STUDENTS at a North-East rally were told they can win their fight against university top-up fees.

The third reading of Tony Blair's controversial Higher Education Bill, which would introduce charges of up to £3,000, is expected in the next few weeks.

Despite Labour's 161 majority in the Commons, the Bill got its second reading by a margin of only five votes.

Opponents, including many Labour MPs, fear the fees will price many youngsters out of higher education and add to the burden of debt facing those who could still afford it.

On Saturday, about 1,000 students from 15 of the region's universities and colleges attended a rally on Palace Green, Durham City.

They were addressed by speakers from all three main parties and National Union of Students president Mandy Telford denounce the Government's plans.

Liberal Democrat education spokesman Phil Willis said the privately-educated Prime Minister Tony Blair and Education Secretary Charles Clarke had enjoyed free higher education but would deny it to tomorrow's students.

He said top-up fees were originally devised by Margaret Thatcher's Education Secretary, Keith Joseph - "that's how right wing they are" - but were rejected by the Tories.

He said university education should be free and paid for by introducing a 50 per cent tax rate for those earning more than £100,000.

Rebel Labour MP Kate Hoey said many in the Labour movement "deeply deplored'' the Bill, which broke the party's manifesto commitments not to introduce top-up fees.

And she said she had little confidence that the promised £3,000 ceiling until 2010 would not be lifted.

Richard Bell, a councillor from Teesdale, County Durham, and the Tories' candidate for Blyth, in Northumberland, said his party would scrap fees, describing them as a "tax on learning''.

Mandy Telford warned that England could follow the US, where students in Ivy League universities pay $30,000 to $40,000 a year and less than ten per cent of students come from lower income families.

"We have to defeat this Bill once and for all, and we can defeat the bill," she said.

Durham Student Union president Craig Jones urged students to keep fighting and lobby MPs to vote against the Bill