Debate: Student Funding

Ms Wendy Alexander (Paisley North) (Lab): It is refreshing to have the chance to debate SNP policy. I wanted to do the party justice, so I had a look at its website.

 It has a promise today by the SNP’s deputy leader under the headline:”SNP makes ‘free education’ pledge”. The article states:”graduates will not start their working lives … burdened by debt.” So, what is that level of debt? Well, the SNP website tells us that it is £18,700 for each graduate. I have to say that both Ms Sturgeon and Ms Hyslop used a rather more conservative figure on television and in the chamber when they stated that the average graduate debt is £11,000.

Let us stick with the conservative figure of £11,000, forget all the past students and the historic debt, and just focus on the pledge of free education for today’s students. What would it cost? There are 271,000 students in higher education. For some reason, the SNP is not concerned about further education students. Let us start with higher education.

Fiona Hyslop: I have particular concerns about the further education figures, which is why I am concerned that the numbers going into higher education—which includes universities and further education colleges—have flatlined under this Government, despite its claim that the numbers have increased.

Ms Alexander: Well, let us stick with higher education. The average debt of £11,000 for 271,000 students comes to a total of around £3 billion. Therefore, to meet the pledge of free education, the SNP proposes either to divert half the national health service budget in Scotland to those destined already to be the richest half of Scottish society, or it does not really mean to meet the pledge at all.

Actually, if we look at the small print that goes beyond the dishonest political posturing, we find that the promise is not for £3 billion and free education but for £100 million. That would be enough to clear the £11,000 debt of one in 25 Scottish students. Is the SNP suggesting that student unions should run a lucky dip to find the one in 25 who will have a free education? If we included further education students, one in 50 will benefit from the lucky dip.

What we have here is a piece of gesture politics, but it does tell us something about the SNP’s political priorities. For the SNP, it is tough luck for the one in two students who do not go to university and for those whose modern apprenticeships are financed by Scottish Enterprise, the budget of which the SNP wants to halve. It is also tough luck for all council tenants, who are surely a more deserving case for the writing-off of historical debt in order to build affordable homes. They are surely more deserving than people such as Ms Sturgeon,

who might herself have historical student debt imprudently left around. It is also tough luck for all those Scots who believe that our future depends on the strength of our universities, because most of the funding for universities in Scotland comes not from the Executive’s core grants but from United Kingdom research councils, UK foundations such as the Wellcome Trust, and UK companies, many of which would be jeopardised under the SNP.

I said last week that I thought “Big Spender” was the SNP’s recurring theme tune. There certainly seems to have been no change over the past week. If the SNP wants to be taken seriously, it must stop trying to buy votes, stop peddling free education for all when it means nothing of the kind and start engaging in a serious debate about how we widen access to Scottish universities.

11:02