Could you find £74,000 to pay for your children’s education? Westminster parties don’t value free education
by If Scottish parents of two children, born two years apart had to pay for the college or university tuition of their children at the same rate as in England they would have to find £74,000 to pay over six years.
Every year students are billed £9,250 a year for tuition i. other parts of the UK. That’s the cost of education under the Westminster parties.In Scotland, university and college tuition is free. That’s because the SNP values free education.
The benefits are there to see with Scotland having one of the best educated populations in Europe. However, protecting free education cannot be taken for granted. Few people would trust the Tories to keep tuition in Scotland free, and with the Westminster government vetoing and ignoring decisions by the Scottish Parliament no policy is safe from that party.
And can anyone trust the LibDems to support free tuition after they blatantly broke their cast iron ‘promise’ to abolish tuition fees to prop up David Cameron’s Tory government?
As for Keir Starmer’s Labour, their record is even worse. Keir Starmer likes to model himself as another Tony Blair but it was Tony Blair’s Labour government who first introduced tuition fees. Just weeks before the 1997 election, Tony Blair pledged: “Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education.”But just two months after taking power, Blair went ahead and introduced tuition fees.
Every year since election to government the SNP has shown its commitment to free prescriptions and abolished them. We value this policy.
However, over that period Scottish Labour have criticised the policy – a former Labour leader described it as “something for nothing”; and in the Scottish Parliament Labour has failed to support budgets that pay for free tuition.
As we approach another Westminster election, Keir Starmer’s Labour are already abandoning promises he made to Labour members when he was elected. He promised Labour members he would “support the abolition of tuition fees”.Yet now he claims it would be ‘impossible‘ to abolish tuition fees despite the fact it is a reality in Scotland.
With Keir Starmer’s Scotland spokesperson in Westminster indicating that Labour wouldn’t reverse the Tory policy of vetoing Scottish Parliament powers, can anyone be confident that Keir Starmer wouldn’t interfere in Scotland’s education system and impose tuition fees?
Keir Starmer’s Labour are taking Scotland for granted. They assume you won’t notice their history of breaking promises on education. If you value free education there’s only one party to vote to protect them – the SNP.