Welcome back to the start of a new term. I hesitate to start with the customary 'happy new year'; this coming term - indeed this coming year - will be tough for students, tough for universities and tough for the country as a whole.

As students returned home for the holidays, Lord Mandelson announced swingeing higher education budget cuts like the Grinch that stole Christmas. This week, the Russell Group, hardly famous for being openly critical of government policy, launched a withering attack on budget cuts by painting an almost apocalyptic scenario facing British universities. One of the most remarkable claims made by their leaders in today's Guardian was that: "It has taken more than 800 years to create one of the world's greatest education systems, and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees."

We should be in no doubt that shrill protestations from the Russell Group about the state of university funding are over-stated and designed to increase pressure on the review group to hike up fees after the General Election.

So far, NUS has been the most consistent, evidenced-based and constructive player in the higher education funding debate. I can think of no other period during my time as a student and a student leader when NUS has been able to credibly make that claim. We should join with university and trade union leaders to stand against cuts in university budgets: we know that the cuts already announced are just the tip of the iceberg and we know that in such a climate it is students and staff who will bear the brunt of cuts locally. But we should also hold fast to articulating students' messages and students' priorities for our universities.

On the 2nd February, NUS will be kicking off the General Election campaign. The launch of a ground breaking new website to harness and turn out the student vote will signal the start of a campaign in which we can make the biggest difference to the future of our country and the future of our higher education system. We will be asking you to do three simple things:

1. Ensure students are registered to vote.

2. Ensure that students visit our website to pledge to use their vote.

3. Ensure that students turn out to vote.

Next week we will sending out more information about the website and the campaign activity for the coming term. I can't impress upon you how important this campaign activity is. Our great potential and strength as a movement is in the numbers of people we represent. We can terrify candidates at the next election into signing our pledge and in doing so we increase our chances of winning in the next Parliament.

More than any other activity you undertake this term, getting students to sign up to our website will have the biggest outcome on the debate that will impact more on student lives and the higher education sector than any other issue for the next decade.

 Look out for the information that will be hitting students' unions next week. Please feel free to contact myself, Susan Nash and Aaron Porter about this campaign throughout the coming term.

 Good luck,

Wes

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