Labour's decision to impose tuition fees on students must rank near the top of this wretched Government's increasing catalogue of shameful decisions.

The punishment of students with a mortgage-style debt of up to £21,000 that could take 30 years to repay continues Labour's ignoble tradition of harming the very people it purports to represent.

For make no mistake, this measure will discourage working-class ambition since fear of debt always weighs heaviest on the poorest in the community.

Tony Blair and education secretary Charles Clark - both recipients of very expensive private education - will never have had cause to reflect that if tuition fees had been around in their day they could not have gone to university.

They would have gone anyway, of course, because their wealthy parents could easily have afforded to foot the bill.

It is perhaps too much to hope our three local Labour MPs in the university city of Brighton and Hove will have the guts to vote down this measure in the Commons.

-Michael Williams, Roedean Road, Brighton