Rebel MPs force Blair to delay top-up fees plan

The Government has been forced to delay publishing its plans to introduce university top-up fees. Instead, it offered a series of concessions to its backbench critics in an effort to stop a revolt by Labour MPs.

But the moves failed to head off hostility to the scheme, which opponents have warned could become Tony Blair's poll tax. The critics vowed not to back down until ministers had abandoned proposals to allow universities to charge top-up fees at varied levels.

The Higher Education Bill confirming the proposals had been pencilled in for Wednesday but was put off for several weeks. The delay allows Mr Blair to avoid a Commons showdown with mutinous MPs before Christmas and provides time for the concessions to be considered. The central concession is expected to be the increase of the salary level at which graduates would have to start repaying the fees from the current proposed £15,000 a year to £18,000 or even £20,000.

Ministers will consider raising the new £1,000-a-year student grants - payable to undergraduates from the poorest homes from next September - before the top-up fees of up to £3,000-a-year are introduced in 2006. They also plan to give the proposed new university admissions regulator - the Office for Fair Access - powers to refuse universities permission to introduce top-up fees if they do not provide bursaries to attract students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The signalling of concessions was being interpreted by Labour rebels and opposition MPs last night as a sign that ministers were "rattled'' by the size of the opposition to their package. A total of 136 Labour backbench MPs, including 25 former ministers, have signed a Commons early day motion attacking the plans.

Last night, the Department for Education and Skills said that Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, had an "open door'' policy on the legislation. Its success is crucial to Mr Clarke's political future. A defeat would also damage the standing of Mr Blair, who narrowly survived a backbench rebellion last month over his proposals to create foundation hospitals.

Peter Hain, the Leader of the House, in a string of interviews yesterday, said that Mr Clarke was prepared to consider ways in which the legislation "can be tweaked''. He said the Government would not "ram through'' the legislation. But speaking on BBC1's Breakfast With Frost programme, he said the central principle of a graduate repayment scheme was "not up for negotiation''.

Opposition was hardening yesterday, with Barbara Roche, a former Home Office minister, adding her name to the growing list of rebels. She told the BBC: "I went from a Hackney council estate to Oxford. What I have to ask myself is this - would I at 18 have been deterred from applying to Oxford because that university was going to be more expensive than a more local university."

University vice chancellors have said that they are £9bn short of the finances they need to meet the Government's plan that 50 per cent of all youngsters will attend university by the end of the decade.