A SCOTTISH Labour government at Holyrood would not impose tuition fees on Scots students, Jim Murphy will confirm today.
The party leader will also pledge to make up the shortfall in income expected by Scottish universities if Labour wins the UK General Election and cuts fees for English students from £9000 to £6000.
Mr Murphy has signalled previously that he would not scrap popular entitlements, such as free prescriptions and university fees, if becomes First Minister after next year's Holyrood poll.
Speaking ahead of a visit to Glasgow Caledonian University today, he confirmed: "Under Scottish Labour there will be no university tuition fees in Scotland.
"I want young Scots to be able to train to be doctors, teachers, lawyers, engineers, scientists and much more no matter their background or how much money their parents have.
"That was why Donald Dewar abolished tuition fees in the first place."
Mr Murphy, who will meet members of the university's Labour Club, will also highlight his plan to spend £125million over the lifetime of the next Holyrood parliament to close the attainment gap between rich and poor children in schools.
Mr Murphy said the low number of pupils from the poorest background qualifying to study in top universities was a "moral scandal".
Tuition fees were abolished in Scotland in 2000.
They were replaced with a £2,289 graduate endowment fee, paid after students graduated, which was scrapped by the SNP in 2008.
However, Scots universities are allowed to charge students from the rest of the UK the same level of fees as in England.
They fear they could lose £37million per year as a result of Labour's pledge to cut fees south of the Border.
Vowing to make good the shortfall, Mr Murphy said: "Scotland has some of the best universities in the world, specialising in medical research that saves lives and is vital to our NHS. We won't allow that to be put at risk."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article