Jeremy Purvis puts fair access to higher education at heart of Liberal Democrat thinking

Today Cabinet Secretary for Education Mike Russell outlined the proposals in his long awaited Green Paper for Higher Education. He outlined a number of various options with the aim of maintaining Scotland's reputation for world class academic excellence.

The six options under consideration are:

• the state retaining primary responsibility for funding
• the state retaining primary responsibility for funding but with a graduate contribution
• charging more for students who come to study from other parts of the UK
• increased donations and philanthropic giving
• more money from business
• efficiency savings

Basically what will happen now is that everybody will study the paper, get some magic numbers about future funding from John Swinney in January and will then draw up their own proposals to go in their manifestos for the election next year and whatever government is elected in May will act accordingly.

Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Jeremy Purvis only had a minute to respond but he used it well.  After barbed encounters with Des McNulty, Liz Smith and George Foulkes, there was a bit more reason to the exchange with Jeremy. While the others concentrated on trying (and failing) to pin Mike Russell down on whether he would rule out or rule in a graduate contribution, Jeremy's question was typically practical. I'd always expect a Liberal Democrat to look at issues of fairness and he made the point that only 20% of students in higher education came from a poorer background, even with free tuition and it was important to address that. Mike Russell actually gave quite an intelligent response, saying how you needed to tackle that issue at the school and nursery gates with early intervention. That might be an encouraging sign that the SNP might be prepared to support a pupil premium like the Liberal Democrats are bringing in south of the border.

Liberal Youth Scotland are unimpressed by Mike Russell's statement, with their President Kristian Chapman saying:

“The only concrete announcement we’ve had from this SNP Government is that they are cutting 12% from University funding, but with no answers on how this will be replaced.

“NUS research has shown that a huge number of students have thought of dropping out because of a lack of student support, and again, we still have no answers from the SNP on how they will address this.”

There's a long way to go on this. Mike Russell himself has given signs that he might be prepared to introduce a graduate contribution to pay for education. This would differ from the graduate endowment introduced by the Liberal Democrats in the first Holyrood coalition as it would actually mean graduates paid some of the cost of their education. The endowment did not pay for teaching staff or materials or lecture halls - it helped poor students go to university. So, Nicola Sturgeon, you can't take away the Liberal Democrat achievements in that first coalition. Without the Scottish Liberal Democrats,  you'd have come into office with students paying fees and top up fees and you'd have had to have found the money to get rid of them, or not...

For heaven's sake, Vince, we don't have tuition fees in Scotland!

Ok, I'm going to be nice. Partly because I can refuse the Almighty Vince nothing - but he's going to have to give me a bit more than this in the future.

This is the e-mail he's sent out to Party members this afternoon. I will give him the floor for now and then I'll have my tantrum at the end.


Dear Caron,


The Liberal Democrats have always championed our universities. We have long fought for a fair deal for students.

Now in Government we are in a position to turn that campaigning into real action.

The higher education package I am announcing today will promote high-quality university teaching and research. It will guarantee fair access for all, regardless of background. It will deliver a progressive, sustainable funding structure.

The key points are -

1) The poorest 30% of graduates will pay less for university - access to higher education will always be based on ability, not ability to pay.

2) Graduate contributions will be capped - we have rejected Lord Browne’s proposal to allow universities to set charges as high as they wish.

3) Maintenance grants and loans will be improved - almost one million students will receive more overall maintenance support than they do now.

4) Student loans will be extended to part time students - no longer will they be ignored by the system.

Our plans are fair for students, fair for graduates and affordable for the nation. Please click here to read the full details of our proposals.

These plans represent an important first step to improving higher education in Britain and making sure that it remains open to all.

I hope you will join me in the coming months in getting this message out to people across Britain.


Excuse me, Vince, but haven't you forgotten that we, er, don't have tuition fees in Scotland, something that's down to the Liberal Democrats?

