Fees campaign to hit MPs

Warwick Students’ Union (SU) launched its ‘Education Write-Off’ campaign last week Monday. Several hundred Warwick students sent letters and e-mails to local MPs, as part of a nationwide lobby against Government proposals for trebling University tuition fees.

The Government are planning savage cuts to university funding, coupled with a rise in tuition fees to as much as £9,000 a year. However, any proposed rise has to be passed in Parliament before it can come into effect. It is widely anticipated that a vote will be called in the next few weeks.

The National Union of Students (NUS) is encouraging its members to pressure MPs to vote against the proposals.

Warwick SU’s Write-Off campaign, led by Education Officer Sean Ruston, is targeting four local MPs. Students have sent ready-made or personalised letters and e-mails, calling for their representative in Parliament to vote against the fee increases.

The MPs being targeted are Jeremy Wright of Kenilworth, Chris White of Leamington and Jim Cunningham, Labour MP for Coventry South. Wright and White are Conservatives and say they will vote in favour of higher fees while Cunningham has promised to vote against the rise.

The primary recipient of letters and e-mails, however, has been Lorely Burt, Liberal Democrat MP for Solihull and Parliamentary Chair.

Burt, along with every other Liberal Democrat MP, signed a pledge to vote against any increase in tuition fees prior to the General Election last May. She said at the time: “It’s simply wrong to penalise people who want to make the best of themselves by saddling them with enormous mortgage-style debts from the day they graduate. My priority is making degrees affordable for people here in Solihull, and that means scrapping these unfair fees.”

However, Burt now says that she may abstain from voting at all on the fee rise.

Students have sent Burt automated e-mails, posing the question, “How can any constituent trust a representative that breaks a specifically made pledge?”

Last Monday, 1,300 sixth-formers, from three colleges in Solihull, signed an SU petition asking Burt not to break her promise to oppose higher fees. Burt has already received a petition from 176 Liberal Democrat party members asking for the same.

Ruston plans to get more signatures by canvassing support in Solihull city centre. He also intends to personally deliver “a large stack of letters” from students to her office in Westminster.

The Government are coming under increasing pressure over their fees proposals, particularly following the national protest in London on the 10 November, which was attended by around 50,000 students and lecturers.

Ruston claimed to have been told, by a senior source, that there are fears the proposals may not even get through Parliament, providing a massive incentive to continue pressuring MPs. He said: “The Con-Dem Government have started a huge revolution in higher education and they are going about it awfully. There has been no forward planning and now they are royally messing up.”

Aaron Porter, President of the National Union of Students, is equally optimistic. In his blog he wrote: “We have vitally important work to do to keep up the pressure on MPs” but, “if we work together to hold politicians to account and to keep their promises, the Government’s vote will be soundly defeated.”