair of Labour's student movement, Karim Palant, who said: "We do not believe that top-up fees are the answer."

'Hard choices'

But Mr Clarke gave little ground - and offered few concessions to those who argued that increasing fees would deter the poorer students that universities were being encouraged to attract.

Instead, Mr Clarke warned the conference that student funding meant "having to make hard choices" and that change could not be avoided.

He told the conference "to look at the real facts" which showed that already the taxpayer was paying �5,300 each year for every university student - compared to only �3,200 for a primary school pupil.

The proposed fees system was fairer in many ways, he said, including that students would no longer pay anything "up-front" and that payment would only come when graduates were earning more than �15,000 per year.

Payback

"No longer will potential students have to find �1,100 a year before they even set foot on a university campus a massive barrier to entry removed at a stroke. That's fairer."

No longer will potential students have to find �1,100 a year before they even set foot on a university campus - a massive barrier to entry removed at a stroke. That's fairer. Charles Clarke, Education Secretary

It was also "fairer", Mr Clarke said, that universities would have to show that they are widening access and that poorer students would not have to pay fees.

The shadow education secretary, Damian Green, rejected Mr Clarke's arguments, saying that raising fees would give students a "high debt, high tax future".

"There can't be a better way of discouraging relatively poor students from applying to university in the first place," he said.

Funding gap

The tough choices facing all political parties over student funding were also outlined on Tuesday by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi).

The think tank warned that even with tuition fees, the government's plans for higher education would leave a �1.6bn funding gap.

And the opposition parties' plans would mean either even larger bills for the taxpayer or the cutting of hundreds of thousands of university places.

I am very worried that the opponents of fees are actually in danger of turning off the very students that they are claiming to be trying to support Bahram Bekhradnia, Higher Education Policy Institute

Report author Bahram Bekhradnia said the government had allowed opponents of higher fees to give prospective students the idea they would be lumbered with high debts if they went to university, even though repayments would be earnings-related.

"They have allowed the language in which this debate has taken place to be dictated to them," he said.

"The language of debt and of fees are not very accurate terms - they have allowed themselves to be out spun by the opponents of their policies.