Scotland's no-fee university policy helps the rich, not the poor

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Paradoxical as it may sound...

NEXT to a loch, in the leafy Edinburgh campus of Heriot-Watt University, lies a monument to political hubris. Unveiled on Alex Salmond’s final day as first minister in 2014, a commemorative block of Elgin sandstone is inscribed with his vow: “The rocks will melt with the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scotland’s students”. Nearly a year on, to little surprise, the rock stands strong.

In 2007 Mr Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP) came to power on a “dump the debt” platform, and duly scrapped the £2,289 ($4,582) fee that all students paid after graduation (yearly tuition fees had already been abolished in Scotland by the previous Labour-led coalition). In the years since, defenders of the old system have grown scarce. No major Scottish political party today says it would reintroduce fees. As Rob Henthorn of Scotland’s National Union of Students notes with satisfaction, “the argument has been won”.


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This is another area in which the English are treated unfairly. The Scots are treated to a whole plethora of things which they get free yet which the English have to pay for - university tuition, medical prescriptions, child care etc.

All students from anywhere in the EU attending Scottish universities are allowed to do so for free - except, of course, the English (and, for that matter, the Welsh and Northern Irish) whom the Scots are able to charge to attend their unis and, therefore, they do so. So a Frenchman or a Pole can attend a Scottish university for free, but those people elsewhere in the United Kingdom can't.

Also, it's Scottish (mainly Labour) MPs who, in 2004, foisted university tuition fees upon English students studying at English universities by voting in favour of them at Westminster (the Tories were outraged at the Scottish Labour MPs at the time). Yet there are no such tuition fees in Scotland because Scottish MSPs in the Scottish Parliament voted AGAINST introducing them in Scotland and English politicians had NO say in the matter, even though Scottish politicians were able to vote in favour of introducing them into England! This highlights considerably the West Lothian Question and the fact that England needs her own parliament to address this glaring democratic unfairness towards the English.