The Green Party has slammed Labour over its U-turn on a pledge to abolish student fees, something that was in Labour’s 2019 election manifesto and Keir Starmer promised to support during his leadership campaign [1].
Co-leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay, said:
“This is the latest U-turn from Keir Starmer’s Labour and this time it’s students who are paying a heavy price. The Green Party thinks tuition fees should be scrapped and grants restored.
“Higher education is a public good and should therefore be properly funded by Government. Students in England pay some of the highest fees in the world, while in Scotland, Germany and Sweden university education is free. This shows that the whopping £9000 charge for students, introduced by the coalition government and now backed by Labour, is a political choice. Publicly funded higher education is not only possible but essential to a society committed to equality and social mobility.”
Co-chair of the Young Greens and a student at Oxford University, Kelsey Trevett, added:
“This U-turn from Labour is deeply disappointing but is exactly what we have come to expect from Keir Starmer’s Labour. It is no surprise that the architects of tuition fees won’t commit to their abolition, and for millions of students, this solidifies what we already knew: Labour is not on our side. Sky-high tuition fees are adding to the yawning gap between the generations and the growing sense of injustice among young people.”
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