Business Secretary Vince Cable has told the BBC's Newsnight that university bosses were right to warn against Labour reducing tuition fees to £6,000.

He told Evan Davis that it could cost up to £10bn to make such a reduction, and he believed the present system was ''stable, sensible and fair''.

And he said free education had been an ''ideal'' but the newly elected coalition government had been faced with ''the reality of office''.