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Perhaps it’s time for an actual National Union of Those Studying

Dec 15

Posted by James in Education, Westminster | 10 Comments

Newsnight screen grabA motion of no confidence in Aaron Porter will be brought at NUS conference, and the frustration in the ranks is understandable. When the exceptionally well-attended main protests were being organised around the Westminster votes, NUS held separate events that few attended. He’s even had to admit he’s been “dithering“.

There have been exceptionally determined student occupations, showing a real commitment to challenging the Tory government, but as Paul Mason’s outstanding report on Newsnight last week showed, the leadership has in many cases come from the secondary school pupils “from the slums of London”. These are the kids who will pay the fees (or more likely be deterred by them), and these are the kids whose EMA is being taken away. No wonder they’re at the front of the marches.

Yet they’re not NUS members: the direct membership of NUS consists of students’ unions, not individual students, and this feels like a contributory reason for the avowed dithering. The leadership of NUS has always been too close to Labour, although this was even more obvious when Labour were introducing fees without their opposition.

It’s time for something new, a genuine national union for those in education, including at school. Perhaps NUS could become it, or perhaps it should be something entirely new. I’m pretty sure either way it would be a bit more radical.

Student funding – there’s plenty of blame to go round

Dec 9

Posted by James in Education, Westminster | 10 Comments

The Lib Dems are rightly the focus of ire today and for this session, even if one sees it as deliberative democracy in action. However, the list of parties who’ve got it wrong on fees is much longer than that, and it seems unfair to let the others off the hook.

1989 protestsThe Tories were the first to attack access to higher education. In 1989 they began whittling the grant system for poor students away and replacing it gradually with loans, and a generation redoubled their loathing of them.

Adam Tinworth has some classic protest pictures from that period here.

The new New Labour Government in 1997 then squarely broke a pledge to students and their landslide voters. Their manifesto said: “The improvement and expansion needed cannot be funded out of general taxation. […] The costs of student maintenance should be repaid by graduates on an income-related basis, from the career success to which higher education has contributed.” A graduate tax, in other words, roughly equivalent to Labour’s current plans.

1997 protestsBut Blunkett and Blair then used the Dearing report to bring in fees and abolish grants (despite the latter having specifically been against Dearing’s recommendations), and this move became their first major let-down in office. As noted here before, the newly oppositional Tories fought the proposals alongside non-NUS universities, although I was advised by a senior Tory MP “never to trust us if we get back into government”.

Enough space has been spent pointing out the Lib Dems’ inconsistency here and elsewhere, and I won’t add to that, except to say that anyone unsure of the scale of their hypocrisy should watch the start of this ironically-titled broadcast very carefully.

The SNP have historically been supportive of students, but even here there are straws in the wind suggesting a shift. They have a green paper coming out next week on higher education, and Mike Russell gave an ambiguous quote in advance. “What we won’t do is have upfront tuition fees”, he said, before promising “major changes”. Given that we currently have no fees at all in Scotland, thanks to a vote by SNP, Green & (ironically) Lib Dem MSPs, students would be forgiven for anxiety about what those “major changes” might be. A return to fees paid later, the old Lib Dem/Labour position? A new graduate tax, however hard that would be to shoehorn into the current powers of the Scottish Parliament?

2010 protestsJust to return to the principles, education that’s free for all is not a holiday camp perk for the middle classes. Neither fees nor an additional graduate tax are required so students pay society back – if they earn more, they pay more income tax back, and graduates in employment contribute through their work, whether it’s for the private sector, for voluntary organisations, or for the public sector. That’s what Labour’s 97 manifesto said, effectively.

Access to higher education should be on the basis of academic potential and desire to attend and learn, not income level, and anyone who argues that no-one has been deterred by fees is simply wrong in fact. That’s not just the right for individual students – it’s also what the country needs. It’s an unequivocal social good for the brightest and keenest to go on to further and higher education, irrespective of their wealth or their attitude to indebtedness.

As a St Andrews graduate, I certainly knew plenty of people who went to university because their parents were rich and it was expected of them, and I also know plenty of people who didn’t go to university because the opposite was true. That was the era before fees, when it was bad enough already.

All three of the Westminster parties of government have got this wrong in the past. Much as it would be in the Greens’ short-term interest to be the only party committed to free higher education based on academic ability, not to pay, I do hope the SNP won’t go the same way next week.

pic credits 1 2 3

The Inevitable Conclusion of Devolution

Dec 3

Posted by Malc in Constitution, Education, Westminster | 37 Comments

I’m surprised it has taken this long.

