MOST Labour supporters believe the party should fight the general election with a commitment to completely scrapping tuition fees, a poll revealed yesterday.

Funding free education through taxation was the most popular policy option with 825 people who responded to a Labour List survey.

Labour leaders are under pressure to reveal their alternative to the £9,000-a-year fees chaos before the general election.

And 45 per cent want Labour to completely cancel tuition fees, which have soared since the party controversially introduced a £1,000-a-year charge in 1998.

Despite this policy being popular among members, Labour List editor Mark Ferguson said it was “unlikely this will be made Labour policy.”

But the result sparked renewed calls from young Labour members for their party to offer a radical alternative in the face of rising support for their Green rivals.

“The polling shows what young people in Labour have been arguing, marching and crying out for,” said Labour Campaign for Free Education spokesman James Elliott.

“We want education to be funded by those who can pay — the rich — not through fees or the ‘stealth fee’ of a graduate tax.

“A clear, principled and popular policy of free education would win Labour votes and end the disastrous experiment of marketisation.”

Support for free education dwarfed the 9 per cent of people who believed fees should be cut to a figure between £3,000 a year and £8,999.

The graduate tax advocated at the weekend by shadow universities minister Liam Byrne was also less popular at 34 per cent.