The came following an interview with the BBC’s Daily Politics Show this week (November 15) in which Mr Foster said that he had not yet made up his mind whether to stick to a pledge he made to voters in the run up to the election or to follow the line laid down by MPs in the coalition agreement made after he was elected.
Don Foster MP told the Daily Politics, “I'm certainly very nervous about having to make a very difficult decision"
Before the General Election Mr Foster, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, signed a pledge to local voters saying he would vote against any rise in tuition fees saying to students at the time “I believe the National Union of Students haven’t gone anywhere near far enough. All they want to do is stop any rise in tuition fees. They should be joining the Liberal Democrats and campaigning for the fully costed abolition of tuition fees”.
The plans currently proposed by the Government would see the cap on tuition fees rise to £9,000 from it’s current level of £3,290.
NUS this week launched the Right to Recall campaign - www.righttorecall.co.uk - which uses the right to recall proposals that all parties have referred to over the last few months, whereby a by-election could be triggered through a petition signed by 10 per cent of constituents if an MP is deemed to be guilty of “serious wrongdoing”.
Commenting on Mr Foster’s apparent change of heart, NUS National President, Aaron Porter, said:
“Don Foster should keep to his word, anything less would be a massive u-turn. In the run up to the election he campaigned hard for student votes on the basis of his stance on tuition fees. He felt we didn’t go far enough then and now he has dropped not only his plans to abolish tuition fees but also his opposition to a trebling of the current fee levels.”
“Liberal Democrats have said that they didn’t win the election and therefore have to drop some of their policies but each and every one of them won an election in their constituency and they have a duty to stick by the clear and unambiguous promises they made to voters.”
Bath Students’ Union Vice-President, James Huelin, said:
“Don Foster convinced thousands of Bath students to vote for him because of his stance on tuition fees. If he now goes back on that pledge he will lose the trust of those students and I would suggest they would be unlikely to vote for him again.
"I will be here to remind students if Don breaks his pledge and they can make up their own minds as to whether they re-elect him or any other Lib Dem who stands in his place. If he does decide to stand by his pledge he should be celebrated, and I will happily and loudly remind voters of his integrity come the next election.”