Press Release: CEP stands up for English university students while the NUS lets them down
The CEP carries on with its opposition to the Government’s policy of discrimination against English university students.
The Campaign for an English Parliamen has deplored the decision of the National Union of Students last week to end its opposition to the tuition and top-up fees which are being imposed upon English university students.
‘We want every English student to know’, stated Mrs Scilla Cullen, Chairman of the CEP, ‘that the Campaign for an English Parliament will not stop campaigning against the fees New Labour has inflicted on English students while sparing Scottish and Welsh students. English students are being hit with immense debts while Scottish students are not.
In England university students have to pay £3145 each year of their university life. Students loans then have to be repaid at 4.8% interest rates after graduation.
Welsh students don’t have anything like the fee burden English students have.Their fees are only £1255 pa.’
However, in Scotland university students have no fees to pay. What’s more, the Scottish parliament has also made grants up to £2510 available to Scottish students coming from families on low incomes, which are not available in England. To make the discrimination even worse English students at Scottish have to pay their fees, while EU students do not; and Scottish students, and indeed Isle of Man students, at English unviersities pay no fees. What is quite grotesque about the whole situation is that, at the same time as the Scottish Parliament was legislatiing to relieve its students of fees, the vote in the UK Parliament to impose top-up fees on English students was carried only by the Scottish MPs in Westminister voting for them to give New Labour its majority in the vote in the House.The majority of English MPs voted against them.
‘The only way forward out of this discrimination’ says Mrs Cullen, ‘is for England to have its own parliament just as Scotland has. The UK government is just seeing England, which provides 85% of its whole tax revenue, as a milch cow from which Scotland and Wales benefit at the expense of the people of England. All the MPs who have imposed these fees upon English students got their university education completely free. The injustice to England is grotesque; and it is time that of the 660 Westminster MPs the 550 who are English start to stand up for their country. England should matter as much to them as Scotland does to the Scottish MPs both at Westminster and Edinburgh. They should stand up for their constituents. I can assure English students that is what an English Parliament will do.’
All students are invited to the CEP National Conference taking place at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, Holborn London on Saturday April 26th from 10:30 to 4:30. It is free and open to everyone.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Well I for one am glad that somebody still represents us lowly student types, particularly when we seem unable to represent ourselves.
It has to be said though that a large portion of blame must be allocated to us students for this turn of events. When the rises in fees were proposed: existing students learnt that it would not effect them and decided not to care.
I am sad to say that I was one of those thoughtless buggers, and this is my confession.
At the time I attended Aber Uni in Wales, a member of the Uni’s own branch of the NUS: when the issue was drawn to my attention I felt outrage on behalf of my future peers; but did nothing to help them. I was forced to leave Aber a year and a half into my course when my father became seriously ill, and entered directly into full time employment.
Now, three years down the line, my dad is well once more, and I have begun a new degree at Essex Uni. When I realized I would now be spending three times the amount on fees that I had been before, I begun to regret not having incited a student uprising in the style of the students of Quebec.
The benefit difference is as clear between those in French and English Canada, as between us in England and Scotland. The difference of course, is that the French Canadian students took to the streets to protect their education, while the Scots seem to be unaware of their good luck.
I do not feel sorry for myself, as I am aware that I missed my chance to speak out. But for the new students who were under 18, unable to vote, and no doubt ignorant of the reprehensible injustice that was being committed against them, I offer them my apologies for my complacence.
However, I have yet to meet a new student that exhibits the same sense of anger that I myself display: perhaps it is simply a case of not missing what they never had? That which has been denied them by preceding generations.
Thank you for your support: though some of us may not deserve it.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:20 amJericho:
Your candour is to be applauded, but you’re a very long way down the list of those who really deserve to suffer pangs of contrition.
To cite Labour’s manifesto 2001 ‘Ambitions for Britain’ page 20:
“We will not introduce ‘top-up’ fees and have legislated to prevent them.”
July 11th, 2008 at 1:04 pmI have a real problem here with the CEP’s apparent attitude to student tuition and top-up fees.
