³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ

A Lib Dem MP who has vowed to vote against a rise in tuition fees has been elected as the President of the Liberal Democrat Party.

Tim Farron - MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale - received 14,593 votes from party members. He has called tuition fees "the poll tax of our generation".

His opponent - the former MP for Richmond upon Thames Susan Kramer - received 12,950 votes.

Former holders of the position include Simon Hughes and Charles Kennedy.

The Lib Dem website describes the president's role as "to chair the Federal Executive Committee, to be a spokesperson for the party membership and to represent their views to the party leadership".

Speaking earlier this week, after students clashed with police in London during a demonstration against the government's plans to increase university tuition fees in England to up to £9,000 a year, Mr Farron, 41, said it was "right that students should protest".

He added: "I was a student activist, I was a student president, I was a member of the NUS national executive 20 years ago and I went on plenty of marches and it was always the case that a handful of people would break off and do something daft - sometimes really quite dangerously daft.

"So it's right that students should protest. I don't want to be flippant about it, but it's part of being a student really that you should get out on the streets and make your voice heard."