IN response to Tom Jennings (Labour Party candidate, Parish Councillor for Grappenhall and Thelwall) in Opinion, May 22, he says: ‘Anne Raymond asks if Labour can run an honest campaign, but this from a party who gave a written promise to scrap tuition fees but then promptly trebled them, just so Nick Clegg could play with the Tory big boys down in Westminster’.

I would like to point out to readers some hypocritical factors in Tom Jennings’ statement. In Labour’s 1997 manifesto it said, under the heading ‘higher education’, ‘the improvement and expansion needed cannot be funded out of general taxation.

Our proposals for funding have been made to the Dearing Committee, in line with successful policies abroad’.

However, a broken promise actually rests on an article in the Evening Standard when Mr Blair said: ‘Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education’.

On May 2 1997, Labour was elected with a manifesto committed to leaving the door open for tuition fees: ‘the costs of student maintenance should be repaid by graduates on an incomerelated basis’.

In July 1997, following the Dearing report, education secretary David Blunkett announced the introduction of means-tested tuition fees, to begin in September 1998.

On June 7, 2001, Labour is reelected with a manifesto pledge that it ‘will not introduce top-up fees and has legislated against them’.

The higher education bill, presented in December 2003 by education secretary Charles Clarke, set out the government’s plans for introducing top-up fees.

In September 2006 Labour agreed that universities would be allowed to charge up to £3,000 a year in tuition fees, or top-up fees, capped until at least 2009.

Perhaps Tom would like to explain Labour’s hypocrisy.

TONY FOX Stockton Heath