August 10th, 2008 at 8:39 pmAs ‘Al Wilson’ points out (#2)this is just one in a long line of broken promises by Labour, and is a party political matter, rather than a question of national identity or self-government.
The CEP appears to be implying that with an English Parliament there would be no tuition or top-up fees, what is the basis for this?
The desire for an English Parliament is not just a desire to cherry pick all the goodies that other parts of the United Kingdom get. There is no reason to suppose that an English Parliament would automatically get any of the supposed benefits that other parts of the UK get (I say ’supposed’ because there is a question mark over whether a lot of these benefits are actually sustainable, particularly as when an English Parliament is formed they would be getting no subsidy from the English tax-payer).
Student support for an English Parliament should be on the basis that English students would get a greater say in how English education is run.
If the Welsh decide to give all their students free laptops are you going to proclaim ‘Campaign for an English Parliament- Get a Free Laptop’?
The reason why we are so opposed to tuition fees and top-up fees and make such an issue of them is because when they were voted on in Westminster, the majority of MPs with English constituencies voted against them but the bill was passed with the votes of whipped Scottish Labour MPs. The Scottish Parliament, which was controlled by Labour at the time, then went on to reject tuition fees and top-up fees in Scotland.
If we had an English Parliament when the bill was debated then it would most likely have failed.
August 10th, 2008 at 10:18 pmNo, I still don’t get it, what’s so special about student fees?
August 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pmThe vote on student fees, as you described, was demonstrably unfair, and the CEP was right to complain and highlight the constitutional anomaly.
But it was then wrong of the CEP to go from complaining about the vote to campaigning against student fees.
The manner of the voting was a constitutional affair, the subject of the vote was not.
Where is the popular mandate on this? You admit yourself that the NUS has dropped it’s campaign.
What happens if we get a Conservative government whose English MP’s vote against your campaign? Will you still continue to campaign?
I can think of a lot more worthy causes related to the unequal and unfair funding between the nations of the UK.
To campaign for a bigger slice of English taxes for English education, now there’s something to campaign for.
Either there’s something intrinsically unique about the issue of student fees or you have to apply the principle universally.
Is the CEP going to support every piece of legislation gaining a majority of English MP votes, which was subsequently voted down by the UK parliament as a whole?
You say “If we had an English Parliament when the bill was debated then it would most likely have failed.”
Well what if it had succeeded? Would you still campaign for it?
You can’t say you support something because the majority support it. You can support the right of people to vote on an issue, that’s what you should be confining your campaign to.
You are now in a position where you have to defend your position on an issue which has nothing to with an English Parliament.
This should not be a ‘Campaign against Student Fees’ but a ‘Campaign for the English to decide on Student Fees’.
Aside from the fact that MPs for English constituencies voted against the fees and they were only introduced on the back of Scottish votes, there is a more serious injustice. If an English student was to study in a Scottish university they would have to pay. A Scottish student would not. If a Polish or French student was to study in a Scottish university they would not have to pay the fees. The fees are not payable by any EU citizen unless they’re English. This was reported to the EU as it is a breach of their rules but they declared it an internal matter for the British government. Which it isn’t of course, because the Scottish government deals with education.
Tuition fees and top-up fees are a highly emotive subject and I have very little doubt in my mind that they would be scrapped if we had an English government. Abolishing the fees would be a very popular move and would be financial viable if an English government had control of England’s substantial wealth as well as the ability to legislate in the interests of English people.
Yes, we’re not campaigning for a Conservative government, we are campaigning for a referendum on an English Parliament.
It’s all part and parcel of the same thing.
If it’s a devolved issue then yes, because the MPs with constituencies outside of England have no democratic mandate to vote on those issues.
Which is pretty much what the press release said, just not in your words.
August 12th, 2008 at 6:14 amYou’ve changed my mind. You were right I was wrong.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:11 amThanks for your replies, it’s helped clarify the issues for me.
Pleased to hear it!
August 12th, 2008 at 8:55 pm