MORE than 1,000 York University students have signed a petition against the introduction of student top-up fees.

MPs also have grave doubts about giving our elite establishments the power to charge up to £3,000 a year and the mood at Westminster is dark.

So it must have been with some trepidation that Higher Education Minister Margaret Hodge appeared before the Education Select Committee this week, a committee whose whole purpose is to give members of the Government a rough ride. To ask the questions lacking answers and keep going until they get them.

The York students will not be thrilled to hear that she got no such thing. In fact, the committee was so charming she must wish she could pop in for a cosy chat every afternoon.

The only thing it lacked was a plate of biscuits and some tea.

The mood was set by chairman Barry Sheerman in the very first minute. His probing opening remark could have been: "Hardly anyone in the country appears to want top-up fees Minister? Why are you introducing them?"

The reality was: "Some people have described this as a very generous settlement for higher education.

"Some Ministers have described it as the most generous settlement ever..." Mrs Hodge, not quite believing her luck, needed no second invitation. "It is an 18 per cent real terms increase," she said. "Over the period of our Government there has been a real terms 34 per cent increase in funding, compared to the 36 per cent cut in funding under the previous Government."

I checked for a moment to make sure I wasn't at a Labour Party rally. No, there were a couple of Tories sitting in the corner. When the MPs did get round to asking some (gentle) questions, Mrs Hodge was less forthcoming - but they let her get away with it.

With tuition fees commuted until after a student has graduated, there will be a period of three or four years when no cash is rolling into the Treasury.

But the universities would still need money, where would it come from? The Government. Wouldn't it place a massive burden on public finances?

As the Government would get the money back eventually, it would appear "below the PSBR (Public Sector Borrowing Requirement) line," said Mrs Hodge.

This is Ministerial speak for "we won't admit we owe the money and it won't appear on the Treasury balance sheet". Surely this was a chance for the Opposition MPs to score an easy political point. They let it go.

Next up was the issue of how many universities would opt for the maximum £3,000 fee. Couldn't universities act as a "cartel" and all ramp-up their costs? In theory, yes. But they wouldn't. Well, how many would then? Impossible to say, said the Minister. The committee shrugged its collective shoulders and moved on. One brave MP asked Mrs Hodge about her recent - and controversial - remarks about universities which offer "mickey mouse" courses.

If students were paying good money for these courses (the same £1,100 a future Prime Minister pays to do law at Oxford, they may have said), didn't they have a right to know?

"This is something I feel passionately about. Setting students up to fail is unforgivable," said Mrs Hodge.

And the names? "I am not prepared to do that." At this point the chairman, Mr Sheerman, got tough. Answer the question, he might have yelled.

Instead he said: "Why do you demonise Mickey Mouse? Why is it never Daffy Duck?" Why, indeed.

Parliament is in recess and James Slack returns on February 28

Updated: 11:50 Friday, February 14, 2003