And did you not realise that on 9th October our Scottish Conference rejected a call for a scheme which involved a graduate contribution? The Holyrood front bench argued strongly and passionately against the amendment which proposed the graduate contribution.

This e-mail was sent to members in Scotland, many of whom were not at that Conference. They might be under the misapprehension that the Scottish Party has adopted a graduate contribution scheme when nothing could be further from the truth.

Even though things are different up here, we know that we will probably get grief over the decisions that Vince has made in England regarding tuition fees. The e-mail does have some of the facts about how the Liberal Democrats have made a bad situation better. However, the main line of attack will be "you broke your promise".  There is nothing in there that helps with that. Not one thing. Please don't tell us that what we're getting today is what we've been campaigning for for years because that just isn't true. It is the height of uncharacteristic insensitivity to suggest to party members who are feeling a bit bruised by this process that we're getting what we wanted all along.

I know that Vince didn't write this e-mail himself, and whoever did is probably running around like crazy doing 17 jobs at once, but tonight's effort was probably the worst of the bunch so far. I'm hoping that the new President will sort this out as a matter of urgency. We need stuff that we can really use. What we're getting is like sending us out to do battle with a sharpened banana.

Update: Jo Swinson has made a better job of it over at Lib Dem Voice, but still that doesn't even mention that it's not applicable to Scotland.

Tuition Fees - a Caron's Corkers special - reissued with correct link

When I wrote about the Browne Report, asking Liberal Democrat MPs to honour their pledges to vote against any rise in tuition fees, I did so looking at the long term effect of lumbering our brightest young people with almost insurmountable debt at the start of their working lives. I also touched on the fact that we as a society benefit from education and it's only right that we should, therefore, pay for it.

Yesterday there were two superlative blog posts taking that theme further. One from new blog Angularities asking for the MPs' tuition fee rebellion from the Party's long held policy be crushed. He makes the point forcefully that education is not a commodity:

 Education is not a commodity. It is a right. It was one of the UK’s saddest days whenWestminster rubber stamped Blair's decision that higher and further education should become purchasable commodities. Tertiary education is no more "goods for sale" than primary or secondary education. It is the gift of our community and it should be given freely for the best of reasons - enlightened, communal self-interest.

Craig Murray is scathing about the proposals, stating that if they go through the UK will be investing less than the US in its universities. He also argues that we can afford it - it's just that the Government's priorities are wrong. I have to say I agree with him.

We are sagely advised that we cannot keep 40% of the relevant population in higher education from the public purse. Really? Yet we can keep 100% of the relevant population in school. A prisoner costs the state eight times what a student costs, but we can have unlimited numbers of those. We can afford any sum to invade and occupy countries across the globe. This small island apparently needs to spend hundreds of billions to have a nuclear capacity to destroy half the world. But we can't afford higher education?

These posts should be compulsory reading for all our Liberal Democrat MPs.

 Readers, please fill MPs' mailbags and inboxes asking them to vote in accordance with our long held principle of free education.

The Browne Report - the next steps in the Liberal Democrat grassroots campaign to abolish tuition fees

Vince Cable's statement yesterday in which he said that the Liberal Democrats had accepted the principles of the Browne Report, removing the cap on tuition fees and lumbering students with around a £30,000 debt, doesn't get any better after sleeping on it.

I'm encouraged by the various efforts being organised to campaign against this. The person to follow on Twitter is @LiberalBertie as she has loads of information. If you're on Twitter, she's preparing an open letter to be sent to Liberal Democrat MPs. If you want to sign, send her a direct message on Twitter or e-mail me and I'll pass it on.

I liked this tweet from Sophie, who's LiberalBertie:

Real politics is not a bunch of MPs sitting around debating - it's what is happening now: the grassroots working and campaigning together!

There is also a Facebook Group, Lib Dems against Scrapping the Cap and a petition to sign.

