UNIVERSITY access has been turned back decades under the coalition government, Yorkshire and Humber regional TUC chair Tim Roach warned at the weekend.

“My father was an East End docker. My mum was a shop worker when she wasn’t cleaning and doing other jobs,” he said.

He did not go to university.

When his eldest daughter was old enough to attend university tuition fees were a barely affordable £3,000.

But when his second daughter was of university age, the Con-Dem government had trebled the fees to £9,000, pricing thousands of young people out of a chance of a university education.

“We have now gone full circle,” he said.

He welcomed Ed Miliband’s pledge to reduce fees to £6,000 if elected.

“I would rather it was £3,000, or no fees at all,” he said. “But it’s a start.”