Leading article: Do the sums on top-up fees

Tony Blair and Charles Clarke have a big problem on their hands. Top-up fees are deeply unpopular with traditional Labour supporters, who regard it as wicked to make people pay for their higher education. They are disliked too by the middle-class voters who used to vote for Mrs Thatcher and now elect a Labour prime minister. Thus, if fees over and above the flat-rate £1,100 fee are introduced as a way of pouring some much-needed cash into the university system, they need to be explained carefully and introduced cleverly. That does not seem to be happening. Some of that is Labour's fault. The endless delays over publication of the Government's plans has produced a feverish atmosphere. Speculation is rife, and those for and against top-up fees are engaged in a battle of the airwaves and the newspaper columns. The latest example was Frank Dobson, who accused his former cabinet colleagues of introducing elitist policies that would make matters worse for disadvantaged young people.

Some of the hysteria is not Labour's fault. The news that Imperial College London is toying with a top-up fee of £10,500 has been thoroughly "unhelpful", to use the jargon of civil servants. In fact the £10,500 is not Imperial's proposed fee; it is the cost of teaching a student at Imperial. It is not intended that parents would be charged that sum. As we report on page 8, many "old" universities want to charge top-up fees but have no intention of charging anywhere near the Imperial figure. A sum of £2,000 to £3,000 is more likely.

We believe universities need the extra money and that it is unlikely to come from the public purse. We also believe that better-off students who reap huge private benefits from higher education should pay more towards the cost of that education. Poorer students should not suffer. The Government needs to say that. Ideally it should introduce the model adopted by the Scots and the Australians, which means that no fees are paid up front and students only start contributing to the cost of their degrees once they have graduated and are earning decent sums. If it is true that Gordon Brown favours that solution, he will have to find the money to put it in place. And then all ministers will need to go out and explain the policy properly.