We are asking that all prospective leadership and deputy leadership candidates respond to our challenges and that Labour MPs take the challenges on board when voting for their new leader.

We would ask that if you have a Labour MP, ask them to sign up to the five challenges, if not write to the leadership and deputy leadership candidates asking for their support.

Five challenges for the new prime minister:

five .

Letter to MPs

Letter to potential candidates

Join the facebook group to be kept up to date with responses from MP's.

The selection of a new Prime Minister has given NUS a unique chance to raise key issues for students in Parliament. It is widely anticipated that the Prime Minister will bring in a raft of new policies in his first 100 days - and we want the student agenda to have top priority.

“Five Challenges for a New Prime Minister” includes 5 key issues for students, that cover every aspect of their lives from health, travel, debt to work and skills.

We picked the challenges on three criteria:

Our increasingly diverse membership must be able to relate to at least one of them

They could realistically be met by the Prime Minister in his first 100 days

They must be on the Government’s agenda

Why five?

Because “Eighty six challenges for the new prime minister” didn’t have the same ring to it. NUS had to be realistic about how many to include and really come down hard on the key issues. Picking too many would dilute the message and the challenges would loose their power.

Because we have to follow these challenges up with campaigns. As an organisation - like all other organisations, we have to priorities our resources and use them at the right time.

Why hasn’t NUS included top-up fees?

The whole booklet is in the context of fees.

Top up fees are clearly a priority for NUS, however, these were to be five challenges that could be met by the Prime Minister in his first 100 days. Top up fees - as much as we might want them to - are not going to be.

The ‘five challenges’ document is clear about these being not the only challenges we will put to the Prime Minister during his term in office. The booklet calls for these challenges to be met as a “statement of intent”. If enacted, they would give a strong indication that students’ concerns will be addressed by the new leadership, including during the review of top-up fees. The response will be an opportunity to test the ground in advance of the review.

A review into fees that reports in 2009 is just about to start. Part of our argument to the Government and Vice Chancellors, is that they shouldn’t pre-empt this review by saying the cap should be raised, as they are clearly doing in private and sometimes in public. If we want to win this, we have to be clever about it - and if we break this embargo so publicly, then we will encourage them to as well. And the people in the pro camp can come down harder and faster upon us than we can upon them.

The first attack we will face, before the cap review, will be increasing the commercial rate of interest on students loans. This will undoubtedly be a prelude to raising the cap - the Government won’t be able to afford to do it otherwise. We have to fight this step by step.

Why those challenges?

All students will be able to fight for at least one of these challenges. They are challenges that through our work with our diverse membership, we have found that we should be concentrating more resources on.

Adopting and embracing diverse campaigns does not imply the abandonment of a priority, but merely challenges those who would stereotype us as being obsessed about a single issue. The war to protect the welfare of students consists of many battles on many fronts.

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