THE SNP have said that Labour can’t be trusted as university fees were hiked for undergraduate degrees in England and Wales today.
The UK Government announced in November that undergraduate tuition fees in England, which have been frozen at £9250 since 2017, will rise to £9535 for the 2025-26 academic year.
In Scotland, meanwhile, undergraduate tuition fees remain free for Scots after the SNP abolished them in 2007.
SNP MSP George Adam highlighted Student Loans Company data which shows Scottish students leave university with the lowest levels of debt in the UK.
Recently, data from the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) also showed 16.7% of full-time first-degree entrants to university in 2023-24 were from the 20% most deprived areas of the country – which is the second-highest level on record.
““Whether it be in Scotland, England or Wales, history has shown that tuition fees go up under Labour. This latest increase will burden a whole generation of students in England and Wales with even higher levels of eye-watering levels of debt,” Adam (below) said.
“In Scotland, we have record number of students being accepted for university and have seen a rise in students from our most disadvantaged communities going into higher education.”
He added: “This progress in widening access to higher education has only been made possible due to the SNP’s continued commitment to free tuition - which would be put at risk by Labour.
“A re-introduction of fees would put this progress at risk and saddle young people with obscene levels of debt. Students graduating in Scotland are not saddled with the crippling levels of debt experienced by students elsewhere across the UK - that's the difference the SNP makes.
“The SNP will always be committed to ensuring that access to university is based on the ability to learn and not the ability to pay, and that the opportunity of a university education is available to everyone.”
