STUDENT FINANCE

On Thursday 27^th July Nicola Sturgeon made a speech to an invited audience of young people and student leaders. Below are some highlights from her speech. The speech contained a number of key pledges which an SNP Government will introduce following next year's Scottish Parliament election.  These include:

- Cancelling existing graduate debt from student loans

- Abolition of the Student Loans system, and the reintroduction of Student Grants

- Abolition of the Graduate Endowment Scheme

In her speech, Ms Sturgeon said:  "The SNP believes in independence for Scotland. But independence is about more than political powers. Independence is a philosophy. It is as relevant to how individuals live their lives as it is to how our country is governed. The notion of personal independence is central to our vision of Scotland's future and it will be at the heart of our manifesto for the Scottish election next year.

University is not for everyone. But those who choose to further their education in college or university should be restricted in doing so by nothing other than the limits of their own ability. Access to education based on the ability to learn rather than the ability to pay is one of the oldest and most cherished public policy principles in Scotland.

Our higher education system, today, is predicated on the accumulation of debt. In 1999, average student loan debt was £2,500. Bad enough you might think. But, today, the average debt owed to the government is more than £11,000 and rising. 

50% of school leavers now go on to higher education, compared to just 17% back in 1980. But that global statistic masks huge disparities between income groups. The wealthiest 7% of Scots are five times more likely to go to university than the least well off 7%.  According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are often deterred from entering higher education, and are more likely to drop out, because of economic hardship and worries about mounting debt. If you believe - as we do - that academic ability alone should determine access to university, then a system that prices anyone out of education in that way is simply not acceptable.

The second reason why the growing student debt burden is not sustainable is this. Just as it restricts access for some people, so too does it restrict the choices of those who are lucky enough to make it through the system and get a degree. When a student graduates, the world should be their oyster. But you don't have to stop and think for very long to realise that a graduate with £11,000 or more of debt will find it much harder than one without to buy a home, start a business or save for their retirement.

The fact that a young person's freedom of choice can be restricted by debts owed to the government for their education is anathema to our belief in free education. But it also offends our belief that the role of government is to encourage ambition and aspiration, not frustrate it.  That is why I can announce today that an SNP government will introduce a £100m package for Scottish students and graduates. Our package has 3 main elements:

Firstly, we will get rid of the graduate endowment - the backdoor tuition fee - and make education free again. It is probably the biggest myth of devolution so far that tuition fees were abolished in 1999. They weren't. They were simply deferred to the end of a student's course.

Secondly, we will introduce grants to replace loans. The support that government gives to students to help them with their living costs should not be repayable in the same way as a credit card debt or bank loan. It should be part of society's investment in our collective future. There is no doubt that a university education benefits the individual student, but it is also the means by which we as a society ensure we have a skilled and educated workforce.

The third element of our package will, I believe, have significant benefits for our economy in the here and now. An SNP government will cancel the accumulated debt still owing to the Student Loans Company by Scottish domiciled students.  That is a measure that will benefit more than 300,000 graduates in Scotland.

Removing the capital burden of education debt will alleviate some of the difficulty that young graduates have in getting a mortgage and a foot on the first rung of the housing ladder; it will make it easier for those wanting to start up a company to access business finance; and, of course, by freeing up income, graduates will get to keep more of their own hard-earned cash and be in a better position to do what, these days, we are all told we must do - save for our retirement.

It is time for the change in government that will bring all this about.
 

SMALL GOVERNMENT

The number of civil servants is continuing to rise.  This despite promises from ministers that they will be reduced in “efficiency savings”.  Jack McConnell said two years ago that the public sector was “too big” and claimed that it was a drain on economic growth.  The Executive has announced plans for an efficiency drive to cut duplication, bureaucracy and red tape but they’ve done that before and still the trend is upwards due to “increasing demands of devolution”. 

So Alex Salmond’s plan to cut the number of Executive Departments, appointing fewer ministers, and reducing the number of civil servants could not be more timely.  He is talking of reducing the number of departments from 9 to 6 with a consequent loss of civil service jobs.  Mr Salmond has not yet said how many that is likely to be.

We cannot go on having cuts in public spending while the number of civil servants continues to rise.  It is ridiculous that from 1999, when there were 13,144 civil servants, we have had an increase of 16%.  Jim Mather is right to say that the latest figures underlined his belief that the efficient government drive was a farce and that “we are not going to have efficient government until we have full economic powers”.
 

NUCLEAR WASTE

So the long awaited report from the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management has been published.  There were no surprises. The experts recommended storing nuclear waste deep underground but agreed that technical answers were decades away.

“The committee agreed that deep disposal…..is the best available approach for long term management of the waste in terms of safety and security.  However it believes that a robust programme of interim storage is needed to safeguard the waste for 100 years or more in case of delay or failure in a repository programme”.  

Deep disposal in secure canisters below the ground in geologically stable rock is the favoured option.  The robust interim measures are needed because it could take 40 years to identify and build the long term disposal facility.

What a farce!  Britain has been creating nuclear waste for 50 years and hasn’t known what to do with it.  Sellafield already has above ground storage and is on Nirex’s list of the 12 most likely radioactive waste sites.  There are 5 possible sites in Scotland – Dounreay and Altnabreac in the north east, Fuday and Sandray in the Western Isles, and offshore near Hunterston.  They say they will not force nuclear waste on communities.  But rather local communities will come forward and offer suitable sites for waste disposal with “benefit packages for local authorities and communities” as a means of securing facility siting.

I would call this “unresolved”.  And Jack McConnell, on record as saying that there will be no new nuclear power stations until the matter of waste has been resolved,  must say if he supports the building of new nuclear power stations or not.