Labour will scrap tuition fees and ensure universities have the resources they need to continue to provide a world-class education.
The Conservatives have held students back for too long, saddling them with debt that blights the start of their working lives. 400,000 university students will be freed from an average of around £27,000 debt this autumn if Labour is elected next month.
The party has announced it will:
- Abolish tuition fees from 2018 – lifting a total £38 billion in debt from fees over the course of the next parliament, before a penny of interest is added
- Restore maintenance grants
- Write off the first year of fees for students planning to start university this September
- Students part way through their degree will not have to pay fees for the remainder of their course and part-time students will be covered for the cost of their first undergraduate degree
- Support students who have already graduated by protecting them from above inflation interest rate rises on existing debt
- Under plans for a National Education Service, scrap college fees for adult learners
Stephen Morgan, Labour’s candidate for Portsmouth South, said:
“When I was young growing up in Fratton, I dreamt about the opportunity of being the first in my family to go to university. With the support of my family and fantastic local teachers, I got that opportunity.
For too long tuition fees and the burdensome costs of university have prevented too many young people from families like mine to go to the university.
Labour’s plans to scrap fees excites me. They’ll go a long way of helping every single young person in our great city to succeed in life”.
Only a Labour Government will build a Britain that works for the many, not the few.