This week the Welsh Assembly’s decided to allow Welsh Universities to charge up to £9,000 for tuition fees (as UK Government policy) but pay the difference between that which students currently pay (£3,290) and whatever the university charges – but for Welsh students only. The key points of the policy are:

  • Welsh universities will be allowed to raise their fees up to £9,000 from 2012-13.
  • All Welsh students living in Wales will get a grant to subsidise the difference between the current and future fee (anywhere up to £5,710 depending on what the university charges).
  • This also applies to Welsh students who study in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland, as well as those who stay in Wales.
  • This will be paid for by the Welsh Assembly Government.

Naturally, accusations of racism are at play.  The Daily Mail excels, suggesting “apartheid” on fees and arguing that students were being “punished for being English.”

Now, they may have a point. One definition of “racism” (which I believe their newspaper front page used to describe the policy) is “Discrimination or prejudice based on race.” In this case, that would, I suggest, apply. Welsh students will receive the grant and they’ll take no real hit on the pocket. English students – who may be studying at the same university, taking the same courses, sitting next to the Welsh students paying £3,290 – will not be eligible.  That is discrimination on the basis of nationality.

However, where I think the Daily Mail is wrong is the fact that they blame the Welsh Assembly Government for this. Devolution was intended to allow Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to govern themselves in the areas devolved to them, and to make distinctive policy in those areas where they disagreed with what the UK Government decided. And we’ve already seen examples of it. Scotland, for example, led the UK on the smoking ban, introduced Free Personal Care for the elderly and changed university fees to a graduate endowment, latterly scrapping that as well. Wales has introduced free prescription charges – a move which Scotland will follow – and now decided that universities should not cost their students more than they do at the moment. In short – devolution has done as intended. It has allowed the devolved nations to operate differently in areas where they have legislative powers, to develop distinctive policies for their respective populations and, more recently, to protect their population from the upcoming rise in tuition fees.

But that’s not the only reason I don’t think they can be blamed. Take a look at the House of Commons. It is a UK Parliament, it is true, but only 59 MPs come from Scotland, 40 from Wales and 18 from Northern Ireland. Which means there are 533 English MPs in the House of Commons (650 total seats minus 117 non-English seats).  Of those 533, the Conservatives hold 298 – a majority over the opposition English MPs on its own. When you add the 43 English Lib Dem MPs, there are 341 English MPs on the government benches against 192 in opposition (191 Labour plus 1 Green).

The point I’m making? Even if all of the MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (including government MPs – 12 Conservatives/ Lib Dems from Scotland, 11 from Wales) vote against the tuition fees rise, it will still be carried by ENGLISH MPs voting for it. This isn’t foundation hospitals or the original top-up tuition fees debate, where the Labour government relied on their Scottish and Welsh MPs to vote in favour of something which was only to be implemented in England. English MPs are voting for this – and will carry it themselves.

So let’s not blame the Welsh Assembly Government or the Scottish Government for deciding to do something which will benefit their own students. This is the natural and inevitable conclusion of devolution – different policies for different parts of the UK. I’m honestly surprised it has taken the English this long to realise that they are getting shafted by the system.

But its not of our doing – so don’t blame us.

PS – Also – don’t blame me for the map above not including Northern Ireland and including Cornwall. I thought it demonstrated my point pretty well but I’m not responsible for drawing it!

Perception versus Reality

Nov 18

Posted by Malc in Governance, Westminster | 1 Comment

For the second time in recent weeks, teaching students on politics has provided inspiration for a post. This week we were discussing the relationship between the PM and Cabinet, the conventions which exist and how recent Prime Ministers (particularly Blair and Thatcher) broke with established conventions on how to work with the Cabinet. We also talked about the importance of collective responsibility – and how it is probably more important at the moment, with a coalition rather than single-party government. So that’s the context of the discussion.

One student made the case that perhaps we didn’t really have a coalition. In their view (and, they argued, the view of many others beside) the government was not a Conservative- Liberal Democrat coalition (or even, as some lefty types have rather unhelpfully described it, the “ConDem coalition”). No, they argued that what we really had was simply a Conservative government with just a tinge of Lib Dem seasoning. From the student’s perspective, those Lib Dem’s in government were no longer “true” Lib Dems because they agreed with – and were enacting – so much Conservative policy. No, for the student, Nick Clegg and the other Lib Dem ministers had become a part of the Conservative party, with only backbench Lib Dem MPs maintaining their status as a separate party.

