A**hole lecturer

Courses aren't designed entirely at the whim of the lecturer. A course specification/syllabus will have been drawn up and considered by more than one person, and a decision will have been reached as to whether it's at an appropriate level, and (for example) whether that's a suitable underlying basis for courses in the 2nd/3rd year.

The past papers you've looked at will reflect what was taught in previous years. It's entirely possible that this year's course is covering a more restricted set of topics. If material does come up in the exam that wasn't covered in teaching, you and your fellow students will have legitimate cause to complain.

On the subject of difficulty, your exam paper will almost certainly have been reviewed internally by someone other than the person who set it, as well as by an external examiner (i.e. an academic from another university). If they thought the work was too difficult for first year students, I'm sure they would have raised this.

As Mr Wednesday notes, a lecturer should have defined "office hours", which is the time set aside to deal with students. It's been a long time since I was last a student, but these were always clearly indicated -- and if they weren't I could have asked the department admin staff.

Probably not your tuition fees. Much academic research is funded through external grants, or other funding allocated specifically for research.

... during the time he had (or should have) set aside for dealing with queries related to teaching. If you'd turned up at that time, he should have been prepared to see you.

As others have noted, you should have course reps with whom you raise issues such as this, and they can raise it with your department. If this is an issue that "practically everybody else" on the course is experiencing, then I'm surprised this hasn't happened. You could also have raised this with your personal tutor.

When problems like this arise, they need to be raised at the earliest opportunity. This gives the department time to deal with the issues quickly and mitigate/limit their impact. While you've tried to raise this issues, it sounds like there were better ways you could (should) have used.

As in most areas, there are external regulators for universities. But an external regulator won't deal with a complaint before you've exhausted the university's internal complaints process.