 | 'New Labour betrayed our students by
implementing tuition fees and abolishing grants. The graduate endowment fund is tuition fees by another name. The £10,000 threshold for repayment is a disgrace that will cripple many graduates.' SNP candidate David Kerr, 18 th December 2000 |  |
The nationalists held their 14 th press conference of a campaign to which they have struggled to bring momentum and temperature, citing what they claimed was a litany of Labour failure. Their report card gave "fail" marks on NHS waiting lists, care for the elderly, what they called unfair stealth taxes, and education, citing both the exams fiasco and student finance.
The campaign manager and SNP deputy leader, Roseanna Cunningham, claimed these were all targets Labour had set and which could not be brushed off.
The candidate, David Kerr, said: "New Labour betrayed our students by implementing tuition fees and abolishing grants," pointing to senior ministers who benefited from free university education and were now "removing that ladder of opportunity" for others.
"The graduate endowment fund is tuition fees by another name. The £10,000 threshold for repayment is a disgrace that will cripple many graduates."
But this was an issue Labour was prepared to take head-on, holding its third press conference of the campaign at Falkirk College to trumpet the achievements of the Labour government and now the Scottish Executive on higher and further education.
Its candidate, Eric Joyce, insisted that as considerable benefits flowed from being a graduate, amounting to a 30% salary bonus over the years, it was right that they pay a contribution, saying of the salary level which triggers repayments: "£10,000 is about the right figure. People who say it should be much higher are pandering more to middle-class graduates than working-class candidates."
He was flanked by the minister of state at the Scotland Office, Brian Wilson, and Jack McConnell, the education minister, who stressed Labour's achievement in boosting funding to the further education sector by more than a third since 1977. "We inherited a sector which was grossly underfunded and was trying to provide for ever-increasing numbers of students without the resources," said Mr Wilson.
Mr McConnell also spoke of his plans to tackle disruptive pupils in schools. He played down simplistic talk of "sin bins" but said a range of measures was needed, from mentoring of new secondary pupils by sixth-year students to specific help at primary level.
Mr Joyce referred to his own troubled past as a 16-year-old expelled and prosecuted for assaulting a teacher, saying this might never have happened if better measures had been in place to give him the discipline he only found when he joined the army. He also praised the FE sector as the stepping-stone that got him into university after leaving school without qualifications.
The Liberal Democrats yesterday claimed credit for using their influence in the executive to take 40 jobs in the new public guardians' office to the town. The candidate, Hugh O'Donnell, said this was a taste of what Lib Dem policies could achieve in terms of decentralisation and jobs dispersal.
The Scottish Socialists campaigned at Falkirk High station, demanding that railways be taken back into public ownership for the sake of passenger safety and the creation of a more efficient and affordable network.
"Other European nations can manage this, why can't we?" asked the candidate, Ian Hunter.
- Dec 19
Return to home page