A Holyrood committee has said it "remains unconvinced" that scrapping graduate fees would do enough to remove barriers to higher education.

In a report published on Thursday, MSPs on the lifelong learning and education committee rejected Scottish government proposals to abolish the £2,289 graduate endowment charge.

The committee was split over whether the legislation should be agreed in Holyrood next week, with three SNP MSPs and one Liberal Democrat backing the Graduate Endowment Abolition (Scotland) Bill and three Labour members and one Tory MSP against.

But the casting vote from Labour convener Karen Whitefield recommended not to agree "the general principles" of the legislation.

"The committee believes that the funding required to be foregone so that the graduate endowment can be abolished would be better invested in other methods," she said.

"This would help to retain a competitive edge in the delivery of high quality higher education and to widen access, including for example more funding directly for universities and in the current
system of bursaries.

"The committee remains unconvinced that the removal of graduate endowment goes far enough in removing barriers to access higher education.

"In the Scottish government's second piece of legislation it has missed the opportunity to address the wider issues of student debt and alternative approaches to widening access to further education."

However the SNP members said there was "overwhelming evidence" for abolishing the fees.