Students must be supported

We should all be listening to those students who demonstrated in such large numbers in Hastings and throughout the country against the Government’s plans to force our brightest young people into massive debt before they’ve even started their working life.

Ms Rudd asks us to look at the bigger picture and she is right though not in the way she thinks. The bigger picture is that every time we visit a doctor, take medicine developed by scientists, use a building designed by an architect or a road built by engineers, let alone call upon the skills of a solicitor, an accountant or a teacher, we benefit from graduates and other highly trained people.

We must kill the myth that further and higher education are a self-indulgence that only benefits an elite few. We all depend upon them and so should all pay for them - that’s the point of paying taxes.

Of course, difficult choices have to be made with the public finances as the previous government had to borrow heavily to prevent the collapse of the banking system which would have been a disaster for us all. It is those who caused the mess and can afford to that should pay to resolve the problems. Young people should not be lumbered with massive debts as they start out in life.

RICHARD STREET

Winchelsea Road