CEP: Students' Loans Company should close its Scottish and Welsh offices
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Tuesday, 02, Feb 2010 12:01
The Student Loan Company is making [1]150 staff in Glasgow redundant and transferring another 45 jobs to Darlington.
The PCS union is predictably complaining about the job losses and calling on MPs, MSPs and Glasgow councillors to fight the job cuts.
There should never have been any Student Loan Company jobs in Glasgow in the first place because it is primarily an English-only quango. Student loans are given to people studying at university in England to pay for the tuition and top-up fees they have to pay thanks to the votes of Scottish Labour MPs [2] who joined the lobbies to help defeat the majority of English MPs that voted against them.
Quite why the British government thought it was acceptable to follow the national insult of having top-up fees imposed on English students by MPs elected in Scotland with the indignity of having the loans to pay them administered in Scotland and Wales where students receive grants to pay for their university education is a mystery.
The Scots and Welsh have profited from the English for long enough. The Student Loan Company should close its offices in Glasgow and Colwyn Bay and transfer all the jobs involved in administering the student loan tax back to England where they belong.
Stuart Parr
Campaign for an English Parliament
2 February 2010
Contact: stuart.parr@thecep.org.uk
Tel: 07973 296 118
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8483056.stm
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/scotland/3432767.stm
Note:
In tertiary education student fees decided by the British Government for 2009-10 in England are £3,225 p.a. The N. Ireland Assembly has also copied this charge but the Scottish Parliament has decided that further education should be free to Scots and £1,775 to other UK students, The Welsh Assembly decision: £1,285 to the Welsh, £3,225 to other UK students. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8348365.stm).