Tuition fees: another "progressive, reforming" measure

I know you've been itching for the answer: have New Labour's "reforms" to higher education improved or worsened access to universities?

...By 2000 however, one can observe social class effects on HE participation, even after conditioning for the number of GCSEs and A levels that an individual has. This seems to suggest a widening of the social class gap in higher education itself in the period after the introduction of tuition fees.

To be fair, the authors note that New Labour's introduction of tuition fees merely reinforced existing trends both within the rest of the education system, and the long-term bias towards greater inequalities of access into British universities.