SNP’s free university tuition policy sees the wealthy laugh all the way to the bank

With the dreaded word “austerity” increasingly beginning to fill the airwaves and column inches, the biggest issue at hand is government spending.

It is here that we’re being encouraged to believe is where Rachel Reeves is aiming for the extra cash she says she needs, rather than with tax increases.

But the SNP Government is unique in being completely relaxed about one of its biggest bits of public expenditure being safe from the Treasury’s axe. That’s the £900 million bill that its free tuition policy for university students costs and the typically braggadocio pledge from Alex Salmond, the late first minister, in 2008, that “rocks would melt with the sun” before his party would allow fees to be brought back.

In spite of the huge costs and the many anomalies that the policy has thrown up, as well as the anger from English parents whose children didn’t get free tuition north of the border, while those from the rest of the EU did, this controversial policy has remained.

It has remained because the SNP simply defy the opposition parties to bring back those fees – something that none of them had the political courage to even threaten given that most Scots families love this “freebie”.

But while it is ridiculous for such a massive amount of the Scottish Government’s spending to remain forever free from scrutiny, SNP ministers are content to keep it going in the certain knowledge that it’s now a part of Scottish life and helps to “buy” votes.

However, a new survey – in fact the first one I’ve ever seen on this subject – suggests that nearly half of Scots support the re-introduction of fees for families who can afford them.

The poll was commissioned by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the charity set up by the Scottish-born tycoon and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, with a £10 million initial endowment in 1901.

It is entirely appropriate that the impetus for such a test of public opinion has come from this trust as it was set up by the Fife-born magnate “to support the improvement and expansion of the Universities of Scotland and especially to help students for whom the payment of fees might act as a barrier”.

Groundhog day

With all university funding and not just student fees under the microscope and under strain at present are further good reasons for a thorough-going and nation-wide examination of the situation in the coming year.

And Hannah Garrow, the chief executive of the trust, is surely right when she says that whenever how to finance higher education, including student tuition, is raised the “discussions... feel like they are stuck on repeat”.

In seeking a more open debate on the issue, the Trust is to commission what it calls a “Citizen Jury” made up of a representative of people to make recommendations on funding.

The problem with this approach is that while everyone may accept that how Scotland pays for its higher education sector is vitally important the various parties are not so much “stuck on repeat” as stuck in their trenches and refusing to budge an inch.

For starters, John Swinney, the First Minister, recently repeated his determination to maintain, no matter what, free tuition fees for all and while his government may well go along, out of politeness, with the idea of a Citizen Jury it won’t countenance for a second any change to Salmond’s supposedly “sacred” oath. More’s the pity.

And as for the other parties, they’re simply terrified of advocating a return to tuition fees for fear of driving off their voters – especially as there’s a Holyrood election in just over a year.

Free tuition fees should be scrapped and replaced with a means test. A policy that currently sees the well-off laugh all the way to the bank with the savings they’re making on their children’s education and not nearly enough is spent closing the attainment gap between rich and poor students is, frankly, grotesque.

But if it wins votes, what do the Nats care?