Eddie Barnes: Honest debate over university tuition costs required

ALEX Salmond famously declared before last year’s Scottish elections that “the rocks will melt with the sun” before he asks graduates to pay back the cost of their tuition after graduating, as is happening in England. The pledge prompted Labour, in slightly less flowery language, and with notably less conviction, to match him as best they could. Now, a drastic acceleration in climate change excepting, it appears that the latter could be the first to have a rethink on this most steaming of hot potatoes.

The debate was revived at the weekend in a speech by Scottish Labour’s leader Johann Lamont. The huge cost of providing that free tuition, she noted, was now having its knock-on effect elsewhere on the system. Further education colleges in particular, she argued, had lost out, with all the spare cash having been diverted to universities. Despite that extra money, universities, she went on, were now having to recruit more and more “lucrative” students from abroad, ensuring fewer places for those at home. An “honest debate about education” was required, Lamont added.

In England, it is noted, Ed Miliband has now come up with his own compromise on fees. Labour would cap fees at £6,000 a year, he has suggested, with graduates on more than £65,000 paying higher interest on their student loans to help fund the lower figure.

Mrs Lamont’s aides moved quickly afterwards to stamp out the SNP’s claim that this was a U-turn, paving the way for a Miliband policy in Scotland. No-one who has seen the impact on the Lib Dems of a post-election volte-face on this issue is that keen to do a repeat performance. Rather, they insisted, Mrs Lamont simply wanted to get up and running the question of priorities. The Scottish Government’s budget is already stretched to breaking point. Chancellor George Osborne has now signalled that all government spending can expect to be cut even further for much of the rest of the decade. The issue now, argues Mrs Lamont, is to ask what the taxpayer can afford at such a time, and – if it can’t – whether services and policies therefore need to be cut, or taxes increased to pay for them.

So, if free tuition is to stay, the question turns to what Labour might do to keep it. Plenty of people in the party are keen to have another look at local government finance, and the SNP’s costly council tax freeze. And, with MSPs soon to get their hands on new tax powers, such as stamp duty, so the options open up for other, newer tax grabs to bolster those flat-lining coffers.

With a referendum and an election still a long time off, Mrs Lamont is unlikely to offer specifics any time soon. But, as one Labour MP insisted to me last week, eventually there comes a point when people begin to notice the potholes, the services cut, and the dilapidated schools, and decide the priority is to find the cash to pay for them. The melting-point of that argument is sure to be tested.