Electronic stuff is fast moving and all well and good, but also talk to as many Liberal Democrat members as you can to build momentum.

I am delighted that MPs such as Julian Huppert, Greg Mulholland and Tim Farron have already said that they will vote against the proposals to honour the promise they made when they were elected.

+++Breaking News: Vince Cable is not the Devil

I am not best pleased with Vince Cable today. If I were married to him, I might still cook his dinner but he'd be eating it on his own while I went and complained about him to my friends over a bottle of red wine. (Bob, if you're reading this, I NEVER do that about you).

I think he's wrong to have painted Liberal Democrat MPs into a corner whereby they either disobey the party whip (and messing with Mr Carmichael and his wand is not an easy thing to do), or go back on a pledge they made to their constituents.

Having said all of that, I do think he's had a bit of a hard time on Twitter. There's no need to get personal, and I'm certainly taking no lessons in honouring Election pledges from the Labour Party. We've been electing the Lords for years, just as they promised in their 1997 manifesto, right? And let's not forget they're the ones who lumbered us with tuition fees in the first place.

Vince is as wise as he always has been, but even he gets it wrong sometimes.

However, if there were a way to get it wrong well, he's probably done that.

Imagine for a moment if the Tories had been in power alone. I very much doubt that their Business Secretary would have tracked down Lord Browne and bent his ear about the importance of the recommendations being fair and progressive. And they are to a point. To play Devil's Advocate a bit here, if we can't have no tuition fees (and I'm not conceding that we can't), then isn't this a better option than anything else? Nobody has to pay out anything to actually go to university so access isn't denied to those from less affluent backgrounds in the way it would be today.

And Labour? Would they, still in Government, be talking about a Graduate Tax? Of course they wouldn't. They'd bung on the fees - although I'm not so convinced that they would have necessarily covered all the angles.  I mean, it's coming to something when it takes a Tory to bring up the issue I blogged about earlier about interest accruing if someone takes time out to look after children. He confirmed in the House today that interest would not accrue under these circumstances.

Annoyed though I might be with him, I have to at least give some credit to Vince for taking an hour's worth of utter tripe from the Labour benches with patience and humour. I'd rate him above just about any Labour minister you might care to mention and definitely any Tory. I loved his line about the road to Westminster having the skid marks of unenacted pledges all over it.

So let's tell Vince and our MPs how we feel, urge them to find a solution that doesn't involve lumbering our kids with debts at the start of their adult life that may stop them saving for their own old age - but let's not demonise them. They're good people, whatever they ultimately do with this. Vince said in his statement that they're looking for ideas and feedback before coming up with their final proposals. Let's get to giving them some.

Liberal Democrat MPs - please say no to tuition fee rise

It's not  a great time to be 11. It wasn't in 1979 when Mrs Thatcher's axe started to fall. There was barely a book in my school that wasn't held together with sellotape and shared with about 3 others at a time.

11 year olds living in England face a much more difficult life than their parents had. Those aspiring to higher education could face unlimited bills for tuition, which they'll be paying back at 9% of salary - that's quite some tax hike - if Lord Browne's proposals go through. You're looking at students coming out of university owing £30,000 plus.

So, they have to pay that back, as well as face a housing market where it's increasingly difficult to find affordable housing. How many will be able to buy their own property? Will the private rented sector be sufficient to cope? It isn't now, and there's no sign of any local or national government making enough progress on providing sufficient social housing.

On top of all that, as they're raising their own children, they may yet face the issue of having to finance their parents' care, as well as providing for their own pension in later years. In an almost indecent haste to ensure that our children don't pay our credit card bill, we have to make sure that this Government doesn't leave them with nothing at the end of their working lives half a century down the road.

It makes you think as well that over the last quarter of a century, we've built up an economy with a huge retail and leisure sector. What happens when people don't have as much money to spend on luxuries? That surely causes problems from the jobs in the shops right down to the suppliers who make (or, sadly, import) the goods. Where are all the jobs going to be for these debt ridden graduates?  The way our economy has been built on a foundation of sand is testament to the failure of successive governments to put sustainability at the heart of what they do.

