If this money goes, my old college, St Anne’s, would lose three-quarters of a million a year.” Options for Oxbridge included charging top-up fees and taking only rich students, or the end of the tutorial system and job losses, she said.Lord Beloff, a Tory peer and former Oxford don, said: “The fact that not every university can operate this system does not make it less valuable.”A spokeswoman for the department said: “Ministers … She spoke of strong rumours of a personal vendetta by Baroness Blackstone, the higher education minister.She said: “We know people who have been to see Tony Blair about this. We know that there is a division between the Department for Education and Downing Street.”The department dismissed the idea of a vendetta as “ludicrous”.Ministers are examining the pounds 19m paid to Oxford and the pounds 16m to Cambridge in college fees each year at the suggestion of the Dearing review of higher education which reported in July. “Privatisation has meant that we have moved from running the railways by team effort to disjointed individual effort where the overall objective is sometimes forgotten,” he said.”If Railtrack and the train operating companies put the same effort and ingenuity into providing an efficient, integrated service as they do in passing the buck, passengers would get the high-quality service they are entitled to expect.”Railtrack said there was nothing “mischievous or sinister” about its request to employees. “It is simply a way of keeping in touch with what’s happening on the ground People are anxious that they get the right information If it’s our fault we will admit it.”. Members of the House of Lords will today rally to the defence of Oxbridge against a government review of the fees which support their colleges.

Conservative peers say they are expecting support from Liberal Democrats and possibly Labour peers in a debate which aims to highlight the threat to an Oxbridge approach to teaching which has endured for 700 years.
Baroness Blatch said yesterday that the attack was part of “the mean politics of envy” characteristic of the Government. Train operating companies can also attempt to pass off rolling stock failures on maintenance staff or rolling stock leasing companies.Jimmy Knapp, general secretary of the union, said Railtrack’s initiative was another example of a changing railway culture. It is not unknown for passengers to be told that delays are caused by bad weather when the truth is the condition of the track or signalling.”He added that most delays are caused by track or signalling problems which are Railtrack’s responsibility. This is especially so with incidents which start as minor delays, stopping unusually between stations, or delays in platforms. Please let us know what you yourself see delaying a train, or reasons the conductors give for the delays.”Railtrack insists that it will always put its hand up when culpable, but has devised a series of euphemisms for the difficulties it encounters (it now prefers “adhesion problems” to the more risible “leaves on the line”).The RMT rail union is angry over Railtrack’s plea to its employees and it argues that the company itself is capable of misleading passengers.Lawrie Harries, an RMT official, pointed out that the privatised railway system is operated on the basis of contracts which include compensation and penalty clauses for delays “Delays caused by Railtrack cost it money. Railtrack is asking its employees to snoop on train crews to make sure it is not being unfairly blamed for delays.

The infrastructure company believes that some drivers and conductors – possibly with the surreptitious encouragement of train operating companies – are taking the organisation’s name in vain.
Railtrack managers believe that train crews routinely use excuses like “signal failure” – which would be down to Railtrack – when in some cases the delay was caused by defective rolling stock, ostensibly the responsibility of train operating companies.In a newsletter covering the southern area, Railtrack suggests that employees using trains monitor what passengers are told, keep “correct records” of what happened and report the information as soon as possible.In its advice to employees, Railtrack says: “When you experience a delay on your train, we would like to know. However, a spokeswoman said the cost could be met from existing budgets and that the pounds 7bn figure was too high.. Figures of between pounds 3bn and pounds 4bn are believed to be more realistic.”This emphasises the need for senior people to start a process of radical prioritisation,” Mr Guenier said.Mr Bruce is pressing David Clark, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, for an early statement on the issue.”There is clearly still too much complacency in Whitehall and it really is time for some action before it simply is too late to sort things out,” he said.Yesterday, one of the leading experts on the problem, Maurice Fitzpatrick of Chantrey Vellacott accountants, said the Government had failed to grasp its magnitude.”In many ways this is the biggest single issue that the Labour government faces in its first term, although whether they are properly aware of that at the moment is hard to say,” he said.Mr Clark has said he cannot comment on details before his statement. Even if it wanted to spend that amount it could not do so, though, because the skilled labour would not be available. In July the Department of Social Security estimated it needed to spend pounds 30m, but now it says it will need pounds 45.6m.