The claim 
“There are more places at university than ever before, and in fact, at this moment, more prospective students have now got a definite firm place at university than at this point last year.” 
Science and universities minister David Willetts speaking at Ucas headquarters, 19 August 2010

Cathy Newman checks it out
We’ve been warned for days that thousands of students could miss out on going to university because of funding cuts. So today the government hit back, saying that despite the financial squeeze, it’s created an additional 10,000 university places – breaking all records. Confusingly, the shadow education secretary and Labour leadership contender Ed Balls then countered that the coalition had in fact CUT 10,000 places. So who’s right?

Over to the team for the analysis 
This year there are 365,000 university places available. According to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, that does indeed set a new record. Apart from a blip in 2006, numbers have been rising consistently year on year. So the universities minister David Willetts was right to claim, as he did today, that “there are more places at university than ever before”. And the deputy prime minister was also drawing on solid figures when he said: “We increased the number of university places by 10,000”.

However, Labour had planned to create an extra 20,000 places this year. But in May, the coalition said it would cut 10,000 of those.   

So although numbers are at an all time high, they could have been even higher under Labour. That said, funding for the extra places Labour wanted to create was subject to lots of conditions so although another 20,000 places COULD have been created, that figure was by no means definite.   

Ed Balls said today: “We had a 20,000 expansion this year planned. That was cut back by 10,000 after the election even though the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said in the election campaign they wanted to expand the number of places.”   

Cathy Newman’s verdict
The confusion comes at the end of Balls’ comment. It seems he’s trying to give the impression the coalition has cut places overall, which they haven’t. As both Clegg and Willetts said, the number of university places is at a record high, but could have soared even higher under Labour.