REPORTS that the Tories are planning to scrap the cap on tuition fees for higher education are a wake-up call to the profound damage successive governments have done to an essential public service.

And news that elite universities are concocting a plot to find another source of student loans in order to ramp charges up to £16,000 a year or more confirms the slide towards a two-tier education system.

The government will doubtless deny it has specific plans to raise or abolish the cap.