For my part, I pointed out that wasn’t quite the case (and yes, quite possibly this was the first time I’ve defended the Lib Dems!). I argued that a coalition was a combination of the interests and manifestos of two parties, that compromises had to be made and an agreement signed by both sides. I argued that, to provide stable government and a platform to address the economic situation, the Lib Dems had compromised on a lot of issues in order to try to help the country. But above all, I argued that, even though it appears that Nick Clegg and David Cameron are now “best mates”, they’ll still disagree on policy issues – and they’ll still be in different parties.

But the student wasn’t having any of it. What was true didn’t really matter in one sense, they argued, it was the perception of that reality that was important. From their perspective, Nick Clegg had morphed from a “likeable Lib Dem” pre-election to Cameron’s right-hand man, a liberal Tory, post election. And so too had those Lib Dem ministers in the Cabinet because they no longer stood for Lib Dem values – in particular PR, tuition fees and the Vince Cable promise not to raise VAT. In short, they’d simply backed the Conservatives to the extent that they were no longer a noticeably different party.

I’ve no doubt Lib Dem readers (if we have any left by this point!) will argue vociferously that this is not the case. In fact, I suspect Lib Dem members and activists (I’d put “if there are any left” in here, but I know I’d get skelped for being so cheeky) who disagree with some or most of the coalition’s actions will find aspects of it which are distinctively Lib Dem. And if not, they can always make the case that, whether there are Lib Dem policies in there or not it is still better for them to be in government than not, because if the Tories were left on their own then the cuts would be much worse. Now, I’m not sure that is entirely true (and I suspect we can’t really know, given we don’t know how much influence, if any, senior Lib Dems have in Cabinet and ministerial meetings) but again, I’m not sure it matters – its how the thing is spun.

And that really is the crux of the matter. How is the coalition perceived in public? Opinion polls have the coalition in negative approval ratings (by single digits, so not entirely unrecoverable) and a recent YouGov poll had the Lib Dems at 11% – up 2 points on the previous, but down by more than half of their 23% vote share in May. So “not well” is probably the answer. And if that result was returned in an election… well, let’s just say Nick Clegg is happy for the government to continue until 2015.

Of course reality matters – you only need to see the depth of feeling and anger of the masses evident in the student demo(lition) last Wednesday. And the reality is, there are two parties in government in the UK – one larger, and gets more policies through, the other smaller, helping them – and trying to pass some of its own ideas. But the perception – if indeed it is widely held, as the student suggested – is that this is a Conservative government simply being helped along by some supportive Lib Dems. And that might be more damaging to Clegg and co in the long run.

Poll – Scots disapprove of Clegg more than Cameron

Nov 2

Posted by Jeff in Westminster | 16 Comments

Angus Reid has released details of a UK-wide poll that contains any number of headlines that can be drawn from it, including:

SNP now UK’s fourth party
Labour holds slight poll edge
Lib Dems slump to 7% in Scotland
SNP and Labour neck-and-neck in Scotland

I, of course, have gone for a different tack, choosing to focus on the result that 60% of Scots disapprove of David Cameron’s performance as Prime Minister but a higher still 63% of Scots disapprove of Nick Clegg’s performance as Deputy Prime Minister.

With the standard caveats of sub-sample polling, it is difficult to tell if such a result is intuitive or counter-intuitive really. The Lib Dems shoring up a Conservative Government was always going to be a tough sell in Scotland so it is perhaps expected that they come in for the strongest disapproval. However, Nick Clegg’s defence is that his party has taken the right-wing edge off what a Conservative Government would have otherwise done with some left-wing coalition victories, an argument that is often overlooked and one that I personally have a lot of time for.

However, the numbers do not lie and it seems it will be Nick Clegg’s turn to follow in the footsteps of electorally toxic individuals such as Tony Blair and Barack Obama when May ’11 comes around.

It is of course an issue of trust that is undermining the Lib Dems at the moment. The sight of ‘VAT bombshell’ posters and signed tuition fee pledges moved their poll figures onto the quicksand after the broken promises and it is not clear what may bring them back onto firmer ground. It is also not difficult to imagine Nick Clegg arguing his case north of the border and being booed and jeered throughout, exacerbating the problem rather than solving it.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats are of course a separate entity which may help insulate them from the worst effects of London-based decisions but with little to mark Tavish Scott and his team out as ‘different’ (the student vote is surely now long gone) then of course they will be tarred with the same brush.

With the two-horse race looking certain to be a continuing narrative right up to May 2011, particularly with the SNP closing the gap on Labour, perhaps the best that the other parties can hope for is anything other than a drubbing.

If so, Deputy Prime Minister and his Scottish colleagues have a lot of work to do.