Labour leader is expected to say the proposed £3,000-a-year reduction will be paid for by cutting pension tax relief for the wealthy

Ed Miliband will make an explicit appeal to younger voters by promising to cut tuition fees and warning that elderly people have become runaway victors in Britain’s intergenerational contest.

The Labour leader is expected to say that a Labour government would cut tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 a year.

At the same time, he will say pension tax relief for the wealthy needs to be cut back to fund universities in light of the loss of income caused by the planned tuition fee cut.



Miliband, expected to announce his plans by the end of the week, is also still being urged privately by academics, the National Union of Students and former cabinet members to look at other reforms to the system of student grants, their effect on inequality and the varying bursaries in universities.

The complications of the maintenance grant system, such as the sharp cliff edges in levels of support once certain income levels are crossed, is a key issue with middle-class parents of students, and has been relatively disregarded in the debate about reforming higher education funding.

Nevertheless, the overall youth strategy is risky for Labour since older voters are increasingly numerous and have a far greater propensity to vote than the young, and have proved to be the bedrock of many Tory election victories.

Already, the over-75s account for nearly 8% of the population. One in six people in England and Wales is over 65, and one person now turns 65 every 41 seconds in the UK. By 2020 more than half of voters will be over 50 years of age.

There is also no guarantee that a cut in tuition fees will mobilise a student vote that is drawn to a general liberal stance offered by the Greens. In the latest Comres poll 17% of 18-24-year-olds said they would vote Green.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are instead focusing on the grey vote. Cameron pledged again this week that he would not means-test middle-class pensioner benefits such as winter fuel allowance and free TV licences.

In a speech on Wednesday the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, will defend the Conservatives’ support for pensioners, saying “through the triple lock – guaranteeing an increase every year of the highest of prices, average earnings or 2.5% – over this parliament, we have ensured the greatest rise in the state pension as a proportion of earnings for the last 40 years.

“From April, the full pension will be a full £950 higher as a result – a proud record and one which, I believe, even in tough economic times, no one can begrudge.” Duncan Smith will underline that he has tried to make saving pay, just as he says he has made work pay.

But Miliband, in a speech to the Engineering Employers Federation on Thursday, is expected to make a broader appeal to society to accept that a better deal for the younger generation is a sign of intergenerational responsibility.

He will also specifically argue to business that the training and education of young people, including at universities, lies at the heart of the UK productivity crisis. By the week’s end Miliband, after months of internal discussion, will finally provide his solution to the tuition fees conundrum.

His aides say the proposals need to be seen part of his longer argument about intergenerational fairness. In 2011 he spoke of the lost “British promise”, saying: “We have always assumed that our kids, the next generation, would do better than us. Not just the well-off, the vast majority can expect that their kids will do better than them.

“It is a promise that each generation will pass to the next: a life of greater opportunity, prosperity and wellbeing. In many ways that is the promise of Britain.

“We may not have given it a name in the way that Americans talk about the ‘American Dream’, but it is there nevertheless. But for the first time in generations, there is now a real fear that the British promise will be broken and the next generation will find it harder to get on than the last.”

Since then, he claims, the evidence has borne him out. His aides point to research published last summer by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing “the employment rate of those in their 20s has fallen, while employment among older individuals has not; and real pay among young workers has fallen much faster than among older workers. As a result, young adults’ real incomes have fallen much more than any other age-group.”

Incomes have been under pressure across the wage spectrum since the financial crisis of 2007/8, but younger people have suffered most. For 31–59-year-olds median pay had fallen 6% by 2012/13, whereas for the 22–30 age group it fell 15%, the IFS has estimated.

The Intergenerational Foundation claims that as “baby boomers” now enter retirement, they are likely to do so with the cushion of inflated house values and yields from public sector and private pensions that are far higher that any younger generation might expect when their day comes.

But Miliband claims it is not just a living standards deficit but a democratic deficit. Labour also highlighted figures produced by the Electoral Commission showing there were nearly 1 million fewer entries on the electoral roll in the 10 months to December 2014, and the decline is most marked in university towns. In some university areas the register has fallen by more than 10%.

The Cabinet Office minister Sam Gmiyah insists he is doing all he can to make it easier for the young to register to vote, including online registration.

Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, described the decline as a disaster for democracy and students. By the end of the week Labour will have provided its proposed solutions.