Frank Dobson, Labour’s MP for Holborn and St Pancras, has a majority of just under 5,000 votes. With one in five Holborn and St Pancras voters being a student, Dobson’s constituency is one of the Parliamentary seats in London where the student vote really matters. To help students decide whether Labour’s Frank Dobson, or Jo Shaw, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Holborn and St Pancras, would work best for them, London Student asked them both a series of questions on the ‘credit crunch’, tuition fees, youth unemployment and Palestine. 

Naturally, Dobson and Shaw held differing opinions regarding Gordon Brown’s handling of the credit crunch. When I asked Shaw whether the Liberal Democrats would have handled the financial crisis differently, she said that “it was only when Northern Rock went absolutely to the wire that Brown was prepared to step in” to nationalise Northern Rock.   

“Vince Cable” [Lib Dem Economic Spokesman], she stressed, “would have nationalised Northern Rock about six months earlier.”    

Shaw added that “Cable was warning about spiralling levels of public debt for about ten years; warning that we were basing our economy on a house price bubble.

Had Cable been the Chancellor”, Shaw insisted, “he would have been increasing the amount of regulation on the banks” and “cutting down the amount of irresponsible lending and borrowing.” 

Dobson, held Brown in higher regard. Quoting Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize Winner for Economics, Dobson reminded me that Krugman has praised Brown for having  acted with “stunning speed” and  a “combination of clarity and decisiveness” that “hasn’t been matched by any other Western government.”  

Dobson pointed out that, in discussing whether Brown actually ‘saved the world’, Krugman concluded: Brown and Alistair Darling “may have shown us through this crisis”.    

Dobson concurrs. He told me thatwhile on holiday he noticed that “every news channel, including the French news channel praised Gordon Brown… apart from the BBC”.    

Dobson elaborated, saying “the BBC’s role in all this has been
deplorable. When [Brown] was going around the world, in the run up to the G20, he was mocked by a collection of second rate know-it-alls at the BBC.”  

The Labour MP hit back at Brown’s critics, insisting, “as a result of Brown going round the world urging other governments to pour public funds into the economy, what might have been a world-wide slump has been an
admittedly very severe recession, which otherwise would have been infinitely worse.”     

Discussing Britain’s debt, Dobson says he believes that “to listen to the Tories you’d think that cuts are the only way to reduce the deficit.” 
“In fact”, he stressed “the best way to reduce the debt is to get the economy working at its full potential.”

He went on: “Increasing the tax take by a windfall tax on the banks and a Tobin Tax on international financial transactions will help.”

Both Shaw and Dobson are opposed to tuition fees. In response to my asking Shaw whether the Lib Dems have revoked their commitment to free higher education, she maintained that “the average student in London graduates with debts of around £30,000, a shockingly high sum that will be a millstone around the necks of the wealth builders of the future.”  

Accordingly, “the Liberal Democrats are committed to scrapping  tuition fees. We oppose Labour and Conservative plans to raise fees by £7,000.”  

Explaining the economic rationale for this, Shaw added that “with youth unemployment at its highest since the 90s, we need to encourage young people to go to university, not put them off. We are clear that society must do all it can to help and support the younger generation. Only their optimism, energy and enthusiasm will get us through the difficult years ahead.”   

When I asked Labour’s Dobson if he thought today’s students are disadvantaged compared to students of his generation, he insisted: “Yes they are. I was utterly opposed to top-up fees; I remain utterly opposed to top-up fees.” 

His preferred alternative being a “graduate tax – with a floor in it. Graduates who are not as well paid would not have to pay it”, but “graduates on higher salaries would have to pay something extra through income tax, once their salary reached a certain threshold.”  

Dobson told me that he was “very glad to see that the Provost of UCL, Malcolm Grant, who has hitherto been an advocate of whopping top-up fees, has now come out in favour of a graduate tax”, adding, “It’s  a much fairer way of funding universities.”      

After reminding Dobson that a student’s other big fear is post-graduate unemployment, Dobson insisted: “if you vote Tory, you’re voting yourself out of work!”     

He explained “a lot of graduates find jobs in the public sector, or parts of the private sector who sell their services to the public sector.” Therefore “Tory public spending cuts mean job losses.”

In response to my suggesting that a Labour Government would cut, just like the Conservatives, Dobson claimed: “some cuts may be unavoidable, but not till unemployment is clearly going down.”

“In any case”, he maintained “the best way to reduce the deficit is to get the country back to work.  It costs the taxpayer £12,000 to keep one person out of work”. 

Sticking to the issue of post-graduate employment prospects, Shaw claimed that the Lib Dem party is “committed to helping students find a job or a placement within 90 days. Our policy is to provide work or training or an internship opportunity within that time, to ensure that there is something, even if it is not ideal – ie. the fabulous job that you always wanted; something that enables you to get experience or training.  

“The Lib Dems”, she says “would fund employers to provide paid internships. Many young people cannot afford to do unpaid internships, which are often the best way of getting onto the career ladder.” This , “and extra college and university places would be funded”, Shaw explained, “by scrapping the £12.5bn temporary VAT cut, which does not help those most in need.”

“As youth unemployment has climbed to its highest for more than a decade, so we must do more to help young people, who’ll be scarred by long periods of being out of work early on in life.”  

Moving rapidly onto the Palestine-Israeli issue, Shaw indicated that the Lib Dems “were the only party not only calling for a ceasefire on both sides during the Gaza conflict earlier this year”, but “also for halting the U.K’s sale of arms to Israel, at the same time as halting  Hamas’s smuggling  of arms into the Gaza strip.”  

She added, “Though Israel is in a very difficult situation, because it is surrounded by countries where some parties have said they don’t think Israel should exist, the reaction from the Israeli Government has sometimes not helped.”    

Regarding the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Shaw maintained that “in order for there to be a possibility for peace, not everybody is going to get what they want. There has clearly got to be movement on [the settlement] issue, and probably from both sides.”   

Dobson’s starting point on the issue was that “Israel’s there to stay”, but “I have been an advocate of a Palestinian sovereign state” from “well before my time as an MP.”  

He insisted that “as far as I’m concerned, other people are catching up with me”; adding that “at the time of the [1973] Yom-Kippur War my wife and myself, and about three other people I knew appeared to be the only people who had any sympathy whatsoever with the Palestinians.”

Dobson concluded: “We’ve got to get the Israelis to realise that the best way to secure the safety and security of the population of Israel, is to come to a decent settlement with the Palestinians.

“That must mean Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank which they have occupied since 1967 in clear contravention of international law”.”

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