Scotland Bill

None of this is simple. The Scottish Parliament came forward with some very practical and pragmatic solutions to try its very best to tackle this problem. Back in 2000, when we first looked at the problem, the big issue was how we treated Scots attending universities outside Scotland, because they, too, are prejudiced—in terms of some of the quite extreme language which has been used at times in this debate. For them, there is a system that is different from that for students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland when they choose to study at a university outside Scotland. I referred to the legal advice that we received that day when I said in the Scottish Parliament: "““We wished to treat all Scots the same, but a significant problem was drawn to our attention. Members have asked for the legal advice and I will try to be helpful on that point … Article 12 of the Treaty on European Union prohibits discrimination on the ground of nationality against nationals of other EU states. The imposition of fees on students who are students of other member states as a condition of access would amount to discrimination if the fees were not imposed on nationals of the host member state … We had to consider whether we, in Scotland, as part of the UK member state, could provide that Scots—who for this purpose would be regarded as UK nationals—did not pay tuition fees in the rest of the UK. Given the risks of challenge by other EU nationals and based on the best advice available, we produced the proposals that are before us today””." In other words, if we had funded Scottish students to attend universities in England, Wales or Northern Ireland without payment of tuition fees, to put them on a level playing field with other students in Scotland, the Scottish Government could have been held liable to fund the tuition fees of all EU nationals from outside the rest of the UK who attended universities in the rest of the UK. This is a complex and difficult problem created, in many ways, by the EU legislation. ““Change your lawyers””, I hear from the Bench in front in me, but we were given that advice by some very senior lawyers, one of whom is present on the Opposition Bench today—a noble and learned lawyer. We came up with what were called the Quigley principles—how many people remember them? It was all about creating some sort of level playing field. I am not going to get into the rather offensive language of ethnic cleansing or use the word ““swamping””. We simply wanted to stop a surge in demand—a disruption of the system that currently allows over 20,000 students from the rest of the UK to study in Scotland. That is a significant number of students, it has been a pretty stable number of students and it has only stayed stable because we have managed to maintain a level playing field. We were given legal advice that this was the only legal way to do it—that quotas would not be acceptable.