Lord Browne's review presents a dilemma for Liberal Democrat MPs.

I'd already looked it up in the Coalition Agreement. Even after five months, it's the electronic equivalent of a well thumbed document. The sections relating to universities and funding are on page 31 and 32.

If the response by the Government to Lord Browne's report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrats to abstain in any vote

This is the pledge that Liberal Democrat candidates across the country signed during the Election campaign in May.

 “I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative”

I expect that candidates of all parties will be signing fewer pledges in the future and certainly not as specific as this.

The thing is that this pledge is completely in line with our philosophy. We believe passionately in free education. We believe that society as a whole benefits from it. Ok, so a doctor earns a fair whack, but they also save lives, find cures for diseases, find ways of dealing with pain and make those conditions they can't cure yet more bearable. You don't go into medicine if you're after an easy ride in life. You give back a lot in terms of hours and effort over the years. It's not all perpetual rounds of golf and foreign holidays.

Sticking with the medical arena, when I looked into becoming a nurse, I wouldn't have had to go to university. Now nursing is becoming a profession where a degree is required.

Look at the comparative rates between doctors' pay and nurses'. Very early on in their career, a doctor is likely to be earning more than a nurse ever will. Most nurses are on bands 5-7 of the Agenda for Change pay scales, with their pay varying from £21,000 to £40,000. Bear in mind that most nurses are women and so are more likely to take time out for having children so any loan they have to pay back may take longer, so under Browne's proposals they'll pay back more as well as have less career earnings. Progressive, huh?

With the unlimited tuition fees proposed by Browne, you get a sense immediately that the students from affluent backgrounds will go to the elite institutions while those from poorest backgrounds will be confined to where fees are cheapest. It shouldn't be like that. There should be no financial or social barriers to the brightest brains going to elite institutions, regardless of background.

In Scotland, students going to Scottish universities pay no tuition fees at all. This is entirely down to the Liberal Democrats who brought that to the Coalition with Labour in 1999. That, to my mind, is how it should stay. It was good that the entire Holyrood front bench came out in force to argue that point on Saturday at Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference. That was an amazing debate which I will write about more fully for Liberal Democrat Voice on Thursday.

If our MPs accept Browne,though, it puts our MSPs and Scottish candidates in a very difficult position. No matter what they do in the Holyrood election next year, reneging on such a key election pledge at Westminster would be a gift to our opponents.

I want my daughter and her classmates to have the opportunity to study free of charge to gain skills that will benefit the whole country.

I think the Government should lock Vince, all other party spokespeople, NUS and other interested parties away to find another solution. The Browne Report is simply not good enough. We need to look at ensuring quality - and that might mean cutting numbers who can go to uni. I can deal with that as long as it's the brightest who get to go. We need to look at getting more from business into universities - but we also need to protect the humanities and arts. These are things worth knowing about and the process of learning about them teaches valuable skills. Maybe we need to be more flexible and look at different options of taking a degree by using technology. I don't know what the answer is, but I know that Browne is not enough.  It's not right that graduates should have to pay the entire costs, with interest, for learning skills that benefit us all.

I expect there to be some moves to reintroduce fees or a graduate contribution in Scotland in the next few years. I will resist them with vigour. Otherwise it may well be that my daughter's only hope of long term prosperity is if Bob and I do the decent thing and die before our home is sold to pay for our care costs.

If Labour thought a Graduate Tax was better, you have to ask why they introduced fees. Their response has no credibility whatsoever, like pretty much everything else they've said since May.

I am very pleased that the likes of Tim Farron, Greg Mulholland and Julian Huppert are prepared to vote against rather than abstain from a vote to implement Browne's proposals. I'm sure that there will be more and it's important that they hold firm on this.